January 09, 2014
The
continuing wave of bombings and assassinations in the heart of the two main
ideological camps in Lebanon have prompted a string of dire warnings from top
political and sectarian leaders—Hizbullah’s Naim Qassem, Future Movement’s Saad
Hariri, Amal leader Nabih Berri, Progressive Socialist leader Walid Jumblatt,
and others—that the country is threatened with destruction if things continue
along their current trajectory. They are correct, of course, but to be taken
more seriously they also should acknowledge three important corollary factors
that they conveniently omit:
• Their
own leadership legacies are a large reason for the precarious nature of the
Lebanese state, for they are not passive bystanders but rather they have the
power in their hands to make Lebanon a more stable place;
• Lebanon
is very typical of many other existing Arab states that are equally threatened
with self-generated implosion; and,
•Arab
states and their existing power structures certainly are threatened, but
society and the people of these countries will persist and regroup under more
competent leaderships one day.
Governance
systems might be dysfunctional, but societies at the grassroots will continue,
as they have for thousands of years.
When Arab
politicians start issuing frightening warnings about imminent national
collapse, and always blame foreign hands for this predicament, the real threat
is to their own political grip on the levers of power rather than on any
imagined existential threat to their societies. Lebanon is probably the most
severe Arab case of under-achieving national leadership because the power elite
in the country has remained largely unchanged for the past half century, with
the exception of the rise of Hizbullah and the Michel Aoun camp. So if this
otherwise wonderful country truly is threatened with collapse, it is relatively
easy to pin the blame on the collective mediocrity of the political elite that
both prevents any meaningful domestic consensus while simultaneously forging
deeper and deeper links with foreign patrons, financiers, protectors and
armorers.
So what
should we make of the sudden announcement earlier this week that Saudi Arabia
was providing the Lebanese armed forces with $3 billion to upgrade its
capabilities? The expected impact, given Lebanon’s severely dysfunctional and
polarized political system, would be a fresh round of sharp accusations by both
main ideological camps that make of this generous grant a new cause for
contention and political immobilization. This is likely in view of the current
state of Lebanese political stagnation, but it would be terribly unfortunate
and a huge missed opportunity, given the pivotal role that the armed forces
play in the country today to keep it below the threshold of national collapse.
The
actual Saudi motives for offering this grant are known only to the leadership
in Riyadh, which has become much more proactive on the regional political
stage. The Lebanese president, Michel Suleiman, a former armed forces
commander, knows very well the immense need for this boost to the capabilities
of the military, along with the critical need to maintain its political
neutrality. The $3 billion grant to the armed forces, coming at a time of escalating
violence across the entire country, could be a means to move towards an
agreement on the one issue that strikes at the heart of the deeply stressed
political system: the fact of a heavily armed Hizbullah group that operates
outside the control of the state.
Hizbullah
has argued for years that it must maintain its military and intelligence
capabilities to protect the country from Israeli and other threats, because the
central government and the national defense forces are unable to do the job. Repeated
attempts in the National Dialogue process to reach agreement on a national
defense and security strategy have always failed. Could President Suleiman,
with a combination of other respected figures, initiate a process that uses the
$3 billion grant as a political catalyst to initiate a fresh attempt to bring
Hizbullah into a mechanism to forge a more effective national security system?
In
effect, this would challenge Hizbullah to reveal the veracity of its argument
that it needs to maintain its independent military capability because the state
is not doing its job to protect the country. The combination of a rejuvenated
national armed forces that enjoys widespread public support and also draws on
Hizbullah’s proven technical capabilities would seem to be a win-win situation
for all Lebanese. If Hizbullah rejects such an approach, it would lead many
Lebanese to conclude that it was never honest about the reason for maintaining
its armed capabilities, and Lebanon would persist on its disastrous path towards
internal strife and chaos. If it accepts, Lebanon might look forward to a
better future with more internal cohesion and stability.
This is a
very unlikely scenario, but it is useful once in a while to try and imagine a
more productive situation than a parade of Lebanese politicians predicting
imminent doom, when they have the power to achieve something more decent and
dignified for their own people.
Rami G.
Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares
Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American
University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.
Copyright
© 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global