Lebanese protesters with flags, downtown Beirut, Lebanon, September 9, 2015. Wael Hamzeh/EPA/Corbis
September 17, 2015
The “You Stink” demonstrations
in Beirut have evolved from an expression of exasperation with the government’s
inability to maintain a garbage collection service into a campaign denouncing
Lebanon’s entire political system. The country has entered its second year
without a president or an elections law, and with a parliament that has
extended its own term. It’s no wonder that thousands of young Lebanese feel
frustrated with their country’s politicians—and politics. For some, Lebanon is
on the brink of becoming a failed state.
Dream of the Founding Fathers
It was not always like that. In
the early twentieth century, France—and to some extent Britain—was inclined to
carve up the eastern Mediterranean between its different sects. Centuries of
Ottoman authoritarianism and various episodes of bloody confrontations between
these sects, often exacerbated by colonial interference, left community
relations strained. In that view, the solution was to allow each of the
region’s major sects to establish a state in the area of its demographic
majority. The region surrounding Mount Lebanon was to become a Levantine
Christian state, in which the traditionally most influential group among them,
the Catholic Maronites, were to play the decisive role.
But the idea of sectarian
states had no currency at the time. Secular, national states (whether
constitutional monarchies or republics) were beginning to appear across the
region. Emerging from the Ottoman cloak, Arabs were inspired by exposure to
Western modernity, and by the vibrancy and optimism of their own Arab liberal
age in the early decades of the twentieth century. The most prominent political
leaders in North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean wanted their communities
to evolve beyond a religion-based political legitimacy and social identity. A
meeting of minds between a small group of political visionaries in the area of
Mount Lebanon and the valleys around Beirut, the most prominent of whom were
the Christian Bishara Al-Khuri and the Sunni Riad Al-Solh, laid the foundations
of an independent multi-confessional state: Lebanon.
It was not all smooth sailing.
A significant percentage of the region’s Sunnis wanted to be united with the
new state of Syria, whose land was for centuries the political and cultural
centre of the Levant, and the heartland of the region’s Sunni Islamism. There
was a heritage of acute distrust and wars between the Druze and the Maronites.
And there were the traditionally less-affluent Shiite Muslims in the region’s
valleys, who have always had a unique political identity and social traditions.
But the founding fathers of the
new state managed to circumvent these challenges. In addition to negotiating
independence from the Western powers, they formulated a political structure
which, though reserving for the Maronites the status of first among equals, was
perceived as one of power-sharing among different sects.
The new state had special
promise. It was the first time ever that a multi-confessional secular state was
established in the eastern Mediterranean. The vision was that this new state would
bring together over fifteen different sects, many of which shared long
histories of feuds and suspicions, into a single society. A new form of
nationalism (being Lebanese) would transcend sectarianism.
The prominent role given to the
Levant’s Christians, traditionally the Arab world’s most globally-connected and
entrepreneurial community, imbued the new state with a sense of openness, a
relaxed social code, and vibrant commercialism. Not surprisingly, 1950s and
1960s Lebanon emerged as the region’s most successful financial, trading, and
entertainment hub.
But economic success was not
sufficient for the Lebanese state to realize its potential. Except for a few
quarters in Beirut, the different communities continued to co-exist in neighboring,
but distinct, areas. Lebanon was increasingly cosmopolitan, but it was not
genuinely mixed. The founders’ aspiration of transcending sectarianism remained
just that—an aspiration.
Perhaps it was a very tall
order. The Maronites, Druze, and Shia have always been minorities in the
region. Discarding their sectarian identity ran against centuries of
trepidation, cautiousness, and coalescing around their religious authorities.
It was not a coincidence that almost all Maronite and Druze villages have always
been nestled in forbidding mountains, far from the Sunni-dominated towns and
cities and from the Shia in the region’s southern valleys. Even the Lebanese
Sunnis, who belonged to the Arab world’s comfortable majority, felt that in
multi-confessional Lebanon they had to assert their sectarian identity. Beneath
the glamorous façade of the “Switzerland of the East”, as the country was
called in the 1950s and 1960s, laid enormous tensions.
Legacy of the Civil War
The eruption came when tens of thousands
of Palestinian refugees were forced to make Lebanon their home in the aftermath
of the confrontation in the early 1970s between the Palestinian Liberation
Organization and the Jordanian monarchy. The rapid infusion of tens of
thousands of mostly Sunni Palestinians disrupted Lebanon’s delicate
religious-demographic balance, creating a cascading set of problems: it
challenged the economic interests of several influential families in different
sects; was seen by many Lebanese as a threat to their country’s sense of joie
de vivre; and crucially made some Palestinian leaders, key among them Yasser
Arafat, harbor ambitions to turn Lebanon (or at least parts of it) into a
temporary alternative Palestinian state.
Many Lebanese observers designate
the civil war that ravaged the country from 1975 to 1990, “the others’ war in
Lebanon”. True, the war turned Lebanon into an open battlefront where
different countries bought influence, pursued geo-political opportunities,
exacted costs on enemies, and experimented with intelligence operations.
Throughout the 1980s, almost all of the fighting factions in Lebanon were
militarily supported and financially sponsored by various regional powers.
Syria’s Hafez Al-Assad exploited the fall of the Lebanese central state and turned
his army and the elaborate security apparatus he had established in Lebanon
into the real decisive power in the country.
But the war was, first and
foremost, Lebanese. It pitted the country’s various sects against each other.
There were episodes of horrifying violence between different sects as well as
between communities of the same faith. Thousands of Christians were killed amidst accusations that
they were “infidels”. At the same time, images of Christian militias rampaging
through Muslim camps while carrying pictures of the Virgin Mary were imprinted
on the minds of millions of Muslims. “Killing by identity” (one of the most
horrendous phases of the Lebanese civil war) traumatized many Christian and
Muslim families and severed relationships between communities that had neighbored
each other for centuries.
That a country with Lebanon’s
reservoir of culture, refinement, exposure to the world, and intellectual richness
could descend into such shocking barbarity revealed the acute distrust felt by
different sects and communities towards each other. Crucially, it demonstrated
that old tensions, and in several cases heritages of hatred, were far from
being diluted by any new “Lebanese identity”.
The Second Republic
By the end of the 1980s, the
majority of the warring factions were tired or broke—or both. It took the
creativity of an ultra-successful Lebanese businessman, Rafik Hariri—and over a
billion dollars of his wealth—to incentivize the leaders of the key warring
factions to lay down their arms. The 1991 U.S.-led war to eject Saddam Hussein
from Kuwait marked the arrival of George H. Bush’s “New World Order” to the
Middle East. That entailed blessing the Hariri-led and Saudi-sponsored
settlement in Lebanon, and acquiescing to Hafez Al-Assad’s effective control of
the country, primarily in return for his participation in the 1991
coalition.
The second Lebanese republic
was born in the Taif Agreement in Saudi Arabia. Taif diluted the Maronite role
in the Lebanese executive structure; it greatly enhanced the power of the Sunni
Prime Minister’s office (which Rafik Hariri predictably occupied); and it left
Hezbollah (the Shiite organization and militia that had emerged in the 1980s as
the key “resistance movement” against Israel’s 1982 invasion) as the sole armed
non-state actor in the country. All of
that left a sour taste in the Christian view of the agreement. But for the
Christians, and for the vast majority of the Lebanese, there was no alternative
to Taif. After fifteen years of destruction and devastation, anything was
better than the quagmire of war.
Taif survived. Hariri used his
billions and connections in the Gulf to rebuild Beirut. Peace gave the legendary
Lebanese entrepreneurialism the space to prosper. By the mid-1990s, Lebanese
entertainment and media had come to dominate almost the whole of the Arab
world. Assad’s Syria continued to exert immense influence over Lebanese
politics, but the sense of revival, of effervescence that had appeared after
the end of the war, gave rise to an inspiration to emerge from the Syrian
cloak.
Cedar Revolution
The assassination of Rafik Hariri on Valentine’s Day 2005
unleashed that inspiration and allowed it to coalesce into a tangible movement:
waves of mass demonstrations denouncing the Syrian presence in Lebanon. Bashar Al-Assad,
who had inherited the Syrian presidency after his father’s death in 2000,
withdrew his army. The promise of the 2005 demonstrations, however, was not in
ejecting Bashar Al-Assad’s Syria from Lebanon: it was in imbuing the Lebanese
identity with new momentum, in the possibility of transcending sectarianism.
In March 2005, the journalist and politician Jibran Tueni took to a podium in Beirut’s
Martyrs Square and movingly stated: “In the
name of God, we, Muslims and Christians, pledge that united we shall remain to
the end of time to better defend our Lebanon”. Tueni seemed to be speaking on
behalf of a new force that was determined to save Lebanon from the
religious-identity politics that ruined it. Soon, however, his call and the
movement that had coalesced behind it, were diluted by the fall of Lebanese
politics into two major camps—those for and against Assad’s Syria, a
special Saudi role in Lebanon, Iran’s influence in the country, and for and
against Hezbollah’s unique status. Tueni—and some of the most distinguished Lebanese
intellectuals—were assassinated. Sectarianism remained robustly healthy. The promise
of the 2005 “Cedar revolution” was lost.
There is a possibility that the promise of the current
demonstrations could also be lost. As happened in 2005, the desire of the protest
movement for a complete overhaul of Lebanese politics could get channeled into
intricate details and processes. And also like in 2005, the current momentum
could succumb to factionalism: those for and against Assad’s Syria, those for
and against Hezbollah, and the myriad of issues that camouflage the interests
of the leaders of Lebanon’ different political groups.
This will be another major loss, for Lebanon acutely
needs the momentum of these demonstrators to confront the real causes of its
sickness. Twenty-five years after the end of the war, Lebanese state
institutions remain weak. Some are hardly functioning. All large political
parties are familial fiefdoms passed from one generation to another. And almost
all of the leading Lebanese politicians are the same militia-chiefs who fought
against each other in the 1970s and 1980s. Their influence and ability to
control their constituencies rest on the continuing weakness of the central
state.
Lebanon on the
Brink
The new youth movement should learn from the experience
of the years since 2005. It needs to rise above the details of the existing and
crippled political system, and realize that the functioning of the Lebanese
state—and
its survival—hinge upon reconstructing Lebanon’s political architecture. The youth
groups should insist on graduating Lebanon from being a mere front for the
different cold and hot wars unfolding in the region into a country whose
national politics are determined by the wants and desires of the majority of
the Lebanese. They should insist that Lebanon resist being a pawn at the mercy
of foreign patron countries that sponsor the leaders of different factions.
The “You Stink” movement has already made it clear that
it rejects the existing leaders and the way Lebanese governments have been
operating in the last few years. This is not enough. The movement should insist
that the foundations of the new political system should be shaped by
independent and neutral professionals—for example reputable judges with
solid track records. Otherwise, any attempt at creating a new system would be paralyzed
by the same machinations that have battered the country. And crucially the
movement should confront the crucial and perennial question in Lebanese politics:
can the state exist on a national, rather than sectarian, basis?
If the experience of the last four decades is any guide,
then the answer is no. This means that Lebanon is either destined for
fragmentation or federalism. Both entail acute dangers. Fragmentation means
small, sectarian-based statelets crammed in the area between Israel, Jordan,
what remains of Syria, and the swaths of land dominated by militant Islamist
groups. These statelets—even a Christian one rich in human capital and with
connections to different international markets and industries—will have unstable
economies and limited attraction for foreign investors. A few sectarian
statelets next to each other will do nothing to resolve religious tensions. It
may instead lead to more long and bloody wars like those that plagued the
Levant in the nineteenth century.
Some observers think federalism is the answer. It is not.
The gap in economic development, available infrastructure, and key
socio-economic metrics between the different regions of the country would
restrain and constrain any federal government. Plus, federalism will entrench
sectarianism, and so each community will, as is the case now, have its
independent foreign policy, which would render the federal government powerless
in international relations, defense and intelligence matters.
Federalism also negates the idea of Lebanon. It is the
polite way of confirming that the Lebanese identity cannot transcend
sectarianism. In essence, a federal Lebanon would mark the end of the project
that Bishara Al-Khuri and Riad Al-Solh launched close to a century ago.
The fall of that idea of Lebanon will be a monumental
loss—for
the entire Arab world. After Iraq and Syria, it will be the third proof that
national identities in the Arab countries created in the last hundred years are
fragile. It will doom the Arab state system in the whole of the eastern
Mediterranean. It will also mean that even the parts of the Arab world with
arguably the most sophisticated cultural reservoir (of which Lebanon is the
prime example) cannot evolve strong national, secular identities that rise
above primal belongings such as sectarianism.
Tarek Osman is
the author of Egypt on the Brink. He has appeared as a
commentator on most major international news networks and has written
extensively on the Arab world and Islamism for major newspapers and magazines
worldwide. He was the writer and presenter of the BBC documentary series “The
Making of the Modern Arab World” in 2013 and “Saudi Arabia: Sands of Time” in
2015. He is the political counselor for the Arab world at the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development. On Twitter: @TarekmOsman