Lebanon’s many mansions
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Salim Mansur
National Post
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
A Lebanese demonstrator makes his desires clear during an anti-Syrian
demonstration on Monday in Beirut.
After the Valentine’s Day murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister
Rafik Hariri, there was a stunning display of patriotism on the
streets of Beirut. Tens of thousands of ordinary Lebanese people
demonstrated to protest the presence of Syrian forces in their
country. Though the nation became a byword for civil war in the 1970s
and ’80s, the plethora of Lebanese flags on parade suggests many
citizens now share an overarching national identity.
But Tuesday’s massive pro-Syrian counterdemonstration showed that
large fissures remain in Lebanon’s body politic. Once Syria
withdraws, will the country move forward on the path to democracy? Or
will it slide into the infernal politics of warlordism, leading to a
sort of Levantine Somalia?
As Kamal Salibi wrote in his authoritative 1988 book, A House Of Many
Mansions, Lebanon is a nation divided by allegiance to faith, tribe
and clan. The main divide is Christian-Muslim, but that cleavage is
complicated by further subgroupings of Christian Maronites, Greek
Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Armenians; as well as Sunni, Shiite and
Druze Muslims — the many mansions of Salibi’s metaphor.
The state of Lebanon is a creature of the 20th century. After the
First World War, the French obtained the mandate to rule the Syrian
provinces of the former Ottoman empire. They expanded an autonomous
Maronite-dominated province into other parts of Syria, in large part
so that the Maronites — an ancient community with longstanding
connections to France and the Roman Catholic Church — could protect
their culture. To this day, Damascus does not accept Lebanon’s
separate statehood.
The inclusion of so many Syrian Muslims presented the Maronites with
a demographic problem: They were in danger of becoming a minority
within Lebanon. Looking ahead, the Maronite leadership in 1943
reached an agreement, known as the National Pact, under which the
president is a Maronite, the prime minister is a Sunni, and MPs are
fixed in a ratio of six Christians to every five Muslims, thereby
making Lebanon a uniquely confessional state.
The National Pact first came under serious strain in the 1950s, when
a tide of Arab nationalism swept the Middle East. The Maronites
turned to the United States, and in 1958 Dwight Eisenhower dispatched
the Marines at the invitation of a Maronite president. The U.S.
intervention illustrated how Lebanon’s delicate arrangement was
viable only if a foreign power propped it up.
In 1970, Hafez Assad became the new strongman in Damascus, and
claimed the mantle of Arab nationalism. Like his predecessors in
Syria, he did not see his country as an outside power where Lebanon
was concerned.
Assad got his chance to safeguard — or dominate — his neighbour in
1975, when an alliance of Sunni nationalists, Druze radicals,
dispossessed Shiites and Palestinian fighters joined to reconfigure
Lebanon’s political status quo at the expense of the Maronites.
Syrian troops poured in and became embroiled in the nation’s civil
war.
In 1989, Saudi Arabia brokered the Taif Agreement, which led to the
war’s end and mandated an incremental withdrawal of Syrian forces.
But Assad dragged his feet for years, justifying himself by pointing
to the continuing presence in southern Lebanon of Israeli troops,
who’d invaded the country in 1982 to expel the PLO. When the Israelis
withdrew in 2000, the remaining justification was the claim that
Syria’s forces were there at Lebanon’s request. The pro-Syrian puppet
government in Beirut did in fact support the occupation, but a
growing number of Lebanese people did not.
In September, 2004, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1559,
demanding the withdrawal of all “foreign forces” from Lebanon, and
“the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese
militias.”Without naming Syria, the resolution was clearly aimed at
that country, and at the Hezbollah militia backed by both Syria and
Iran. Bashar Assad, who assumed power in Damascus when his father
died in 2000, ignored the resolution. He did not realize his position
was untenable until the outrage that followed the murder of
Hariri.Behind the inspiring display of national pride in Beirut lies
a disturbing reminder of traditional differences. The country’s
Christian and Druze leaders have been leading the anti-Syrian
protests, while Hezbollah and other Shiite groups lead the pro-Syrian
demonstrations . The dispute over Syria’s presence has become a proxy
struggle between those Lebanese who see their destiny tied with the
West and those who see their place within the fold of Damascus and
Tehran.Rafik Hariri was an influential power-broker who sought to
bridge differences between these two sides, and help Lebanon create a
new political identity that doesn’t need propping up by Syria or any
other outside power.His dream was noble. But his murder has exposed
vulnerabilities that no amount of patriotism or sunny talk of a
“cedar revolution” can disguise. Once Syria has fully withdrawn,
Lebanon may well disintegrate — as it did 30 years ago — into a war
among its various mansions.
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