LEBANON BEYOND SECTARIANISM
Chris Phillips

guardian.co.uk
Friday 24 April 2009 10.00 BST

As the battle lines are drawn for the Lebanese elections in June,
reports suggest the surprising kingmakers could be Lebanon’s
Armenians. This small community of barely 150,000 look set to abandon
its traditional neutrality and back the Hezbollah-led opposition. While
this appears to be yet another example of the complex interconfessional
horse trading that has characterised Lebanese politics for years,
it could be a sign that the state is finally taking slow steps away
from its long-standing sectarianism.

Although the Taif accord of 1989, which ended the Lebanese civil war,
stated that "abolishing political sectarianism is a fundamental
national objective", a confessional electoral system remains in
place. Parliamentary seats are assigned by religious group and
parties are defined by sect rather than political agenda. In the
years of Syrian domination after the war (1991-2005), Damascus saw
the benefit of reviving this system which allowed them to divide
and rule. Even after the Syrian withdrawal, it stayed enshrined in
the constitution. The recent decision to enact Taif’s other demand
of removing religion from ID cards two decades later than expected
cannot disguise the slow progress that has been made.

Ostensibly, the cedar revolution of 2005, which expelled the Syrians
and created the current political landscape, also divided along
religious lines.

The Sunni, Druze and Christian communities supported the
anti-Syrian 14 March coalition, while the pro-Syrian 8 March group
was largely Shia. Yet recent developments have challenged these
alignments. Firstly, the memorandum of understanding in early 2006 saw
the Christian Free Patriotic Movement form an unlikely alliance with
Hezbollah. With the FPM claiming they had won 70% of Christian support
in the 2005 elections, this ensured that 8 March could no longer be
seen as a purely Shia bloc. Now, the decision of Armenians, such as
the Tashnag party, to join them in the coming elections is further
bolstering 8 March’s non-sectarian credentials, producing an opposition
that is seemingly united by its politics rather than confession.

A key reason for this drift into non-religious blocs is the question
over Syrian influence after their withdrawal in 2005, which presents
Lebanese voters with a political rather than a sectarian issue around
which to align.

While the Maronite Christian and now Armenian communities appear
more equally split between the two camps than other groups, there
are also minority Shia parties in the government and Sunni and Druze
representatives in the opposition. Moreover, issues unrelated to
Syria are emerging to define the camps’ agendas; 8 March presents
itself as anti-corruption, while 14 March claims to be the defender
of economic stability. Could these political platforms eventually
come to outstrip creed in setting the civic agenda?

Sectarianism won’t be washed away in one election though, and powerful
forces support its continuation. Christian, Druze and Sunni political
dynasties that have created parties to continue a regional dominance
of their tribe and sect stretching back generations do not want to
alter a system that has historically given them power. Similarly,
external actors promote divisions. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have
tried to whip up hostility in recent years by presenting Hezbollah as
part of a wider Iranian-led Shia threat to Sunnis in the region, while
Iran and Syria have made little effort to dispel such accusations.

Despite pursuing a non-sectarian agenda, even the opposition can be
seen as endorsing the status quo. Many see the FPM’s alliance with
Hezbollah as merely an expedient way for its leader, Michael Aoun,
to find political space as the only major Christian figure in the
opposition, rather than carving out a permanent political alliance. His
importance to 8 March is that he brings parliamentary seats that can
only be allocated to Christians.

In a non-religious electoral system, he would have no role to play.

Similarly, the Tashnag party’s conversion could be viewed as an
assessment that Armenian interests would best be served under 8 March,
rather than a genuine belief in abandoning a structure that guarantees
this minority’s political representation.

Lebanon’s confessional constitution damages its democratic credibility
and leaves the door open for a return to religious violence in the
future. Only last year sectarian militias took to the streets of Beirut
and Tripoli , showing that conflict isn’t far from the surface. This
is exacerbated by outside powers exaggerating the Sunni-Shia divide to
pursue their own regional goals. Twenty years on from the civil war,
political power remains in the hands of the same elites and ruling
families, with a few new additions, who oversaw the outbreak of
hostilities in the first place. Hopes that the younger generation who
dominated the cedar revolution might produce new leaders to break this
oligarchy soon dwindled as the cause was hijacked by the traditional
parties and their political heirs.

Yet even if their motives are more cynical, the emergence of two
political rather than religious blocs in Lebanon should still be
encouraged. It might be unlikely that these fragile coalitions will
be able to wean Lebanon off confessionalism in the current regional
climate. However, the more they evolve policy agendas that transcend
traditional divisions, the more likely the Taif goal of "abolishing
political sectarianism" will prove possible when, and if, regional
circumstances allow.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress