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COMMENTARY
January 15, 2011
Lebanon unravelling
To say that Lebanon is on the brink -- of actual war; of terrific civic convulsions; of another Levantine peace settlement that brilliantly ignores the law of contradiction -- is to say nothing new. Perhaps the reason there is so little media attention to this current flashpoint for another Middle Eastern conflagration that would embroil the world, is that we're bored. We have had Lebanon on the brink, or over, continuously since 1975.The country was not an entirely happy place before that, but it was the (misplaced) hope for a "modern" Middle East; and Beirut, before its destruction in the 1975-'90 civil war, was in many ways the centre for banking, trade, industry, design, art, publishing, music, and general culture for the whole Arab world. Which is to say, enterprising persons from many other countries were magnetically drawn to the freedom of Beirut. By some incredible coincidence, it was also the only Arab domain under predominant Christian rule, the substantial non-Christian presence being divided between native Sunni and Shia Muslims (further subdivided into sects), the Druze, and permanently segregated Palestinian refugees (of various religious affiliations). The Christians themselves were divided between the majority Maronites (Catholics from the Syriac liturgical tradition), and both Melkite (Catholic) and Greek Orthodox; plus trace minorities such as Armenians and even the odd Nestorian. A "multicultural" hotchpotch, in which 18 distinct sects were officially recognized -- but an apparently successful one under westward-looking Maronite leadership. Demography is destiny, according to many political observers, and the relative size of the respective religious and ethnic communities within Lebanon have changed over time. To make the long story short, the future is now a contest between Shia Islam, under the direction of the Iranian-sponsored "Party of Allah" (Hezbollah); and everyone else. (There are Shia who don't support Hezbollah, of course; and good luck to them.) There is an official Lebanese army somewhere, which sometimes comes out to quell minor insurrections in places like the Palestinian camps. But Hezbollah has this army heavily outgunned, even before counting the 45,000 missiles the Israelis think are aimed toward them from launching pads in southern Lebanon -- brought into the country right under the noses of United Nations "peacekeepers" since the last Hezbollah-Israel exchange. I am actually over-simplifying the situation, for I have not mentioned Syria yet, whose open interference in Lebanese affairs has included sometime occupation of the country, and which considers the very independence of Lebanon to be merely an artefact of the old French imperialism. Syria is allied with Iran, and governed by a totalitarian regime, dominated by minority Alawites (an arguably Shia sect). But that alliance is -- like every other in the region -- one of convenience against common enemies; the western world being their common enemy for the foreseeable future. What I have written so far is intended to give some hint of the degree to which Lebanon offers a proxy killing field for the region's rival powers; and to contradict the malicious suggestion that, somehow, Israel is behind all the trouble. From its foundation as a state, Israel has been trying to stay out of Lebanese affairs, and Lebanon to stay out of Israel's. But the option evaporated when first Yasser Arafat's PLO, and then Hezbollah, appropriated Lebanese territory to attack Israel. The live issue of the moment is, Who killed Rafik Hariri in 2005? He was the Sunni former prime minister of Lebanon -- an immensely wealthy businessman who led the rebuilding of Beirut after the civil war, and through the (now failed) "Cedar Revolution." His son and inheritor, Saad Hariri, was prime minister until Hezbollah pulled the rug out from under his government this week. The Syrians were at first assumed to have been the perpetrators, of that and several other bombings that decimated the Lebanese political class. They certainly had the motive of vengeance, for Hariri had manoeuvred to compel their humiliating retreat from Lebanon. But the UN-agreed international investigation of the affair, which will finally report in March, quickly found overwhelming evidence that Hezbollah placed that particular car bomb (which also killed a score of others). Hezbollah, which as recently as October conducted a playful nationwide military exercise, to show how easily it could take over everything, pulled its ministers out of the Lebanese coalition because Saad Hariri refused to condemn the UN tribunal in advance. Hezbollah instead insists on its own preposterous theory, that the Israelis did it. The odd thing is that they even care. But that is where the situation becomes even more twisted: because Hezbollah wants not only to rule Lebanon, but to do so with something like Hamas's claim to legitimacy in ruling Gaza. That is, to make Israel the common enemy, and unite the country behind the ambition of driving Israel into the sea. But rather than provide serious aid and assistance to Hezbollah's opponents within Lebanon, the western powers, under U.S. leadership, are just watching this happen. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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