Le Monde diplomatique / June 2008
`A State Based on the Rule of Law Isn't Any Party's Aim'
___________________________________________________________
An unexplained decision by the Lebanese government last month to
challenge Hizbullah over its military capabilities provoked a
Hizbullah-led alliance of militias to defeat those of the prime
minister and a Sunni party. With the election of a new
president, Michel Suleiman, the fighting ended, but Hizbullah's
participation in government is a blow for the US.
by Alain Gresh
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The Masnaa border crossing has recently reopened. The
militias who had blocked all traffic in and out of Syria have
gone and the army has moved in, a sign that tensions are
easing after last month's fighting in Lebanon. The road,
which plunges down the mountain towards Beirut, is usually
choked with chaotic traffic between the countries, but the
situation hasn't yet returned to normal, so you can drive to
the Lebanese capital in under an hour.
Though everyone I spoke to agrees on the sequence of events,
their interpretations differ. On 6 May, after 12 hours'
deliberation, Lebanon's government passed two decrees: one to
establish an inquiry into Hizbullah's private communications
network ("illegal, illegitimate, an aggression against the
sovereignty of the state") and the other to transfer Beirut
airport's head of security, Wafiq Shuqair, a Shia general,
who is said to have close links to the opposition. The
authorities decided to internationalise the crisis and bring
the details of "this new aggression against the rule of law
in Lebanon" before the Arab League and the United Nations.
The decision was condemned by the opposition, whose main
players (in the Shia community) are Hizbullah, the political
and military movement backed by Iran and Syria, and Amal, led
by Nabih Berri, and (in the Christian community) the Free
Patriotic Movement (FPM) led by the Maronite general Michel
Aoun. On 8 May Hizbullah's secretary general, Hassan
Nasrallah, denounced this "declaration of war on the
resistance" at a press conference. At the same time Hizbullah
militia, along with those of Amal and the secular Syrian
Social National Party (SSNP), took control of predominantly
Sunni west Beirut. The airport and the port were blockaded.
After brief fighting, the militias of Saad Hariri's Future
Movement (a Sunni party) and the prime minister, Fouad
Siniora, surrendered. There were confrontations in other
regions in which 70 people were killed before a fragile peace
was restored.
The government rescinded its two decrees. The militias
withdrew in favour of the army, which had remained neutral,
and the politicians. On 17 May, under the auspices of the
emir of Qatar and the Arab League, negotiations began between
government and opposition in the Qatari capital, Doha, with
the aim of preventing Lebanon splitting in two. The
government side represented the majority of Sunnis and Druze,
as well as a minority of Christians. The opposition spoke for
most of Lebanon's Shia and a good half of the Christians, a
fact which western media often overlook, portraying Hizbullah
as the only opposition. On 21 May an agreement made provision
for Michel Suleiman, the former army chief, to be elected to
the presidency (on 25 May; the position had been vacant since
November 2007), the creation of a government of national
unity, and a new electoral law which will come into effect
for next spring's elections. For the moment, finding a
solution to the highly sensitive problem of Hizbullah's arms
has been postponed.
Questions remain
There are many questions but no clear answers. Why did the
government pass the two decrees; why did Hizbullah and its
allies take direct action; why didn't the army get involved;
why didn't the US and the European Union intervene? And what
is the scope of the Doha agreement?
"Hizbullah claimed that it would never turn its arms on the
Lebanese people. They said they were aimed only at Israel," a
pro-government journalist told me. "Now we know they were
lying." The argument that Hizbullah is no more than a militia
and doesn't constitute resistance to Israel and the US is
regularly voiced by all government leaders and their friends
in the media. But Ali Fayyad, a senior member of Hizbullah's
executive committee, says: "The conflict is not about
domestic politics. Our military communication system was a
decisive factor in our victory over Israel in July-August
2006. We cannot accept it being dismantled. That would
effectively mean disarmament. On the other hand, we have
never used force of arms to impose our views internally, to
change the government or obtain changes to the electoral
system."
What he didn't say was that Hizbullah seized its chance to
resolve a crisis which has been festering for 18 months,
paralysing the country and exasperating its supporters. The
formation of a national unity government furthers their aims,
since Hizbullah isn't seeking a central role in government,
but the creation of a context favourable to its core mission:
resistance to Israel and US plans for the region.
Siniora and his allies knew that Hizbullah's arms represented
a line not to be crossed. So why did they cross it, despite
many warnings from officers from the Internal Security Forces
(ISF), which is loyal to the government (1)? Waleed Jumblatt,
the pro-government leader of the Druze Progressive Socialist
Party, who brought the charge against Hizbullah's
telecommunications, and Saad Hariri, head of the Sunni Future
Movement, "miscalculated in not believing that Hizbullah
would respond militarily", according to a government analyst.
"They hoped that the crisis would drag on, and that they
could negotiate to win concessions from the opposition. They
didn't take account of their own impotence or US weakness in
the region."
Michel Samaha, a former opposition minister, agrees, but
believes the two government measures were part of a plan
devised by the US, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, with their local
allies, to impose their views on Lebanon. President Bush has
presented Lebanon as "the third front in the war on terror"
(after Afghanistan and Iraq). Samaha told me: "Plenty of
evidence supports this view: the meeting Samir Geagea, the
[Maronite] Lebanese chief of staff, had with Bush in
mid-March; Saudi Arabia's request that its nationals should
leave Lebanon; and the repeated American diatribes against
Hizbullah `terrorism'. A Security Council meeting was
scheduled for 8 May to hear [UN representative for Lebanon]
Terji Roed-Larssen's report on Lebanon. This session was
supposed to conclude with the condemnation of Hizbullah's
refusal to disarm. But all these calculations were based on
an overestimate of the government's strength and on the
conviction that Hizbullah would not resort to force."
Weird rumours
To divert attention from its own shortcomings, the Lebanese
government has increased criticism of its allies' lack of
intervention. Weird rumours are going round: Lebanon is being
sacrificed for the sake of secret negotiations between
Washington and Tehran; or the US, which has launched a major
offensive against al-Qaida in Mosul in northern Iraq, is
trying to curry favour with Damascus.
Like most political movements, General Aoun's FPM has its own
television channel, O(range) TV. During my visit it was
broadcasting simultaneous pictures of the Syrian army leaving
Lebanon in 2005 and the Saudi ambassador fleeing the country
this May. What all commentators agree on is that in this
latest conflict Riyadh didn't handle its involvement
carefully enough, especially its funding of Siniora's
government and the Sunnis, and as a result suffered a
humiliating defeat.
The Lebanese media have been commenting ironically on the
kiss of death Bush sent Siniora when he expressed his support
during his visit to Israel, the state which all Lebanese
regard as guilty of the destruction of their country in 2006.
The future participation of Hizbullah in Lebanon's government
marks a major defeat for Washington. An academic in the
Lebanese government wondered: "Do westerners want the east
coast of the Mediterranean to be dominated by the Iranians?"
Members of the government have also castigated the army for
its neutrality. General Suleiman insisted that
non-involvement was necessary to "avoid bloodshed and more
divisions within its ranks" (2). At least a third of the army
is Shia and a significant number of officers have links to
the opposition, especially the Aounists. Any engagement by
the army would have resulted in the break-up of Lebanon's
last remaining institution.
Hizbullah took a serious risk in deciding to settle the
crisis through force, according to one Christian opposition
leader: "Until that point, it had only had recourse to
political means - leaving the government in November 2006,
calling for the government's resignation, setting up a tented
village in the middle of Beirut at the start of 2007, and
demonstrating in the streets. But now it wants to send a
clear message: the arms of the resistance are non-negotiable.
Even if that makes it seem like a simple militia and stokes
the tensions between Sunnis and Shia."
A few Hizbullah flags
In the streets of west Beirut, the only signs of a "Shia
invasion" are a few flags belonging to Hizbullah, Amal and
the SSNP. In Hamra, the commercial district, fashion
boutiques, food shops, banks and sports centres are all open
again. Soldiers are everywhere and have set up barriers
around sensitive places such as the Saudi embassy, which is
currently closed, the Hariri family home and the
Lebanese-American University, which has just reopened after a
two-week closure. On its walls are warnings from the
administration: "Out of respect for everyone, don't discuss
politics or security problems."
The closure of Future television and Saad Hariri's daily,
Al-Mostaqbal, has provoked strong condemnation in the press.
An opposition journalist shared this indignation, but added:
"During the three days of fighting, Hizbullah was afraid that
the media might fan the flames of a civil war. When the
danger passed, they were able to resume their activities
without coming under any pressure."
Sunnis, who feel let down by their leaders, express their
fear of a Shia threat, a spectre raised by several leaders of
other Arab nations. Eyewitness accounts, magnified by
rumours, testify to atrocities during the fighting. And yet
the number of victims seems to have been limited. "If Amal's
men had taken part in the attack without Hizbullah, there
would have been at least a thousand dead and mass pillage," a
pro-government journalist told me. According to Human Rights
Watch, both sides in Beirut and in the north committed human
rights violations. A journalist on the pro-opposition
Al-Akhbar talked of "several cases of dead bodies being
desecrated".
The authority of the Future Movement among Sunnis has been
questioned since "Saad Hariri was incapable of organising the
Sunni community or defending it, let alone building the
institutions of state", according to Mohamed Baydoun, a
former Amal minister who is now with the government. There
are fears that Sunnis, especially those in the north and in
Tripoli, will turn to Salafist groups, or even to al-Qaida,
which has been extending its reach in Lebanon in the past two
years (3). It was after all, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's
second in command, who recently proclaimed that Lebanon would
be pivotal in the struggle against "the Crusaders and the
Jews".
The Christians stayed on the sidelines of the recent
fighting. Alain Aoun, an adviser to General Aoun, believes
their reaction to the recent events has been ambivalent: "On
one hand, they were worried about the use of force, but on
the other they were pleased about the alliance between the
FPM and Hizbullah, which guaranteed peace in the Christian
districts of Beirut and in the mountains."
Five days of suspense
For five days the country remained in suspense while the Doha
negotiations went on. All the political leaders took part
with the exception of Hizbullah's Hassan Nasrallah, who has
rarely been seen since the assassination of his
organisation's military leader, Imad Mughniyah, in Damascus
on 11 February (see "Damascus young dream on"). On the road
to the airport demonstrators brandished placards saying
"Reach an agreement or don't come back" or simply "Don't come
back". Their message to their political leaders as they
departed for Doha was a sign of their discontent with the
political class. All of them espouse the principles of
democracy and champion the authority of the state, but these
are more honoured in the breach than the observance.
Ask which parties' leaders have not embezzled public funds
and the answer is unanimous: "Hizbullah and the FPM."
Stealing from state coffers has become standard since the
signing of the Taif accords in 1989, when the civil war ended
and Hariri became head of state. "There aren't two camps in
Lebanon, a democratic one and an autocratic one," a writer
told me with regret. "The building of a state based on the
rule of law isn't the aim of any political party. We're the
prisoners of the strategies of different regional and
international powers. We can dream of staying out of it, of
going it alone, but reality regularly brings us back down to
earth. And often with a nasty bump."
Hizbullah's risky gamble has turned into a defeat for Saad
Hariri's US-backed government. But the momentous week in May
is not the last reverberation that will be felt in this
country, for so long the trial arena for all the conflicts in
the region.
