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Now
Caught Between False Notions of National
Independence
Lebanon
on the Brink
By FAWWAS TRABOULSI
An introductory note from
Assaf Khoury
The little country is exposed
more than ever to the political storms east of the Mediterranean.
In the following article, historian and long-time political commentator
Fawwaz Traboulsi explains that the dangers faced by Lebanon today
are, in part, the result of its "confessional system".
This system did not always exist and Lebanese were not ordained
to live in it. Historically, given that Lebanese and other communities
of the Levant existed for hundreds of years before, confessionalism
is a relatively recent invention as an institutional form of
government. It is a peculiarly factious power-sharing formula
based on religious denominations, first introduced in the second
half of the 19th Century, partly dictated by the balance in the
contest between a declining Ottoman empire and encroaching European
colonial powers. It was then adjusted and re-adjusted but never
abandoned, after every political upheaval ever since, always
at the prodding if not behest of external actors. By tying the
fate of the country to external interests, different for different
confessional parties, the confessional system belies lofty proclamations
by Lebanese politicians about "national independence"
and voids the term of its meaning, as pointed out by Traboulsi.
The most recent version of
the confessional setup, in place since the Taif Accord of October
1989 that ended the civil war, is a variation of a formula adopted
in 1943 when France was forced to grant Lebanon its formal independence:
the president of the republic is a Maronite Christian, the speaker
of the parliament a Shia Muslim, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim,
and parliament seats are equally divided between Christians and
Muslims, with each of the two blocks proportionally divided among
various Christian denominations and Muslim denominations. This
effectively excludes all political parties that are organized
on platforms other than confessional. Thus, for example, the
Communist Party has never been represented in government in any
capacity, even though it is the oldest political party in Lebanon
(founded in 1924) and has had a strong presence in labor unions
throughout its history.
The article below is translated
from the Arabic and first appeared in the Lebanese daily as-Safir
on Novembe 24,r 2006. Three days earlier, the minister of industry
Pierre Amin Gemayel was assassinated in broad daylight in Beirut.
The traditional parades on Lebanese Independence Day, which falls
on 22 November, were canceled and a state funeral was held for
Gemayel on November 23 instead, which turned into a massive
anti-Syrian demonstration by several hundreds of thousands in
downtown Beirut.
Who killed Gemayel? Walid Jumblat,
a leader of the pro-government coalition, accuses the Syrian
secret services. Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hizbullah and a main
party in the anti-government coalition, points his finger in
the opposite direction, observing that the main beneficiaries
this time are Israel and the US, not Syria. Political assassinations
have been far too common in Lebanon in recent years and usually
carried out on orders from the outside. Jumblat and Nasrallah
may be short on the whole truth, but both have valid reasons
to suspect their external enemies. Jumblat is publicly reported
to be on the assassination list of the Syrian government and
his own father, Kamal Jumblat, was murdered on Syrian directives.
Nasrallah is openly declared to be an assassination target by
the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and his predecessor at
the head of Hizbullah, Abbas Musawi, was murdered in a raid by
Israeli helicopter gunships. In these two cases, as with all
other assassinations, the local victim came to represent an obstacle
or the "fall guy" for the interests of powerful regional
and international state actors. And the Lebanese body politic,
instead of rallying to unite and defend itself in times of increased
external dangers, is made to expose all its cleavages by the
confessional system.
When a majority of the Lebanese
unite, as when they overwhelmingly embraced resistance to the
Israeli onslaught in July-August 2006, they do so at a spontaneous
popular level and across confessional lines, largely ignoring
confessional parties and their external sponsors that claim to
represent their interests; that is, they do so despite the confessional
system and against it. -- Assaf Kfoury
CAUGHT BETWEEN FALSE NOTIONS
OF NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE
by Fawwaz Traboulsi
In 1867, at another time of civil strife
in Lebanon, a prominent Lebanese leader regretfully observed
about the state of his own society that "tribes that are
engaged in killing their own members for sectarian reasons deserve
to be subjugated by foreign powers that come to the rescue of
one faction against another" (Youssif Bey Karam addressing
the Algerian emir Abdel Kader, then in exile in Damascus after
his defeat by colonial France).
Today, as we watch confessional
leaders in Lebanon holding forth on the meaning of national independence,
we cannot but smile with sadness and hope for mercy, for ourselves
and for those who believe these leaders and vote for them. They
hold forth as if there is no connection between independence,
or lack thereof, and the confessional system, the latter remaining
the main factor in creating conditions of subservience to external
factors in Lebanese political life.
From the time when Youssif
Bey Karam took notice of the golden rule connecting internal
sectarian divisions and external domination, the Lebanese have
yet to come to their senses and desist from this odious practice.
Confessional leaders keep looking to the outside, for protection
against impending marginalization, for maintaining a dominant
position, or for keeping a monopoly of wealth and power against
other confessional leaders. Seeking external support usually
results in blunting internal dialogues and concessions to domestic
opponents, which often exacerbates civil conflicts and in turn
facilitates further external interference.
We must recognize that Lebanese
parties have sought arms or external help, or both, in order
to impose themselves on a rigid and factious political (and socio-economic)
system that treats citizens differently, with different rights
and privileges. In recent decades, major components of Lebanese
society have thus achieved political and socio-economic ascendancy
by force of arms and reliance on outside powers. In this way,
for example, we can view the bloody events of 1958, pitting the
Christian-dominated government of the Lebanese president Camille
Shamoun against a coalition of parties mostly representing Sunni
(and, to a certain extent, Druze) elites, which resulted in the
empowerment of the latter within the confessional power-sharing
system. Similarly, we can view the civil war of 1975-1990 as
the means by which Shia elites acquired greater participation
in the system, leading to a more equitable overall balance between
Christians and Muslims in government institutions.
The question of Lebanese independence
can never be separated from the three-way interaction of regional
and international forces in which Lebanon has been caught since
the colonial fragmentation of the Levant in 1920. Time and again
in this history, two main regional actors reach an understanding
of sorts, usually facilitated by a third international actor,
which in turn imposes a settlement on the Lebanese. An accord
between two major regional parties, coupled with international
sanction, then allows for finalizing a new local arrangement
and providing it with guarantees.
Thus, in 1943, Egypt under
prime minister Mustafa Nahas Pasha, supported by Britain eager
to evict France regionally, reached an understanding with the
Syrian national movement which had sought independence from France
and union with Lebanon. In this context, an agreement was reached
between Lebanon and Syria, and also between Beshara al-Khoury
and Riad al-Solh -- soon to be the president and the prime minister
of Lebanon, respectively, after independence from France -- which
came to be known as the Lebanese National Pact. And again, in
1958, an understanding between the United States and the United
Arab Republic under Gamal Abdel Nasser permitted for an end to
the civil war in Lebanon and the selection of general Fuad Shehab
as president in succession to Camille Shamoun, together with
a renewal of the National Pact and an adjusted confessional setup.
So long as the logic of the
confessional system prevails, only when conditions are lacking
for an agreement between regional and international actors, as
was the case after the October 1973 war, do the Lebanese proxies
fail to reach a settlement among themselves and then resort to
armed confrontation. Such was the explosion of 1975-1990. They
then failed because some of their leaders continued to rely on
the outside to extricate their parties from the internal stalemate
or because they were under the illusion that the external party
to which they were connected would likely prevail in the regional
or international balance of forces.
There is no need to dwell long
on the different discourses on national independence emanating
from different Lebanese parties, all couched in the absolute
and expressing inflexible ultimate goals. In an increasingly
interdependent world where far larger countries, such as the
Russian Federation for example with its enormous natural resources
and industrial potential, still struggle to achieve a margin
of independence via-a-vis the American empire, there are politicians
in tiny Lebanon that will not accept anything short of an absolute
notion of independence. They talk about complete independence
in a country whose economy is almost entirely dependent on the
outside, engaged as it is in exporting most of its labor force
and importing virtually all material goods, whose national debt
is nearly three times its annual gross domestic product (the
highest ratio for any country in the world), and where confessional
parties are increasingly made to rely on, and do the bidding
for, their respective external allies.
Let us, more concretely, consider
the question of Lebanon's independence in the context of current
regional circumstances. The United States, now bogged down in
a bloody occupation in Iraq, is scrambling for new options to
realign its policies in the region and cut its losses, especially
after the setbacks of the Republican Party in the most recent
midterm elections. American policies are now less predictable
and will continue to shift in coming months. Some in Washington
still suggest a more aggressive approach to Iran, including bombing
of its nuclear installations, but others counsel engaging Iran
and prodding it to play a special regional role that will help
extricate US troops from the Iraqi quagmire. Simultaneously,
we are witnessing a complex diplomatic dance between Washington
and Damascus, at times aiming at distancing Syria from Iran and
encouraging it to play a "positive" role in Iraq, but
at other times accusing Syria of terrorism and threatening to
bring it to accounts in the International Tribunal set up to
pursue Rafiq Hariri's killers.
In such circumstances, which
are bound to affect the entire region in ways that are difficult
to foresee, should Lebanese parties not call for a truce in
their internal show of force and take note of the surrounding
storms? Should they not take pause and stop betting on illusory
victories against each other? Should the little wounded country
that is Lebanon not be navigated cautiously through these regional
storms? Is it not utter foolishness on the part of some Lebanese
players to presume there are two sides -- one American-Israeli
and one Iranian-Syrian -- and one of the two must be joined?
Should they not recognize that, in order to prepare themselves
for external dangers, there is only one thing that they can truly
control: their own internal affairs?
Till now we have lost the battle
for independence twice, or more precisely, we have lost two battles
for independence in a little more than a year. On the one hand,
the leaders of the 2005 independence movement against Syrian
domination have forgotten the continuing Israeli threat and decided
to put their trust in what appears to them the juggernaut of
the American empire after September 11. On the other hand, the
leaders of the May 2000 liberation of the South from Israeli
occupation and the July 2006 resistance to Israeli aggression
have failed to convince the rest of the Lebanese that they can
act independently of Syrian priorities. The negotiations for
a government of national unity broke down because each of the
two camps sought to block the dictates of the other camp's external
ally. The two camps thus acted as if Lebanese policy and decision
are fated to follow external dictates. And both camps demonstrated
that their "independence" is a total sham.
I would like to think that
the murder of Pierre Amin Gemayel was the result of the failure
to recognize this sham independence. "In times of political
turmoil, save your head," the saying goes. This is not just
a benevolent wise saying for the little wounded country, but
the ultimate wisdom. Lebanon did not succeed in saving the head
of Pierre Amin Gemayel. Will his murder contribute to saving
Lebanon's head?
CounterPunch
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