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March 14 urgently needs a new impetus
By Michael Young
Thursday, June 26, 2008
No one likes to take a prediction back, but last week I wrote that Michel Aoun would be unable to win as large a parliamentary bloc in next year's elections as he controls today. Three developments in the past week indicate why this reading may have been over-optimistic; and why those of us who focus on Aoun's undoubted loss of power in the past three years might also be guilty of overstating his failings to our own peril.
The first development is the precariously insular mood of the Christian community, which the beatification of Yaaqoub Haddad last Sunday illustrated well. Christians assembled massively for the event, which was understandable, but by way of contrast (since nothing political could have similarly galvanized them) this affirmed how detached the community is toward the larger issues afflicting Lebanon - Syria's persistent efforts to reimpose its writ and Hizbullah's challenges to the sovereignty of the state.
Many things explain this Christian lassitude. Like most Lebanese, Christians have had enough of the political deadlock. Where Haddad's story was inspirational, Lebanon's today is anything but. More disturbingly, the community feels itself in permanent decline, therefore politically irrelevant. All this favors Aoun, who feeds off Christian frustration. While the general has lost ground, while many Christians now look at him with as much cynicism as they do other politicians, he still has a loyal core of followers who will mobilize amid the ambient indifference, even as his Christian adversaries gain little from his setbacks.
A second reason is that Michel Murr, the powerbroker in the Metn, may be more vulnerable than we thought - which means that Aoun will be less vulnerable in the Metn next year. In past elections, Murr's strength has come from two phenomena: his alliance with the Armenians and his ability to act as a bridge between the disparate Metn constituencies - his own voters, Amin Gemayel's electorate, the Armenians, the Aounists in 2005, and other smaller groups, such as the Syrian Social Nationalist Party's sympathizers. The situation appears to be changing today.
Murr's priority appears to be to ensure that his son, Elias, will be appointed defense minister. Because the portfolio is important to determine who will be named to top military posts, including that of commander of the army and head of military intelligence, the Murrs are under pressure from the opposition to offer guarantees on these appointments before a government can be formed. It also appears that the Tashnak Party's alliance with Aoun is stronger than many suspected and does not necessarily pass through Michel Murr. If so, this may compel the Murrs to recalculate in 2009. Reports in recent days, for example, have suggested that Michel Murr may be trying to reopen a channel to Aoun. He needs Armenian votes to win in the district; the Armenians are not about to abandon Aoun, but are hostile to Amin Gemayel after the way he condemned the community after his loss in the 2007 by-election; and the Murrs are not in the best of postures because of their Cabinet demands. What you may have in the making is a winning Aoun campaign, which Aoun's substantial funds from various patrons will help lubricate.
A third reason why writing Aoun off could be premature is that the March 14 coalition, particularly in the past week, has only confirmed how devoid it is of stirring ideas. If many Christians are far less enthusiastic than they were about Aoun, they have not transferred their enthusiasm to the majority. And yet there are things the March 14 leadership can and must do to behave like a majority and regain the initiative nationally.
For starters, the government and March 14 need to show more imagination when dealing with the social and economic crisis - the main concern today of all Lebanese. What has the government done to make this a priority? What has the majority done? There is no lack of money among states supporting March 14, no lack of interest from the Lebanese diaspora, to fund projects that might increase employment and reinforce the impression that the parliamentary majority, like Rafik Hariri once, stands for economic prosperity. The government may have limited constitutional powers today, but nothing prevents it from proposing practical measures alleviating the socioeconomic burden on the Lebanese that a new government could take up. In its rhetoric, March 14 almost never constructively tackles the population's declining purchasing power.
Much more also needs to be done by the majority to outline a vision of a Lebanese state that can eventually overcome Hizbullah's vision of a non-state. Christians won't embrace that vision if they believe the majority is no better than Hizbullah. But the reality is that Saad Hariri cannot define such a vision when he appears to be losing control over his justifiably angry Sunni community - in Saadnayel, Taalbaya, and Tripoli. Nominally, most Sunnis are staunchly behind the Future Movement, but on the ground the dynamics say the Hariri camp is being overtaken by events.
It is troubling, for example, that Hariri has not traveled once to Tripoli and the Akkar since the fighting last May. Yet it is essential for him to place his stamp on developments in that area, show his face with a Sunni base that has become, for better or worse, his street muscle, and most importantly prevent the Sunnis of the North from taking their resentment of Hizbullah too far, because the result will be open war. Hariri has no choice. A moderate, he will nonetheless be blamed for any upsurge in Sunni extremism. There are reports he is reorganizing the Future Movement. That's long overdue, but his priority must be to see to it that Tripoli and the Sunni areas around it, like the Sunni areas in the Bekaa Valley, are not lost to the state as are the areas under Hizbullah control.
March 14 still has a great deal in its favor, but it needs to develop a strategy that draws maximal benefit from these advantages. It needs, first of all, to talk to the Christians on their own terms. Muslim leaders in March 14 rarely ever address the concerns of Christians, never even make an appearance in their districts, abandoning too many of them to Michel Aoun. A single visit by Saad Hariri to St. Joseph University to exchange ideas with students, to lay out his plan for a future Lebanon, to discuss the anxieties of the young, perhaps also to defend, or conversely apologize for, the quadripartite electoral agreement of 2005, would have a tremendous impact. If March 14 represents a majority, then it should show it.
March 14 also needs to develop a coordinated election strategy to make certain that Christian rivalries inside March 14 won't facilitate a new Aoun victory in Mount Lebanon next year. This means forming consensual candidate lists as soon as is feasible, preferably in coordination with Michel Sleiman, who enjoys Christian support. It also means initiating required reconciliations where possible. Amin Gemayel, for example, needs to quickly resolve his differences with the Armenians in Metn, while Saad Hariri should explore a new relationship with Tashnak in Beirut, even if he loses a parliamentary seat in the process. The long-term gains from that could well counterbalance the disadvantages.
And most importantly, in defending a state project March 14, particularly the Future Movement, needs to show that it has a tight rein on what is today a humiliated and confused Sunni community. Hariri cannot defend the project of a stronger state while allowing the Sunnis outside Beirut to slip further into a war mentality. That Hizbullah's recklessness is to blame for this goes without saying. But national suicide, to borrow from Michel Sleiman, will spare no one. And if Lebanon goes down that path, Syria will very likely again be tasked with imposing order on the country, ending the fragile freedom we won three short years ago.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
No method to Aoun's destructiveness
No method to Aoun's destructiveness
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, June 19, 2008
There is a scene in the film "Apocalypse Now" where two characters, Captain Willard and Colonel Kurtz, are talking. Kurtz rules over a mad, mini-kingdom in the heart of the jungle and the US Army wants him assassinated. That's what Willard has come to do. Kurtz asks: "Are my methods unsound?" Willard responds: "I don't see any method at all, sir."
Much the same thing can be said about Michel Aoun's strategy in the aftermath of Michel Sleiman's election as president last month. That is unless the sum total of Aoun's method is to block the emergence of a new government as revenge for not having been elected himself - in other words to undermine the Doha Accord. And while the general is at it, he seems impatient to undermine the Taif Accord as well, whose death was, not coincidentally, announced a few days ago on Aoun's OTV channel by Wiam Wahhab, one of Syria's megaphones in Lebanon. When he's cornered, Aoun resorts to attacks against Sunni prerogatives to rally the Christians, and it was Wahhab's message the general was channeling on Tuesday when he declared: "It is unacceptable that the executive branch also be granted supervisory authority [over the public administration]; all the inspection agencies are under [Prime Minister Fouad Siniora]."
However, this time the Christians are almost certain not to bite. Aoun's method has been to pick a fight with all those who threaten his standing among his coreligionists. The general fears, quite legitimately, that Sleiman will pick up many of those Christians who voted for Aoun's candidates in 2005. Aoun's impetuous plan, however, may well bring about the very outcome that he is most trying to avert.
By going after Michel Sleiman, but more specifically by trying to curtail his ability to select ministers, Aoun has not only made an enemy of the president, he has done so at a moment when Sleiman is most popular and embodies much-wanted stability in the mind of people. Aoun has also proven to the Christians that he is indifferent to the prerogatives of the president, unless the president happens to be Michel Aoun. In continuing to impede the formation of the government, Aoun is also preventing the implementation of a state project, which was allegedly his project until Sleiman was selected in his place. For many Christians, as well as most Lebanese, this is objectionable. Aoun's reputation will continue to wane if he remains the main obstacle to post-Doha normalization.
When Aoun implied in his weekly press conference that the formation of a new government would not take place until one month before parliamentary elections, you could almost hear the Lebanese groan. Yet the general, to our advantage, rarely hears the sounds of his own ruin.
Then there is the preparation for the parliamentary elections, where Aoun's absence of method has been particularly conspicuous. If Sleiman is Aoun's worst nightmare, if the president turns into a major electoral player next year, then you would assume Aoun has a strategy to guard against this. Traditionally, this situation has led to alliances between Christian leaders who felt collectively vulnerable when facing a strong president. However, Aoun has burned his bridges with potential allies.
By opposing the appointment of Elias Murr as defense minister, for example, Aoun has made his dispute with Michel Murr personal. Since Michel Murr is the kingmaker in the Metn region, this is downright foolish. Murr will ally himself with the Armenians, most probably with Amin Gemayel, and is likely to include Sleiman's choices on his list. But one thing he may not want to do is leave slots open for the Aounists, which means they could be eliminated electorally from Metn.
Similarly, Aoun has no advantage in cutting himself off completely from the Lebanese Forces, who are also wary of Sleiman's influence. But that is precisely what he has done by allowing OTV to recently broadcast a program on the killing of Tony Franjieh, an operation in which Samir Geagea was involved. The aim was transparent: to keep alive the animosity between Geagea and Suleiman Franjieh in the North. However, by so doing, Aoun crossed a red line in his relationship with the Lebanese Forces and now stands accused by Christians of unnecessarily dividing the community by reopening old war files better kept shut.
In all probability Aoun will not be able to again win the large bloc he now has in Parliament. In the Christian heartland of Jbeil, Kisirwan, and Metn, he will at best win a handful of seats. Only in Baabda might Aoun have a decisive advantage, thanks to Hizbullah's electoral weight, but even there it is uncertain how the vast majority of voters, who are Christians, will vote. If Sleiman plays his cards right, if he can position himself as the patron of a state project and grand conciliator, Aoun's amorphous base of support might dissolve as quickly as it materialized in 2005.
Sleiman's best stratagem is to allow Aoun to hang himself. Rather than enter into a collision with Aoun, at least for now, which would mean a collision with Hizbullah and Amal, who are quietly backing Aoun, the president should restate the principles of the Doha Accord, continue in his endeavor to provide a constructive alternative to the vacuum that Aoun offers, and build up his networks in the Christian community. The decision to host an inter-communal dialogue in Baabda was a smart idea, since success is guaranteed in such platitudinous forums. It also bolsters Sleiman's image as a national leader, whereas Aoun is looking pettier by the day.
The real question is what to do with Aoun's parliamentarians. It may be time for Michel Murr and Sleiman to begin breaking apart Aoun's bloc. Murr has considerable sway over most of the Metn parliamentarians, who know they need to be on good terms with him in order to be re-elected. Sleiman has already won over Walid Khoury in Jbeil. In Kisirwan most of the Aoun parliamentarians are unsure about their future, meaning they are more predisposed to advances from the president, particularly if Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir blesses such moves.
Rarely has a politician been as adept at transforming his victories into defeats as Michel Aoun. Rarely has a man in a position of responsibility been as incompetent in reading the mood around him. The problem with Aoun's political self-immolation is that it is taking too much of everyone's time. The general is drifting off into a sea of inconsequence from where, very soon, most people may hope he never returns.
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, June 19, 2008
There is a scene in the film "Apocalypse Now" where two characters, Captain Willard and Colonel Kurtz, are talking. Kurtz rules over a mad, mini-kingdom in the heart of the jungle and the US Army wants him assassinated. That's what Willard has come to do. Kurtz asks: "Are my methods unsound?" Willard responds: "I don't see any method at all, sir."
Much the same thing can be said about Michel Aoun's strategy in the aftermath of Michel Sleiman's election as president last month. That is unless the sum total of Aoun's method is to block the emergence of a new government as revenge for not having been elected himself - in other words to undermine the Doha Accord. And while the general is at it, he seems impatient to undermine the Taif Accord as well, whose death was, not coincidentally, announced a few days ago on Aoun's OTV channel by Wiam Wahhab, one of Syria's megaphones in Lebanon. When he's cornered, Aoun resorts to attacks against Sunni prerogatives to rally the Christians, and it was Wahhab's message the general was channeling on Tuesday when he declared: "It is unacceptable that the executive branch also be granted supervisory authority [over the public administration]; all the inspection agencies are under [Prime Minister Fouad Siniora]."
However, this time the Christians are almost certain not to bite. Aoun's method has been to pick a fight with all those who threaten his standing among his coreligionists. The general fears, quite legitimately, that Sleiman will pick up many of those Christians who voted for Aoun's candidates in 2005. Aoun's impetuous plan, however, may well bring about the very outcome that he is most trying to avert.
By going after Michel Sleiman, but more specifically by trying to curtail his ability to select ministers, Aoun has not only made an enemy of the president, he has done so at a moment when Sleiman is most popular and embodies much-wanted stability in the mind of people. Aoun has also proven to the Christians that he is indifferent to the prerogatives of the president, unless the president happens to be Michel Aoun. In continuing to impede the formation of the government, Aoun is also preventing the implementation of a state project, which was allegedly his project until Sleiman was selected in his place. For many Christians, as well as most Lebanese, this is objectionable. Aoun's reputation will continue to wane if he remains the main obstacle to post-Doha normalization.
When Aoun implied in his weekly press conference that the formation of a new government would not take place until one month before parliamentary elections, you could almost hear the Lebanese groan. Yet the general, to our advantage, rarely hears the sounds of his own ruin.
Then there is the preparation for the parliamentary elections, where Aoun's absence of method has been particularly conspicuous. If Sleiman is Aoun's worst nightmare, if the president turns into a major electoral player next year, then you would assume Aoun has a strategy to guard against this. Traditionally, this situation has led to alliances between Christian leaders who felt collectively vulnerable when facing a strong president. However, Aoun has burned his bridges with potential allies.
By opposing the appointment of Elias Murr as defense minister, for example, Aoun has made his dispute with Michel Murr personal. Since Michel Murr is the kingmaker in the Metn region, this is downright foolish. Murr will ally himself with the Armenians, most probably with Amin Gemayel, and is likely to include Sleiman's choices on his list. But one thing he may not want to do is leave slots open for the Aounists, which means they could be eliminated electorally from Metn.
Similarly, Aoun has no advantage in cutting himself off completely from the Lebanese Forces, who are also wary of Sleiman's influence. But that is precisely what he has done by allowing OTV to recently broadcast a program on the killing of Tony Franjieh, an operation in which Samir Geagea was involved. The aim was transparent: to keep alive the animosity between Geagea and Suleiman Franjieh in the North. However, by so doing, Aoun crossed a red line in his relationship with the Lebanese Forces and now stands accused by Christians of unnecessarily dividing the community by reopening old war files better kept shut.
In all probability Aoun will not be able to again win the large bloc he now has in Parliament. In the Christian heartland of Jbeil, Kisirwan, and Metn, he will at best win a handful of seats. Only in Baabda might Aoun have a decisive advantage, thanks to Hizbullah's electoral weight, but even there it is uncertain how the vast majority of voters, who are Christians, will vote. If Sleiman plays his cards right, if he can position himself as the patron of a state project and grand conciliator, Aoun's amorphous base of support might dissolve as quickly as it materialized in 2005.
Sleiman's best stratagem is to allow Aoun to hang himself. Rather than enter into a collision with Aoun, at least for now, which would mean a collision with Hizbullah and Amal, who are quietly backing Aoun, the president should restate the principles of the Doha Accord, continue in his endeavor to provide a constructive alternative to the vacuum that Aoun offers, and build up his networks in the Christian community. The decision to host an inter-communal dialogue in Baabda was a smart idea, since success is guaranteed in such platitudinous forums. It also bolsters Sleiman's image as a national leader, whereas Aoun is looking pettier by the day.
The real question is what to do with Aoun's parliamentarians. It may be time for Michel Murr and Sleiman to begin breaking apart Aoun's bloc. Murr has considerable sway over most of the Metn parliamentarians, who know they need to be on good terms with him in order to be re-elected. Sleiman has already won over Walid Khoury in Jbeil. In Kisirwan most of the Aoun parliamentarians are unsure about their future, meaning they are more predisposed to advances from the president, particularly if Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir blesses such moves.
Rarely has a politician been as adept at transforming his victories into defeats as Michel Aoun. Rarely has a man in a position of responsibility been as incompetent in reading the mood around him. The problem with Aoun's political self-immolation is that it is taking too much of everyone's time. The general is drifting off into a sea of inconsequence from where, very soon, most people may hope he never returns.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
A logic of power that threatens Lebanon
A logic of power that threatens Lebanon
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, June 12, 2008
If there is one thing that has characterized commentary on the Middle East in the United States in recent years, it is self-flagellation. One article after the other, in tedious succession, tells us the same thing: The Bush administration's policy in the region has been a disaster and America has lost all standing among the Arabs. "Why do they hate us," the American lament after 9/11, has been picked up by a commentariat confirming that "they do indeed hate us," and it's all Washington's fault.
To an extent that is mainly George W. Bush's fault. When a president provokes such derision, he's lost the confidence of his people. But that doesn't make the criticism necessarily right, and it doesn't mean critics should be allowed to inaccurately represent US relations with the Arab world.
I've argued here before that, in retrospect, once tempers have cooled and Bush has gone home, analysts will see that, other than the Iraq war in its early stages, this administration has pretty much acted in the Middle East through an international consensus, United Nations institutions, and in support of international law; in other words in the very way that Bush's critics demanded he behave in Iraq. This applies to US policy toward Lebanon, Iran, and the Palestinian-Israeli track, even if there are those unhappy that the administration has not engaged Hamas. However, that refusal is neither new nor self-evidently misguided, and only echoes what previous administrations did, particularly that of Bill Clinton. Even in Iraq, soon after the end of the invasion in 2003 the US was obliged to go back to the international community to gain UN sanction for its presence. Examined more closely, unilateralist American neoconservative impulses in the region have been greatly overstated by Bush's detractors.
Lebanon, more specifically, has suffered from the backlash against Bush. American policy here, though it has been based since 2004 almost entirely on UN resolutions as well as on enforcing international law by finding out who murdered the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, has been condemned, as has the isolation of Syria, though its regime was certainly behind Hariri's assassination. And now it is all the rage to suggest that recent negotiated breakthroughs in the Middle East, including the Doha agreement that ended the recent fighting in Lebanon, have been the work of regional parties often ignoring or acting against the preferences of the United States. This has been repeated in articles by Rami Khouri and David Ignatius, and the latest version came to us from Robert Malley and Hussein Agha in a June 3 New York Times piece.
Malley, a former Clinton administration official who directs the Middle East program at the International Crisis Group (ICG), has often paired up with Agha in penning articles, including, most prominently, a much-debated revisionist view of what take place at the Camp David summit between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak in 2000, for The New York Review of Books. In their Times opinion piece, the authors wrote: "In the last few weeks, three long-frozen conflicts in the Middle East have displayed early signs of thawing [in Gaza, Lebanon and on the Syrian Israeli track] ... That so many parties are moving at the same time in so many arenas is noteworthy enough. That they are doing so without - and, in some cases, despite - the United States is more remarkable still."
Malley and Agha went on to observe that "[i]ntent on isolating its foes, the United States has instead ended up marginalizing itself. In one case after another, the Bush administration has wagered on the losing party or on a lost cause." This conclusion is of particular relevance to Lebanon, because the authors believe that the recent Doha agreement was a victory for Hizbullah and a defeat for America's allies in the March 14 coalition. They ask, "How much stronger would Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon and his colleagues have been had they agreed two years ago to the very power-sharing accord they were forced to swallow last month?"
Their thesis, intriguing though it is, merits scrutiny. For one thing the Doha agreement, as several commentators have pointed out, was perhaps not a case of the US being marginalized. As the fighting in Beirut flared up, the Bush administration held a conference call with its Friends of Lebanon partners. Rather than object to Qatari mediation in the Lebanese crisis, Washington, for a change, strongly endorsed Arab League action, in this case to end the fighting. Far from being irrelevant, the administration may actually have added some teeth to the Qatari efforts. And as Malley and Agha know well, there is more to Arab diplomacy than just pleasing the US. The Qataris also needed Saudi and Egyptian backing to mediate in the Lebanese crisis, and American support for the Qatari mission must have encouraged Cairo and Riyadh in that regard.
Then there is the question of whether US allies in Lebanon actually lost. In fact, no one was an outright loser in Doha, and Malley's and Agha's focus on the fact that the opposition received veto power in the government, what they refer to as a "power-sharing accord," is simplistic. Lest we forget, Hizbullah shared power in the government until November 2006. But more significantly, that veto power, while it was a gain for the opposition, came at a price: the election of a president, when Hizbullah and Syria preferred to maintain an open-ended vacuum in the presidency to bring in a more pliant government, and a new president, on their own terms. One of their conditions, often restated, was that Siniora not return as prime minister. The Qatari initiative derailed that strategy. Siniora is back, Michel Suleiman has been elected, and while it would be a mistake to see this as a loss for Syria, his election has allowed a political process to resume in Lebanon with which Damascus feels uncomfortable, as it risks consolidating a post-Syria order. That is precisely why the Syrians are still pursuing, and will continue to pursue, their destabilization of Lebanon. And it is why the Saudis and Egyptians still refuse to reconcile with the regime of Bashar Assad.
But there is something else. In encouraging the US to take the realities of power into consideration when it comes to addressing the Middle East, Malley and Agha send a disturbing message. Their advice seems to be that if America's allies are losing, then Washington should consider picking up with the winners. Malley and the ICG have long advocated, for example, that the US resume its collaboration with Syria, but they have thought little about guaranteeing that this will not harm Lebanon and its fragile sovereignty. Lebanon is not a priority to them, and now that Malley and Agha have all but declared that Syria's Lebanese foes have lost, there seems to be no further reason to ignore a call for engaging Damascus.
Yet nowhere in their article do we see a word on what Hizbullah recently did and is still doing in Lebanon. Malley and Agha accuse the US of "[pushing] its local allies toward civil wars ... [including by] financing some Lebanese forces against Hezbollah." They might want to provide some evidence for so vague and misleading a statement, which suggests that both sides in Lebanon are equally guilty; that Hizbullah is armed and so are its enemies. Not a word is offered on Hizbullah's massive advantage in weapons and training over its rivals; no mention is made of its mini-state that on a daily basis defies the authority of the legal Lebanese state, or the brutality of the party's armed takeover of Beirut last month; nothing on the party's conscious intent to humiliate the Sunni community in the capital; nothing on its openly expressed pride in what it did, or on the dangerous, hubristic belief among its officials that when Hizbullah decides to resort to its weapons, against the Lebanese state or the Lebanese in general, there is simply nothing anyone can do about it.
If that is not behavior certain to provoke a new civil war in Lebanon, then what is it? Are Malley and Agha suggesting that the US get real, abandon those in Lebanon who, for all their shortcomings, seek a sovereign and independent state, and instead deal with Syria and by extension Hizbullah, the stronger parties by virtue of their capacity to intimidate and kill? That is precisely where they are leading us. The US does need to overhaul its credibility in the Middle East, but if a new strategy is based on looking the other way while Syria and Hizbullah and Hamas use violence to advance agendas that cannot possibly be in the US interest, then you have to wonder if the ritualistic denunciation of the Bush administration is not feeding into a policy approach devoid of any moral center, and worse, that will only end up favoring those destabilizing the region.
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, June 12, 2008
If there is one thing that has characterized commentary on the Middle East in the United States in recent years, it is self-flagellation. One article after the other, in tedious succession, tells us the same thing: The Bush administration's policy in the region has been a disaster and America has lost all standing among the Arabs. "Why do they hate us," the American lament after 9/11, has been picked up by a commentariat confirming that "they do indeed hate us," and it's all Washington's fault.
To an extent that is mainly George W. Bush's fault. When a president provokes such derision, he's lost the confidence of his people. But that doesn't make the criticism necessarily right, and it doesn't mean critics should be allowed to inaccurately represent US relations with the Arab world.
I've argued here before that, in retrospect, once tempers have cooled and Bush has gone home, analysts will see that, other than the Iraq war in its early stages, this administration has pretty much acted in the Middle East through an international consensus, United Nations institutions, and in support of international law; in other words in the very way that Bush's critics demanded he behave in Iraq. This applies to US policy toward Lebanon, Iran, and the Palestinian-Israeli track, even if there are those unhappy that the administration has not engaged Hamas. However, that refusal is neither new nor self-evidently misguided, and only echoes what previous administrations did, particularly that of Bill Clinton. Even in Iraq, soon after the end of the invasion in 2003 the US was obliged to go back to the international community to gain UN sanction for its presence. Examined more closely, unilateralist American neoconservative impulses in the region have been greatly overstated by Bush's detractors.
Lebanon, more specifically, has suffered from the backlash against Bush. American policy here, though it has been based since 2004 almost entirely on UN resolutions as well as on enforcing international law by finding out who murdered the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, has been condemned, as has the isolation of Syria, though its regime was certainly behind Hariri's assassination. And now it is all the rage to suggest that recent negotiated breakthroughs in the Middle East, including the Doha agreement that ended the recent fighting in Lebanon, have been the work of regional parties often ignoring or acting against the preferences of the United States. This has been repeated in articles by Rami Khouri and David Ignatius, and the latest version came to us from Robert Malley and Hussein Agha in a June 3 New York Times piece.
Malley, a former Clinton administration official who directs the Middle East program at the International Crisis Group (ICG), has often paired up with Agha in penning articles, including, most prominently, a much-debated revisionist view of what take place at the Camp David summit between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak in 2000, for The New York Review of Books. In their Times opinion piece, the authors wrote: "In the last few weeks, three long-frozen conflicts in the Middle East have displayed early signs of thawing [in Gaza, Lebanon and on the Syrian Israeli track] ... That so many parties are moving at the same time in so many arenas is noteworthy enough. That they are doing so without - and, in some cases, despite - the United States is more remarkable still."
Malley and Agha went on to observe that "[i]ntent on isolating its foes, the United States has instead ended up marginalizing itself. In one case after another, the Bush administration has wagered on the losing party or on a lost cause." This conclusion is of particular relevance to Lebanon, because the authors believe that the recent Doha agreement was a victory for Hizbullah and a defeat for America's allies in the March 14 coalition. They ask, "How much stronger would Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon and his colleagues have been had they agreed two years ago to the very power-sharing accord they were forced to swallow last month?"
Their thesis, intriguing though it is, merits scrutiny. For one thing the Doha agreement, as several commentators have pointed out, was perhaps not a case of the US being marginalized. As the fighting in Beirut flared up, the Bush administration held a conference call with its Friends of Lebanon partners. Rather than object to Qatari mediation in the Lebanese crisis, Washington, for a change, strongly endorsed Arab League action, in this case to end the fighting. Far from being irrelevant, the administration may actually have added some teeth to the Qatari efforts. And as Malley and Agha know well, there is more to Arab diplomacy than just pleasing the US. The Qataris also needed Saudi and Egyptian backing to mediate in the Lebanese crisis, and American support for the Qatari mission must have encouraged Cairo and Riyadh in that regard.
Then there is the question of whether US allies in Lebanon actually lost. In fact, no one was an outright loser in Doha, and Malley's and Agha's focus on the fact that the opposition received veto power in the government, what they refer to as a "power-sharing accord," is simplistic. Lest we forget, Hizbullah shared power in the government until November 2006. But more significantly, that veto power, while it was a gain for the opposition, came at a price: the election of a president, when Hizbullah and Syria preferred to maintain an open-ended vacuum in the presidency to bring in a more pliant government, and a new president, on their own terms. One of their conditions, often restated, was that Siniora not return as prime minister. The Qatari initiative derailed that strategy. Siniora is back, Michel Suleiman has been elected, and while it would be a mistake to see this as a loss for Syria, his election has allowed a political process to resume in Lebanon with which Damascus feels uncomfortable, as it risks consolidating a post-Syria order. That is precisely why the Syrians are still pursuing, and will continue to pursue, their destabilization of Lebanon. And it is why the Saudis and Egyptians still refuse to reconcile with the regime of Bashar Assad.
But there is something else. In encouraging the US to take the realities of power into consideration when it comes to addressing the Middle East, Malley and Agha send a disturbing message. Their advice seems to be that if America's allies are losing, then Washington should consider picking up with the winners. Malley and the ICG have long advocated, for example, that the US resume its collaboration with Syria, but they have thought little about guaranteeing that this will not harm Lebanon and its fragile sovereignty. Lebanon is not a priority to them, and now that Malley and Agha have all but declared that Syria's Lebanese foes have lost, there seems to be no further reason to ignore a call for engaging Damascus.
Yet nowhere in their article do we see a word on what Hizbullah recently did and is still doing in Lebanon. Malley and Agha accuse the US of "[pushing] its local allies toward civil wars ... [including by] financing some Lebanese forces against Hezbollah." They might want to provide some evidence for so vague and misleading a statement, which suggests that both sides in Lebanon are equally guilty; that Hizbullah is armed and so are its enemies. Not a word is offered on Hizbullah's massive advantage in weapons and training over its rivals; no mention is made of its mini-state that on a daily basis defies the authority of the legal Lebanese state, or the brutality of the party's armed takeover of Beirut last month; nothing on the party's conscious intent to humiliate the Sunni community in the capital; nothing on its openly expressed pride in what it did, or on the dangerous, hubristic belief among its officials that when Hizbullah decides to resort to its weapons, against the Lebanese state or the Lebanese in general, there is simply nothing anyone can do about it.
If that is not behavior certain to provoke a new civil war in Lebanon, then what is it? Are Malley and Agha suggesting that the US get real, abandon those in Lebanon who, for all their shortcomings, seek a sovereign and independent state, and instead deal with Syria and by extension Hizbullah, the stronger parties by virtue of their capacity to intimidate and kill? That is precisely where they are leading us. The US does need to overhaul its credibility in the Middle East, but if a new strategy is based on looking the other way while Syria and Hizbullah and Hamas use violence to advance agendas that cannot possibly be in the US interest, then you have to wonder if the ritualistic denunciation of the Bush administration is not feeding into a policy approach devoid of any moral center, and worse, that will only end up favoring those destabilizing the region.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Next step: undermining Resolution 1701
Next step: undermining Resolution 1701
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, June 05, 2008
The most worrying development in the coming months in Lebanon may be only partly visible today: a concerted effort by Syria, Iran, and Hizbullah to undermine United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which, with Resolution 1559, is at the core of international decisions to bolster a sovereign Lebanese state with absolute control over its territory.
In an NBN interview on Tuesday, Hizbullah's Nawwaf al-Musawi said something both revealing and remarkable. He observed that upcoming security appointments were important because they "affect the security of the resistance." At this stage it's official, any government decision that Hizbullah opposes can be described as harming the resistance. But more disturbing was another reading of Musawi's statement, one we should place against the backdrop of the Abdeh bomb explosion at a military intelligence post last weekend, for which Fatah al-Islam claimed responsibility.
Michel Suleiman's election as president means a successor needs to be found as army commander, which suggests that someone new is also expected to take over as military intelligence chief. The Abdeh explosion was Syria's message to Suleiman and the army that it wants individuals it can trust to be named to senior military positions. That's because for all the debate over Fatah al-Islam's origins during the Nahr al-Bared fighting, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the organization, or what remains of it, is mainly an instrument of Syrian policy today - a stick to destabilize Lebanon under the guise of Sunni militancy.
If so, what does this have to do with Resolution 1701? Here is a scenario we should watch out for. The Syrians, who have not given up on re-imposing their writ in Lebanon and whose offer of diplomatic relations with Beirut will do little to change this, have several priorities. The first is to open a dialogue with the United States once the Bush administration leaves office. The way ahead is to pursue negotiations with Israel over the Golan Heights. However, Syria is less interested in the final outcome of such negotiations than in the process itself, because it is that process that might ensure improved relations with Washington while eroding international determination to press forward with the Hariri tribunal, whose establishment is already proving to be lethargic at best.
It is very doubtful that Syria will carry on serious negotiations without ensuring, first, that it has military leverage over Israel through the southern Lebanese border. Damascus may not necessarily want talks to reach a conclusion now, but it does have to prepare for the possibility of an eventual breakthrough. As far as President Bashar Assad is concerned, a Golan deal is important principally if Lebanon is part of the package. In other words, Syria gets the Golan but is also granted effective hegemony over Lebanon - an arrangement with which the Israelis have no problem, nor did when they were bargaining with Hafez Assad during the 1990s.
The Syrians can hit these two birds with one stone by ensuring that Hizbullah resumes its military operations in South Lebanon. The attacks would provide Syria with the leverage it seeks but also revitalize a Hizbullah threat that Assad will insist only Syria can resolve by again being granted considerable leeway in Lebanon. Ultimately, the Syrians hope, that would mean a return of their army and intelligence network in some capacity. Iran and Hizbullah would, for a time at least, see an advantage in this as it would protect Hizbullah's weapons against the growing demands for disarmament of the party inside Lebanon while allowing it to resume fighting, despite resolutions 1559 and 1701.
For Hizbullah to reopen the southern border, three conditions must be met: Resolution 1701 must be rendered ineffective; Hizbullah must not be seen as responsible for reigniting the southern front, since most Shiites have no desire to be brutalized by Israel yet again; and the Lebanese Army command must cooperate with Hizbullah in the border area. That latter prerequisite explains the Abdeh explosion and Musawi's statement.
Resolution 1701 is only as effective as the will of the international community and of UNIFIL, the United Nations force in South Lebanon. What better way to break that will than to restart bomb attacks against UNIFIL's contingents, and blame Fatah al-Islam - in other words Sunni Islamists - for this? Given France's impetuousness in wanting to reopen ties with Syria after the Doha agreement; given that neither Italy nor Spain, two other key members of UNIFIL, is likely to stand firm if the bombings begin in earnest; and given that ongoing Syrian-Israeli talks will considerably lower international incentive to punish Damascus for whatever goes wrong in the border area, this may prove quite easy. The fact that the attacks are allegedly the work of Sunni militants would cover Hizbullah vis-a-vis its own electorate, allow the party's media to once more highlight the alleged links between Fatah al-Islam and the Future Movement, and let Hizbullah exploit instability in the border area to provoke Israeli actions justifying a resumption of armed resistance.
What would the objective be? Some have suggested Syria, Iran and Hizbullah want a new arrangement in the South similar to the April Understanding of 1996, legitimizing Hizbullah military action through new "rules of the game" between the party and Israel. That seems a plausible theory, if it can be managed. But there are some question marks. In the long term, Hizbullah would welcome a Syrian return to Lebanon, but realizes that any final Israeli-Syrian settlement, even with Lebanon in Syrian hands, could be curtains for the resistance. It's equally unclear how Hizbullah might use possible attacks by alleged Sunni Islamists against UNIFIL to validate its own military operations. And will the Lebanese Army be as pliant as Hizbullah and Syria want it to be, or does the presence of Michel Suleiman, no enemy of Syria but also the main beneficiary of a stronger Lebanese state, make this less likely?
These uncertainties notwithstanding, Resolution 1701 has been in the crosshairs of Iran, Syria, and Hizbullah for some time. With the Bush administration on its way out, the Europeans ripe to end Syria's isolation, Syria's Arab foes anemic, Israel little interested in reinforcing the UN's credibility in Lebanon, and the Hariri tribunal looking like an afterthought, now may be the ideal time to begin chopping down the edifice built up in Lebanon by the Security Council between 2004 and 2006. Assad is in the driver's seat and no one seems willing to stop him.
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, June 05, 2008
The most worrying development in the coming months in Lebanon may be only partly visible today: a concerted effort by Syria, Iran, and Hizbullah to undermine United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which, with Resolution 1559, is at the core of international decisions to bolster a sovereign Lebanese state with absolute control over its territory.
In an NBN interview on Tuesday, Hizbullah's Nawwaf al-Musawi said something both revealing and remarkable. He observed that upcoming security appointments were important because they "affect the security of the resistance." At this stage it's official, any government decision that Hizbullah opposes can be described as harming the resistance. But more disturbing was another reading of Musawi's statement, one we should place against the backdrop of the Abdeh bomb explosion at a military intelligence post last weekend, for which Fatah al-Islam claimed responsibility.
Michel Suleiman's election as president means a successor needs to be found as army commander, which suggests that someone new is also expected to take over as military intelligence chief. The Abdeh explosion was Syria's message to Suleiman and the army that it wants individuals it can trust to be named to senior military positions. That's because for all the debate over Fatah al-Islam's origins during the Nahr al-Bared fighting, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the organization, or what remains of it, is mainly an instrument of Syrian policy today - a stick to destabilize Lebanon under the guise of Sunni militancy.
If so, what does this have to do with Resolution 1701? Here is a scenario we should watch out for. The Syrians, who have not given up on re-imposing their writ in Lebanon and whose offer of diplomatic relations with Beirut will do little to change this, have several priorities. The first is to open a dialogue with the United States once the Bush administration leaves office. The way ahead is to pursue negotiations with Israel over the Golan Heights. However, Syria is less interested in the final outcome of such negotiations than in the process itself, because it is that process that might ensure improved relations with Washington while eroding international determination to press forward with the Hariri tribunal, whose establishment is already proving to be lethargic at best.
It is very doubtful that Syria will carry on serious negotiations without ensuring, first, that it has military leverage over Israel through the southern Lebanese border. Damascus may not necessarily want talks to reach a conclusion now, but it does have to prepare for the possibility of an eventual breakthrough. As far as President Bashar Assad is concerned, a Golan deal is important principally if Lebanon is part of the package. In other words, Syria gets the Golan but is also granted effective hegemony over Lebanon - an arrangement with which the Israelis have no problem, nor did when they were bargaining with Hafez Assad during the 1990s.
The Syrians can hit these two birds with one stone by ensuring that Hizbullah resumes its military operations in South Lebanon. The attacks would provide Syria with the leverage it seeks but also revitalize a Hizbullah threat that Assad will insist only Syria can resolve by again being granted considerable leeway in Lebanon. Ultimately, the Syrians hope, that would mean a return of their army and intelligence network in some capacity. Iran and Hizbullah would, for a time at least, see an advantage in this as it would protect Hizbullah's weapons against the growing demands for disarmament of the party inside Lebanon while allowing it to resume fighting, despite resolutions 1559 and 1701.
For Hizbullah to reopen the southern border, three conditions must be met: Resolution 1701 must be rendered ineffective; Hizbullah must not be seen as responsible for reigniting the southern front, since most Shiites have no desire to be brutalized by Israel yet again; and the Lebanese Army command must cooperate with Hizbullah in the border area. That latter prerequisite explains the Abdeh explosion and Musawi's statement.
Resolution 1701 is only as effective as the will of the international community and of UNIFIL, the United Nations force in South Lebanon. What better way to break that will than to restart bomb attacks against UNIFIL's contingents, and blame Fatah al-Islam - in other words Sunni Islamists - for this? Given France's impetuousness in wanting to reopen ties with Syria after the Doha agreement; given that neither Italy nor Spain, two other key members of UNIFIL, is likely to stand firm if the bombings begin in earnest; and given that ongoing Syrian-Israeli talks will considerably lower international incentive to punish Damascus for whatever goes wrong in the border area, this may prove quite easy. The fact that the attacks are allegedly the work of Sunni militants would cover Hizbullah vis-a-vis its own electorate, allow the party's media to once more highlight the alleged links between Fatah al-Islam and the Future Movement, and let Hizbullah exploit instability in the border area to provoke Israeli actions justifying a resumption of armed resistance.
What would the objective be? Some have suggested Syria, Iran and Hizbullah want a new arrangement in the South similar to the April Understanding of 1996, legitimizing Hizbullah military action through new "rules of the game" between the party and Israel. That seems a plausible theory, if it can be managed. But there are some question marks. In the long term, Hizbullah would welcome a Syrian return to Lebanon, but realizes that any final Israeli-Syrian settlement, even with Lebanon in Syrian hands, could be curtains for the resistance. It's equally unclear how Hizbullah might use possible attacks by alleged Sunni Islamists against UNIFIL to validate its own military operations. And will the Lebanese Army be as pliant as Hizbullah and Syria want it to be, or does the presence of Michel Suleiman, no enemy of Syria but also the main beneficiary of a stronger Lebanese state, make this less likely?
These uncertainties notwithstanding, Resolution 1701 has been in the crosshairs of Iran, Syria, and Hizbullah for some time. With the Bush administration on its way out, the Europeans ripe to end Syria's isolation, Syria's Arab foes anemic, Israel little interested in reinforcing the UN's credibility in Lebanon, and the Hariri tribunal looking like an afterthought, now may be the ideal time to begin chopping down the edifice built up in Lebanon by the Security Council between 2004 and 2006. Assad is in the driver's seat and no one seems willing to stop him.
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