Michael Young's columns

A gesture Lebanon must not ignore

2012-01-27T09:31:00.000+02:00

On Wednesday the Syrian National Council, which is leading the opposition to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad from abroad, made a significant gesture toward Lebanon.

In a statement the council promised, if it took power in Syria, to turn a “new page” with Lebanon. The rapport between the two countries would be built on a foundation of respect for sovereignty and parity, as well as support for ethnic and religious diversity and pluralism. The council promised to review bilateral agreements between Beirut and Damascus—above all the Syrian-Lebanese Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation, and Coordination, signed in 1991—and abolish the Higher Council that was set up through the treaty.

The Syrian National Council also undertook to terminate the role that Syria’s security services have played in Lebanon, and more broadly to end Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs. It said that it would demarcate the Lebanese-Syrian border, especially in the Shebaa Farms area, and affirmed that it would create a committee to investigate the matter of Lebanese held in Syrian prisons.

It would be easy to interpret the move as born of necessity, while the Syrian National Council garners Arab support to topple the Assad regime. The council did indeed speak to potentially damaging ambiguities in its public image, not least the fact that many Lebanese Christians fear an Islamist takeover in Syria. The guarantee of ethnic and religious pluralism was designed to reassure on that front.

However, the statement also represented, potentially, a highly significant moment in the uneasy Syrian-Lebanese relationship. There continues to be a perception in Lebanon, perhaps justified, perhaps not, that whoever controls Syria will pursue some form of hegemony over its smaller western neighbor. Long before the Baathists came to power in Damascus, defenders of this thesis argue, Syria had designs on Lebanon, and that won’t soon change.

Whatever the real answer, don’t take anyone’s word for it. At some stage, perhaps even before the Assad regime falls, Lebanese and Syrian democrats must sit together and clarify what the future holds for their two countries. This may not have an immediate impact on official policy, but stated principles, preferably written down in a consensual document, have a way of filling vacuums; and given the direction in which Syria is going today, a vacuum is likely in the country before a post-Assad order can take hold.

The relationship between Syria and Lebanon has been an orphan of the public debate over the Syrian uprising, indeed over Arab uprisings in general. The narrative of emancipation throughout the region has been focused internally, as one of populations rejecting authoritarian leaderships. There has been little room for a consideration of another type of subjugation, namely of one Arab state by another.

That is a reason, perhaps, why the Lebanese Independence Intifada of 2005 seemed to provoke so little interest last year among those taking to the streets against their regimes. And yet so much in that revolt against Syria was replicated elsewhere in the Arab world—from the way public space was used to stage protests, to the discussion of how to place instruments of state repression under democratic control, to the optimal way of approaching international intervention.

Anyone observing the barbarity of the Syrian leadership today cannot help but spare a thought for the Lebanese, who spent 29 years in one way or another under the Assads’ thumb. There were many in Lebanon who sided with Syria during that time; the violence inflicted by Lebanese on fellow Lebanese during the civil war was appalling. But a large number of those suffering during that period—the tens of thousands killed, injured, maimed, kidnapped or humiliated by Syria or its epigones—did not merit their fate, nor were they ever consulted about what Lebanon’s affiliation with Syria should be like.

That is why the initiative of the Syrian National Council is so necessary. There is baggage to clear away, as well as myriad misperceptions on both sides. Lebanese and Syrians must overcome the insufferable sense of contempt they still frequently display when talking about each other. Syria risks today what Lebanon faced three and a half decades ago, so destructive sectarianism is not solely a Lebanese curse. Yet as more Syrians suffer and become refugees, the Lebanese should recall how greatly they welcomed the empathy, and indulgence, of outsiders in their times of need.

One aspect of Arab uprisings today that require more attention is the way the emergence of more representative governments in certain countries will affect relations with countries next door. One can expect that Egypt will no longer deal with Israel or Gaza in quite the same way as it did under President Hosni Mubarak. Tunisia may not have particularly effective sway over developments in Libya or Algeria, but with time a more open society there may deploy democratic “soft power,” to the irritation of autocrats in the Maghreb.

The nature of Syria’s relations with the Lebanese, Palestinians, Iraqis, Jordanians and Turks will be essential for assessing the success of the Syrian uprising. Syria’s opposition still must triumph and then establish a democratic government. Yet given the Assads’ proclivity for destabilizing those around them, a new order in Damascus must make it a priority to place regional relationships back on an even keel.

To its credit, the Syrian National Council has taken the first step. Now it’s up to Lebanese democrats to push in the same direction from their end, to ensure the rapid start of a dialogue between governments once that becomes possible. Beirut and Damascus are intertwined. It’s a about time that both sides benefit in equal measure.

How the Assads won the West over

2012-01-26T07:44:00.000+02:00

As the regime of President Bashar Assad pursues its campaign of repression against its own population, how do those Western officials who once saw Syria as a serious partner in the Middle East feel?

The Assads, father and son, benefited from a profound misunderstanding of the nature of their leadership. None of Damascus’ many interlocutors ever doubted that they were dealing with a fetid dictatorship, but they pursued their flirtations anyway. Somehow, they repeatedly persuaded themselves that Syria was a key to unlocking closed regional doors. That the doors usually stayed closed failed to discourage further advances.

Bashar Assad cheerfully exploited this obstinacy, as he did the supremely idiotic insight that someone who doesn’t look, dress and talk like a thug cannot possibly be a thug. Whatever his deeper proclivities, Bashar has internalized a system that is, essentially, a vast criminal enterprise, one that has entirely absorbed him.

What are some of the misperceptions that have sustained Syria’s autocrats for so long? The most resilient was that Syria under the Assads was reformable. The masks are down, so that when the Syrian president brings up his purported reform program these days, he is greeted with contempt. But for more than a decade the unqualified worthlessness of this proposition was plain to those bothering to look.

There is no great mystery in the way Syria is run. True reform in the country would mean undermining the delicately balanced structure that Hafez Assad set up to protect his rule, and that of his family. Like any good architectural work, Hafez built institutions of governance and subjugation propped up by neutralizing contrary forces. Security bodies and military units proliferated, but also cancelled each other out; governments were eternal, but were counter-balanced by the Baath Party, while both were dominated by the security services, themselves arbitrated by the president. The political arrangement rested on Alawite solidarity and advancement, but Sunnis were integrated into it, even as they were denied substantial authority. The regime was allegedly secular, but as of the mid-1980s it expanded the numbers of schools and mosques to earn religious legitimacy (no doubt facilitating infiltration of Islamist groups as well). And so on.

Even Hafez Assad himself occasionally had trouble maneuvering such a bulky machine. Bashar, less skillful an operator, could only play at the margins. He opened Syria up to foreign banks and investment. But this primarily benefited the ruling clique, above all the president’s cousin Rami Makhlouf, who expanded his stake in the Syrian economy, becoming a conduit for major transactions. You could now sit at trendy new sidewalk cafes in Damascus, Assad’s promoters crowed. But most Syrians couldn’t afford a latte, and this veneer of modernism was somehow confused with political openness.

The inability to reform impacted on many fronts. Much has been made of Hafez Assad’s willingness to sign a peace treaty with Israel during the 1990s. Yes, the Syrians appeared genuinely willing to go quite far, while the Israelis backtracked at the Shepherdstown talks in December 1999, refusing to return the entire area of the Golan Heights to Syria’s sovereignty. However, it was never clear how the Syrian order would have adjusted to a settlement. This would have imposed a substantial overhaul and demobilization of the military and security edifice, shaking the very foundations of Assad rule. It seems apparent that Bashar Assad, despite welcoming a process of negotiations with Israel, knew that he did not have the latitude that his father enjoyed to manage the aftermath of a successful outcome.

If Bashar couldn’t reform domestically and had limited room to conclude a peace settlement with Israel, Syria during most of the past 10 years nevertheless took on the role of an ardent spoiler. In Iraq after 2003, on the Palestinian-Israeli track after the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004, and in Lebanon after the Syrian pullout of 2005, Damascus was a compulsive fire-starter. But here, too, the behavior of the Assads generated a new misunderstanding: If Syria could start fires, then presumably it could also help extinguish them.

Except for one thing. Under Bashar Assad, Syria was a second-rate Arab power. There was no “peace process” to lend it regional relevance; Assad soon lost Lebanon; and the Bush administration’s objectives in Iraq ran against those of Syria, so engagement became futile. Damascus could siphon jihadists into Iraq; it could, with Iran, turn Hamas against Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestine Liberation Organization; and it could cooperate with Hezbollah to reverse the shaky independence that Lebanon gained in 2005.

But what Assad could not do was surrender any of the cards he had accumulated. By doing so, Syria would have lost its leverage, with little to compensate for this. The Americans and Europeans did begin returning to Damascus to ask Assad to facilitate solutions all around him. The French mainly pleaded on behalf of Lebanon; the Americans requested help to break the Palestinian deadlock. President Barack Obama followed with a promise of “engagement.”

And Assad budged on not a single request of the foreign envoys. He deduced, quite reasonably, that if he did so, no one would knock at his door any more. Even Arab foes were coming around. Saudi Arabia reconciled with Assad, despite his alliance with Iran, and compelled its recalcitrant Lebanese allies to do the same. But at some stage, all shell games backfire. By never delivering, Assad was seen increasingly as a time-waster, and a liar to boot.

Today, everyone from French President Nicholas Sarkozy to Qatar’s Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, friends of Bashar past, as well as Barack Obama, realize whom they were pampering. They have recoiled in disgust. But for too long they eagerly bought into Bashar Assad’s scam, and people are still dying because of their error.

Arab states show their mettle by calling for regime change

2012-01-26T06:00:00.001+02:00

After ignoring the situation in Syria for months, Arab states, it now seems, cannot float enough plans for the country. Two weeks ago the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, called for the deployment of Arab troops to Syria. And last weekend, Arab League foreign ministers asked President Bashar Al Assad to leave office.

The latest Arab scheme is modelled on the plan that the Gulf Cooperation Council presented to resolve the Yemeni crisis. Mr Al Assad would hand over power to his first vice president, leading to the formation of a government of national unity within two months.

This government would implement a broad Arab League plan that, among other things, seeks to end the violence through the withdrawal of the army from cities and the release of prisoners. The transition proposal also outlines a process to elect a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution and hold parliamentary elections within six months.

On Tuesday, the Assad regime rejected the transition plan. The opposition Syrian National Council, in turn, and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, welcomed it, not least the clause about Mr Al Assad's removal. However, the SNC said there could be no negotiations with the regime until the Syrian president stepped down.

Saudi Arabia played a significant role in formulating the proposal, in its capacity as a member, with Oman, of a committee tasked with following up on the Syrian crisis. The Saudis brought the Gulf states on board and collaborated with their occasional rival Qatar, which chairs the Arab League until March. In another sign of its hardening position, the kingdom pulled its nationals out of the Arab League observer mission to Syria, a measure soon followed by its Gulf partners.

Like Sheikh Hamad's demand that Arab forces be deployed to Syria, the transition project represents a radically new dimension in Arab diplomacy. Neither may prevent a further escalation in Syria. Yet for practical purposes, the Arabs have just advocated regime change there, pushed firmly by the Gulf countries, which have the Yemen experience to borrow from. Mr Al Assad's ouster now has an Arab imprimatur, therefore legitimacy, and this cannot be underestimated.

The Arabs also somehow managed to put together a road map towards what they claimed would be a more democratic Syria. This was inevitable, perhaps, in light of developments in Egypt and Tunisia, where constituent assemblies are preparing to undo constitutions that gave considerable latitude to authoritarian leaders. Yet it also represented an innovation for a regional organisation habitually committed to the narrowest interpretation of state sovereignty.

The foreign ministers extended the Arab League monitoring mission. It would have been difficult to do otherwise. The observers symbolise the continued Arab stake in Syria, even as any expectation that they will succeed in their mission, or perhaps even pursue it, is negligible, especially after Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners pulled out.

The novelty in the Arab position aside, where does one go from here? We can now speak of armed conflict in Syria, with what appears to be a considerable swathe of territory outside the effective control of the regime. This explains the Arab sense of urgency, but it also highlights the dangers of ambiguity within the Arab League or discord within the United Nations Security Council. The Arab foreign ministers agreed that the Arab League would inform the Security Council of its support for the transition plan, a potentially far-reaching initiative.

Now that the Arab states have endorsed Mr Al Assad's exit in the name of stability and ending bloodshed, a good case can be made that Syria has become a threat to regional peace and security - therefore in some ways to international peace and security. By informing the Security Council, the Arabs will implicitly request that the world body take matters in hand. Recall that Russia and China affirmed in mid-2011 that Syria did not mandate Security Council consideration, because the tension there was no threat to international peace and security. Now the Arab states are suggesting the contrary.

As the fighting intensifies, the stakes are becoming much more dangerous. No Arab official has mentioned it publicly yet, but there is real anxiety that Mr Al Assad's stubbornness may lead to the de facto break-up of the Syrian state, even if temporarily. Once the leaders of the ruling Alawite community sense that their situation is hopeless, they may conceivably implement a mad venture to pull back to the Alawite heartland and consolidate there. That would not be easy and an Alawite statelet would in all probability not be permanent. But Mr Al Assad and his acolytes are adept at making bad calls. An Alawite fallback strategy could unleash other centrifugal forces, particularly involving the Kurds, alarming Syria's neighbours.

How long Russia can resist Security Council action on Syria is anybody's guess. The Arab decision is not one that Moscow can ignore lightly, nor will a post-Assad Syria quickly forgive the actions of the Russian government. Mr Al Assad is on the way out and even close Syrian allies such as Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas may have reached that conclusion. The merit of the Arab plan is that the Arabs have finally grasped the inevitability of a transformation in Damascus.

The Security Council must take up the Arab proposal, even if that means tightening some of its clauses. Things will get worse before they get better. But only when Mr Al Assad and those around him realise that they're finished, will they act in ways that widen the cracks in Alawite ranks. Few in the community relish dying for the ruling family.

More on God and man in Lebanon

2012-01-19T10:42:00.002+02:00

An article I recently wrote on rising religiosity in Lebanon has provoked the ire of some readers. Fortuitously, after its publication I was sent the results of a fascinating survey adding substance to my unempirical observations.

Among the reactions of outrage was that of writer William Peter Blatty, who did not like the argument that when Lebanese youths bury themselves in the depths of a creed, this is in one measure because they are unwilling, or more likely unable, to have a say in the world outside – in the republic. Blatty found the statement “logically unsupported, if not absurd.”

Running to the rescue is Professor Theodor Hanf, who since 1982 has carried out six surveys on the attitudes and opinions of economically active Lebanese. The latest of these, conducted in early 2006, was published in 2007 by UNESCO’s International Center for Human Sciences. Hanf, a German social scientist, also happens to be the author of the highly regarded “Co-existence in Wartime Lebanon: Death of a State and Birth of a Nation,” which came out in 1993.

If linking religious belief to politicization is logically unsupported, then I’m guilty of an error made by everyone from Karl Marx to scholars of the Middle East who have studied that connection in the context of authoritarian Arab countries. Turning to religious practice so that it gives central meaning to life is a way individuals have, and there are others, to compensate for a perceived inability to influence their environment, especially their political environment.

This is not to affirm that all Lebanese believers are depoliticized. Indeed, religious identity can be a highly potent instrument of political mobilization. However, my topic was, and is, religiosity – the outward manifestations of religion. Lebanese have developed a powerful personal bond with their religion, and are increasingly flaunting this bond in their daily life. Somewhere, this tells us something about their outlook toward the world around them.

Readers deserve better than my gut feeling, so to Professor Hanf. His survey covers a range of opinions. For our purposes I will focus on just three, not in the same order as Hanf. The first examines Lebanese views of religion. Hanf writes, “Secularizing moderation of religious convictions and less observance of religious practice is not part of the Lebanese agenda, not 20 years ago, and today even less so.”

Whereas in 1987, 71 percent of respondents answered in the affirmative when asked “I believe in a life after death, in which the righteous will be rewarded and the wicked will be punished,” in 2006 the figure was 94 percent. To the question “I try to live by the teachings of my religion,” 75 percent said yes in 1987, while in 2006 the figure was 90 percent. In 1987, 38 percent of respondents said they often visited a place of worship, whereas 63 percent replied in the affirmative in 2006. And in 1987 and 2006, only 11 percent agreed that “I can be happy and enjoy life even if I don’t believe in God.”

While I have cited 1987 and 2006, Hanf also did a survey in 2002. The results show upward trends in answers to the first three questions in the periods covered, excepting the last question. In other words the percentage of respondents answering affirmatively rose between 1987 and 2002, then again between 2002 and 2006. Nothing in current daily life suggests that these trends have been reversed.

A second category of attitudes Hanf examined pertained to political orientation and how the Lebanese viewed their political system. Here, Hanf found that depoliticization was widespread. In response to the question “If you keep out of politics you have peace and quiet and a clear conscience,” 62 percent agreed with the statement in 1987, while 69 percent agreed in 2002 and 67 percent agreed in 2006.

Hanf qualified this, however, by noting that almost a third disagreed in 2006, articulating their political involvement by naming the political organization to which they belonged. A new survey is needed to determine perspectives today. However, again based on what I see around me, I predict the figure has risen beyond 67 percent.

Finally, Hanf asked respondents about their fear of the future, their cautiousness and powerlessness. In response to the question “When I think of the future, I feel uncertain and afraid,” he found rather alarming results. In his four wartime surveys, about 60 percent of respondents answered in the affirmative; in the 2002 survey 81 percent did so, and in 2006 no less than 84 percent did. In other words, 16 years after the war ended, a significantly larger number of Lebanese were more anxious about the future than during wartime.

As disturbing were the responses to the question “You should always be careful. You cannot trust the people you live or work with.” In 2002, 78 percent agreed, while 84 percent did so in 2006. Who did respondents trust, according to the survey? In 2006, 95 percent pointed to “relatives,” 71 percent to “friends,” and 41 percent to “members of one’s religious community,” to name the top three categories. This represented upward trends over 1987 and 2002.

What does this partial reading of Hanf’s survey show? Those like Blatty may repeat that nothing in the results proves that higher religiosity is linked to higher depoliticization. Indeed, but there is a definite correlation between the two, even if multiple factors enter the mix. The Lebanese in 2006 were uncertain about the future; more than two-thirds had negative attitudes toward political participation – and we can safely assume a reason for this was a sense of political futility; and religion was ever more important to an overwhelming majority of Lebanese, to the extent that only 11 percent admitted to being able to live happily and enjoy life without believing in God.

Here we must return to the notion of a republic as, literally, the common wealth of its citizens. In Lebanon it is, plainly, under great stress. A republic is built on trust between citizens, their confidence in the future and the ability to collectively shape that future. When happiness is so strongly associated with religion rather than matters related to life in the polity, we can legitimately ask whether burying oneself in religious creed reflects an unwillingness, or an inability, to have a say in the republic.

In a final section, outside the confines of the relationship between political action and religious practice, Hanf addresses the issue of national coexistence. He finds intriguing results, allowing him to conclude that Lebanese want to live together, but in ways indicating they have also drifted apart; they seek unity in pluralism.

Has Professor Hanf made my case? Perhaps not enough for some. But his studies are invaluable for casting light on the intersection between personal belief, political participation and public confidence in the Lebanese state. Address any further protests to him.

History of Arab interventions argues against role in Syria

2012-01-19T07:59:00.000+02:00

Last Saturday, in an interview on US television, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, threw a rock in the very still pond of Arab bewilderment over Syria. He recommended that Arab troops be sent to the country "to stop the killing". If previous Arab military interventions in fellow Arab countries are anything to go by, the bewilderment will not soon dissipate.

It's still unclear what Sheikh Hamad had in mind. His statement could have been a tactical manoeuvre, to place the onus for the carnage in Syria on other Arab countries, at a time when Qatar finds itself virtually alone in aggressively opposing the regime of President Bashar Al Assad. Or the emir could have been thinking of something more specific, namely Arab military protection of so-called humanitarian corridors, to safeguard Syrian civilians.

The idea may not be as far-fetched as it appears, even though Damascus has rejected any kind of foreign military involvement in its affairs. The French government has supported establishing humanitarian corridors, which presumably would be sustained from Turkish territory. The Turkish leadership, itself at a loss over quite what to do in Syria, may welcome such a scheme if it enjoys Arab approval, and if the boots on the ground are Arab.

Moreover, humanitarian corridors defended by Arabs, rather than by Turks, would be a way to avoid alarming Syria's Kurds. It is difficult to see how Russia and China, let alone the United States or the United Kingdom, could actively oppose an Arab consensus on an initiative that circumvents the United Nations Security Council.

At this stage, we can only speculate over what Sheikh Hamad meant by his cryptic comments. Yet those Arab governments reluctant to go along with his project, and they doubtless are many, can point to the dubious record of Arab military operations during the past half-century to chill any ambient enthusiasm.

In the most relevant case, in 1976 the Arab League deployed what was known as the Arab Deterrent Force to Lebanon, to end the civil war in the country. When formed, the force included soldiers from a variety of Arab nations, although the vast majority were Syrian.

Creation of the force effectively legitimised the prior Syrian military presence in Lebanon, and ultimately Syrian domination, even if Arab states initially sought to contain Syria within an Arab framework. The other Arab contingents did not remain beyond 1979, leaving the Syrians in control on the ground. This lasted until April 2005, when Damascus withdrew its army after it was accused of being behind the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, a former prime minister.

The Syrians were rarely unchallenged. In the months before the ADF was formally set up, their soldiers had entered Lebanon to fight an alliance of Palestinians and leftists, in collaboration with Christian militias. Subsequently, they would engage in a series of vicious armed confrontations with the Christians, exacting a very high civilian death toll in the subsequent decade and a half.

The Syrian entry into Lebanon was a relatively uncommon occurrence. Only the debilitating Egyptian campaign in Yemen between 1962 and 1968 or the Moroccan takeover of Western Sahara in 1979 were on a comparable scale, and they did not aim to end a domestic conflict. The entry of Gulf troops into Bahrain last year proved decisive in bolstering the monarchy against those favouring reform, but was of a much smaller magnitude.

Syria did dispatch military units to Jordan in September 1970, to defend Palestinian organisations then fighting the regime of King Hussein. However, the Syrians were beaten back amid splits in their leadership. The head of the air force (and later president of Syria), Hafez Al Assad, did not make use of his aircraft, handing the Jordanians a decisive advantage.

More recently, Arab states participated in two other major military interventions in Arab countries. However, in the war over Kuwait in 1991 and again last year in Libya, Arab governments were enlisted in initiatives led by the United States or by France and the United Kingdom. While these operations were relatively successful, the Arab participants went along because they assumed the western governments were pursuing limited objectives.

What are the messages for Syria today? The first is that Mr Al Assad will depict any Arab military role in Syria as part of a hegemonic foreign conspiracy. His speech last week, in which he declared that Syria was the victim of a plot, set the stage for this. How ironic for a regime that maintained an army in Lebanon for three decades. But the reality is that the Arab world has no successful, entirely Arab military accomplishment to look back upon as a model for Syria.

A second message is that where there is no Arab consensus, military interventions tend mainly to exacerbate inter-Arab discord. Brute force alone allowed Syria to impose its will in Lebanon for so long, over opposition from certain Arab countries. Egypt's war in Yemen was in large part a consequence of its bitter rivalry with Saudi Arabia. The Western Sahara remains a source of profound tension between Morocco and Algeria. And so on. As desirable as Arab harmony over Syria would be, it is unlikely to be forthcoming.

On Sunday, the Arab League is scheduled to discuss Sheikh Hamad's suggestion. Mr Al Assad will play on Arab differences to keep a military option at bay. He may succeed. However, Arab states may have to reinvent themselves militarily in Syria, for it is principally they who would bear the brunt of a Syrian civil war, if one begins.

Voters, expect no change!

2012-01-13T08:40:00.000+02:00

Here’s a bet I will make with anyone. The law governing Lebanon’s 2013 parliamentary elections will essentially be the 2009 law.

It’s an easy prediction to make, you say. You would be right. But judging from all the noise this week, as Interior Minister Marwan Charbel organized a conference at the Phoenicia Hotel to discuss his draft proposal for a new law, in coordination with the United Nations Development Program, you would imagine the contrary.

Last October, Charbel presented the outline of a draft law that would allocate seats on the basis of proportional representation. The size of electoral districts has yet to be decided and Charbel’s proposal offers several options. Ultimately, the government and parliament will decide. However, a vast majority of parliamentarians are members of blocs with absolutely no interest in altering the status quo. And the last thing they will endorse is proportional representation, which would allow minorities in the districts they dominate to win seats.

Let’s take as a given that they will find a way to derail proportional representation. The best way to do so is to simply avoid reaching agreement over it. This the blocs will do indirectly, not by rejecting proportionality, as this may be unpopular, but by failing to settle over the size of electoral districts, or some other aspect of the draft law. We saw hints of this direction at the Phoenicia conference, where considerable criticism was leveled at Charbel’s scheme.

Having undermined proportional representation, the leading political forces will then reimpose the current electoral districts. While it’s true that some parties would prevail under different districting, others would not. For a broad consensus to be reached in parliament, everyone needs to be satisfied. That’s why there is a better than even chance that the districts will not change.

Let’s see why. Start with Baabda, Jezzine, Bint Jbeil, Nabatiyeh, Zahrani, Tyre, Marjayoun-Hasbayya, and Baalbek-Hermel. In all these districts, Hezbollah, Amal, the Aounists, or some combination thereof, have a headlock on seats. Michel Aoun has no impetus to agree to a district larger than the qada, since it ensures that he will do well in Jezzine and Baabda; Hezbollah will not challenge this, even if it can fare just as well in a larger constituency. Amal will go along with both, since it has no latitude to compete with Hezbollah.

Walid Jumblatt, too, approves of the current law. He accepts that Hezbollah and Aoun will select the Druze candidate in Baabda, but the 2009 law still means he can control Aley and the Shouf. Jumblatt’s Druze candidate in the West Beqaa, Wael Abu Faour, and in Beirut, Ghazi Aridi, rely on Sunni votes, while Sunnis make up a third of the Shouf electorate. That means that between now and election time the Druze leader must reconcile with Saad Hariri, who in all probability will form leading lists in the West Beqaa and Beirut.

That reconciliation will have electoral implications. Because Jumblatt cannot afford to be at odds with Hariri before the polls, expect the Druze leader to block all efforts by Aoun or Hezbollah to redraw district lines in Beirut to the former prime minister’s disadvantage.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati and President Michel Sleiman, who together with Jumblatt hold veto power in the government, would also likely oppose such steps, each for his own reasons: Mikati, because he, too, cannot allow his conflict with Hariri to fester, as he must protect his Sunni bona fides and seeks to avoid a bruising electoral contest in Tripoli; and Sleiman, because he doesn’t want Michel Aoun to benefit from gerrymandering in Beirut, which would aim to unify the Christian and Shia electorates.

Aoun as well cannot wish for better than the 2009 law. He still remains the most powerful Christian in Baabda, the Metn, Kisirwan, and Jbeil. Even if he has lost ground in the popular vote, his March 14 adversaries have arguably lost more, given the recent incoherence of the previous majority and Aoun’s ability to discredit the allies of Saad Hariri by playing on Christian fears of the Sunnis.

Michel al-Murr is not the powerhouse that he once was in the Metn, and has made overtures to the new majority. Aoun’s reliance on the Armenian vote in the district, as well as his support among Shia in Jbeil and Baabda provide him with decisive advantages. In the Kisirwan, a unified opposition to Aoun has yet to emerge, and would have less access to funding than the Aounists.

Finally, Saad Hariri will not abandon the 2009 law either. He should do very well in Beirut, if the districting stays the same, as well as in Tripoli, Akkar, Dinniyeh, Zahleh, and the West Beqaa. In Saida, he may have to deal with that new Salafist emanation, Sheikh Ahmad Assir, which raises numerous questions about how dynamics in the Sunni community will play out, given Hariri’s long absence and the conflict in Syria above all. Will the former prime minister have to include more Islamists on his lists? Will his influence remain intact if his financial woes continue? All interesting questions, but none will make him reconsider the kind of election law that he favors.

A final verdict on an election law will be shaped by events in Syria. That’s why we are unlikely to see consensus on a new law soon. But assume the 2013 election law will be a case of back to the future.

Do discard the ‘resistance axis’ hoax

2012-01-12T12:45:00.000+02:00

This past week several British parliamentarians were in Beirut to learn more about the situation in Lebanon and Syria. They met with politicians, academics and journalists, and an argument they took home with them was particularly intriguing. It pertains to what has become known in the West as the “resistance axis.”

As a parliamentarian put it to me, they had heard from one of those with whom they chatted not to underestimate the solidarity between members of the “resistance axis” – mainly Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas – and the intensity of the ideological principles uniting them. With Syrian President Bashar Assad facing an existential threat to his rule, his fellow “resisters” would ride forcefully to his aid.

So, what did I think of this view?

Certainly, I replied, Iran and Hezbollah have bolstered Assad and his acolytes, and will continue to do so as they slaughter their own population. They may be preparing for the possibility of Assad’s downfall, but they are also doing everything to ensure that repression succeeds. Yet rather than representing a common culture of “resistance,” this team spirit merely reflects parallel interests. At the leadership level, the alleged moral underpinning defining “resistance” is secondary.

The notion of a “resistance axis” has been a casualty of the revolts in the Arab world. Using the term displays willful blindness to what has taken place during the past year. Resistance, the way the word is currently understood in the Arab world, implies resistance to injustice and hegemony, principally imposed by the United States and Israel. Yet when Iran and Syria, pillars of the axis, have been at the vanguard in violently and unjustly suppressing freedoms at home, the term “resistance axis” elicits only laughter. And yet there are people who need to keep the term alive, with its moral implications, because their professional agenda is invested in its being taken seriously.

The most prominent of these is Alastair Crooke. He is a former MI6 agent who heads Conflicts Forum in Beirut, which promotes dialogue between the West and Islamist groups. However, Crooke has become less a mediator between the two sides than an interpreter, advocate and relayer of the Islamists’ messages to the West, above all those of Hezbollah. This drift into partisanship has pushed Crooke to take positions in defense of the Assad regime that have exposed him to ridicule, as when he wrote in Asia Times last July that “Syrians also believe that President Bashar al-Assad shares their conviction for reform” and that there is “no credible ‘other’ that could bring reform.”

Lebanon has also attracted inferior knock-offs of Crooke, but their message is similar and their attitude toward the carnage in Syria as mercenary and inexcusable. They realize that with Assad facing a popular uprising, the conceptual edifice that they have spent years building up is about to collapse. The only thing that can save them is for the Syrian leader to prevail. That is why they have hemmed and hawed on Syria, when they have mentioned it at all, admitting to the regime’s brutality before tossing in caveats playing down such behavior, showing how unnerved they are with the prospect that they may lose a rationale to fund their enterprises.

Why is the conceptual edifice of Crooke and his imitators in danger? The Arab revolts have already brought Islamists to power through democratic means in Egypt and Tunisia. If Assad goes, two things risk happening in Syria: the Muslim Brotherhood will enter the political mainstream, even if it is unlikely to replicate the successes of its brethren in Egypt; and Hezbollah’s regional star will rapidly dim, as a majority of Syrians turn against the party for supporting Assad.

Both dynamics are problematic for would-be mediators like Crooke. The legitimization of Islamist parties through elections has forced Western governments to seriously contemplate dealing with them directly, without passing through non-governmental organizations. And if Hezbollah is perceived in the West as being weaker, there will be far less of an impetus to sponsor dialogue initiatives with the party, and far more to push for Hezbollah’s marginalization. That won’t happen quickly, so those like Crooke will still hold a job for awhile; but it will be principally a cleaning up job, because the profitable nexus that they have hitherto depended upon, that of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas – the “resistance axis” – will be no more.

How odd that proponents of the “resistance axis” have failed lately to feed Hamas into their equation. Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has found it tricky to stand with Assad against the Syrian Brotherhood. From the moment the prominent cleric Sheikh Yusif al-Qaradawi declared last March that the train of revolution had reached Syria, it was apparent that Hamas would one day have to make a choice. It has delayed doing so, but with Assad calling the Syrian Brotherhood “brothers of Satan” in a speech on Tuesday, a pillar of the resistance coalition may be nearing disintegration.

The template of those peddling a “resistance axis” line is the same as the one highlighting the perils of Western neo-imperialism in the Middle East, with its Arab nationalist pedigree. In the name of the struggle against Israel and neo-imperialism, Arab societies were turned into leviathans of subjugation. Yet the overriding message in the Arab revolts is that Arab populations, whatever their outlook toward the outside, now want their domestic tribulations to be given priority.

No fantasy of a “resistance axis” can survive in such an atmosphere. Resistance against whom? On whose behalf? Arabs want to resist the cruelty of their own leaders, to secure their future as free citizens and that of their children. Opportunists flogging schemes that ultimately benefit the tyrants will not convince the Arabs otherwise.

Arab League's indecision is fuelling Assad's belligerence

2012-01-12T07:58:00.000+02:00

When lost, continue walking around in circles. That is the motto of the Arab League in dealing with the crisis in Syria. And judging from the wavering in Arab capitals over what to do next with the regime of President Bashar Al Assad, little is likely to soon change.

Sensing the confusion among Arab governments over an Arab League plan to end the Syrian violence, Mr Al Assad counterattacked in a speech on Tuesday, rebuking them for not standing by his government. He hopes to profit from their mood to regain the initiative at home.

When Mr Al Assad accepted the Arab plan, he widened the cracks in Arab ranks over how to resolve his country's problems. The plan calls for a withdrawal of the army from Syrian cities, the release of prisoners, and a dialogue between the regime and opposition, as well as the deployment of Arab monitors to implement the scheme.

Each of these conditions is a minefield. The Syrian army has not withdrawn from cities, with some 400 people estimated to have been killed since the monitors arrived last month. Yet there are too few of them to verify compliance. Some prisoners have been released, but without accurate figures for how many have been detained, and without a mandate for monitors to freely enter detention facilities, it will be impossible to ascertain the actual number. And while the Assad regime says it welcomes dialogue, it wants to choose its interlocutor, and sees talks as a way of splitting the opposition further.

Last November, Arab states seemed more decisive. They suspended Syria's Arab League membership when it refused to sign the protocol formalising the Arab plan. They also imposed sanctions and a travel ban on Syrian officials. The impact was limited, in there being no mechanism compelling Arab League members to enforce sanctions. While they went further than expected, Arab officials said the decisions were necessary to avoid "internationalisation" of the crisis through the United Nations Security Council.

Mr Al Assad's foes now describe the execution of the Arab plan as a fiasco. In a report last Sunday, the monitors hardly dispelled the unease. Killings and arrests have continued, though Arab divisions meant the Arab League could agree only on pursuing the mission for now. The arrival of new monitors is being delayed by Syria, their movement is controlled by the security forces, and Mr Al Assad feels confident.

Arab dynamics are revealing in this regard. Other than Qatar, which has played a vanguard role in opposing the leadership in Damascus, there is a profound disconnect between the Arab regimes and the Syrian opposition, whose minimal demand is Mr Al Assad's removal. That explains the opposition's mistrust of the Arab League, itself a mirror of the Arab consensus - or rather the lack thereof.

The two traditional Arab powerhouses, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, remain deeply ambiguous on Syria. The Egyptian military council is focused on managing its domestic affairs and is avoiding taking risks abroad, despite the potential strategic advantage to Cairo of a breakdown in the Syrian-Iranian alliance. More cynically, the generals, keen to consolidate their authority at home, favour the status quo regionally. They fear that new convulsions, above all Mr Al Assad's fall, would further embolden their Egyptian detractors.

The disposition of the Egyptian military can be read in the actions of the Arab League secretary general, Nabil Al Arabi, an Egyptian who like most of his predecessors is close to the power centres in Cairo. Mr Al Arabi has been indecisive and behind the curve on Syria, and has not used his pulpit to advance his organisation's plan. Instead, he has obtained agreement over lowest common denominators among the Arab states, effectively neutralising the Arab mission.

Saudi Arabia has also been strikingly hazy on Mr Al Assad's repression. The kingdom has condemned the actions of the Syrian regime, but it has also shied away from shaping Arab agreement on events in Syria. Riyadh has played a largely passive role, in contrast to its interventions in Bahrain and Yemen. That could be because the Saudi plate is full and the royal family is going through a transition; perhaps, too, the Saudis prefer a slow corrosion of Syria's regime. That said, the prospect of ensuring that Iran loses a vital ally in the Levant has appeared not to galvanise Saudi decision-makers.

The Saudis' response on Monday to the Arab League monitor's report showed that they still prefer to have it both ways. The council of ministers issued a statement calling on the Syrian government to carry out the Arab plan and protect civilians. Yet it also implicitly supported pursuing the plan, affirming that it has been "partially" implemented - which the opposition rejects.

Other Arab states have also shown no enthusiasm for aggressively applying Arab decisions. Iraq, Algeria, Sudan, Morocco, Jordan and Lebanon have either been openly sympathetic to Mr Al Assad or have gone with the flow. Most of the Gulf states will follow the Saudi lead, which has been to step back. Qatar has stood out as the exception, but in March it relinquishes the rotating presidency of the Arab League to Iraq, which has defended Mr Al Assad.

There is no Arab momentum to side with the Syrian population against their leaders. This risks dangerously alienating the Syrian opposition, leading to radicalisation of the uprising. That may be precisely what Mr Al Assad wants, but it is also what the Arab states claim they want to avert. Syria is now an urgent matter for the UN Security Council, and has been for months. Arab indecision shows why.

Is Hezbollah losing control?

2012-01-06T11:02:00.000+02:00

The cacophony in the government this past week, while hardly surprising, tells us much about the nature of the Lebanese system. And the party best absorbing the lesson is Hezbollah.

Last month, the defense minister, Fayez Ghosn, declared that Al-Qaeda was present in Lebanon, in that way echoing accusations that Syrian officials have made. He was soon contradicted by Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Interior Minister Marwan Charbel. This prompted Ghosn’s political patron, Sleiman Franjieh, to publicly back the defense minister, even as Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader, called on Russia and Iran to persuade President Bashar al-Assad that a change of regime in Damascus was necessary.

And this from the government “of one color” we’ve heard so much about. That such a government can continue to survive is less a miracle than a sign of Syria’s and Hezbollah’s desire not to allow a vacuum in Beirut that could turn to their disadvantage. But outside the boundaries of that general condition, anything goes. Franjieh does the bidding of the Syrian regime, Jumblatt recommends its departure, and Mikati tries to steer a middle course between the icebergs.

Hezbollah controls the commanding heights of the Lebanese state. It has considerable sway over the army and the intelligence apparatus, not to mention over Beirut airport and port. It has an independent telecommunications network, which it has been able to install throughout large parts of the country. And it has access to numerous ministries through its political partners and clients. The list goes on. But one thing Hezbollah cannot do is impose harmony on a litigious political environment to advance its interests. The ensuing pluralism poses the greatest threat to Hezbollah’s wellbeing.

It’s difficult to say how Hezbollah judges the situation in Syria. It continues to staunchly support the Assad regime, but the party is too lucid not to have a backup plan. And such a plan almost certainly involves a measure of self-protection through Hezbollah’s continued participation in and supremacy over the government and state. That’s why it doesn’t want a governmental void in the country, since this might hinder its ability to shape the political environment in its favor.

However, things may not be so clear-cut. The dispute over Al-Qaeda as well as Jumblatt’s remarks led in directions that Hezbollah would prefer to avoid. The party cannot be particularly comfortable with the implications of Ghosn’s declarations. If Lebanon has become an Al-Qaeda base, with members allegedly present in Aarsal, a Sunni town in the northeastern Bekaa Valley, near Hezbollah strongholds, this can only heighten hostility between Sunni and Shia. Hezbollah, which must know that the Al-Qaeda accusation is bogus, today prefers to sidestep sectarian antagonism, let alone confrontation, that would further isolate it if the Syrian leadership were to collapse. Syria’s priorities and Hezbollah’s are not invariably the same in Lebanon.

The same holds for Jumblatt’s bombshell. The party perhaps understands that the Druze leader must also plan ahead for the exit of the Assads, given that there are some 300,000 Druze in Syria. It cannot approve of Jumblatt’s call for regime change in Damascus, but nor can it intimidate him in quite the way that it previously could. Jumblatt makes the parliamentary majority a majority; and Hezbollah knows that in a world without the Assads, it will need to be on cordial terms with many of those whom it finds unsavory.

Things will not get easier for the party. Last October the inhabitants of Tarshish stopped excavation work which they warned was being carried out by Hezbollah to extend its telecommunications network. While the episode was relatively limited in scope, that kind of reaction can only increase in the future, as the perception spreads that the party is increasingly vulnerable because of the Syrian crisis.

What we have today is a Hezbollah whose constraints oblige it to be in league with a politician bluntly wagering on the end of Assad rule, as well as a prime minister who has pushed hard to finance an international tribunal that has indicted Hezbollah members. The party is finding it difficult to manage a dysfunctional cabinet to its advantage. Lebanon’s Sunnis feel emboldened because of events in Syria, at the very moment when Hezbollah is eager to avert sectarian animosities. And if Bashar al-Assad is ousted, the party will lose its strategic depth in case of war with Israel, greatly limiting its ability to engage in such a war and diluting its deterrence capability.

All this is the natural consequence of a complex, unruly Lebanese political order that no party can hope to dominate for long. Hezbollah has engaged in hubris by believing the contrary. Lebanon’s sectarian order sooner or later pushes back against attempts at hegemony by one party or a coalition of parties. The “politics of alleyways” that Hassan Nasrallah once dismissed in describing the conduct of Lebanese domestic affairs, is slowly overcoming Hezbollah.

But the party won’t disappear once the Assads do. For Lebanon to peacefully navigate a post-Assad era in Syria, negotiations between the Lebanese communities are necessary. Sunnis need to speak to Shia. Hezbollah will become more modest as the system grinds the party down. But nothing will have been gained if the party’s foes become overconfident. That would be a recipe for civil conflict.

It's always difficult to reach post-revolutionary closure

2012-01-05T12:24:00.000+02:00

As Arab revolts began last year, it was inevitable that people would compare them to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

And that comparison suggests that the emancipation of Arab societies will likely stumble on the matter of memory, as did the former communist societies.

A useful keyhole into that recent past is a Pulitzer Prize-winning 1995 book by Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism.Ms Rosenberg focused on three countries; Czechoslovakia (before its break-up into two states), Poland, and the German Democratic Republic. She examined how each came to terms with its oppressive communist legacy, and concluded that the process in each country was wanting, causing discord rather than the desirable closure initially anticipated.

In Czechoslovakia, the post-communist establishment introduced what came to be called "lustrace", a mechanism to uncover who had collaborated with the secret service, the StB, while barring those who had from certain types of positions. The difficulty was that the names of alleged collaborators were taken from the StB registry that indexed folders on the individuals. Being named in the registry automatically implied guilt, although there were myriad other reasons why someone might be listed. Over time, lustrace came to be regarded as indiscriminate, provoking growing condemnation.

In Poland the situation was different. There was no broad organised purge of communists. Rather, the focus was on whether the former Polish leader, Wojciech Jaruzelski, and members of his Council of State, had committed treason by introducing martial law under Soviet duress in December 1981. The inquiry, by a parliamentary committee, debated whether Mr Jaruzelski and his ministers should be referred to the State Tribunal. Ultimately, the committee decided not.

The process was undermined by its haphazard nature. Mr Jaruzelski argued that he had been forced to impose martial law to avert a Soviet invasion. That was not quite true, but there was also no agreement in Poland over how to deal with the communist legacy. Even Adam Michnik, a dissident targeted by the communists, defended Mr Jaruzelski, arguing that reconciliation was necessary.

In East Germany, a third approach was tried; opening the files of the secret police, the Stasi, to the victims. This way individuals could determine who had informed on them, and what had been known of their activities.

The post-unification German authorities also tried East German officials, as well as some border guards who had killed people trying to escape. This proved less successful, partly because it required proving that the accused had acted illegally under East German law, no easy task.

Each experience reaffirmed that societies going through momentous change often reach no consensus over settling past accounts.

This will prove even more challenging in the Arab world, where political transitions have tended to be violent and divisive.

In Egypt, for instance, the military allowed Hosni Mubarak to be put on trial. However, the potential benefits of the decision were soon neutralised by conflict, as supporters and enemies of the former president fought around the courtroom. Instead of being turned into an institutional means to dismantle the old order, the trial was closed to the public, amid a clear lack of enthusiasm by the military. After all, Mr Mubarak's trial is also that of the security institutions that bolstered his rule, led by the army.

In Libya, the post-war divisions render unlikely a harmonious consideration of the Qaddafi regime's ills. Muammar Qaddafi's killing eliminated prospects for a trial that could have united Libyans against the old leadership. Seif Al Islam Qaddafi is in custody, but pervasive factionalism may mean he becomes a political football rather than an instrument to wash away a sordid past.

In Yemen, the regime that brutally repressed dissent may enjoy impunity, because the Gulf plan to remove President Ali Abdullah Saleh effectively exonerates him. That may be reversed one day, but dissension in the country and the breakdown of government authority, which was never strong in the first place, makes a concerted reckoning with the past almost impossible.

And in Syria, too much remains indeterminate to contemplate the issue of memory. Syrians would find much to deconstruct, literally, after 40 years of Assad rule, but the society is complex. A desire to avert disputes may favour a comprehensive reconciliation, once a handful of individuals are punished.

Two Arab countries that did have an opportunity to engage memory are Lebanon and Iraq. After the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990, the government issued a blanket pardon for wartime crimes. Post-war reconstruction was advanced on a foundation of officially-sanctioned amnesia. Few Lebanese challenged this because most communal leaders, therefore their leaders, were culpable.

In Iraq, the trial of Saddam Hussein was widely interpreted as a last opportunity to part the curtain on Baath-era crimes. Sunnis saw the trial merely as another facet of their communal marginalisation, while many Shiites viewed it as an expedient occasion to get rid of a once-feared man.

In times like this, it's worth rereading Ms Rosenberg. There are no easy paths to national self-reflection, especially when this involves confronting one's own misdeeds, which only rarely can be fully separated from the misdeeds of overthrown rulers. Guilt has a way of touching everything. That is why societies in democratic or peaceful transitions will often prefer to forget, and to forgive the unforgivable.

Finding God everywhere in Lebanon

2012-01-05T11:00:00.000+02:00

Readers will forgive me if I use a personal milestone as the premise for what follows. The year 2012 marks 20 years since my return to Lebanon, after an interregnum abroad. On the occasion, what change has struck me most during this period? Without a doubt, that affecting religion.

By this I don’t mean the primacy of sectarianism, though that is certainly part of it. What I’m referring to is the pervasiveness of the outwardly devotional, of public manifestations of faith, a belief in miracles, and the compulsive recourse to God or other sacred figures in all varieties of day-to-day situations. Moreover, such religiosity seems everywhere present physically – on trinkets, lockets, wristbands, key rings, bumpers, pocket flashlights, lighters, and wherever else one can affix the image of a saint or a Quranic verse.

Religion is, or should be, a private matter. Yet what is so startling is that the Lebanese today routinely wear it on their sleeve, literally and figuratively. They mechanically assume that if they mutter a religious invocation, that their interlocutors will respond in kind. And many do. Stranger still, it is the young who are the most dedicated. Where one would assume that youths are impatient to cut loose from religious tradition, in Lebanon they are the ones holding the trenches.

The phenomenon is disturbing. To believe in God is one thing, and it is a right no less meriting of protection than the right to religious unbelief. However, it often appears that the rise in overt Lebanese religiosity, like the rise in sectarian polarization, is one consequence of the breakdown of confidence in the state and its social contract.

If so, the issue we’re addressing perhaps has less to do with religion as such than with the particulars of identity. Among Christians, for instance, there is a palpable connection between explicit examples of religiosity and a sense of communal decline. When you feel yourself to be on the ropes, the natural reflex is to reaffirm your presence by whatever means possible, even if it means overdoing things.

I still recall walking into a bank one day and watching a young trainee teller as she went through the steps of verifying my check. The girl, she must have been 22 at most, was a movable reliquary. She wore a large rosary around her neck and religious strings around her wrist, alongside a smaller rosary doubling as an elastic bracelet. I may have caught sight of the Immaculate Conception on a chain as well.

The teller was hardly to be blamed for her convictions. Yet I wondered at how developed must have been the inner sanctum inhabited by this girl, and how this somehow represented a loss for Lebanon as a whole. When youths of any sect bury themselves in the depths of a creed, that is in one measure because they are unwilling, or more likely unable, to have a say in the world outside – in the republic.

This contrasts sharply with attitudes among an older generation of Lebanese, those who were in their 20s during the 1970s. In that first decade of the Civil War, secular ideologies still held meaning. Sect was important and militiamen flaunted their religious artifacts. But back then they still seemed to be fighting over the state, over something tangible: their version of what they regarded as an ideal polity. For many Lebanese in their 20s nowadays, once they manage to transcend their cynicism, the ideal polity, typically, is abroad.

Not surprisingly, political and religious leaders have facilitated the Lebanese retreat to religion. On the one hand, religion provides sectarian leaderships with a fine instrument to impose unanimity behind their authority; on the other, the alienation Lebanese feel from public matters means politicians are left unchallenged.

The clergy has been no better. More religion makes them more relevant, but also bolsters their much-inflated influence. Priests and sheikhs can only applaud when their flocks fall back on the outer trappings and paraphernalia of the faith, as opposed to the spirituality purportedly at its core. For it is the churches and the mosques that administer the public facets of devotion, lending them legitimacy. Yet there is an irony. Few Lebanese are naïve about the corruptions of their religious institutions. Rarely have clerics been as mistrusted, as blatantly enslaved to the worldly. And yet they still enjoy obedience.

If the Lebanese aspire to a better future, they will have to break out of their sectarian islands and closeted religious mindsets. Religion will remain a defining feature of Lebanon, the secular notwithstanding. But whatever the rewards of religion, when religiosity is emphasized in a mixed sectarian society, it becomes a medium of demarcation or separation. Identity politics can be divisive politics, just as a surfeit of religious ostentation conceals deeper insecurities. In the framework of unstable states, these hinder a consensus over coexistence.

Many will disagree with this assessment, so essential to their life is religion, precisely because the Lebanese state has let them down. It’s a vicious circle, no doubt. However, then we might refer back to that phrase about the necessity of rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. On this earth, let’s attend to what is Caesar’s, and those who want to deal with God will have an eternity to do so.

Sunnis, Shia, and Saad

2011-12-30T10:59:00.000+02:00

It will soon be a year since Hezbollah and its allies brought down the government of Saad Hariri, through fair means and foul. But no one walked the former prime minister to Lebanon’s door and told him to get lost. That decision he appears to have implemented freely.

Last April, Hariri left Beirut, allegedly for security reasons. Yet even those in his circle no longer employ that lame excuse when justifying why Hariri has been gone for so long. Explanations abound and some may be true: Hariri’s patronage power is not what it was because of cash flow problems; the former prime minister’s Saudi patrons do not want him in Lebanon while the situation in Syria festers, to avoid his being dragged into the conflict, and they with him; or, more prosaically, Hariri prefers to be outside Lebanon while Najib Mikati is prime minister, to return in strength if the government falls.

Whatever the answer, or combination of answers, there is a far more serious problem that Hariri, and Hariri alone, must address: A good chance exists, if the vacuum in the Sunni community persists, that extremist elements will emerge to seize the communal initiative. Already, in Saida a hitherto unknown cleric, Ahmad Assir, is bringing in the crowds with worrisome anti-Shia rhetoric, and will almost certainly have to be reckoned with in future elections.

That may not bother the Saudis, but it really should bother Hariri. Any form of religious fanaticism challenges the vision that he and his father purported to champion--that of a free-wheeling Lebanon, open in all directions, pluralistic, tolerant, and stable. The principal beef leveled by the Future Movement against Hezbollah, and a legitimate one, is that the party has in one way or another undermined all those qualities depending on the circumstances.

What are Saad Hariri’s options? He surely recognizes that his absence is harmful to his political prospects. If the Saudis are behind his decision to stay away, then he has to choose between being a Lebanese politician and a Saudi ally. If Hariri opts for the first choice he may lose in the short term; but he has enough political capital in his community to then impose his choices on the Saudi sponsors.

In the end, Hariri was elected by Lebanese in 2005 and 2009. There are those who paid a price for their allegiance during the unsettled period in between. The former prime minister owes something to his political base, and that obligation cannot be repaid from afar.

Then there is the patronage pretext. The Future Movement’s finances have been under stress in the last year and more. Projects that were to be financed by Hariri money have been on hold, and the former prime minister’s political debts are said to be substantial. Saad Hariri will not soon be dining in soup kitchens, but personal wealth and political money are not the same thing, even if they do overlap.

Then there is the question of what Hariri’s cash flow problems tell us about Saudi attitudes toward him. There was much idle speculation in the past that the Saudis had turned against the former prime minister, only for them to award him a lucrative contract soon thereafter. The relationship is doubtless a complex one, rendered more complex by the changes in the kingdom resulting from succession questions. If so, Hariri may be right not to rock the boat, but that calculation is made on Saudi, not Lebanese, time.

His supporters in Lebanon would again reply that the last they heard, and voted, Hariri was Lebanese. Patronage goes a long way in our political system, but given the polarization in the country, Hariri can offer something else that is compelling, by way of ideas. That he has limited financial reserves to toss around may not be so damaging if he recasts his role, depicting himself as the head of an apprehensive Sunni community which he intends to guide through hard times.

For Hariri and his acolytes to contemplate such a project, they must break away from their focus on the shortcomings of Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s government, and clarify what they stand for, not against. Their being reactive has allowed Mikati to retain the upper hand, the dysfunctional nature of his cabinet notwithstanding. March 14 has offered no credible riposte to the fact that Mikati has delivered precisely where the previous majority said he could not deliver.

But one thing Mikati does not have is the political weight to reassert control over the menacing fringes of his community. Only Hariri can do that, and the effort requires him to be in Lebanon, working his networks carefully to compensate for the fact that many of the Islamists are funded by Gulf countries. The uprising in Syria has become sectarian, with ominous repercussions for the Lebanese communities, among them greater tension between Sunnis and Shia.

And that’s not all. If Hariri’s uneasy Christian partners see the Sunni community drifting toward the zealots, they will begin re-examining their political alliances. This may conceivably shatter the coalition Hariri spent years trying to build and hold together.

Hariri and his entourage insist the former prime minister is not down and out. Politically he has no reason to be, not least if the regime of Bashar Assad disintegrates in the coming months. But Hariri can’t afford to be Godot--someone many Lebanese will wait for, without assurances that he will reappear. Serious politics is about the here and now, not an indefinite future. Hariri must come home, whatever the cost, to help contain the sectarian antagonisms rising all around.

An ideology has taken on life of its own in these uprisings

2011-12-29T11:32:00.000+02:00

'A spectre is haunting Europe," wrote Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto, "the spectre of communism." The revolutions of 1848, which led the two men to publish their historic pamphlet, may have been defeated by the forces of the status quo, but Marx and Engels' choice of words was quite appropriate: vast movements of emancipation are often propelled by something thoroughly intangible, an overpowering spirit of change.

Looking back on the Arab revolts this year, that detail is worth remembering. Journalists and academics have sought to explain what happened through quantifiable yardsticks - a youth bulge, disparities between elites and the poor, rising unemployment and so on. But these factors would have counted for little without a meta-narrative unifying and channelling popular frustrations across the region, infusing them with a determination to overthrow their oppressors.

When Tunisians ousted the kleptocratic regime of President Zine El Abedine Ben Ali last January, this was initially regarded as a happy coincidence. Even the outbreak of protests in Egypt soon thereafter did not immediately appear to represent the onset of a wave sweeping the region. Or perhaps it did, and the less imaginative, or the less romantic (and I count myself among them), failed to grasp that the narrative of emancipation had already taken hold.

Yet the fall of President Hosni Mubarak focused even the dullest minds on that reality. The historian Robert Conquest used a luminous term as the title of one of his books, "the dragons of expectation", borrowed from a collection of old Norse poems. For Mr Conquest, otherworldly expectations, bolstering a sense of unqualified ideological truth, were frequently behind the great crimes of the 20th century. However, we can employ that expression less pessimistically in the context of the Arab uprisings, to convey what has happened in many Arab societies, overwhelming, dragon-like, everything before it.

When protesters in Tunisia and Egypt prevailed against their security apparatuses, Arabs elsewhere began inserting themselves into that grand narrative, as success in two countries seemed preordained to bring success in others. That moment was essential, with Libyans, Syrians, Yemenis and others carried forward by transnational momentum of which they saw themselves a part. Here is when one discovers the courage to go into the streets, and when regimes react with the brutality that brings even more people out into the streets.

The role of media has been significant, principally in transmitting the meta-narrative. Social media in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria have played an important mobilising role, while highlighting that there are domains that regimes do not control. Arab satellite channels, above all Al Jazeera, have transported the dragons of expectation from one society in rebellion to the next, heightening outrage through their use of dramatic footage, reinforcing the interpretation of events as one of victims winning out against consuming injustice.

The influence of the stations was demonstrated when Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, reflecting the political uncertainties of the regimes financing them, took weeks before siding with the protesters in Syria. This prompted the Syrians to demand more attention, and before long Al Jazeera, partly a prisoner of the narrative it had helped propagate and could not abandon for fear of losing its credibility, took sides. The station was far less militant over Bahrain, to its detriment, but the violence in Syria was of a scope that permitted no ambiguity.

Powerful narratives often displace others. Recall how at the end of January, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad sat with the Wall Street Journal and offered a sanguine assessment of his rule. Arabs were up in arms elsewhere, but not in Syria, Mr Al Assad pointed out, because Syrians had an ideology and a cause, so that on foreign policy they were closely aligned with their regime. "When there is divergence between your policy and the people's beliefs and interests, you will have this vacuum that creates disturbance," the president said.

Here was one irony wrapped in another. Mr Al Assad recognised the sway of ideas, but did not imagine that ideas would soon threaten his rule. And there was a greater irony. The president did not foresee that the narrative he held up as a basis for why he and the Syrian people were in purported harmony - their common embrace of a narrative of resistance to America and Israel above all - would count for little in the face of demands by Syrians for internal transformation.

That's the real message from the Arab world this year. Societies may sympathise with foreign policies opposed to the West, the United States and Israel, but they no longer will allow regimes to use foreign antagonisms to validate stifling, sadistic, security-dominated political systems at home. Nor will they tolerate giving foreign matters precedence over their own welfare and that of their children.

That is why, at some stage, the meta-narrative of emancipation cedes way to more worldly concerns. That is the trickiest part. Once you've got rid of the tyrant, what social contract does a society put in his place? In Egypt and Libya, societies are struggling with the answer, while in Tunisia the consensual resort to institutions has helped clarify one. In Syria, the repression is ongoing with the emancipatory narrative continuing to undermine Mr Al Assad's authority.

Whatever the outcomes in the Arab world, the impulse of liberty, once unleashed, justifies itself. Thank those Arab leaders who are confronting angry populations for having allowed that impulse to take on a life-force of its own, so that barricade by barricade it is devouring them.

The Arabs’ touch turns Syria to lead

2011-12-29T10:48:00.000+02:00

Is it remotely reassuring that the Arab League is dealing with the crisis in Syria? For a partial answer, note that the Arab observer mission in the country is headed by a Sudanese general who participated in his government’s brutal campaign in Darfur. He described his first day on the highways as “very good,” only hours after Syria’s security forces perpetrated their latest outrage in Homs.
Recall that until two months ago, the Arab states allowed the massacre to continue. There was a lack of unity over Syria, but also a hope in several capitals that the criminal enterprise that is President Bashar Assad’s regime would prevail, denying a fresh victory to those striving to change their leaders in other parts of the Arab world.

Score the latest round to Damascus. In November the tide was in the other direction. Arab sanctions had been agreed, including a cutoff of transactions with Syria’s central bank and a suspension of Syrian membership in the Arab League. Assad initially delayed accepting a five-point Arab plan, which includes withdrawing the army and security forces from Syrian cities, releasing prisoners, and deploying observers to determine if the plan is being implemented. He backed down when the Arab states threatened to go to the United Nations Security Council, buying Damascus valuable time to undercut the Arab plan.

We know what will happen next. The Syrians will turn every issue into an object of exasperating negotiation, assuming the observers do their job right, which is improbable. Nor are there enough observers to make a difference. Even if the mission rises to 200-300 monitors, that remains far too low. There have been disturbances in dozens of large urban areas throughout Syria, not to mention in suburban and rural districts. That means major agglomerations will host only a handful of observers at best. The regime will run rings around them, a reality facilitated by the cynical Arab decision to allow the monitors to be transported by the very security services they are supposed to be monitoring.

Then there is the prisoner release dimension of the Arab plan. In Lebanon we well remember how difficult it was to determine the number of Lebanese in Syrian prisons, because Damascus invariably lied about the figures. The Assad regime will greatly downplay the numbers of Syrians it has incarcerated, and the observers will almost certainly not get a mandate, or display the will, to independently verify this. The regime will release prisoners here and there, in full view of the observers, and arrest new waves of victims elsewhere.

If the Assad regime is lucky, it will be able to stretch the process out long enough for Arab states to push for a start of negotiations with the opposition, another facet of the Arab plan. Why would this be to the regime’s benefit? Because if it can pursue its repression in the interim period unchallenged, agreeing to negotiations would allow it to kick off a long, fruitless phase of talks permitting it to claim it is sincere about the Arab project, even as this opens up cracks in the opposition.

But which opposition? That, too, will provoke extensive maneuvering, as the Assads will look to pick their interlocutors, and as different segments of the opposition disagree over whether to negotiate or not. The Syrian National Council will doubtless refuse to sit with the regime, which may carry political costs, as this could be portrayed by Bashar Assad as an effort to undermine the Arab plan. Here, the president and his acolytes may widen the breach in Arab ranks.

The problem is that Arab incompetence, even if it strengthens the hand of the Syrian leadership in relative terms, will make much more likely further militarization of the intifada. There is no going back in Syria, certainly not to the squalid kleptocracy that a smug Bashar Assad thought was unshakeable last January, when he boasted of his regime’s popularity to The Wall Street Journal. Either the Arab plan eases Assad out of power, or we are heading toward a struggle even more vicious than what we are witnessing today. National interest dictates that regional states, above all Turkey and Iraq, will seek to shape what is taking place on the ground and ensure that they don’t lose out when the carnage ends. If that happens, the Security Council will become the only available venue to address Syria, since we will then have a textbook threat to international peace and security.

Much will depend on how the Arab states interpret their mandate. The Arab League’s secretary general, Nabil Elarabi, has noted that the organization will issue an early assessment of whether the Syrian regime is cooperating with its plan. If that denies Syria the means to deceive its Arab brethren, fine. But rebuilding an Arab consensus against Assad rule will be difficult, and going the next step up to the Security Council is something many Arab regimes want to avert.

Qatar has taken the lead on Syria, but may find itself isolated. The Egyptian military council, which is trying to consolidate its authority, opposes the trend of transformation in the Arab world. No less so Saudi Arabia, which has had little sympathy for the upheavals all around, and would relish a Qatari reversal. Iraq has sided with Assad, while other countries, among them Turkey, may fear too sudden a Syrian collapse to firmly sponsor internationalization of the crisis.

Syrians are right to regard Arab intervention as bad news. And Assad was right to presume that a break in the Arab momentum against his regime could become a turning point in his political survival. He gains from the militarization of the intifada. In an armed conflict, Assad believes, the winner imposes his own legitimacy. Many Arab leaders, whose own legitimacy rests on intimidation, may alas agree.

An enemy of totalitarianism the Mideast misunderstood

2011-12-22T11:18:00.000+02:00

In February 2009, Christopher Hitchens gave a talk at the American University of Beirut titled Who are the real revolutionaries in the Middle East? As he later wrote in his last book, Arguably, a collection of essays: "I did my best to blow on the few sparks that then seemed dimly perceptible." He praised individuals best embodying democratic change in the region, from the Egyptian academic Saad Eddin Ibrahim, to the Kurdish foes of Saddam Hussein, to the Lebanese who had overthrown Syrian hegemony in 2005.

Yet the AUB talk was a bad-tempered affair. Many in Hitchens' audience had come to castigate a man who supported the war in Iraq and whom they blamed for siding with American neoconservatives. Others accused him of ignoring Palestine. Hitchens reminded them that he had written a book with the late Edward Said on the Palestinians, and pointedly asked: "Could there have been any greater degradation for Iraq than being under the control of a psychopathic family?"

For Hitchens, who passed away last week, the episode left a bitter aftertaste. The hostility of those in attendance represented "another round in a long historic dispute … between the anti-imperialist left and the anti-totalitarian left. And in the case of any conflict, I have increasingly resolved it on the anti-totalitarian side."

Hitchens was right to frame the issue in those terms, but he was also too kind by half. He did not mention that most of those counting themselves among the anti-imperialist ranks have repeatedly evaded discussion of how one might have better dealt with the barbaric leadership of Saddam Hussein, who was directly or indirectly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

It makes no sense to disapprove of the American invasion of Iraq on moral foundations, while offering nothing in return for how the international community might have countered the Baath regime's daily outrages against morality. That disconnect was at the heart of Hitchens' thinking on Iraq, as it is in the broader discussion of humanitarian intervention in foreign policy. Anti-imperialism has often been used by autocrats in the developing world to rebuff western disapproval of their abuses, on the grounds that such condemnation constitutes a form of neo-imperialism.

Such hypocrisy was too much for Hitchens, even as he never abandoned his roots in the political left, or for that matter his anti-imperialist impulses. Quite simply, he did not regard the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as imperial ventures, and appears to have been vindicated by the American withdrawal from Iraq last week. Hitchens believed that it was foolish to see all states as somehow morally equivalent. There were states that responded to the will of their citizens, no matter how imperfectly; and there were those that imprisoned their citizens for expressing the slightest dissent. He preferred a world shaped by the impositions of the first group.

Those affirming that Hitchens had shifted to the right showed little grasp of the subject at hand. Liberal interventionism has tended to be an exigency of the left, not the right. Conservatives have traditionally respected state sovereignty, which holds that regimes can do what they want at home, as long as they preserve stability beyond their borders.

When American neoconservatives came onto the political map in the 1970s they were better known for advocating Washington's tolerance of friendly dictators. That was the point of a much-discussed article at the time by a Georgetown academic named Jeane Kirkpatrick. She so pleased a future president, Ronald Reagan, that he made her his ambassador to the United Nations.

Ms Kirkpatrick's article understandably divided the neocons, some of whom saw the duplicity in opposing communism for its denial of freedom while also backing a multitude of despots because they happened to be anti-communist. This was a difficulty Hitchens didn't remotely face, as he was consistent in his opposition to dictatorship. That neocons embraced democratic interventionism after the 9/11 attacks showed not that Hitchens had drifted to the right, but that neoconservatives had drifted left.

Nor did Hitchens display any conservative reflexes in his controversial attitude towards religion. His atheism was well-known, and he viewed it as an extension of his anti-totalitarianism. Articulating what he called an "anti-theist" stance, Hitchens maintained that the image of God as represented in many religions was, essentially, that of an absolute ruler. This led him to transcend non-belief to assert that one could not possibly accept such a God.

Hitchens dedicated Arguably to three Arabs - a Tunisian, an Egyptian and a Libyan - people he believed had played instrumental roles in unleashing the succession of revolts this year. By then he knew that he was dying and wanted to leave readers with a sense of his priorities.

The Middle East preoccupied Hitchens more than anything else during the last decade of his life, because of 9/11. It must have been satisfying to be proven right on the intensity of the anti-totalitarian strains in the region, against all those, his AUB detractors at the forefront, who in their fixation on American perfidy utterly missed the rumblings of domestic discontent around them.

Much has been made of Hitchens' admiration for the author George Orwell. But I've always been taken by his regard for the historian and poet Robert Conquest, the great documenter of Joseph Stalin's purges. In his poem In Place, Conquest describes the memory of the First World War dead as "the shadow nothing tames". Mourn Christopher Hitchens, in death a shadow untamed.

Military man

2011-12-16T08:57:00.000+02:00

A few weeks ago, as Army Day and Independence Day approached, someone, no doubt at the instigation of a pushy army officer, decided to hang up a gigantic portrait of the army commander, Jean Kahwaji, above Sassine Square in central Ashrafieh. Regardless of Kahwaji’s merits or demerits, this struck many people as remarkable excess on behalf of an individual who is, after all, a mere employee of the state.

Imagine for a moment the absurdity if the director general of the Social Security Fund were to do the same thing; or the governor of the Central Bank. To be fair to Kahwaji, he’s not the first to allow his mug shot to decorate a thoroughfare. The faces of former President Emile Lahoud and current President Michel Suleiman filled our skylines when they led the battalions, and were usually far more invasive than that of the present commander.

Somehow the Egyptians, or at least those who returned to Tahrir Square a few weeks ago, got it right. You cannot have genuine transformation in the Arab world in the overbearing shadow of soldiers. The sacrifices of the military – real or, more often, imagined, given how Arab armies usually plunder the state –do not entitle the institution to a blank check of popular sympathy and obedience.

Jean Kahwaji is no Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi; nor is he even ruling over Lebanon. Indeed, if there is one criticism we can level at our armed forces it’s that they do not hold the monopoly over the use of violence in the country. Rather, the army commander, like his predecessors (and no doubt his successors), simply dreams of becoming president. After all, our last two heads of state have hailed from the military, and Lebanon went through two years of trauma between 1988-1990 because a third army commander sought to exploit the conflicts he ignited to ease himself into the presidency.

Lebanon is a paradox in some ways. Here is the one country that mostly elected civilian leaders during its post-Independence years, unlike a majority of other Arab countries. Until 1998, when Lahoud was appointed by Syria, only one other army commander, Fouad Chehab, had been head of state, and his election was the consequence of a compromise to end the 1958 conflict, reached largely outside Lebanon’s borders. Chehab was an estimable man, refusing to accept an unconstitutional extension of his mandate, but that did not prevent his comrades in arms from abusing their power.

And yet it appears these days that the country can do no better than a beret when it goes in search of new presidents. How demoralizing it is for the Lebanese, who pride themselves on their civil institutions, to have to look no further than an officer as their national representative. How demeaning to know that when a new army chief takes over, a military cabal begins maneuvering to get him elected, hoping that it will ride to Baabda on his coattails.

Kahwaji is as entitled as another Maronite Christian to become president. The problem comes when an army commander uses his position to campaign for the job. Nothing politicizes the army more, raising the probability that security decisions are taken with the presidency firmly in mind. Gone, it seems, are the bluff, blunt military men, straight as arrows. Lebanon’s army commanders have become as agile as ballet dancers, able to walk through raindrops without getting wet.

This must end for the good of the country, and the army. Article 49 of the constitution obliges grade-one civil servants and those in equivalent positions aspiring to stand for the presidency to retire from their post two years before an election. In practice, that condition was ignored before the elections of Lahoud and Suleiman. Parliament would do best to amend the article and extend that period to six years, to ensure that officials do not prepare their candidacy while still serving under the president they hope to replace. The article may yet be ignored, but the amendment process will inject seriousness into it, making the rule more difficult to disregard.

A second proposal, and it may not mean much beyond the symbolism, is to cease referring to military figures who have taken on civilian responsibilities as “general”. This should apply as much in media citations as when these individuals are addressed publicly.

Is there any reason why we should still call Sleiman, Lahoud, or Change and Reform bloc leader Michel Aoun, for that matter, by their rank, when they have moved beyond the military establishment and are in positions where they represent, or have represented, the country as a whole? To refer to an individual as “general” is to underline his association with an institution that is, constitutionally, under civilian authority. There is no reason not to recognize that hierarchy by identifying such figures through their non-military titles. Furthermore, to continue giving officials a military rank has intimidating overtones, since the army, among many other things, is an instrument of intimidation.

Finally, it would be very useful if the government prohibited, once and for all, the habit of allowing state representatives to hang up their portraits publicly. You might have trouble forbidding images of the president, parliament speaker, and prime minister (though there is no reason not to do so), but it should be easier to impose such a ban on other functionaries, including the army commander.

It’s not personal. Jean Kahwaji is no worse than anyone else, and may be better than many. But as much as Lebanon tries to behave like a banana republic, there is no reason for our governing institutions to encourage such behavior. As Lebanese, we are entitled to ask that civil servants be more modest. After all, they allegedly work for us.

Lebanon's intifada offers lessons for the Arab Spring

2011-12-15T06:30:00.002+02:00

There has been a tendency to regard the emancipatory impulses in the Arab world this year as unique. It's as if there was 2011, and before that, lethargy. That's not quite accurate. A look back at Lebanon in 2005 provides a useful prism through which to examine what is happening in societies now intoxicated by the fragrances of liberation.

In 2005, following the assassination of former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, most Lebanese, except the Shia supporters of Hizbollah, demonstrated for a month at Martyrs Square. They accused Syria, with some justification, of being behind Mr Hariri's killing, and demanded a Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon and an overhaul of the Syrian-dominated Lebanese political order. A combination of domestic and outside pressure forced Syrian President Bashar Al Assad to pull his army out, terminating 29 years of Syrian hegemony.

This was no mean feat, regardless of the uncertain outcome of what the Lebanese called the Independence Intifada. The Syrians sought to reimpose their writ in Beirut, and with their Hizbollah allies almost succeeded in doing so. Yet despite this, large pockets of resistance to Syria and its partners remained and Mr Al Assad never regained what he had lost in 2005.

Four salient realities of Lebanon's Independence Intifada have been replicated in Arab upheavals today: the use of a public space for protest; a demand that those in charge of the instruments of repression be replaced; acceptance of the necessity of foreign intervention to counterbalance the dictator's clear advantages; and a tendency to question the accomplishments and legitimacy of the revolts in light of their potentially unsatisfactory aftermaths.

In all the Arab uprisings, there was a rapid realisation of something the Lebanese grasped in 2005 (and others before them), namely that a successful protest movement must control a public space from which it can operate. Whether Martyrs Square in Beirut, Tahrir Square in Cairo, or Pearl Roundabout in Manama, protestors instinctively seek out a space where rallies can be held, towards which people can converge, which is accessible to media, and that retains, or can be infused with, symbolic relevance. Most importantly, such spaces must stay off limits to the authorities, effectively becoming "liberated" spaces.

Protecting the autonomy of such areas usually leads to the establishment of tent cities, maintained by youths, even as the authorities seek to deny access to those spaces. Sometimes this official response is successful, as in Bahrain; sometimes it is a fiasco, as in Tahrir Square. In Martyrs Square, the Lebanese Army and Internal Security Forces tried to do the same, but failed when they were unwilling to resort to violence. Moreover, Mr Hariri's tomb is at the square, so it was difficult for the security forces to seal off the area.

At times, these spaces of protest can be entire cities, or large parts of them, as in Libya and Syria. Benghazi became the headquarters of an opposition council that, ultimately, was recognised as Libya's government. In Homs, the Assad regime has repeatedly sought to crush rebellious quarters, but has been unable to do so. This shortcoming has only further emphasised that it has lost ground, which can be calamitous for an absolute leadership ruling through fear.

A second message from Lebanon in 2005 was that the street can impose change on the agents of repression. The Lebanese protests led to the resignation of senior security officers. This was perhaps the first time in the Arab world that citizens, as opposed to a monarch or president, successfully ousted intelligence and security officials.

In Egypt, the inability of protesters to dent the state's security edifice created a problem that lingers to this day. The army sacrificed President Hosni Mubarak to save itself, and largely succeeded. The same is true in Yemen, where family members of President Ali Abdullah Saleh still control major security organs. In Libya the opposite occurred. The destruction of Muammar Qaddafi's army and security apparatus left a vacuum that the new Libyan government is having trouble filling.

A third message from Lebanon was that international intervention is often necessary to equalise the relationship between protesters and their rulers. In 2005 the Lebanese appealed to the international community, and even perpetuated a David and Goliath narrative to appeal to western media. This earned them animosity among many Arabs, who did not like it that protestors loudly welcomed the backing of President George W Bush. Yet outside support was crucial in keeping the security forces in line when managing the protests.

In many ways the debate has been resolved. From Libya to Syria to Egypt, oppositions have welcomed, indeed called for, foreign assistance against their oppressors. A key factor is that the insurrections began from within, which endowed outside intercession with legitimacy. This has only underlined a point the Lebanese embraced in 2005: in the uneven struggle with a superior foe, all means are justifiable to secure one's emancipation.

And finally, the instability in Lebanon that followed the intifada of 2005 substantially marred the magic of that moment. Political divisiveness, the summer war of 2006, and the nearness of civil conflict in 2008, all made observers reconsider the validity of what had happened.

However, such a benchmark seems excessive. No matter what the outcomes in Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen, they cannot invalidate the endeavours of those desiring change. Overthrowing a suffocating political order is admirable in itself, whatever the costs. Credit the Lebanese for understanding this paradoxical point before their Arab brethren did.

What if the Syrians had still been here?

2011-12-15T05:55:00.002+02:00

The tendency among many Lebanese today is to deride the Independence Intifada of 2005. This is a result of the high expectations unleashed, then dashed by Lebanon’s factionalism and sectarianism. Yet we should ask, in light of the revolt in Syria, where would Lebanon have been had the protests six years ago not pushed the Syrian army and intelligence services out of the country?

The question is not academic. Lebanon 2005 has been denied its due as a precursor of Arab uprisings this year, even though the popular demands at the time were very similar to what we are witnessing today. A reason for this is that the aftermath of the Lebanese intifada against Syria was, to put it kindly, uncertain. Rather than emerge into a new morning of emancipation, the Lebanese grew apart, within a year were caught up in a war with Israel, and within three found themselves on the cusp of civil war.

And yet judging emancipatory moments by their outcomes can sometimes play surprising tricks, because the unintended consequences are invariably good and bad. It’s best to evaluate such moments on their own merits, and few acts are more laudatory than seeking the replacement of an authoritarian leader and the criminal enterprises with which such individuals surround themselves.

However, that does not mean that we cannot engage in some alternate history, and conclude that the Lebanese were fortunate to see the back of the Syrians six years ago. The reason is that, otherwise, Lebanon, far more so than it is today, would have become a main instrument in the Assad regime’s suppression of its own people.

Recall what happened in 2003, when the Americans invaded Iraq. Though less threatened than now, the Syrians engineered a Cabinet reshuffle that brought in the most ghoulish of their underlings to surround Rafik Hariri, who remained prime minister. Their calculation was that the potentially dangerous American military presence to the east required that Syria reinforce itself in Lebanon and not allow the country’s volatile dynamics to undermine Syrian interests. Much the same logic went into President Bashar Assad’s decision to extend Emile Lahoud’s mandate in 2004.

Assad tried to replicate that logic when he ordered the Lebanese to form a government last June. However, there was a vital difference. Syrian weapons were no longer in Lebanon to enforce Cabinet unity and decisions. Hezbollah’s strength notwithstanding, the party is incapable of imposing unanimity on its refractory countrymen, and indeed has turned into a lighting rod for its political foes.

Had Syria’s army and intelligence services still been in Lebanon, several things would likely have happened. Syrian victims of the violence at home would have been unable to flee across the border into Lebanese territory. Syrian opposition figures would have been hunted down in Beirut in a more efficient way than they presently are. Lebanon’s political and economic systems would have been on a tighter Syrian rope, precipitating a potentially devastating standoff with the international community, possibly harming the banking sector. And Syrian troops and agents would have had to expand their repression to those Lebanese sympathizing with the Syrian protesters, particularly in northern Lebanon, where the Sunni community staunchly backs its brethren in places such as Homs and Hama.

Lebanon would have become a Syrian battering ram in its dealings with the Arabs and the West. Domestic animosities would have been exacerbated, with one group of Lebanese employed by Syria to intimidate the other. As is their way, the Assads would have ensured that if they were destroyed, Lebanon would be as well.

While the government of Najib Mikati and President Michel Sleiman have closely toed the Syrian line in recent months, they have done so with a wary eye on the Lebanese opposition. The prime minister has been, at best, a hesitant Syrian partner, as he knows well that his political base in Tripoli loathes the Assad leadership. Even Hezbollah has been careful not to overstep the boundaries, because the party appears to be preparing alternative options if the Syrian regime falls. Once Assad goes, Hezbollah has no interest in being dragged into sectarian strife with a reinvigorated Lebanese Sunni community.

Such contradictions, oddly enough, have shielded Lebanon from the Syrian crisis. With a foot in each camp, the Lebanese have until now sailed through the Syrian maelstrom relatively unscathed. There are limits to what Syria can do to destabilize Lebanon by firing warning shots at the international community and Israel. Assad can order his collaborators to plant an occasional bomb along the Tyre road against U.N. patrols, or fire rockets across the border. But at some stage these actions merely discredit his friends in Beirut, or push Hezbollah into an unwanted confrontation with Israel.

There are negatives, of course. By most accounts, weapons are being smuggled from Lebanon into Syria. The vacuum in the north is favoring militant groups, particularly in the Sunni community. These are serious developments. Ideally, the state must take advantage of this situation to better assert itself, without favoritism, in areas where its influence is limited. But that won’t happen soon.

Lebanon dodged a bullet by removing the Syrians when they did. This should not be the yardstick for approval or disapproval of what happened six years ago, but it is useful for re-evaluating what occurred. Perhaps Bashar Assad himself might engage in that exercise. How much more potent would the crushing of his own citizens have been had he not lost Lebanon in 2005.

Pragmatic diplomacy enables Qatar to punch above weight

2011-11-24T13:42:00.001+02:00

It is a new development that some Arab states now have to figure Qatar in their calculations, as just two decades ago, the bantam-sized emirate was on the margin of the Middle East's political attentions. Yet in the last 10 years, Qatar has skilfully bolstered its power by blending economic might, nuisance value, political counterpoint, diplomatic hardnosedness, ideological solidarity and an adeptness at filling regional political vacuums.

Qatar's economic prowess is the result, principally, of its natural gas reserves, estimated to be the world's third largest. The primary medium for the state's nuisance value has been the satellite television station Al Jazeera, long a thorn in the side of Arab rulers, especially during the recent months of upheaval in the Arab world. Qatar's talent for political counterpoint has been displayed in its parallel yet contradictory associations, so that the emirate could, for instance, host a major American military base while maintaining friendly relations with Washington's bitterest foes, such as Iran and Hizbollah.

Ideologically, in recent years Qatar, which like Saudi Arabia is Wahhabi, has assisted Islamic movements in the Arab world. After the 2006 Lebanon war, the emirate financed reconstruction in Hizbollah-controlled areas, which was vital to neutralising resentment against the party. Lately, it has funded Islamists in Libya and probably Syria. The emirate has also hosted an Egyptian sheikh, Yusif Al Qaradawi, one of the region's most influential clerics.

Last week, speaking in Doha, Sheikh Yusif urged Egyptian voters to avoid voting for "a secularist, an agnostic, or those who don't accept Allah as their God, Islam as their religion and Mohammed as their Prophet" in Egypt's forthcoming parliamentary elections. That is, assuming these are held on time in light of the recent unrest.

The most significant factor allowing Qatar to punch above its weight has been its ability to adapt to changing circumstances more rapidly than most others. Amid mounting protests earlier this year in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and even Syria after initial uncertainty, the emirate backed protesters, giving Al Jazeera wide latitude to channel Arab sympathies by defining a heroic narrative for anti-regime actions.

Yet Qatar avoids recklessness in its immediate neighbourhood. Despite Al Jazeera's partiality toward Arab uprisings, the emirate did not break ranks with its Gulf partners over Bahrain. In fact, the royal family has tightened its hold over the station, after the departure of Waddah Khanfar, its Palestinian director general. Years of hostility with Saudi Arabia have also been papered over, even if Qatar is taking advantage of the vacuum left by the kingdom as it goes through a political transition that has sometimes diminished its sway.

It is in the relationship with Syria that Qatar has made the most radical about-face. Doha had given the regime in Damascus quite a bit of support in recent years. Qatar's critics would argue that the emirate accorded Syria and its allies such as Hizbollah political cover to reimpose their writ in Beirut after the assassination in February 2005 of Rafiq Hariri. Damascus was blamed for the crime, and reluctantly withdrew its army from Lebanon as a consequence.

But then why has Qatar emerged as one of Syria's fiercest critics in the Arab League and possibly the motive force behind a tougher stance? It probably had to do with the fact that Qatar brokered an agreement in Doha in May 2008 between the conflicting Lebanese factions. A principle of the accord was that Lebanese parties - the implicit focus was on Hizbollah - would not resort to violence to achieve their political aims. However, last January Hizbollah, prompted by Syria, ousted Prime Minister Saad Hariri from office. The move was constitutional, but the party made it clear that if Mr Hariri were brought back, it would resort to violence.

Mr Hariri's removal was a blow to the Doha agreement, but also to Saudi Arabia, Mr Hariri's sponsor. The Qatari prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim, travelled to Beirut to negotiate a compromise, along with two colleagues. When he was told by Hizbollah that the party still would not accept Mr Hariri's return, he left Beirut thwarted and humiliated, no doubt well aware that Syria had endorsed the repudiation. This effectively undermined Qatar's efforts to play a balancing role in Lebanon.

The rift with Syria was not immediate, but a momentous sign that tempers had changed in Doha came last March. In a sermon there, Sheikh Yusif declared that the "train of Arab revolution" had reached Syria. Officials in Damascus were stunned. The remarks not only implied Qatari acquiescence of what the sheikh had said. Given Sheikh Yusif's Islamist credentials, it hit the Assads in their most vulnerable spot, granting Islamist legitimacy to an uprising that, whatever its broad democratic motives, has effectively pitted the Sunni majority in Syria against a minority Alawite-led regime.

Qatar is likely to continue to play a vanguard role in an Arab world in flux. The emirate's pragmatism, some would say its cynicism, as well as the absence of internal challenges to the emir, make it much easier for the emirate to play all sides simultaneously. In an Arab world riven by paradox, Qatar's paradoxes have allowed it to ride many unruly waves - waves frequently of the emirate's own making.

Amid Lebanese chaos, a chance for reform

2011-11-24T11:37:00.001+02:00

There are several accounts of Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s life, most made available by the Hezbollah leader himself over the years to various publications. Taken together, they serve as a terse official biography. In one of these, we learn that even as a boy, Nasrallah was religious and devoted to Imam Musa Sadr. When other boys went to the beach, Nasrallah rode to the old downtown area of Beirut, from his home in Karantina, to buy religious books.

How instructive it is to picture the young Hasan joining the teeming crowds around Martyrs Square, a movable surrender to the senses and to raucous pluralism, under the blistering Mediterranean sun grilling his carefree comrades not so very far away, to pick up his Koranic texts. But it would be a mistake merely to view this as a tale of youthful earnestness, or humorlessness. Rather, it tells us much, if the story is true – and more so if it isn’t – about Nasrallah’s detachment from the essential features making Lebanon what it is.

With this as a backdrop, we can ask whether Lebanon today is at the threshold of an opportunity to redefine its social contract and engage in political reform. Do events in Syria, and the probability that President Bashar Assad’s regime will fall, create an opening for more balanced negotiations between Lebanese religious communities, particularly Sunnis and Shiites, on reapportioning political power?

Much, of course, will depend on how Assad goes. If Syria dissolves into civil war, then the impact on Lebanon could be dire. Polarization would increase, with the distinct possibility of violence. However, the nightmare scenario is also relatively doubtful today, given the consensus in the Arab world and Turkey to contain the Syrian situation, precisely to avoid harming neighboring countries.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, an ideal outcome. Assad departs in such a way that Syrians can navigate a fairly smooth transition. Whatever this transition, in Lebanon the dynamics are likely to be the following: Hezbollah, which remains militarily powerful, will have nonetheless lost a major ally, and more importantly the strategic depth the party enjoyed in the event of a war against Israel. Faced with the reality that it can no longer combat Israel against the will of a majority of its countrymen, Hezbollah’s fears will increase along with those of the Shiite community. Perhaps this will make Shiites more amenable to accepting Hezbollah’s disarmament in exchange for greater Shiite political representation in a restructured political system.

As Hezbollah’s expectations drop, the end of the Assad regime will push Sunni expectations up to stratospheric heights. A successor leadership in Syria is bound to be sympathetic to Lebanon’s Sunnis and hostile to Hezbollah. The sectarian repercussions of this newfound confidence will certainly mean, among other things, that Lebanese Sunnis will no longer accept intimidation by Hezbollah. A rational Hezbollah, grasping these new circumstances, will have no choice but to adapt accordingly by searching for a compromise, otherwise it may have to prepare its followers for civil war.

That’s one theory, at least. Yet so much in this outline is also an ingredient for conflict, that it may seem illusory to describe what is happening as a window of opportunity. Hezbollah and Shiite anxiety, coupled with the community’s military superiority, is hardly liable to prompt Hezbollah to roll over and sue for peace. Sunni self-assurance might easily transform itself into ruinous hubris, allowing extremists to take the lead in “the battle against the Shiites.” Impulses on both sides will have to be carefully tempered, even if a Shiite sense of loss and a Sunni sense of gain, if properly exploited, is exactly what is required to get a dialogue on reform started.

But is Nasrallah someone inherently open to such a jump? The Hezbollah leader has often affirmed his antagonism toward the Lebanese sectarian system, even as he has presided over the most sectarian of parties. In truth, Nasrallah has manipulated Shiite resentment of a political and social order that was not good to Shiites in the past, in order to reinforce Hezbollah’s influence and discredit any talk of political reform. The party knows that such reform, if reached consensually, would lead to its demise as a military force.

Yet Nasrallah is not alone. Unless a moderate leadership can reassert its authority over the Sunni community, and soon, there remains a possibility that Sunnis may succumb to those least willing to come to terms with the Shiites. In this context the absence of Saad Hariri and the uncertainty surrounding the Future Movement has left the field open for less pragmatic figures, even as Hariri himself seems in no mood these days to concede much to Hezbollah. This situation in the Sunni community may mean that the initiative slips to those who, like Nasrallah, would have bought only religious books had they waded into the miscellany of Martyrs Square; or it may bolster secular populists; or both.

Left unmentioned here are the Christians, particularly the Maronites, who would have to relinquish the most in an overhaul of the political system – above all the 50-50 ratio of Christians to Muslims in parliament. Ultimately, Christians too will have to avert the pitfall of excessive fear by embracing reform under the rubric of Taif, or else they may one day see political change imposed on them by their Muslim partners. However, given the despondency today among Christians and their more influential political and religious leaders, such prescience does not seem to be in the cards.

The imbalance in Lebanon’s political system, the presence of an armed, semi-autonomous party and community prevailing over all others, has discouraged discussion of reform. The reality is that Sunnis won’t bargain over their future with a Hezbollah holding the guns. That won’t hold if Bashar Assad is ousted. What Lebanon would then need is leaders who can control the wild ambitions or apprehensions ensuing from so enviable a moment.

The Rai rumor tells us little

2011-11-18T10:00:00.000+02:00

For years a lubricious rumor had circulated about Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rai. A Lebanese author in Paris, Antoine Basbous, has, so to speak, just torn the covers away by putting it all in print. Regardless of whether the rumor is true, the method of publicizing it remains questionable, as is Basbous’ interpretation of its significance.

In a new book, Le Tsunami Arabe, published by Fayard, Basbous argues that Rai’s recent public endorsement of the Syrian regime is a likely result of the patriarch’s being blackmailed by Damascus. Basbous was the Lebanese Forces representative in France, where he now heads the Observatoire des Pays Arabes. He describes an incident when Rai was still bishop of Jbeil: allegedly, the onetime Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon, Ghazi Kanaan, had Rai filmed communing rather too tenderly with a member of his flock, and subsequently used this against the clergyman to shape his political attitudes.

Is the story true? If it is, Rai would hardly be the first priest to have a fondness for the fairer sex, even less so in a Maronite Church where, at a certain level of the hierarchy, married men are allowed to become clergymen. Moreover, Rai’s inherent narcissism may predispose him to such acts, whereby every conquest confirms the validity of his self-love.

However, idle speculation aside, the reality is that Basbous offers no solid evidence to substantiate his claim. Publishing a rumor does not make it any less of a rumor. It is surprising that a respectable publishing house like Fayard failed to demand more from the author by way of proof. The charge, if true, is a serious one. Given the influence of the Maronite patriarch on Lebanese politics, it merits investigation. Yet by tossing the information out as he does, Basbous actually diminishes its importance, so that the story will titillate without otherwise informing us whether Rai is indeed in Syria’s pocket.

There is a second problem with Basbous’ rationale. Why assume that Rai’s defense of President Bashar al-Assad, or for that matter Hezbollah’s weapons, has to be a consequence of blackmail? It is unfortunate, but when the patriarch implies that Maronites are better off allying themselves with other Middle Eastern minorities—Alawites or Shia—against the Sunnis and the prospect of a revived Sunni Islamism, he is not at great odds with the Maronite mainstream.

There are certainly Maronites who disapprove of the mad notion of an “alliance of minorities.” However, there are also many who remain so fearful of their minority status amid a Sunni majority in the Arab world, and who see Islamism everywhere, that they are willing to pursue the most ruinous of policies. We can, legitimately, condemn Rai for his pitiable short-sightedness, and for siding with the criminal dictatorial enterprise in Damascus against the most basic principles of his own faith. But this may not make him such a renegade as Basbous imagines.

Even Rai’s apparent disregard of the traditional outlook of Bkirki doesn’t tell us much. Yes, the new patriarch is very different from his predecessor, but there are not a few Maronite bishops who have tended to share Rai’s perspective against those of Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir. Bkirki is a house of many mansions (and given the wealth amassed by the senior clergy, you can just as well take the sentence literally), so that it is not always easy to determine which political approach best expresses the consensus in the Maronite Church.

And for that matter, what is the consensus in the Vatican? The tortuous ways of the Catholic Church are sometimes difficult to follow, but by most accounts Rai’s election was actively supported by Rome. In remarks several weeks ago, the papal nuncio seemed to back up the patriarch, despite his controversial pronouncements. Even if that was to be expected, we can assume there is a current in the Church that would agree with the way Rai seeks to safeguard the Middle East’s Christians.

Rai has been less verbose lately, so perhaps he received advice from the Vatican to be more careful. But that does not mean that the leadership of the Church is upset with him. After all, Pope Benedict XVI has made the protection of Arab Christians a priority, and earlier this year was sternly taken to task by Al-Azhar when he criticized the Egyptian government for not doing enough to protect Coptic Christians following a New Year’s bomb attack against a church.

Rai fits well into this ecclesiastical ambiance. His recent visit to Iraq, to bolster the Christian communities there, must have been welcomed at the Vatican. Benedict is no fool. He no doubt realizes that Arab Christians will not survive if they remain isolated from their predominantly Sunni surroundings. And yet there is a profoundly conservative side to the man that may explain why he has not pushed harder for a rapprochement between Christians and Sunnis, and why the Vatican has reacted with such shameful reticence to the Arab uprisings.

Neither Bkirki nor Rome has progressive impulses. The Catholic Church is headed by a man who has made the containment of change a hallmark of his tenure at the Vatican, both as pope and as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope John Paul II. The sad truth is that Syria may not have needed to blackmail Bechara al-Rai to elicit his favorable words on Assad's rule. The patriarch’s fear of revolutionary transformation aligns with that of the institution he serves.

Assad's regime crumbles one frayed relationship at a time

2011-11-17T10:12:00.000+02:00

With the Arab League voting to suspend Syria's membership the late Syrian president, Hafez Al Assad, must be spinning in his grave. In recent years his son Bashar has managed to squander almost everything he inherited when Hafez died in 2000, steadily undermining the multiple pillars bolstering the Assad regime.

In fairness, the late president didn't leave behind a political system particularly adept at responding with flexibility to challenges. What Hafez Al Assad built was a monumental engine of stalemate, designed to stifle all aspirations for change and to safeguard Assad domination. Bashar has struggled with this unwieldy apparatus to contain the uprising against his authority. Given his overpowering dependency on violence, perhaps not surprisingly he has failed to do so.

The Assad order, in place since 1970, has granted the president myriad instruments of repression, but also of patronage. Though the regime is led by an Alawite elite, the late Al Assad played down this reality to avoid being delegitimised by Syria's - and the Arab world's - Sunni majority. He did so by exploiting an inherent sense of Arabism among Syrians and accentuating his regime's Arab nationalist credentials. The Baath Party was made to play a vanguard role in political life while serving as a prime lever of Assad power.

Even when the party began losing credibility, the regime presented enduring nationalist bona fides, above all implacable opposition to Israel and frequent opposition to American policy in the Middle East. At the same time, until 2005, Syria controlled Lebanon, which gave the Assads substantial regional leverage. When Hizbollah fought Israel the outcomes were negotiated in Damascus. The Syrian regime gained politically without risking confronting the Israelis directly.

At home, Hafez Al Assad co-opted the Sunni community. He created favourable conditions for the Sunni business class, which proved essential to defending his regime, particularly in Damascus, when it was challenged by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s. In turn, the Baath party was used as a conduit of patronage and services to poorer Syrian areas, including Sunni rural areas hitherto backbones of the regime. The party's marginalisation at the hands of the ruling family could be one reason why a pro-regime district such as Deraa revolted.

Over and above this, the elder Assad carefully fashioned a regional Arab consensus on Syria, further anchoring his leadership despite its minority status. He maintained close ties with Saudi Arabia, until Camp David stood with Egypt at the forefront of the conflict with Israel, and won Arab approval for Syrian dominion in Lebanon. Al Assad also imposed himself as a primary interlocutor of the United States, the Europeans, and until the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union.

The president positioned Syria at the nexus point of regional interests. He was never quite able to dominate the Palestinians but Al Assad retained a spoiler role in Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

Bashar Al Assad replicated the general lines of his father's strategy. He stuck to Arab nationalist tropes, propped up the enemies of Israel and the United States, and in more recent years sought to destabilise Syria's neighbours - Iraq and Lebanon, but also the Palestinian territories through Hamas - to reinforce Syria's bargaining position when outsiders came looking for solutions. And even though the Assad family expanded their stake in the Syrian economy, often through intimidation, the Sunni business class did not challenge them.

The first true sign that Bashar Al Assad was less gifted than his father came in 2005 in Lebanon. Following the assassination of former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, which was blamed on Syria and its local allies, Mr Al Assad withdrew his army from the country. But he also angered Lebanon's Sunnis by eliminating their champion. This is coming back to haunt the president as most Lebanese Sunnis are backing their rebellious coreligionists across the Syrian border.

To compensate, the younger Al Assad strengthened ties with Iran, exacerbating his relationship with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis later reversed themselves and sought a reconciliation with Damascus. However, they have also remained very ambiguous during the Syrian revolt, in part because there are those in the kingdom who must realise that Mr Al Assad's fall would be a blow to Tehran.

More damaging still, the president has alienated countries once friendliest to his rule. Where Hafez Al Assad avoided a clash with Turkey, his son has presided over the collapse of the relationship with Ankara. Similarly, Qatar previously provided the Assad regime with valuable political assistance; today the emirate's leadership is taking the lead in advocating Arab league measures against Syria.

Mr Al Assad has shattered the Arab and regional consensus behind his regime, instead managing to produce one opposed to the regime. Even King Abdullah of Jordan has advised the president to step down.

The vicious sectarian behaviour of Syria's army and security forces has only reaffirmed the Alawite core of Assad rule. And the Sunni business class, which thrives on stability, knows that Mr Al Assad's continuation in office will mean more instability.

All that Mr Al Assad has left is the solidarity of his fearful Alawite acolytes. They will pursue the massacre to avoid what they believe will be their own if they are defeated. Iran and Hizbollah are on hand to help, but they cannot reverse Arab discontent or pacify the streets of Syria. The sordid Assad interregnum is coming to an end, bullet by bullet. We must hope that Syria avoids all-out civil war.

Speechless in Bashar Assad’s Syria

2011-11-17T10:02:00.000+02:00

To capture the essence of the Syrian regime’s behavior today, a very useful place to start is W. H. Auden’s poem “August 1968,” whose theme is the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring.

“The Ogre does what ogres can,/Deeds quite impossible for Man,/But one prize is beyond his reach,/The Ogre cannot master Speech:/About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain,/The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,/While drivel gushes from his lips.”

It was, indeed, an inarticulate Syrian ogre that greeted the decision of the Arab League, traditionally a generous assemblage of ogres, to suspend Syria’s membership in the organization. And the drivel has come in the form of indignant statements by Syrian ambassadors and officials; but also in the mob attacks against diplomatic missions, a reminder of how frequently the Assad regime, that of father and son, has targeted foreign envoys to make its displeasure known.

Were it not for the fact that President Bashar Assad, with his family and close comrades, is steadily transporting Syria toward civil war because he refuses to leave office, we could derive grim satisfaction from the incoherence in Damascus. For once the explicit thuggishness, the feigned outrage to mask the shameless deceitfulness, the apocalyptic warnings, are failing to have an impact. Assad has misled several times too often, and, finally, his credibility has evaporated.

And yet we tend to forget that the Syrians had their way for decades by deploying precisely those methods. Their fury comes from the realization that their act, the single act that Syria’s regime has learned, is boring the audience. To gain Arab attention, Assad must take steps to further intensify the violence against his own population. He hopes to provoke an all-out sectarian conflagration that polarizes opinion, thereby creating a frightening enemy, in that way, perhaps, recouping for his regime much of its lost support. And yet a sectarian conflict is precisely what the Arab states wish to avert, and Assad must sense, with the example of Moammar Gadhafi still fresh in his mind, that a civil war really can go either way for an autocrat clinging to power.

Where Assad is right is in realizing that the Arab League plan that he was offered represents a roundabout way of getting rid of him. The liberation of tens of thousands of prisoners and the withdrawal from Syrian cities of the army and security forces would make irrelevant any dialogue with the opposition, another facet of the Arab plan. Once the streets are in the hands of the protesters, there will be no dialogue whatsoever; only an irrepressible drive to tear down Assad rule.

Here are the stark options that Syria’s leadership have left for itself: Either crush the intifada or be crushed. From day one the Assads responded to the rolling unrest with gunfire and sham concessions. No one was duped, just as no one was duped the first, second and third time Syrian officials, including Assad himself, pronounced the uprising over. It is remarkable how the vernacular of the Syrian regime is shaped by claims diametrically opposed to reality: that peaceful protesters are “armed groups”; that the engine of reform has started, even as the death toll climbs; that sanctions will never work, when Syria is that rare example of a place where sanctions may work.

How familiar this sounds for those Lebanese who remember Assad’s actions six and seven years ago. Here was the Syrian leader in summer 2004, insulting our intelligence by serenely telling an Arab newspaper that it was the Lebanese who would decide whether to extend Emile Lahoud’s mandate. That was before Assad issued his threat in person to Rafik Hariri, instructing him to vote in favor of the extension, or else.

And there was Assad in March 2005, two weeks after Hariri’s assassination, explaining to the gaggle of sycophants Syria calls a parliament, that he would redeploy his soldiers in Lebanon toward the Syrian border. No mention was made of whether they would cross to the other side, because the president hoped to avoid such an outcome. He expected Hezbollah’s intimidatory rally of March 8, three days after his address, to silence his Lebanese foes. And when a Syrian pullout did come, because March 8 brought on the massive anti-Syrian demonstration of March 14, it came sullenly and surreptitiously, in the night, a bad-tempered signal that Assad would do everything to return.

The mendacity, the arrogance, the condescension, the surreal levels of criminality, have all been in full view these past months, as the Assads have slaughtered their people without flinching. The Arab states gave the Syrian regime ample time to stifle the dissension, until they saw that Bashar Assad was going to lose anyway. Panic has set in as the intifada veers toward a Sunni-Alawite war, which would have dire repercussions for Syria’s neighbors, and the Arab world in general.

One should have faith. A people that has mostly avoided resorting to arms though eight months of carnage, is one wise to the ways of its tormentors. Syrians have the Assads to thank for that. Having endured for four decades the whims of two sordid families, they know what to expect. See through the bully, and you’re on your way to deflating him. Assad dreams of containing the Syrian intifada and imposing a bogus reform project that consolidates his authority; but to many Syrians he is simply irrelevant. Recognition of that fact was implied in the advice of King Abdullah of Jordan that Bashar Assad step down.

It is difficult to predict what will happen next in Syria. But the Assad order has been stripped down to its carcass, left only with the brutality of Alawite solidarity, fortified by mounting Arab isolation. The ogre is stammering, meaning the end cannot be too far off.

Christian minorities forced by fear into the dictators' fold

2011-10-20T10:34:00.001+03:00

The recent violence in Egypt between Copts and the Egyptian army, with its sectarian overtones, poured ice on the high expectations surrounding the Arab intifadas. Arab Christians in particular are worried about the future, and their anxieties are colouring their interpretation of the repression all over.

For Christians in the Levant and Iraq, communal security in recent decades has involved a static reading of political affairs. As a minority, they have feared that change might threaten the stability that was buying them respite. That is why Christians tended to be on good terms with the autocrats, whether under the Assad regime in Syria, which is led by minority Alawites, or the previous regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, led by minority Sunnis. This was true even if it led to charges from their more assertive brethren elsewhere that this exemplified the submissiveness of dhimmis - minorities protected under Islam.

Among those once levelling the charge were Lebanon's Christians. In relative terms they are the most potent of the Arab Christian communities, representing an estimated third of the population. The largest Lebanese Christian sect, the Maronites, dominated the state and security organs before Lebanon's civil war in 1975, hardily preserving a status quo to their advantage. The setbacks and infighting of the war years, alongside the community's demographic decline, have greatly reduced Maronite standing.

The situation is different in Egypt. The Copts had long been in dispute with the regimes of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, accusing them of overseeing systems discriminating against the Coptic community. For them, the "new" Egypt offers new anxieties, by possibly allowing for the consolidation of Islamist forces less accepting of Copts than before. Copts feel caught between two evils: a seemingly immovable state in which political and administrative realities are gamed against them; and a post-Mubarak society in flux, where Islamist and Salafist groups openly antagonistic to Christians appear to be gaining ground.

Lebanon is perhaps the best illustration of dilemmas faced by Arab Christians. Virtually all types of Christian communities are represented in the country, and they find themselves at a crossroads in terms of their destiny and demographic survival. Nowhere has this been more obvious than in the conflicting ways that the Christians, Maronites in particular, have reacted to the uprising against the regime of President Bashar Al Assad in Syria.

On the one side, there have been those Maronites who dread the consequences of Mr Al Assad's downfall. Their argument is based on an assumption that minorities have a vested interest in allying with each other against the Sunni majority in the Middle East. They believe that if the Alawite leadership collapses, it will be replaced by a Sunni Islamist regime. The most vocal Lebanese proponents of this line are the politicians Michel Aoun and Suleiman Franjieh, who have recently found an unexpected partner in Maronite Patriarch Bishara Al Rai. President Michel Suleiman has not opposed their assessment, even if he has not explicitly supported it either.

On the other side are those Maronites who insist that the end of Assad rule would be a boon to Christians. They point out that no one has undermined the community over time as has the Syrian regime, and that an "alliance of minorities" is a path toward self-destruction. There is no certainty that Sunni Islamists will dominate Syria, they maintain, and anyway it makes no sense for Christians to side with the repressive leadership in Damascus against those seeking freedom; even less so given that Mr Al Assad will likely be toppled at some stage.

Those who defend this approach have rallied, principally, around the Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and Christian politicians close to the Sunni-dominated Future Movement of Saad Hariri, the former prime minister. Patriarch Al Rai's predecessor, the 91-year-old Cardinal Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, who retired this year, has emerged as a spiritual godfather to this coalition of forces. While backing Patriarch Al Rai in public, Cardinal Sfeir has dropped remarks here and there revealing a very different philosophy.

The second view is the more sensible one, though many Christians may disagree. Ultimately, it is mad for Arab Christians to sanction tyrants slaughtering their people. Such a policy is a perennial game of Russian roulette, with Christians wagering on the triumph of the murderers. Not only is this politically reckless, it is morally reprehensible, especially when involving those like Patriarch Al Rai, who purport to speak in the name of a religion of charity and love.

As far as their existential options go, Arab Christians have few alternatives but to advocate pluralistic, democratic orders protecting social and political liberties. Only such environments can ensure that Christians are accepted for their differences and the dissonances they bring, rather than merely tolerated until alignments shift.

The problem is that if Lebanon's community is having trouble accepting this conclusion, even though the country is freer and more permissive than those in its neighbourhood, then what can be expected of those dwindling Christian communities elsewhere in the Middle East? Worse, if the Christians themselves are disorientated, will this not encourage extremists who are overtly hostile to the Christian presence, even if they are few in number?

There is great confusion in the Arab world today as revolts defy decaying authoritarian systems. The Christians are understandably worried that they may become dispensable in the pulverising political transactions ahead. Their salvation is to embrace change that brings with it freedom. The road is bound to be difficult, as many will define freedom as the denial of freedom to others.

Bashar’s blood brothers

2011-10-14T07:17:00.000+03:00

Among the more dismal displays in recent weeks has been that of governments openly expressing their support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria—or simply refusing to blame it for the savage, months-long repression of domestic dissent.

More remarkable still, most of the governments adopting such an approach lean politically to the left and claim to be sympathetic to popular aspirations. Several have suffered from domestic repression in their modern history. These states include Brazil, India and South Africa, who abstained recently in a vote on a UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria; but also Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba, who sent representatives in a delegation to Damascus last weekend to give confidence to Syria’s leadership.

The old concept of “Third Worldism” was for a long time shorthand for anti-Americanism. But what we are witnessing today is something more complex. When Brazil, India and South Africa refuse to condemn the manifest thuggery of a Syrian regime whose crimes can be readily called up on the BlackBerrys of their United Nations ambassadors, they happen to be sending contradictory messages.

They are saying, first, that the balance of power in the Security Council has changed, and it has changed in that the three states are no longer willing to docilely toe the line set by the United States and the Europeans. This is an act of affirmation, not displaced inferiority, a consequence of these states’ growing regional and international influence, thanks in large part to their economic successes.

But the reaction is also one that incorporates resentment of a Western-dominated international order. It is even, to an extent, an illustration of lingering sentimentality for Third World causes. That the particular “cause” in Syria happens to be mass murder is irrelevant. President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, like President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, comes from a leftist tradition, where the default setting was once to align with regimes from the developing world. India, with its history of nonalignment, is no different.

South Africa has been equally ambiguous on Libya, backing Moammar al-Qaddafi despite his declared intent to crush his opponents “like rats.” For Zuma, Qaddafi defended the African National Congress in a time of need, earning such solidarity. Yet there is a problem when solidarity is expressed for individuals at the expense of democratic ideals. What kind of hypocrisy is it for a government dominated by the ANC, which spent decades fighting against an oppressive, discriminatory political system, to now side with the oppressor in Libya—and by omission in Syria?

One expects less discernment from the likes of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador. The principal prism through which they consider Syria, or Libya, is that of hostility toward the United States and inherent sympathy for America’s enemies. Cuba and Venezuela are effectively led by dictators, so they have no profound philosophical difficulty with Assad, or with Qaddafi. But it must have been disheartening indeed for the average Syrian to observe this exotic deputation of Latinos, thoroughly illiterate in the ways of Syria or its uprising, disembarking in Damascus to defend a homicidal autocrat whom most of them know next to nothing about.

The duplicity of the so-called “people’s republic” of China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia is well established when it comes to covering for the abuses of foreign governments. Moscow and Beijing have always been realists to the core, pursuing their interests regardless of the transgressions of their overseas partners. China sold weapons to Qaddafi even as his regime was collapsing, while Russia has intervened brutally too many times in the Caucasus to readily set a new precedent against such behavior by condemning Assad.

What conclusions can we draw from this catalogue of insincerity? The most obvious is that Western democracies, for all their own insincerities, have tended to be more consistent in bolstering humanistic values than much of the rest of the world. The Obama administration was initially disinclined to get involved in Libya, and took far too long to demand Assad’s departure. But when the decisions were taken—and the United Kingdom and France were instrumental in leading on the Libya and Syria fronts—the diplomatic or military machinery, or both, kicked commendably into gear.

The template of a naturally domineering, exploitative West facing off against a vulnerable, victimized South is utter nonsense. This characterization may sound like an exaggeration, but it is far less so than you might imagine. The romance of revolution (for many of the governments backing Qaddafi and Assad somehow perceive themselves to be revolutionary, or on the side of revolution internationally) is often made doubly powerful by its imprecision. Only such imprecision, the imposition of a black-or-white reading of Syria’s standoff against Europe and the United States, can induce governments to take the side, explicitly or implicitly, of a leader who merits a seat in the dock at the International Criminal Court.

I will wager you an all-expenses trip to Managua, Havana or Cape Town, that the cynical reckonings of Assad’s new international comrades will prompt no invitation for us to reinterpret the current state of international relations. That countries arousing so many positive expectations in the past should somehow find themselves protecting, essentially, criminal enterprises, is a sign of moral and ideological bankruptcy. And yet those countries will continue to elicit warm feelings worldwide for allegedly challenging the global status quo. Few will see this impression for the lie that it is.

The Hariri assassination needs a motive

2011-10-13T07:19:00.000+03:00

This time, at least, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon managed to navigate through an official’s resignation by immediately appointing a successor. The tribunal’s president, Antonio Cassese, stepped down this week, to be replaced by Sir David Baragwanath of New Zealand. The smoothness of the transition aside, Cassese’s departure with a trial looming did little to bolster the institution’s credibility.

In recent months, the debate over the special tribunal has been largely defined by those yearning for its failure. Even the prime minister, Najib Mikati, is in a bind. He went far in promising that his government would approve funding for the tribunal, only to see this turned against him by Hezbollah and Michel Aoun. What the outcome will be is anybody’s guess, but Mikati will probably opt to delay the issue indefinitely, averting a showdown in which he is bound to be humiliated. He may be wagering that an international community incapable of approving a Security Council resolution condemning the savagery of Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, will be equally unlikely to punish Lebanon for failing to honor its financial obligations.

On the side of those who endorse the tribunal, present company included, there has mainly been uncritical acquiescence to whatever the institution does. Some cracks in confidence have started to appear, not least after it became known that the prosecution would not be taking up several bomb attacks committed in 2005, including those against journalists May Chidiac and Samir Kassir. However, the March 14 coalition continues to view the tribunal as its principal weapon against the majority.

Tactically, this is understandable. But for those more interested in whether the special tribunal represents a qualitative judicial achievement that enhances the rule of law in Lebanon, the picture is more blurred. Six years after the assassination of the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, such an ambition has evaporated. Perhaps that was to be expected, but it has also been facilitated by long, unjustified, and damaging delays in the investigation of the crime.

The indictments issued by the tribunal offer us, bluntly, a crime without an articulated motive. It is embarrassing that after six years of investigation, only four suspects, all active at the operational level, have been named. This may change, indeed it must change if the prosecutor is to strengthen his case. In practical terms this requires indictments of those who ordered Hariri’s elimination, with an explanation for why they did so. And yet something tells us that this may be it for now – with the prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, hoping to use the initial indictments as a wedge for further indictments.

Motive is the key to most crimes. Detlev Mehlis, the first head of the independent investigative commission of the United Nations, concluded that Hariri had been killed for political reasons. He and his allies were on the verge of winning a parliamentary majority in the summer 2005 elections, a point acknowledged by Syria’s Lebanese allies. The former prime minister himself was telling foreign envoys that he would gain a majority whichever election law was adopted.

When you put this together with what the Syrians were then saying, a hypothesis becomes clearer. A Syrian friend familiar with regime thinking in Damascus informed me in January 2005 that Assad intended to “respond to” Security Council Resolution 1559, which, among other things, called for Syria’s army to be removed from Lebanon. Syrian forces would be redeployed in the direction of the Syrian border, he said. But no one was talking of a full withdrawal.

The Syrians had a good reason for imagining that this ploy would work. In early 2005 the United States was willing to advance in stages on a withdrawal. In the words of the former ambassador in Beirut and current assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, Washington sought “to avoid allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good.” In other words, the Americans considered a partial Syrian pullback preferable to none at all. In his speech before Syria’s parliament in early March 2005, three weeks after Hariri’s murder, Assad behaved precisely according to that playbook. He declared that Syrian troops would soon start moving toward the border, though he did not say that they would actually cross it.

Here is probably what the Syrians were thinking. At some point in late 2004, they concluded that an election victory for Hariri and his comrades represented an existential threat to the Syrian order in Lebanon. Hezbollah concurred, anticipating that a Hariri government would undermine the substantial military and political advantages the party enjoyed under Syrian rule. A decision was taken to get rid of the former prime minister, to be followed by steps suggesting that Syria would implement Resolution 1559 and move all its forces into the Bekaa Valley. This injected a useful ambiguity into the equation, since it could be depicted as falling in line with the Taif Accord (which even Walid Jumblatt preferred to hold up at Syria instead of Resolution 1559). With Hariri gone, the Syrians would win the elections hands down, bring in a friendly government, and under the rubric of Taif negotiate with that government a continued Syrian presence in Lebanon, circumventing Resolution 1559.

What spoiled the scheme? We have to assume growing Arab and international pressure on Syria, but also the mass demonstration of March 14, 2005, which convinced Assad that his plan had backfired. He now faced a united and mobilized Sunni community, working in tandem with a unified Christian community and the Druze. The elections, Assad could plainly see, would lead to the very outcome that the Syrian president had sought to avert. He apparently concluded that it was better to bring his troops home before that happened.

Is this interpretation debatable? Sure, but until now the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has little enriched the conversation. We have suspects, but no hint as to their purpose. Bellemare may propose an explanation by indicting new figures, or he may outline his thinking in court. But without new suspects his case will be weak, and many of us will be even more persuaded that the tribunal has let us down.

The patriarch loses the plot

2011-10-07T10:57:00.000+03:00

Among the geopolitical gems that Patriarch Bechara al-Rai has endowed us with in recent weeks is the notion that there is a grand scheme to divide the Middle East into sectarian statelets.

Rai raised this issue on his controversial visit to Paris some weeks ago, and repeated it on the eve of his departure to the United States, when visiting with President Michel Sleiman. The pair issued a statement in which they agreed that Lebanon was facing myriad dangers, among them that plan to fragment the region by religion.

Rarely do clergymen provoke any wistfulness in me, but reading Rai’s remarks I was transported back to the mid-1970s, and those balmy afternoons in the sitting room hearing family elders discussing politics. And it came to me that the recurrent topic of conversation back then was the same elaborate plan to divide the Middle East into sectarian and communal statelets. Who was the mastermind? Naturally, the US secretary of state at the time, Henry Kissinger, while the principal beneficiary of the project was Israel.

A separate part of Kissinger’s plan, we learned, was to empty Lebanon of Christians and hand the country over to the Palestinians (the ships that would evacuate us were said to be offshore, though it was never revealed where we would be deposited). Given that the Christian political groupings looked to be on relatively good terms with Israel, and that Israel was on bad terms with the Palestinians, our adolescent minds were somewhat puzzled by how Israel would benefit. However, the plan was complex, and teenagers had no business questioning their parents—and even less the diabolical ways of Henry Kissinger.

Decades on, the Middle East still hasn’t dissolved into sectarian statelets. Which makes you wonder, who is in charge of the plan these days? Perhaps Rai knows, or Sleiman. If so, the patriarch has been rather cagey on that point, although he has mentioned the concept of a “new Middle East” as the strategic backdrop to the process. When you hear the words “new Middle East,” you know someone is thinking of the George W. Bush years and the alleged plot to reshape the region in America’s image, of which the Iraq war was a centerpiece.

I’m willing to accept that the Bush administration, for a time, saw Iraq as a lever to alter broad political realities in the Gulf and the Levant in the wake of the 9/11 attacks against the United States. However, the political campaign in Iraq was so incompetently carried out, with American officials often pushing conflicting bureaucratic agendas, that it was obvious by the end of 2003 that Washington was increasingly mystified about how to proceed with the Iraqis. Even as Bush mentioned the “new” Middle East, his military was struggling mightily to contain the consequences of the old Middle East.

And all this had nothing to do with breaking Iraq up into sectarian statelets. If anything, the Bush administration sought to avoid that result at all costs—even if it proposed a federal system for Iraq, which was natural given Iraqi realities. I remember interviewing the deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, in 2004, soon after agreement was reached over the Transitional Administrative Law—Iraq’s constitution until a permanent basic law could be agreed. Wolfowitz made quite plain his uneasiness with what he regarded as too much autonomy for the Kurdish areas, a sensitive admission in light of the close relationship between Washington and the Kurdish parties.

Nothing that the Bush administration did in Iraq after that period contradicted American fears of a sectarian breakdown. Yes, there was a battle in Baghdad between the Sunni and Shia communities, but the ethnic cleansing that ensued was not the fruit of an American stratagem. In fact, had the US wanted to split Iraq apart, it would not have played such an essential role in assisting Baghdad to re-impose its writ over Sunni areas, above all Anbar province, in collaboration with the Awakening Councils. Nor would it have attempted to find a solution between Kurds and Arabs over the disputed city of Kirkuk.

What about Syria? If any party to the unrest there today is implementing measures that might break the country up into sectarian statelets, it’s the Assad regime, which Rai has invited us all to reconsider with a more compassionate eye. By unleashing its predominantly Alawite praetorian units and Alawite armed gangs against mainly Sunni protestors, the regime has intentionally heightened sectarian animosities. This it has done to bolster Alawite solidarity and ensure that those in the community remain united; but also to make the prospect of a sectarian civil war so real, that foreign states, to avert this outcome, will not risk undermining Assad rule.

And since when has the US, or for that matter Israel, tried to break Syria up into smaller states? For decades Israel and Syria have been the best of enemies, their border as tranquil as a Sunday afternoon in the Scandinavian countryside. It was no coincidence that in a New York Times interview last May, Rami Makhlouf, President Bashar al-Assad’s cousin, warned: “If there is no stability [in Syria], there’s no way there will be stability in Israel.” Very succinctly, and openly, he admitted that Syria and Israel protected each other—a source of great discomfiture in Damascus, even if Makhlouf was telling the truth.

Priests enjoy vast political intrigue, because so much of it seems to surround their institution. But Rai can do better than offer us a reheated version of a spurious conspiracy theory from the 1970s, reinforced by his sketchy grasp of current realities in the Middle East. Patriarchs really shouldn’t echo dated, imprecise salon gossip.

Syrian disdain for diplomacy has lasted for four decades

2011-10-06T07:37:00.000+03:00

Last week the American ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, was attacked by a group of pro-regime supporters while meeting with an opposition figure in Damascus. This came only days after France's ambassador, Eric Chevallier, was assaulted in a similar manner. The violence was, plainly, organised by the Syrian regime.

Confirming this, on Sunday the official Al Baath daily warned that Mr Ford, who has strongly condemned the ongoing repression in Syria, could expect more "unpleasant treatment" if he continued acting in the same way.

Threatening or harming diplomats is one of the more established prohibitions in international relations. When foreign envoys become targets of intimidation or worse, formal ties between states effectively end, with unpredictable consequences. The United States and Iran have yet to reconcile decades after the hostage takeover at the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Israel, in turn, reacted in a relatively subdued way to the attack on its embassy in Cairo in September, because it feared the political costs of severing peaceful relations with Egypt.

Yet when it comes to ignoring the immunity of foreign envoys and missions, Syria is in a class of its own. Bashar Al Assad's regime and that of his late father, Hafez, have never hesitated to strike against foreign missions in the pursuit of their political objectives. Nor have they been shy in employing Syrian diplomats to commit crimes.

A leadership that butchers its own people is unlikely to be overly preoccupied with diplomatic niceties, one might argue. True, but foreign governments should have realised much sooner that a regime unconcerned with one of the oldest foundations of international interaction, diplomatic privilege - enshrined in international law through the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 - is also one more apt to butcher its own people.

Take what happened at the Danish Embassy in Syria in February 2006. At the time, Denmark was facing a harsh backlash for the publication by a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. A mob, roused by officially-appointed clerics, marched on the embassy offices in Damascus and set it on fire - also damaging the Chilean and Swedish embassies housed in the same building.

In a cable released by WikiLeaks, the US chargé d'affaires in Damascus at the time, Stephen Seche, reported that a Sunni sheikh, whom he described as "one of the most influential Sunni religious figures in Damascus", had virtually confirmed Syrian government "involvement in escalating the situation that led to the violent rioting in Damascus … including communications between [Prime Minister Muhammad Naji Al Otri's] office and the Grand Mufti."

Mr Seche also wrote that the "Danish Ambassador confirmed to us separately that the Minister [of Religious Endowments] had inflamed the situation the day before the rioting, with his remarks at Friday prayers in a mosque."

Most interesting was the sheikh's interpretation of why Syrian officials had encouraged clerics to denounce Denmark in their sermons, "without setting any ceilings on the type of language to be used." He believed the regime was trying to say the following: "'This is what you will have if we allow true democracy and allow Islamists to rule.' To the Islamic street all over the region, the message was that the [Syrian government] is protecting the dignity of Islam, and … allowing Muslims freedom on the streets of Damascus they are not allowed on the streets of Cairo, Amman, or Tunis."

Throughout the years it dominated Lebanon, Syria likely knew about or played a role in bomb or assassination plots against foreign missions. While the motives varied the underlying purpose was usually to guarantee that their governments would not challenge Syria's supremacy in Beirut.

It is difficult, for instance, to imagine that Syria's intelligence services did not have prior knowledge of the suicide car-bombings against the US Embassy complexes in Lebanon in 1983 and 1984, even if these were carried out by suspected pro-Iranian militants. The same can be said of the bombing of the Iraqi embassy in Beirut in December 1981, and the bomb attack against the French embassy in May 1982. And Syria was widely accused of being behind the killing in September 1981 of Louis Delamare, France's ambassador to Lebanon.

Even as Syria's regime has ignored diplomatic conventions, so too has it corrupted its own Foreign Ministry, often employing Syrian embassies in support of its security agenda. In 1983, for example, Syria's embassy staff in East Berlin stored the bomb used by Carlos the Jackal to destroy the French Cultural Centre in West Berlin, with the full knowledge of the ambassador at the time, Faysal Sammaq.

More recently, Syria's foreign minister, Walid Al Muallim, and his ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Abdul Karim Ali, were sanctioned by the US Treasury. And the State Department accused Mr Ali of harassing Syrian opposition figures in Lebanon, and helping organise the disappearance of others.

The beef with Mr Al Muallim is older. In a leaked UN document from 2007, the minister warned UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the US ambassador in Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, had to leave the country. Washington took this as a threat, especially when an embassy vehicle was bombed in January 2008.

One can go on. The respectability once enjoyed by Syria's regime has now been torn away. However, in 41 years in power the Al Assads, both father and son, have shown disdain for foreign representatives whose governments nevertheless continued to confer international respectability on them. It's a shame that it has taken seven months of carnage in Syria to terminate that particular indignity.

A U.N. veto buys Bashar time to kill

2011-10-06T07:09:00.001+03:00

For a brief moment, Lebanon can say that it behaved relatively courageously in comparison to Russia and China at the United Nations. On Tuesday, Moscow and Beijing vetoed a Security Council resolution on Syria, arguing that the text, in the words of the Russian envoy, “was based on a philosophy of confrontation.”

Lebanon had little choice. As the Arab representative on the council, its decision reflected the discord in the Arab world over Syria. Abstention was the logical outcome of the region’s treacherous cross-currents. However, in light of the Russia and Chinese votes against, Syria cannot have been overjoyed with the non-committal Lebanese attitude. You have to wonder if the Syrian army’s brief incursion into Arsal on the day of the voting was not, partly, a warning to Beirut.

What bothered the Russians and Chinese was that the resolution threatened retaliation against Damascus if the violence in Syria continued. The draft did not mention “sanctions,” to satisfy Moscow, replacing it with the more ambiguous “targeted measures.” Responding to claims that the resolution would lead to military action in Syria, as it had in Libya, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice was scathing. She called such worries a “cheap ruse by those who would rather sell arms to the Syrian regime than stand with the Syrian people.”

In a way Rice was right. A September report in Toronto’s The Globe and Mail indicated that Chinese arms companies negotiated contracts worth some $200 million in the past months with the regime of Moammar Gadhafi. This violated Resolution 1970, approved by China, which imposed an arms embargo on the Libyan government. However, Rice was less convincing in implying that Washington stood staunchly with the Syrian people. It took months for the Obama administration to do anything of substance on Syria, with officials complaining that the United States had little leverage in Damascus.

As with much else, this outlook showed President Barack Obama at his self-neutralizing best. Political leverage is something built up over time, patiently. Only the U.S. stands at the center of the network of countries with a say in Syria – the Arab states, Turkey, the permanent U.N. Security Council members, and the European Union. If anyone can bring all the pieces together to fashion a consensual stance toward Syria that persuades the regime to depart, it is the United States.

This does not diminish the cravenness of Russia and China. Both saw an opportunity to abort international momentum in favor of using humanitarian arguments to intervene in the Middle East and North Africa, where the two have political and economic stakes. Moscow and Beijing know that they are fated to follow when humanitarianism beckons, wedded as they are to political realism, which enjoins pursuing one’s interests abroad without worrying about the domestic abuses of the regimes with which they are transacting.

This is short-sighted. Modern communications mean that the outrages of brutal leaders are out there for all to see, on television screens, computers and mobile telephones. The old realism, which accepts an artificial barrier between a partner’s foreign affairs and his internal behavior, is no longer as tolerable as it once was. When Syrians routinely burn Russian and Chinese flags in the streets of their cities, that means there will be reckoning down the road, when the foul edifice of the Assads collapses, as it is destined to.

President Bashar Assad will appreciate what Russia and China did for him. However, it may little change things. At this stage the dynamics in Syria appear to be increasingly beyond the reach of foreign actors – which is precisely why the international community and the Arab states in particular are blameworthy for having dawdled on Syria, so eager was everyone to wish the problem away. Whatever Moscow and Beijing do, there is no repressive solution to the Syrian crisis. On the other hand, both have just ensured that Assad gets enough spare oxygen so that his security forces and armed gangs can murder more people – even as this heightens the prospect that the protesters will move toward further militarization of their revolt against Assad rule.

Was it a good idea to go for a vote in the Security Council, despite the likelihood of Russian and Chinese vetoes? Yes. We have to accept that none but the most anodyne text would have been approved by Moscow and Beijing, which would have surely discredited the council far more than disagreement over a stronger resolution. Still, the U.N. is indeed deeply divided over Syria. At a time when its secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has gone commendably far in denouncing Bashar Assad and his methods, the capacity of the international body to mediate in the Syrian upheaval has been substantially reduced.

If the U.N. cannot address Syria effectively, individual states will fill the vacuum. Turkey played an essential role by hosting the founding session of the new representative council of the Syrian opposition, and soon intends to impose sanctions on Syria, after an arms embargo. Other governments are expanding sanctions already in place. The pressure is hurting. Last week Syria’s government suspended the importation of goods with tariffs above 5 percent, to avoid the flight of hard currency. However, when Syrian traders complained, the government backtracked. But to have taken that step in the first place, and risk alienating those whose support is indispensable for the regime’s survival, showed how reckless Bashar Assad and those around him have become.

The situation in Syria will take a long time before clarifying. Russia and China are betting on the opposition’s exhaustion, or perhaps on a shift in the balance of power, granting them room to address a new Security Council resolution under improved conditions. Whatever is the thinking, many Syrians will not forgive them their cynicism.

Their own worst enemy

2011-10-01T08:27:00.000+03:00

It is unfortunate that at a moment when the head of the Lebanese Forces, Samir Geagea, has made one of the better public presentations in recent years, his allies have come across as increasingly irrelevant. The opposition is adrift, a view shared by many inside the house.

March 14 parties met this week at Saad Hariri’s residence to “coordinate their stances.” They should have considered defining a clearer national role for themselves, because the coalition seems gripped by confusion. Hariri has been abroad for months, an affront to those who elected him. His money problems are genuine and have not yet been resolved, taking a toll on his patronage network and political authority. The former prime minister is not out yet, however if his occultation lasts much longer, his leadership will melt.

Many sympathizers wonder what Hariri actually stands for. Who did they mobilize to elect in the 2009 elections? No answer has come from the Future Movement, which has morphed into something of an annoying jack-in-the-box—popping its head up episodically to deliver some statement or barb against Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

In the March 14 firmament these days, Geagea is an exception. His speech on Saturday was, in its own right, highly significant in the context of current Maronite history. Here was the leader of an organization once described as “isolationist” during Lebanon’s war years, saying that the salvation of Christians lies in their affirmation in the Middle East and the spread of freedom. This was, in part, a response to the foolishness of Patriarch Bechara al-Rai, who has sought protection for his community under the wing of the depraved rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But it was also more than that: an alternative framework for how Arab Christians all over might interpret the momentous transformations in their political environment, and an enlightened one at that.

One nuisance the Future Movement has faced is that it has based much of its strategy in the past months on bolstering the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The expectation among the Hariri camp and its allies was that Mikati would formally break Beirut’s ties with the institution, at the insistence of Hezbollah. In fact the prime minister has not done so. The matter of Lebanese funding has yet to be finalized, but Mikati is in favor of payment, meaning that he appears willing to fight for his money. To the dismay of March 14, the prime minister has neutralized their main argument against him—and he even garnered international legitimacy on his trip to New York.

But that’s not all. As important as the tribunal is, most Lebanese have other priorities. With the economy in a dark patch and many people worried, rightly so, about the country’s future finances, for March 14 to give inordinate weight to the Special Tribunal is awkward. Whether the population likes the government or not, or embraces Mikati or not, it will always look toward the state to defend the much broader range of concerns that it has. Unless March 14 can offer an alternative governance project of its own, one as comprehensive as the government’s, it will come across as a single-issue interest group.

March 14 has been equally insubstantial on the question of Hezbollah’s weapons. These weapons are at the heart of the political crisis in Lebanon today. As parliamentarian Sami Gemayel astutely pointed out in a NOW Lebanon interview this week, until the issue is settled, it will impede national dialogue over reform. “If there are to be negotiations about developing institutions, you’d be sitting at the same table as someone who has an arsenal,” Gemayel said.

But what has the opposition done to advance a serious discussion of weapons? Saad Hariri made Hezbollah’s disarmament a cornerstone of his address at the March 14 rally this year. However, he did so in the most inflexible of ways, by throwing it down as a gauntlet. The former prime minister did not integrate discussion of the weapons into a broader political package, one that might involve a quid pro quo that eventually appeals to the Shia community. The demand was there to be accepted or rejected. Hezbollah—no surprise—rejected it.

Since then, Hezbollah has found a very useful friend in Bechara al-Rai, who gave the party until the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict to hold on to its guns. The blank check issued by the patriarch further destabilized March 14, while doing something else: It precipitated a quarrel between the opposition and Rai, who has evidently decided to transform himself into a sandbag for the parliamentary majority, behind which Hezbollah can now comfortably shelter itself.

An opposition parliamentarian put it succinctly to me: “March 14’s trouble is that it doesn’t know whether it is a loyal opposition or a coalition that must block what it has described as a Hezbollah coup.” Quite true. March 14 has principally behaved in the second way, which is why its interventions have tended to be shrill and disruptive, losing it the esteem that constructive oppositions generally enjoy.

You have to wonder if Najib Mikati didn’t get lucky when he stood against Hariri for the post of prime minister. Yes, he did join in a Syrian- and Hezbollah-led constitutional coup of sorts, and yes, Saad Hariri was always the Sunnis’ first choice. But since then March 14 has done virtually nothing to make us regret its absence in government. And this is fortifying Mikati day after day.

The Syrian intifada, a grim update

2011-09-29T12:40:00.001+03:00

Six months into its uprising, Syria is facing ruinous stalemate. President Bashar Assad can thank his late father, Hafez, for having first installed the magnificent engine of repression that guarantees his political survival. And yet Syria’s system is incapable of gradual amelioration, which is at the heart of the Assads’ dilemma.

Syria today is like the picture of Dorian Gray. For many years the Assad regime was sought after by numerous Arab and Western governments, even by prominent nongovernmental organizations, for being regarded as an essential key to resolving regional problems. The evidence suggested otherwise, but few apparently seemed to care. Today the picture is out in full view. What the world sees is the sordidness and depravity behind the ersatz façade.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is correct in saying that Assad will not triumph over the Syrian intifada. But the mad band ruling Syria can hold out for a while, and will do its utmost to transform the crisis in a way that ensures it has a fighting chance of staying in power. If that doesn’t happen, a plausible alternative would be for it to fall back on the Alawite heartland, whose access points the regime put a lock on months ago – from Jisr al-Shoughour in the north to the area of Tell Kalakh along Lebanon’s border.

This week two news items revealed Assad’s mounting difficulties. The Financial Times reported that the Syrian authorities had instructed foreign companies to sharply cut back their oil production. Syria has been unable to bypass the European Union embargo on its exports of crude, so that the country’s oil storage capacity is filling up. Despite claims by Syrian officials that the embargo would fail, the newspaper noted “not a single cargo of Syrian crude has left the nation’s main export oil ports this month, according to shipping data.”

And Monday, the Syrian government adopted a budget for next year that will increase spending by 58 percent when compared to 2011. A Syrian economist, Nabil Sukkar, expressed his astonishment to Abu Dhabi’s The National newspaper. “Where are they going to get the money from to pay for this? That’s the big question,” Sukkar asked. He warned: “Our concern is that they are going to start printing money to meet their expenditure, which will lead to serious inflation.” This is precisely what European diplomats based in Damascus had predicted would happen in a report early this year.

As the regime’s revenues decline, its patronage and influence network will shrink. Resources will be concentrated on crushing the revolt. At the same time, economic hardship will hit the Syrian population, which has been exhausted by months of upheaval. Yet here is the danger. As the situation worsens, it is improbable that the Assads will gain the upper hand in a decisive way. What is more likely to happen is a radicalization of the conflict, something that may already be inevitable in the face of the utter savagery displayed by the Syrian army, security services, and predominantly Alawite armed gangs.

All future options may be bad for Syria. If the army falls apart, then we will move squarely toward armed resistance and civil war; and if the army remains relatively united and the largely peaceful protests continue, then we could see open-ended carnage. Both situations have a better than even chance of ceding the initiative to those wanting to pick up weapons. That may be the Assads’ wager. They feel that such a development would favor Sunni Islamists. An armed Islamist rebellion would polarize Syria, rally many inside Syria and out to the regime’s side, and justify a policy of eradication, as in Algeria during the 1990s, against an enemy the Assads essentially created.

Some observers believe the Assads are hoping to impose a somewhat less cynical solution: to contain the demonstrations until fatigue sets in, after which the regime will introduce cosmetic reforms that divide the Syrian opposition while simultaneously silencing the international community. If that’s indeed the regime’s aspiration, it relies on a particularly optimistic reading of the dynamics in Syria. Something is fundamentally broken in the country. That Assad can take his people back to where they were seven months ago is fanciful.

That said, the Syrian president has room to maneuver, with outside pressure on him still bearable for now, despite the ominous pinch of European sanctions. The Arab League has been catatonic on Syria, it’s so-called plan to resolve the Syrian emergency having little momentum. The United Nations Security Council for weeks has been debating a resolution on Syria, yet one reportedly that will not punish Damascus. The United States has ratcheted up the rhetoric against the Assads, but has otherwise done virtually nothing to bring the different parties together behind a consensual transition plan. And Turkey has officially separated from Damascus, but is restrained by anxiety that a Syrian collapse will lead to a confrontation between Ankara and Syria’s Kurds, which will have domestic repercussions.

A leitmotif adopted by the Arab League, but also the ventriloquist dummies of the Assad regime and even some opposition members, is that there must be no outside involvement in Syrian affairs. The reality is that Bashar Assad and his clique will only be ousted through a combination of domestic and international efforts, hopefully short of military action. The Assads thrive on conflict. Everything must be done to deny them the oxygen of violence.

'Zero problems' in Ankara is havoc for the neighbourhood

2011-09-29T06:38:00.000+03:00

Much hyperbole has been deployed in describing Turkey's reorientation towards the Middle East. Partly, this has been the fault of the Turks themselves, who have sought to ride the wave of Ankara's popularity in the region - primarily a result of its rift with Israel and vocal support for the Palestinian cause. But the reality is considerably more complicated, as Turkey is increasingly drawn into the treacherous byways of Arab and Iranian affairs.

In a much-discussed book he wrote before taking office, Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, enunciated what he called the policy of "zero problems with neighbours". This has shaped Ankara's approach to the Middle East in past years. However, today the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan finds itself managing problems - open or more subtly stated - with virtually every country in its perimeter, especially those to the south and east.

This was predictable. For nearly a century Turkey has focused on Europe. Ankara's renewed attention southwards poses a challenge to Arab states and Iran, which are little prepared to make room for what can come across as an overbearing Turkish government with a tendency to overplay its hand. Arab regimes have publicly embraced Mr Erdogan. But they have also set limits to Turkish actions involving them.

Take Mr Erdogan's recent visit to Egypt. Although it was hailed as a success, Egypt regards Turkish involvement on the Palestinian front, particularly in the Gaza Strip, as an irritant. Cairo views itself as the interlocutor of choice with the Palestinians, and President Hosni Mubarak's ouster has not changed that. Anything that strengthens Hamas could have damaging repercussions for Egyptian internal security. The military leadership in Cairo is also watching carefully how the mildly Islamist government in Ankara inspires elements of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which the generals mistrust.

Turkish spokesmen erred in announcing before the Egypt trip that Mr Erdogan might enter Gaza. Neither Egypt nor the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, relished such a prospect, and ultimately the Turkish prime minister backtracked. Here was a classic example of Mr Erdogan going too far. Mr Abbas opposed a move that would have legitimised Hamas at his expense. The military council in Cairo surely agreed, seeing no reason to hand Turkey a new wedge to insert itself politically on Egypt's eastern border.

Mr Erdogan justifiably expressed outrage with Israel after its soldiers killed Turkish protesters trying to breach the Gaza blockade in May 2010. Israel's government refused to apologise, leading Turkey recently to downgrade diplomatic ties. Early on, the Turkish prime minister caught the mood of exasperation with Israel for its intransigence toward the Palestinians, which he has used to his advantage to garner Arab approval.

However, once the indignation is used up, does Turkey really gain from having undermined the mediation role it once could play between Arabs and Israelis? Did Mr Erdogan need to go as far as he did? He has made an apology and the lifting of the blockade of Gaza conditions for the resumption of normal relations with Israel. The first demand is defensible, but is Gaza enough of a Turkish national priority to justify the prime minister's second, tougher stipulation?

Mr Erdogan's ability to exploit regional transformations has been neutralised by his outspokenness. A resumption of Arab-Israeli, even Palestinian-Israeli, negotiations is, admittedly, unlikely in the foreseeable future. However, Turkey could have seriously aspired to play a key role in a revived peace process. But today, Israeli ill-feeling against Mr Erdogan, the Palestinian leadership's refusal to see their position undercut by the prime minister's demagogical instincts, and international recognition that Turkey is now more a part of the problem than the solution, have effectively sidelined Ankara.

In Syria, Turkey has broken with President Bashar Al Assad's regime. That was to be expected. But Syria is tricky for the Turks. If the country collapses into civil war, this might not only push Syria's Kurds, who have no affection for Ankara, to seek autonomy. It might also drive Arab Alawites in Turkey's Hatay province to assist their Syrian brethren.

At the same time, Mr Erdogan cannot afford to do nothing. The prime minister heads a Sunni Islamist party, a substantial part of whose appeal is that it can build bridges to Arab Islamists. To allow Mr Al Assad to pursue his slaughter of peaceful protesters, many of whom happen to be Sunnis, represents a humanitarian and religious affront to the values Mr Erdogan claims to espouse. More cynically, as the uprising in Syria takes on an overtly sectarian colouring, thanks principally to the brutality of Alawite-dominated security services and military units, Ankara does not want to be on the losing side.

That Mr Erdogan has turned against Mr Al Assad is to his credit. Yet Turkey's worsening ties with Syria have also heightened tension with Damascus's ally Iran - which lately has also opposed Turkey's decision to host a Nato early-warning radar system. Iran and Turkey are vying for regional influence, so they are destined to clash many more times. Not surprisingly, this rivalry has affected Lebanon, where Turkey has invested in predominantly poor Sunni areas. Earlier this year Mr Davutoglu helped Qatar mediate in the Lebanese political crisis. Their efforts were thwarted by Hizbollah and Syria.

As Turkey gets caught up in the Middle East's contradictions, it can no longer seriously portray itself as being above the fray, on friendly terms with all. Words are cheap, and when Mr Erdogan hears praise he should be wary. No one will give Ankara a free ride in a region that cheerfully grinds down the self-assured.

Mikati may not be that dead after all

2011-09-23T13:40:00.000+03:00

The electricity expansion project remains a substitute battlefield for the factions making up Lebanon’s government. On Wednesday, ministers named by Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Nabih Berri and Walid Jumblatt agreed to a demand from March 14 that forced their Aounist ministerial colleagues to swallow a bitter legislative pill.

As you might recall, the cabinet recently passed a draft electricity bill that was approved on Thursday by parliament. That draft included certain oversight measures—the introduction of a regulatory authority to supervise the sector, the naming of a new board for the electricity utility, and the adoption of a revised mechanism to consider bids. However, when the energy minister, Gebran Bassil, sent the draft law to parliament this week, those measures had been removed.

March 14 parliamentarians balked, demanding that the government resend the draft passed earlier by the council of ministers. Bassil and his Aounist partners replied that it was not up to the legislature to impose oversight conditions on the executive. However, they backtracked when Mikati, Jumblatt and Berri sided with March 14, accepting that Bassil should resubmit the original draft.

Some time ago I described Mikati as Lebanon’s very own dead man walking. To an extent I still believe that is true. The prime minister’s margin of maneuver on a variety of essential national issues remains very slim, not least Lebanese cooperation with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. More ominously, Mikati continues to be a hostage to his community’s reservations about him. He has had to balance every decision because he is caught between Sunni outrage with Hezbollah and the Syrian repression on the one side, and his own alliance with the party and with President Bashar al-Assad on the other.

Economically, the prime minister is equally constrained. He faces a veritable minefield when it comes to macroeconomic reform. One might observe that the Hariri government didn’t greatly progress on that front either. However, Mikati presides over a government of “one color,” or so they say, therefore theoretically better apt to endorse a broad reform plan than an unwieldy government of national unity.

But one has to be fair. The shortcomings of Mikati’s government are not very different from those demonstrated by the government of Saad Hariri. Bearing in mind that no authority could have arrested the four Hezbollah suspects, the prime minister has sought as best he can to work with the STL, against the predictions of many, present company included, that he would toe Hezbollah’s line. Mikati has also refused to sanction retribution against the previous majority through political appointments, rebuffing Aoun’s demand that Ashraf Rifi and Wissam al-Hassan be removed at the Internal Security Forces.

Left largely unmentioned amid the discord within the government over the electricity expansion scheme is the core reason for the dispute: Mikati doubts Bassil’s integrity. A senior politician currently represented in the government told me months ago that Mikati did not want to return Bassil to the Energy Ministry, on the basis of disturbing information he had in his dossiers. Mikati was compelled to do so when the Syrians demanded that a government be formed quickly. A lack of trust alone explains why the compromise over the electricity plan involved breaking down payment into four installments and improving oversight and bidding methods.

The Aounists would complain that Berri and Jumblatt are hardly entitled to take the moral high ground against Bassil. However, Mikati has no reason to be defensive, and has fought hard when he needed to fight. Even on Lebanon’s funding of the STL, the prime minister has shown a readiness to go all the way. He has used Hezbollah’s and Aoun’s helplessness to bring the cabinet down (since Syria would say no) as leverage to push his agenda forward.

The maneuvering within the Mikati government is more interesting than initially forecast by March 14. It was plain early on that Berri and Jumblatt would work with Mikati to clip Aoun’s wings. Interestingly, Hezbollah has responded to this with some restraint. The party avoided leaning too heavily in Aoun’s direction on the electricity plan, and has not followed the general’s lead on appointments. Instead, Hezbollah is employing its power sparingly to protect its “red lines.” The party has embarrassed Mikati when it comes to the STL, but until now has also remained relatively quiet over funding, leading some to believe, perhaps naively, that a compromise will be found.

The calculation of March 14 has been that Mikati is the weakest link in the government, therefore that he is the man the coalition must target. Maybe. The prime minister is indeed vulnerable to decisive shifts in the Sunni mood, and events in Syria remain unpredictable. However, Mikati has one advantage. Efforts to undermine him risk being interpreted by many Lebanese as just another way of undermining the country’s wellbeing, therefore their own. Mikati also happens to be in Lebanon and his rival, Hariri, abroad, which could be to the advantage of the prime minister in public opinion.

If Mikati is working to reinforce the authority of the state and to contain Lebanon’s growing economic problems, then it would be irresponsible not to support him. That is even more imperative if the situation in Syria deteriorates further. Whether March 14 likes it or not, in a potential struggle between the partisans of a sovereign state and Hezbollah to fill a possible post-Syria Lebanese vacuum, Mikati will be the man representing the state. And if his performance in recent weeks is anything to go by, he will do so with conviction.

Maronites pray to a dispiriting trinity

2011-09-22T14:03:00.001+03:00

This week the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Anbaa, citing sources at the Maronite patriarchate in Bkirki, reported that relations between France and Patriarch Beshara Rai had deteriorated. Rai apparently sought an apology from the French ambassador, Denis Pietton, for having declared last week that his government was “disappointed” with Rai’s recent comments in Paris, and would seek clarification.

If Pietton is spared a surplus of patriarchal masses, he may come out of the dispute a happy man. However, on Wednesday the ambassador visited Rai, suggesting that their disagreement had been contained. Yet it is extraordinary how Rai has made a splendid mess of things in just a few weeks, damaging his own reputation, and with it that of his church. The patriarch gains nothing by picking fights with foreign envoys who represent countries rather important for Lebanon.

Someone should remind Rai that France has a large contingent in UNIFIL, the United Nations force in southern Lebanon. It is well within Paris’ remit to ask for clarifications from the patriarch when the position he has taken on Hezbollah’s weapons – indicating that the party should hold on to them until the Arab-Israeli conflict ends – directly contradicts Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1701.

Rai’s gaffes are a manifestation of a larger problem among Maronites. The community, through what is traditionally regarded as its three senior representatives – Rai, but also President Michel Sleiman and the army commander, Jean Kahwagi – has had pitifully little to add to the intellectual, spiritual, political, and communal revitalization of a state that Maronites played so large a role in creating and sustaining. The community is not alone in this shortcoming, but it can offer considerably more for holding the crucial balance between Sunnis and Shiites, who find themselves at profound odds over Lebanon’s future.

Ironically, the one individual who once tried his best to define a particular idea of Lebanon is former Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir. Today, he finds himself routinely abused by followers of Michael Aoun and those pleased with Rai’s political innovations.

That Sfeir made his share of mistakes is undeniable. In the end he presided over a divided community, which sullied his reputation. However, he was always a reluctant political actor, unlike his successor, and it was inevitable that he would be sucked under by his fragmented flock. In the years when he stood alone against Syrian hegemony, with Samir Geagea in prison and Aoun in exile, Sfeir never wavered from a simple message: After a devastating 15-year war, Lebanon was entitled to genuine sovereignty – meaning that Syria had to withdraw its army from the country. And such a Lebanon could only survive through coexistence between its religious communities.

Sfeir’s critics would do well to recall that this vision ended up informing theirs. In the early postwar years when Aoun’s partisans were being beaten and arrested, they sought Sfeir’s protection and sanction – though they had humiliated the patriarch during their general’s failed campaign against the Lebanese Forces. Aoun and Geagea, who contributed more than anyone to the Christians’ ruin, still retain the loyalty of a majority in the community. But the old man who echoed an earlier generation of Maronites, for whom Lebanon personified communal self-confidence, achievement, and an often idealized form of transcendental appeal, now finds himself compared unfavorably to the careerist who followed him.

Rai has long tied his fate closely to that of Michel Sleiman, which should be a cause for nervousness. To borrow from Vernon Walters’ remarks about former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, Sleiman is a man who couldn’t make waves if he fell out of a boat. There was high promise the day he was inaugurated, and that’s where the promise stayed. No one can say with a straight face that Sleiman has turned himself into a credible alternative to Aoun or Geagea. His influence among Maronites is anemic, and yet he has not succeeded in incarnating the state either – particularly for those in the Muslim communities. When confronted, he has consistently backed down, playing it safe and preserving his measured gains. As a friend once put it, Sleiman came to office with the ambition of being an ex-president, and it’s difficult to disagree with so decapitating a phrase.

As for Kahwagi, he is now in the throes of that great malady of army commanders: an expectation that he will become Lebanon’s next president. The stark measure of the Maronites’ political poverty these days is that when it is not their clergymen fiddling with politics, it is their soldiers. Since Emile Lahoud was selected in 1998, it seems the presidency is reserved for anyone wearing a cocked beret. And so we Lebanese for years have had to endure army commanders who have meticulously, almost seismographically, assessed prevailing power relationships in the country before taking their every decision – and who have relatively frequently faced the dilemma of having to choose between their own welfare and that of the institution they lead.

Absent from this triumvirate is any farsightedness as to the destiny of the Maronites. Rai still seeks to unify the community, with a meeting planned for this Friday in Bkirki, even as he has provoked the greatest internal upheaval that Maronites have experienced since Aoun and Geagea fought each other more than two decades ago. Sleiman is marching stalwartly toward a legacy whose greater part threatens to be inconsequence. And Kahwagi will remain a hostage to the house of many mansions that is Lebanon’s army – over which Hezbollah has inordinate influence, arousing the suspicion of Sunnis – incapable of transforming its battalions into the valid basis of a national project.

Maronites have the institutions, talent, and memory to reverse their community’s steady mediocrization. What they don’t have is the self-assurance required to reinvent themselves in the shadow of their demographic decline. Rai, Aoun, Sleiman, perhaps even Kahwagi, have adjusted to this decline by accommodating the view that their minority has a stake in allying itself with other minorities, no matter how repressive these may be. Such is the path to communal suicide.

Figureheads fall, but security forces are the test of change

2011-09-22T07:38:00.000+03:00

When the time comes to gauge the democratic success or failure of this year's Arab uprisings, one criterion will be more important than most others: whether the instruments of repression of the old regimes - above all the security services, the army and the police - have been replaced by qualitatively different institutions that respect the rule of law, civilian oversight and human rights.

While much differentiates the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria, all have one thing in common in that protesters have sought, or are seeking, to overthrow authoritarian regimes backed up by networks of militarised intimidation. These vary from country to country, which is why organs of repression are often valuable, indeed essential, windows through which to examine a country's leadership, sociology and political culture.

In Libya, for example, the security services were in the hands of the Qaddafi family and their tribal allies. Favoured units of the Libyan army were controlled by the leader's sons and were designed to act as a praetorian guard, while other components of the armed forces were left to languish. A similar situation holds in Yemen, where family members of President Ali Abdullah Saleh are in charge of vital military and security branches responsible for regime survival.

In Syria, since the 1960s and 1970s, authority over the military and security agencies has reflected and sustained the rise of the minority Alawite community. At the same time, the Assad regime has used Alawite security and military appointments (like those in the Baath Party) to keep a headlock on the system, guarding against coups and uprisings, and as a source of communal patronage.

A different situation exists in Egypt, where the military and security agencies embody the timeless power of the state. When protesters demanded that President Hosni Mubarak leave office last January, the military command was able to engineer the removal of the man without hastening the collapse of the security edifice that he had supervised. Unlike Syria, Libya and Yemen, where a leader's departure means the departure of those who managed repression, in Egypt security institutions have remained more or less intact. Mr Mubarak was expendable, as was the former head of military intelligence, Gen Omar Suleiman. And they were expendable precisely to ensure the survival of the system they had dominated.

Central to the motives of those who have taken to the streets throughout the Arab world is an aspiration for freedom and democracy. However, the long-term health of the countries involved and the realisation of their revolutionary potential, will be defined by how repression is exercised after the autocrats. If one repressive order merely replaces another, then little will have been achieved.

What is happening in the societies that have rid themselves of oppressive leaders, or are trying to, is not necessarily encouraging. In Libya, tribalism, regionalism and the divide between Islamists and secularists (and the myriad splits within those categories) make for a devilish brew. The new order will be shaped by the de facto power balance as the war seemingly begins winding down. Who prevails could be determined by the tense interaction between the disparate elements in the transitional authority. This is not ideal for building up accountable security institutions.

In Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has exploited the rifts within the ranks of those who opposed Mr Mubarak to assert its will. Recently, the council expanded the emergency powers introduced during the Mubarak years, representing a significant setback to the high expectations last January. Far from following the lead of the Egyptian government, the supreme council is calling the shots. The most organised opposition force, the Muslim Brotherhood, has also increasingly sided with the military as elections loom, probably in November. All this makes it considerably more difficult to reform, let alone overhaul, the vast Egyptian security apparatus.

In contrast, Syria's President Bashar Al Assad and his acolytes know there is no middle ground allowing their regime to change while also staying in place. This explains the ferocity with which the Alawite-dominated security services, praetorian divisions of the Syrian army, and irregular militias have crushed mostly peaceful demonstrations. They perceive the challenge to Assad rule as an existential threat to their community, an attitude the regime has hardened to quash all political alternatives. The question is: even if Mr Al Assad is ousted, the more this would this occur? A negotiated exit will more likely facilitate a process placing the security apparatus under civilian authority than if the Assads are removed through violence.

Stalemate in Syria, or in Yemen and in Bahrain, where the standoff of several months ago has not been resolved, is upheld by built-in mechanisms of equilibrium. It is a truism that armed deterrence in most Arab states is primarily directed inward. Arab armies and security services rarely win foreign wars, but until recently they were quite adept at stifling domestic discontent. The regimes did this by balancing interests and patronage, blending coercion with co-optation, neutralising political or social forces apt to undermine the status quo, and securing regional acquiescence for their policies.

Some observers prefer to use the term "Arab revolutions" over "Arab Spring" when describing the transformations in the Middle East and North Africa today. But revolutions frequently devour their own, substituting fresh oppressive orders for those that existed before. Overcoming that foul predisposition will be the benchmark of success in a new Arab world, not vague rhetoric about the allures of liberty.

Jumblatt’s Sunni disposition

2011-09-16T06:16:00.000+03:00

To write that Walid Jumblatt is shifting political direction is a conspicuous waste of perfectly good words. Changeability, we know, is par for the course with the Druze leader. And Jumblatt’s acrobatics, particularly his efforts to curry favor with a Sunni community from which he has been alienated for months, were always expected.

Jumblatt’s most recent foray into defending the Sunnis was his response to Patriarch Bechara al-Rai, who publicly warned last week that the Muslim Brotherhood might win out in Syria if the regime of President Bashar al-Assad were to fall. Jumblatt described Rai’s statement as “inaccurate,” and was rewarded with condemnation from the patriarch’s partisans. Jumblatt was right, but to compensate for his disapproval and preserve good relations with the Maronites, he prepared a warm Druze welcome for Rai on his tour of the North Metn and the Chouf, and will reportedly visit the patriarch soon.

There are two principal reasons why Jumblatt cannot endure lasting Sunni resentment: Lebanese parliamentary elections and the Druze leader’s view of the long-term interests of his community.

Jumblatt’s influence is closely tied in to the size of his bloc in parliament. The Druze leader knows well that his political representation is exaggerated, given his community’s scant numbers. What lets Jumblatt punch above his weight is the current election law, which allows him to dominate in the Chouf and Aley districts, and at one time gave him a significant say in Baabda. However, in the Chouf Sunnis form a third of the electorate (with the Druze and Maronites each making up a third), and in 2009 they were numerically the largest single voting bloc. For Jumblatt to have his way in the district, since he can never be sure of how the recalcitrant Christians will lean, he must guarantee that Sunnis stay on his side.

That’s not all. Two of Jumblatt’s closest Druze collaborators, the parliamentarians and ministers Ghazi al-Aridi and Wael Abu Faour, were essentially elected in 2009 on Sunni-dominated lists backed by Saad al-Hariri: Aridi in Beirut and Abu Faour in the West Bekaa. Were Jumblatt to enter the 2013 elections on bad terms with Hariri and the Sunnis, the pair would almost certainly fail to be re-elected, representing a major setback for the Druze leader.

In parallel, between now and election time expect Jumblatt to lead efforts to undermine an election law based on proportionality. Such a law would threaten the Druze leader’s tight hold on the mountains. Nor will he be alone. Lebanese election laws grant winning candidate lists all the seats in voting districts. This system favors major politicians and factions—who in turn perpetuate the system.

Beyond elections, however, Jumblatt has long regarded it a strategic necessity for the Druze to be allied with the Sunnis in Lebanon and outside. Quite sensibly, he has grasped that a minority like his only gains by tying itself to the community forming a majority in the Arab world. This partly explains Jumblatt’s reflexive recourse to Arab nationalist symbolism, but also his persistent efforts to situate his actions, when possible, in the context of an Arab consensus. During the postwar period, and until 2004, he managed to maneuver with ease because Saudi Arabia and Syria, and with them most Arab states, were on the same wavelength in Lebanon.

More prosaically, Jumblatt is well aware that a close affiliation with the Sunnis opens doors to Saudi Arabia and the vast resources allowing the Druze leader to exercise his power of patronage. Jumblatt sounded appropriately glum earlier this year when he announced that the Saudis had severed their ties with him following his break with Saad al-Hariri. That was indeed costly—and yet Jumblatt had positioned himself at the crossroads of a Syrian-Saudi deal to neutralize the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, urging Hariri to endorse such an arrangement. In the end it was to no avail.

For now Jumblatt is inching closer to the Sunnis, but he’s not there yet. He faces several obstacles. The first is that Syria and Hezbollah are not pleased with his realignment, so that his relations with both have noticeably cooled. However, the Druze leader will not permit a full-fledged divorce. The notion that he will return to March 14 seems almost absurd. Jumblatt aims to mend fences with Hariri specifically, but he has no interest in fully reintegrating a cumbersome coalition that would limit his latitude to pursue his own agenda.

Moreover, Jumblatt holds the balance of power in parliament. He can hand the majority either to March 14 or to Hezbollah and the Aounists depending on how his bloc votes. The Druze leader will not soon surrender such leverage, which requires him to play March 14 and the Hezbollah-Aoun alliance off against one another.

A second obstacle for Jumblatt is the uncertainty surrounding Saad al-Hariri’s intentions. Rumors have been swirling about the former prime minister’s political future, his cash flow problems and even his relations with Saudi Arabia. Whatever the truth, Hariri has been perplexingly absent for months, probably because the Saudis don’t want him in Beirut during the Syrian uprising. This makes planning difficult for his allies—and for Jumblatt, who needs to discern better where Hariri stands before preparing his next move.

It’s a sign of how bad things are in Syria that Walid Jumblatt is slipping out from the Assads’ embrace while still relatively confident that he is not a top priority for assassination. Nonetheless, the Druze leader must be careful. The Assads don’t forgive or forget. Jumblatt will pursue his balancing act with the precipice rarely far away.

Lebanon’s troublesome political priest

2011-09-15T13:49:00.000+03:00

If reverse had multiple gears, Beshara Rai would be shifting into fourth about now. Since his return from France last weekend, the Maronite patriarch has tried to qualify what he said during his trip, while blaming everyone but himself for his irresponsible statements. With bad grace (pun intended), on Tuesday Rai declared that his remarks had been taken out of context, probably intentionally.

Here was a useful insight into the man – a readiness to resort to self-pity and demagoguery when cornered. In recent days Rai and his bishops have said much that is incoherent to detract from the patriarch’s endorsement of the Assad regime, his implicit willingness to accept Hezbollah’s weapons until the Palestinian issue is resolved, and his fear that if the Syrian opposition were to win, this would profit Sunni Islamists. We’ve been told that Rai was misunderstood; that the partial rendition of his words did not reflect his real views; that the Maronite Church’s decisions are taken after deep reflection, unlike the superficiality of those criticizing the patriarch, and so on.

Perhaps Rai was misunderstood, but if so, he was misunderstood by those on all sides of the political spectrum. The followers of Michel Aoun and Sleiman Franjieh have rushed to the patriarch’s defense, as have members of Hezbollah. What can we conclude from this ecclesiastical mess, beyond its immediate political ramifications?

Rai’s problems greatly transcend the split between March 14 and March 8 and the Aounists. The patriarch did alienate the supporters of March 14, but in that sense he was only as guilty as his predecessor, Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, who took positions that clearly leaned toward those of March 14. True, Sfeir’s opinions were more attuned to the traditional outlook of the Maronite Church – its support for national sovereignty, its rejection of armed groups outside the control of the state, and, specifically, its hostility to Syrian hegemony over Lebanon. But it is equally true that before stepping down, Sfeir presided over a hopelessly divided community, and that this was a black mark against him as far as the Vatican was concerned.

Then again, Rai took only six months to wreak havoc. For those without strong political affiliations, the patriarch sinned in three ways. He foolishly and unnecessarily split the Maronites, when one of his principal duties is to unify them; he gratuitously insulted the Sunnis by presuming that all they could produce was Islamists; and he implicated his community in a foreign crisis when he was under no obligation to do so. Worse, he placed Maronites on the side of a Syrian regime that has been engaged in barbaric repression.

It is astonishing that Rai could not have foreseen where his comments would lead. The patriarch is notoriously verbose, and plainly prefers his politics to religion. However, surveying the wreckage of the last few days, we can conclude that he is really not particularly good at politics. Rai was reportedly told by French President Nicolas Sarkozy that President Bashar Assad is finished, therefore that Rai had to prepare Christians for the aftermath. That the patriarch persisted in bolstering the Assads after that exchange was a sign of hubris from a denizen of the sacristy who yearns for the governor’s chair.

Some outraged Maronites are seeking to persuade Rome to push for Rai’s resignation. That’s no solution. It would only throw the Maronite Church into disarray while resolving none of its outstanding problems. And who would replace the patriarch? The upper echelons of the clergy form a vale of mediocrity and moral wretchedness. Rai may be contentious, but he’s better than most of his bishops – as condensed a compilation of shifty characters as one is likely to uncover.

Instead, Rome must press Rai to play less politics and reform his institution. The Maronite Church is being torn apart by greed and petty factionalism. What it needs urgently is an injection of less politicized, credible, younger clergy to replace the gargoyles in office. If Rai and his acolytes looked closely, they would see that while Maronites will go through the motions of their religion and fiercely defend its traditions, when one digs deeper, they also have profound contempt for the corruptions of their higher clerics. The alacrity with which many of Rai’s coreligionists turned against him was a sign that the church does not enjoy unlimited credit among the faithful.

If the patriarch wants to rebuild his reputation, the only way for him to do so is to convince believers that he can rejuvenate their church. That means giving Maronites confidence in the future rather than playing on their fears of political and demographic decline. It means thinking in the long term how the community can coexist peacefully with both Sunnis and Shiites, not one or the other. It means ensuring that the vast network of institutions that the church controls – schools, universities, social institutions, sporting clubs and much more – serves those ends. And it means defending pluralism, liberty, democracy and openness, for only a society imbued with such rights and values can safeguard the Christian presence in Lebanon.

For believers, and even unbelievers, a church that sustains a butcher is a contradiction. What kind of sordid religious establishment is it that takes the side of a despot against his own people? How can Rai pontificate about Christian love and communion, then with a straight face warn of the potential dangers if the Assads are removed? If he’s unsure, then the patriarch has the option of remaining silent. Rai mentioned the fate of Iraq’s Christians as a path to be avoided by Maronites. Unfortunately, that community is suffering today precisely because it was identified with Saddam Hussein’s brutality. Is that the outcome Rai seeks for Syria’s Christians, or Lebanon’s?

Beshara Rai would do himself and us all an immense favor by pausing, taking a break from politics, and exploiting his ubiquity by reconnecting with, and listening to, his Maronite base. Maronites expect more from their church than a patriarch who divides them and bishops who despoil them. In this time of uncertainty, the church, for better or worse, has a role to play in communal renewal. Rai may not be the best man to lead that effort, but it’s his job to begin trying.

Arab League's indecision in Syria is a chronic condition

2011-09-15T07:26:00.000+03:00

It showed the lack of esteem that Syria's President Bashar Al Assad has for the Arab League that he initially postponed the visit of the body's secretary general, Nabil El Arabi, to Damascus before the two men met last Saturday. And the Arab League's dwindling confidence in itself was revealed in the initiative Mr El Arabi brought with him that remains wrapped in ambiguity.

This is hardly surprising. For months the Arab League was silent about events in Syria, even as the death toll was rising. Nor have Arab governments been duped by the official line of the Syrian regime that what is occurring is an insurgency by armed groups. Several weeks ago, in a move condemned by Damascus since it implicitly cast doubt on its depiction of the crisis, the Arab League issued a statement calling for an end to the bloodshed in Syria.

Arab ambivalence was again on display after the Assad-Arabi meeting. The secretary general declared that the Arab League had proposed to take a prominent role in national reconciliation talks between the government and the opposition. This bolstered Mr Al Assad's purported endeavour to initiate internal dialogue. However, it also placed the opposition on the same level as the regime, while edging the Arab states into a process that Mr Al Assad wants to control alone.

Mr El Arabi also took the Syrian regime's side by expressing the Arab League's rejection of "outside intervention" in Syrian affairs. However, upon returning to Cairo, the secretary general issued a strong statement saying that he had transmitted the League's desire that "immediate steps" be taken to end the violence - a demand that Arab foreign ministers reiterated on Tuesday - and for "guarantees [allowing] a transfer that will achieve the aspirations of the Syrian people for change and reform and protection".

For now, words are about all Mr El Arabi has to achieve his aims. The continuing upheavals in the Arab world have crippled the Arab League's effectiveness, never great in the first place. In recent years Arab summits have mainly been bad-tempered talk shops. Major challenges such as the Iraq conflict, the Lebanese crisis, Palestinian-Israeli relations, and the convulsions in Sudan and Somalia, to list only a few, have underscored collective Arab failures.

And yet it hasn't always been sound and fury signifying nothing. In rare moments, Arab states have been able to take far-reaching decisions. For example, in 2002, at an Arab summit in Beirut, Arab heads of state passed what became known as the Arab Peace Initiative - to this day an even-handed foundation for negotiations to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. The initiative was re-endorsed at the 2007 Riyadh summit, after which the Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers travelled to Israel to persuade officials to take the offer seriously. The Israelis never did, a mistake that has only helped exacerbate the country's political isolation internationally.

Much earlier, at the Fez summit of 1982, Arab states had shown a willingness to be conciliatory. Despite a recent war in Lebanon, they endorsed the Fahd Plan at the request of the Reagan administration. The initiative was subsequently surpassed by more ambitious ones, yet it did support United Nations Security Council "guarantees of peace between all states of the region", by which it also meant Israel.

At summits in Riyadh and Cairo in 1976, the Arab states wrestled with the ruinous civil war in Lebanon. The two gatherings, held at an interval of almost two weeks, mandated the deployment of an Arab Deterrence Force to put an end to the Lebanese fighting. In the short term this curtailed the violence, even if the ADF soon became a cover for Syrian hegemony, laying the groundwork for new hostilities.

The Arab League's influence has always been a function of what is known in regional jargon as the "the politics of Arab axes" - the ebb and flow of rivalry between the region's major states and their allies. At the same time, the organisation's secretariat has been a defining instrument of Egyptian foreign policy - of the League's seven secretary generals, only one, Chedli Klibi, was not Egyptian. At the end of the Cold War, the Arab League was shaped principally by the interaction between Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria. The three states emerged victorious from the 1991 war over Kuwait, their policies in broad harmony with the interests of the United States, the dominant superpower.

As a result, throughout the 1990s and until 9/11 there was relative consensus among the Arab countries. Syria received an Arab green light to rule over Lebanon, and enjoyed Arab approval as it negotiated with Israel. Egypt became the obligatory Arab mediator between Arabs and Israelis, while benefiting from Washington's largesse. And Saudi Arabia felt secure thanks to the American security umbrella protecting the kingdom, the containment of Iraq, Arab-Israeli peace talks and the stability this brought to the Gulf and the Levant.

The comparative tranquillity was swept away by the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The invasion, Iran's growing sway in Baghdad and regionally, the aftershocks of Syria's involuntary withdrawal from Lebanon, Tehran's and Damascus' rising leverage over Palestinian affairs through Hamas, America's drawdown in the Middle East, and more undermined the equilibrium. The ensuing divisions had not been overcome when popular revolts this year further shattered the hitherto unshakable pillars of Arab immovability.

Sympathise with Mr El Arabi. If he speaks for Arab unanimity, then expect only whispers. Syria is a predicament, among others, in which the secretary general's margin of manoeuvre is narrow. The Arab League is adrift because so too is the Arab world. But more refreshing, the organisation, customarily a temple of regional stalemate, is now compelled to reinvent itself. Otherwise it risks lasting irrelevance.

Patriarch Rai, you’re wrong

2011-09-09T22:12:00.000+03:00

Perhaps I’m alone, but in recent months almost no significant remark from Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai has failed to disappoint me.

Rai’s first priority always was to renew the Maronite Church, and no doubt he deserves more time to carry forward such a thorny project. The patriarch has certainly seemed more lively to his coreligionists than his predecessor, thanks to his energy and ubiquity. But he has also tended to pronounce far too much, especially on Lebanon’s public affairs, betraying a profound yearning to be a political player.

Soon after taking office in March, Rai announced that he intended to travel to Syria. In that way he hoped to signal a clean break with Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir. However, he didn’t have to take such a hasty step, one soon made irrelevant by the outbreak of the Syrian intifada, when he had more urgent priorities at home. It looked like the patriarch was currying favor with Damascus, and nothing that Rai has done since then has shown this interpretation to be false.

More disturbing, in May the patriarch made an ill-advised statement on the Taif Accord. After meeting an Aounist parliamentarian, Neematallah Abi Nasr, Rai observed that the Taif “has flaws and needs to be reformed.” He went on to insist that the powers of the president should be expanded. “We are with the equal division of shares between Christians and Muslims, but we do not support it when the president has no power to make a decision,” he declared.

Evidently, it didn’t occur to the patriarch that before Taif can be reformed, the accord needs to be implemented in full, otherwise its amendment will appear selective. And for it to be implemented in full requires ending sectarian quotas in parliament, therefore the 50-50 ratio of Christians to Muslims. In condemning Taif, all Rai did was articulate Christian, particularly Maronite, resentment toward the current state of confessional affairs in Lebanon. He would be much more useful injecting self-confidence into his flock and finding ways for Christians to reach a mutually advantageous modus vivendi with the Muslim majority, in that way arresting their demographic decline.

This week Rai blundered again, with perfectly reckless comments on the uprising in Syria, offered up in separate contexts. The cycle started when the patriarch, deploying high ecclesiastical ambiguity while on a visit to Paris, wondered in a France 24 interview, “Are we heading in Syria toward a Sunni-Alawite civil war? This, then, is a genocide and not democracy and reform. Are we heading toward a division of Syria into sectarian mini-states?” Rai then warned the French, “What we are asking of the international community and France is not to rush into resolutions that strive to change regimes.”

The essence of the message was relatively clear. Rai fears for Syria’s Christians, who have been well treated under the Alawite-dominated regime of Bashar al-Assad, therefore it is best for everyone to think twice before pushing for the Syrian president’s removal. But what did Rai mean by “genocide”? Genocide by whom? Of whom? If he was warning in absolute terms against the consequence of civil war, then it’s true that such a catastrophe would lead to horrifying bloodshed, which may well resemble a genocide of all Syrians.

However, that interpretation merits two responses. Until now it is principally the Assad regime that has brought together all the ingredients that may plunge Syria into civil war, not the opposition, which by and large has stuck to its strategy of peaceful protest. It is also the regime that, if its authority begins slipping, will consider reverting to a strategy of establishing an Alawite mini-state to guarantee its survival. In other words, maintaining the Assads in power is likely to trigger the very consequences that Rai fears most.

Secondly, when Rai mentions “genocide,” are we sure that deep down he actually means a genocide of all Syrians—Alawites, Sunnis, Christians, Druze and what have you? Genocide usually involves a specific ethnic group, and even if the patriarch might defend himself by saying that he’s worried for everyone, the tortuous structure of his phrasing, his resort to a sectarian argument, suggests a more focused anxiety. What appears mainly to alarm Rai—quite understandably, if narrowly—is that war in Syria may lead to a Christian genocide. After all, who do patriarchs ever lose sleep over but their own?

According to a tweet by Antoine Haddad of the Democratic Renewal Movement, in his meeting with Rai, French President Nicolas Sarkozy cautioned that Bashar al-Assad was finished and that Christians had to prepare for such an outcome and work toward the establishment of a civil state. If that exchange indeed took place, it reveals French impatience with the patriarch, and it is also excellent advice.

A Lebanese cleric has no business publicly telling the international community how it must address the Syrian situation. It is even less Rai’s business to implicitly take the side of a despot against his own people—a people that the Assads and their security organs have been slaughtering for months. No need to mention Christian doctrine here and the injunction against killing, because the patriarch apparently operates on an elevated plane of strategic contemplation. And it is not Rai’s business to send a message to those protesting in Syria that Christians and their religious representatives sympathize with the tyrant—let alone to commit all Maronites to such a controversial stance—because if anything will harm the future Christian presence in Syria if the Assads fall, and in Lebanon, it is such a perception.

For the Christians to survive in the Middle East, they must be on the side of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Only democracy and genuinely civil orders, to borrow from Sarkozy, can truly protect them—not a sordid game of alliances with other minorities, particularly repressive minorities. Bolstering butchers will spell the end for the Christians, and Bechara Rai should know that by now.

Kamal Salibi, crossroads to the man

2011-09-08T23:36:00.000+03:00

In 2009, at the death of David Dodge, a former president of the American University of Beirut, I wrote that one might be tempted to portray his passing as a page turned in the American educational and moral enterprise in the Middle East, which began during the mid-19th century. However, I disagreed with such an assessment. To me, the page was turned when Malcolm Kerr, another AUB president, was assassinated in January 1984. That dark moment more truly marked the end of a dialogue between Western humanism and the culture of the Arab world, mediated by optimistic Yankee Protestants.

But I hadn’t yet met Kamal Salibi. His death last week at the age of 82 represented a new closing chapter in Beirut’s declining relationship with the objective rationalism and confidence that AUB’s founders sought to instill, which found its highest expression in that complex, contradictory Anglican of Greek Orthodox origin from the mountain town of Bhamdoun. For those fortunate enough to have met Salibi, what shone through was a Protestant ideal: modesty, invariably more pronounced for contrasting with Lebanese grandiloquence.

I met Salibi late in his life, through a mutual friend, a protege and student of his named Makram Rabah. Salibi’s Ras Beirut apartment was functional, a nice painting here and there, but otherwise without superfluities, a time machine of sorts back to the 1960s. At the appropriate moment, it was the end of the day, he served scotch, enjoying his momentary release to vice. His latest discovery was Facebook, affirming that Salibi, though he did not go out at night, was the most sociable of men. Yet he could readily turn a decapitating phrase against those he disliked, or an insightful compliment, when required.

I hadn’t read all of Salibi’s books when meeting him, but somehow he didn’t make you feel that this mattered. However, his “The Modern History of Lebanon” had long been a valuable companion in my research, as had his “Crossroads to Civil War: Lebanon 1958-1976,” even though the work was soon overwhelmed by the monumental conflict whose origins it aspired to chronicle. However, it was “A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered” that has proven to be Salibi’s most influential book, and rightly so.

The essence of the book is modesty, and I would add Protestant modesty. That’s because Salibi approaches his subject from the standpoint of an individual belonging to a minority maneuvering among more forceful, numerically larger minorities. A friend once noted, citing the sociologist Ahmad Beydoun, that the better historians of Lebanon were those from marginal religious sects, including Salibi, but also Edmond Rabbath and Zein Zein, who could take their distance from a narrative shaped principally by Maronites and Sunnis during the years when modern Lebanon was finding its feet.

“A House of Many Mansions” is a product of modesty because it is constructed around the most modest of urges: to doubt. Salibi’s mission is to examine critically the contending views of Lebanese history – essentially the historical myths that Lebanon’s communities have adopted to assert their own prevailing ideologies against the other Lebanese communities. It is a subtle, devastating book, fundamentally out of joint with what so many Lebanese take as truth.

The German political scientist Theodor Hanf astutely remarked near the end of Lebanon’s war that “A House of Many Mansions” could potentially serve as a core post-war reference for Lebanese students, a unifying text in a country deeply divided by historical interpretation. Yet that quality is why Salibi’s book was never made, and never will be made, to serve such a worthy objective. Lebanon is not a country where communities are partial to the truth when it clashes with their self-image, let alone with tradition perpetuating a stalemate in power.

That could be one explanation for Salibi’s intriguing love-hate relationship with the Maronites. In one sense, he was doubly predisposed and indisposed toward the Maronites. Predisposed as a historian, for he could not avoid being fascinated by a community whose rise in the 19th and 20th centuries was, in many respects, that of Lebanon itself – a community that became the life-force of the modern Lebanese state; and predisposed as a Protestant, and through his ancestors as a Greek Orthodox, for Salibi could not help but be enthralled by Maronite affirmation as a stand-in for wider Christian affirmation, therefore partly Protestant affirmation, which his own minority within a minority could never replicate.

And yet fascination can also carry with it revulsion. Salibi was conceivably doubly indisposed to the Maronites from his vantage point as a Protestant and a Greek Orthodox, for what is the story of the weaker Christian sects than a yearning to strike back against what they deem to be Maronite hegemony? So that even as Salibi wrote about the Maronites, and published a monograph on their historians, his most potent weapon against the weight of Maronite historiography (and not only Maronite historiography) was skepticism, expressed through a reconsideration of Lebanese history.

Toward the end Salibi seemed torn between despair with what he identified as a Christian, and specifically a Maronite, impulse for self-destruction, and anxiety with how such communal suicide might adversely affect the Christian presence in the Arab world. In an interview with Now Lebanon in 2007, he lamented that Christians “are so bent on destroying themselves … [I]t seems that they enjoy the lack of charity more than they enjoy life for some reason.”

Now here was a forgotten word: charity. Charity, modesty, temperance, diligence, all virtues that this unique professor had learned from those sturdy American Protestants of yesteryear, in whose educational institution he had thrived, now erected by Salibi as barriers against a Lebanon, in particular a Christian Lebanon, that seemed to be going in a different direction than what he would have preferred. But this Christian Lebanon, concurrently attractive and repulsive, vital and reckless, was a profound part of Kamal Salibi, a man of myriad personalities, a house of many mansions.

Sleeping with the killers

2011-09-02T06:22:00.000+03:00

On Wednesday, Al-Jazeera English broadcast an interesting report based on documents discovered at the headquarters of Libya’s intelligence services. The documents allegedly show that a former US State Department official, David Welch, and a US congressman, Dennis Kucinich, tried to help the Libyan regime at the height of the NATO military campaign in which Washington played a major role.

Welch is said to have proffered advice to Libyan interlocutors in Cairo on how the Qaddafi regime might win the propaganda war against NATO—in part by providing information to the United States on Al-Qaeda. He also purportedly proposed that Moammar al-Qaddafi step aside without relinquishing all power. Kucinich supposedly asked for information allowing him to lobby fellow members of Congress to suspend their support for the Libyan National Transitional Council and end NATO air strikes. More egregiously, Kucinich also sought information that would both help in the defense of Seif al-Islam Qaddafi if he were brought before the International Criminal Court and permit a lawsuit against NATO and the United States.

The veracity of the documents remains to be proven. Kucinich issued a statement to The Atlantic magazine’s website that passed for a denial. However, read it more carefully and you’ll see that its wording and elisions appear to lend some credence to the accusation. At the time of this writing, Welch, now employed by the Bechtel Corporation, had not responded to Al-Jazeera requests for clarification.

If the documents are truthful, then what is surprising is that we should be surprised. The two Americans may have taken a position in contradiction with the policies of the Obama administration. However, Welch is a private citizen (even if what he may have said could raise legal issues in the United States) and Kucinich opposed Washington’s line on Libya from the start. The stronger argument against their actions is the moral one. Why were the men explicitly or implicitly cozying up to an absolute ruler who had promised to hunt down his opponents like rats and murder them? Unfortunately, Welch and Kucinich may have too ready an answer.

Their answer would probably be that everybody in the West at one time or another was hungry for a piece of Libyan largesse, political and financial, including senior officials in the United States and Europe. That Welch and Kucinich, relatively small fry in the decades-long minuet with Libya, may have done so after the start of the revolt in Libya is virtually matched in its odiousness by Western companies such as Narus, Amesys or VASTech. These companies provided the Qaddafi regime with equipment and training to eavesdrop on the Internet and mobile telephone conversations of ordinary Libyans.

Not so long ago, Qaddafi was loudly feted in Western capitals. American government officials pursued him with almost as much assiduity as their European counterparts. Libyan money and oil contracts were heady incentives, but also the perception that the Qaddafi regime was a valuable ally in the battle against Al-Qaeda. The sense of urgency in the United Kingdom a few years ago to resolve the case of Abdel-Baset al-Megrahi, the accused Lockerbie bomber, was one example of a sympathetic disposition. Qaddafi and his mad brood were just as generously pampered and humored in Paris and Rome.

Strangely, less affluent Arab autocrats also had oversized leverage in Western capitals. Do we really need to mention the warm receptions reserved for Bashar al-Assad on his visits to France or Spain, for instance, even though the Syrian president’s security services continued to engage in massive repression at home, and Damascus was then inciting violence in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon. Syria’s export of instability seemed to work especially well when Barack Obama advocated a dialogue with Assad upon taking office, hoping this would ease the way toward a negotiated settlement with Israel.

Arab despots, from the Gulf States to North Africa, have grown adept at playing foreign politicians or companies against one another. If a company refuses to deal with a foul regime on the grounds that it abuses human rights, others will pick up the slack. The same applies in politics. There is always a leader willing to fill the vacuum of relations with a dictatorship when this can bring strategic advantage.

Certain benchmarks will help us determine the success of the Arab intifadas, and shame is one of them. If foreign officials and companies, particularly from Western countries where democracy and human rights carry weight, can be shamed into taking a stand against autocrats, this will mean that something has been gained. Such conduct will be imperfectly applied and provoke rancor among those who refuse to let pass political and economic opportunities. But politicians and firms who get into bed with autocrats should at least be forced to do so out in the open, in the glare of ignominy.

Shame still packs a punch. Remember that fawning Vogue photo shoot of Asma al-Assad, wife to the Syrian president? It was greased by the international public relations firm Brown Lloyd James. But when Mr. Assad began slaughtering his own people, the magazine was self-conscious enough to take the piece down. Click here to enjoy the outcome of embarrassment in pursuing tainted riches.

A familiar road to nowhere as good intentions falter in Syria

2011-09-01T23:29:00.000+03:00

In his influential book Deliver Us From Evil, published in 2000, the British author William Shawcross chronicled the frequent disconnect between the ambitions of the international community to resolve political and humanitarian crises in the 1990s and the shortcomings of implementation. From Cambodia to Bosnia to Somalia to Rwanda and beyond, prominent states acting through the United Nations often promised too much and did too little.

In Syria, both the Arab world and the broader international community have promised little and, until recently, done even less. For five months the regime of President Bashar Al Assad has been slaughtering its population at will, with over 2,000 people said to have been killed, although the figure does not include the disappeared who are feared dead. Many thousands more have been arrested. The UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recently observed that a fact-finding mission had "found a pattern of human rights violations that constitutes widespread or systematic attacks against the civilian population, which may amount to crimes against humanity" under the statute of the International Criminal Court.

Despite this, only last weekend did the Arab League criticise Damascus. The organisation issued a statement calling for an end to the bloodshed, and then announced that its secretary general, Nabil Al Arabi, would meet Mr Al Assad and discuss an Arab initiative, whose details were not revealed. Syria's delegate reacted furiously to the statement, which apparently had not been agreed beforehand, saying his government would behave as if it never had taken place.

Syria's isolation is growing. Turkey's president, Abdullah Gul, remarked at the weekend that his government had "lost confidence" in the Assad regime. Even stalwart Syrian allies Iran and Hizbollah have advised Mr Al Assad to consider his people's demands. However, for months the United Nations Security Council has failed to agree to a resolution on Syria because of Russian and Chinese opposition. Moscow is now drafting a text of its own, largely because its position has become untenable amid the bloodletting. However, the Russians also hope to offset a stronger resolution that the Europeans and Americans have been preparing that imposes sanctions on Syria.

Syria is a black mark on international integrity and foresight. Whether by action or omission, Arab countries, Turkey, the United States and European powers all handed Mr Al Assad the latitude he needed to crush the revolt. Only when he could not do so did we hear rumbles of discontent, accompanied by further dallying. The Turkish government, which is reluctant to push too hard because of fears of a Syrian vacuum, recently gave Mr Al Assad valuable additional time to effect reforms; he pursued his repression. Washington remains wary of Syria, preferring to allow the Arabs and Turkey to take the lead. The Russians have just issued a two-week extension to Mr Al Assad to introduce change. Expect more death, arrests and disillusionment.

Shawcross described how extensively crises during the 1990s reduced the vigour with which states managed subsequent crises, stretching the limited resources of the UN. The conflict in Libya, like the convulsions in other Arab countries, prompted many governments to steer clear of involvement in Syria. However, it was always plain that the carnage could have dire repercussions on the Middle East if not dealt with at the right moment. That's why Arab and international concern with Syria today may be too little too late.

There never was a doubt that the Assad regime would respond to the Syrian intifada by employing sectarian reflexes. Whatever the laudable goals of the multi-sectarian opposition, Syria's leadership from the start saw the demonstrations as a threat to Alawite primacy, and conducted itself accordingly. For instance, when countering the protests in Deraa last March, the Assads swiftly deployed praetorian units under the control of Maher Al Assad, the president's brother.

To many Alawites, what is taking place is a zero-sum game. For a minority that has ruled Syria since 1966 - and with an even harsher hand since 1970 - Alawite domination is not something over which there can be compromise. If those in the streets triumph, Mr Al Assad and his loyalists know, they will dismantle the current structure of power. Alawites view the intifada in existential terms, blind to the fact that their ferocity only threatens their community's existence more.

There was no excuse for outside actors to ignore how such dynamics might destabilise Syria's neighbours. Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon all have mixed ethnic-religious societies. The violence visited on Syrians by the Assads has the potential to bring on sectarian civil war that spreads beyond the country's borders, undermining communal relations elsewhere. If that does not pose a threat to international peace and security, nothing does. And yet the Arab League, the United Nations, the United States and the Europeans have all failed to devise a political plan to bring about a peaceful transition in Damascus.

The silence surrounding the Arab proposal, as well as the haste with which it was put together, are worrisome. At the best of times the Arab League is a futile body. With Mr Al Assad having lost all legitimacy and the near impossibility that Syria will return to where it was six months ago, there is no alternative to the president's exit. However, Arab regimes, sturdy agents of sovereignty, are by tradition hostile to backing changes of leadership. Yet unless this happens, the situation in Syria will fester and prospects for a generalised conflict will rise.

That the situation in Syria is taking centre stage in regional anxieties is a good thing. But it may not be enough. Having waited for too long to act, without a cohesive strategy, and divided by clashing agendas, foreign actors are ill placed to contain the Syrian emergency. That means more devastation until the rotting fruit of Assad rule falls.

Divided, Mikati’s cabinet stands

2011-08-26T22:15:00.000+03:00

Sometimes a surfeit of optimism looks suspiciously like self-delusion. As the masonry came crashing down around Najib Mikati’s head on Wednesday, it was disquieting to hear the prime minister declare that all had gone well at the cabinet meeting held in Beiteddine.

There is electricity in the air over Gebran Bassil’s $1.2 billion energy bill, with Aounist ministers threatening to boycott government sessions unless, and until, the legislation is approved. In the latest development, Walid Jumblatt announced that his three ministers would reject such approval unless comments on the bill from his National Struggle Front were taken into consideration.

There is more to this than Jumblatt’s and Michel Aoun’s longstanding loathing for each other. Look more closely at the dynamics of the majority now in control of Lebanon and you will see that Aoun also has deep-seated problems with Mikati and Nabih Berri, the speaker of parliament. While this will limit his margin of maneuver in the coming months, it will also allow the general to precipitate crises that ultimately strengthen him with his Christian electorate.

During the government-formation process, the prime minister did not hide from his political interlocutors that he had problems with returning Bassil to the Energy Ministry, for reasons of integrity. He was forced to back down when President Bashar al-Assad made it clear last June that he wanted a government in Beirut as soon as possible. But the reality is that Mikati is no keener to see the minister have access to a substantial sum of money than Jumblatt is, even if the Druze leader is an old hand at patronage politics and pie-sharing, so that his salvo against Aoun must be viewed in that light as well.

As for Berri, his resentment has long been building against Aoun, especially after the speaker lost the election in Jezzine in 2009 against candidates backed by the general. There have been rumors circulating among parliamentarians that Berri is looking for openings to strike back at Aoun by helping to undercut the general’s legislative agenda. More profoundly, nothing unites Aoun with the speaker, just as nothing unites Aoun with Jumblatt: The general regards the two as prime beneficiaries of the early post-Taif system that he abominates, principally because French exile denied Aoun the worldly temptations and the political authority that he felt was his by right.

Pity Najib Mikati for being a prisoner of clashing interests impossible to reconcile. When he is not facing Michel Aoun itching for a fight, the prime minister is submitting to the humiliations of Hezbollah. Last week, Time magazine published an interview with one of the suspects indicted by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. It was no surprise to hear him say that the Lebanese authorities knew where he was, but would not arrest him. Mikati asked Hezbollah to deny the interview. This the party did, which in no way lessened the impact of the message: On the tribunal, the government does Hezbollah’s bidding.

One might almost say the same thing when it comes to domestic security. Marwan Charbel, the interior minister, continues to defend a statement he made on the day of the Antelias bombing, to the effect that the explosion was the outcome of a personal dispute. No one buys that story, and even less so Charbel’s protestations that he was not protecting Hezbollah. That’s because it took almost no time for the verbose minister to contradict himself, when he declared that the Time interview was “dangerous and targets Hezbollah.”

Charbel knew very well that the interview was intentionally set up by Hezbollah. If he could so brazenly misstate the facts about that matter, then we can be assured that he could do the same about the Antelias blast. Charbel may be the common property of Aoun and President Michel Sleiman, but the interests of both are parallel these days, and Aoun is the stronger of the two. As a result, the minister has no trouble emulating Aoun in being a Hezbollah buffer.

March 14 has repeatedly said that it intends to bring Mikati’s government down. There is something rather unsettling in that vow—a sense that a government only has relevance in the context of partisan fighting between the country’s political alignments. You have to wonder where the interests of the Lebanese come in.

Yet Mikati and his turbulent team have done nothing to prove the opposition wrong. Aoun will continue to ride roughshod over his partners in search of greater power to offset his debilitating envy; Hezbollah has missed few opportunities to disgrace the prime minister; Jumblatt has no stomach for Aoun, and is rethinking his rapport with Hezbollah; and Mikati is a bright mask on a squalid tragicomedy—powerless, unable to escape his predicament through resignation, a man tied to a tree receiving a steady pummeling.

This is a government inspiring groans, pretty much the same groans merited by its predecessors. Ignored in the egotistical thrusts and parries of the politicians is the Lebanese public—disgusted with what is going on, yet in large part responsible for giving their leaders so much leeway to act as they please. Mikati’s government is effectively stillborn, despite a useful achievement here and there. Unfortunately, putting it out of its misery may not necessarily bring better.

Arab Spring gives US a new chance in the Middle East

2011-08-25T23:31:00.000+03:00

Barack Obama has not faced the continuing revolutions in the Arab world with any passion. Rather, the US president has often behaved as if these were annoying intrusions into his domestic agenda. Yet change has come, and whether Mr Obama likes it or not this will alter Middle Eastern attitudes toward the United States.

Mr Obama has been lucky - not a bad thing for a politician. The president has avoided taking the lead amid regional convulsions, failing to exploit openings to Washington's advantage. He has not even outlined a strategy defining American interests and aims, beyond the generalities in his speech at the State Department last May. And yet the US administration has almost everywhere managed to fall on its two feet, with limited negative consequences. Those who predicted that the Arab Spring would be a disaster for the US have so far been proven wrong.

For a superpower that has spent 60 years claiming to be a sentinel of Middle Eastern stability, even stalemate, the record recently has been very different. Mr Obama helped push an old friend, Hosni Mubarak, out of office in Egypt. He has sought to midwife a new order in Yemen to replace that led by another partner, Ali Abdullah Saleh. He has blessed the removal of an ally in Tunisia, Zine Al Abedin bin Ali. He is demanding that Bashar Al Assad step down in Syria. And he has used the US military to help unseat Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. US support for the monarchy in Bahrain is the exception confirming the rule.

Mr Obama's paralysing caution has been a mitigating factor. The president has tried, though not very convincingly, to play up the fact that the US, as the world's leading democracy, has a desire to see democracy triumph elsewhere.

However, American abandonment of comrades in Egypt and Tunisia came only when there was no other choice. In Libya, Mr Obama seemed perpetually to move one step forward and two back in sponsoring Nato military action. In Syria it took the president almost six months of slaughter by the regime to take a stance against Mr Assad - though this would have been justified, even essential, much sooner, on both moral and political grounds.

Perception is important in politics. Mr Obama could have accumulated valuable cards by being out ahead of the transformations in the region. Ideas are equally important in this period of Arab upheaval, yet Washington has not been good at using its democratic ideals as a means of influencing what comes next in the Middle East and North Africa.

But perceptions can cut both ways and the reality is that, disturbing contradictions aside, in the public imagination the Americans today are increasingly perceived as having chosen the side of insurgent populations against overbearing despots.

Better still, some of Washington's most ardent foes are finding themselves on the wrong side of the Arab revolts. This is principally because of the situation in Syria. Iran, and more openly its Lebanese client Hizbollah, have openly endorsed Mr Assad, on the grounds that he is a bulwark of the "resistance axis" against Israel.

There have been unsubstantiated reports of Iranians and Hizbollah militants being active in the Syrian repression. Even if this is untrue it doesn't matter, for many Syrian protesters and their sympathisers believe it to be. The reputation of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's secretary general, has been battered. Syrians have mocked him in satirical sketches, accusing him of hypocritically cheering only those democratic movements that serve his political and sectarian objectives.

Oddly enough, for once the US has come out ahead in the reputation game. At this late stage it is easier to overlook initial American misgivings about popular movements than it is to ignore the fact that Sheikh Nasrallah and Iran are explicitly aligned with a murderous leadership in Damascus. Perhaps that's because they sold themselves for so long as partisans of the deprived, against the indignities imposed by the West, and by the US and Israel in particular. How they must have groaned last week when the Syrian army bombed a Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia.

Does this mean that America will suddenly be liked by Arabs, reversing the glut of polls affirming that it is loathed in the Middle East? Not necessarily. Washington's affection for Israel will remain a drag on its popularity. But popularity isn't everything, and we appear to be entering into a new phase with respect to the potential for change in the American role. We can hope that Mr Obama and his successors will show more imagination than he has demonstrated so far in exploiting the rich possibilities of the moment.

Freed of the accusation that it invariably supports authoritarianism in Arab states, Washington will have greater latitude to assist in bringing about democratic outcomes. This will permit it to end the unhealthy relationships of the past decades, in which American authority rested on leaders who had largely lost their legitimacy by stifling liberty and economic development.

The Middle East is still far from where it needs to be, but for once we can contemplate a radical overhaul that carries societies forward toward authentic pluralism and more balanced prosperity.

Mr Obama has not quite absorbed that the Arab Spring is the best thing that has happened to the US in a long time. In his fixation with properly managing each new revolutionary instalment, the president has missed the inherent magic of what is taking place.

He must catch on quickly, so that the man whose personal triumph embodied the inspiring, the thrilling, can ambitiously redefine America's long-term interaction with an Arab world in thrilling flux.

Hezbollah faces its trial with errors

2011-08-25T10:11:00.000+03:00

For a party that repeats how unconcerned it is with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Hezbollah spends much time showing how concerned it is with the tribunal. The latest installment was a press conference Tuesday by Muhammad Raad, the head of the party’s parliamentary bloc, in which he stated that the United States and Israel had drafted the institution’s recently released indictment.

Hezbollah’s concern is understandable. The indictment appeared to confirm many of the technical details (with some differences) of what emerged in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary last year. Using the methodology of “co-location,” investigators examined concentric rings of cellular telephone usage, and in that way identified the four Hezbollah suspects. However, one thing the indictment did not mention, but that the CBC program did, is that the Lebanese police officer Wissam Eid, in analyzing telecommunications before, during, and after the Hariri assassination, found that “[e]verything connected, however elliptically, to land lines inside Hezbollah’s Great Prophet Hospital in South Beirut, a sector of the city entirely controlled by the Party of God.”

It is unclear if the special tribunal intends to pursue that line of investigation, or even if it has material to substantiate the CBC’s assertion. However, Hezbollah is well aware that the published indictment does not tell the whole story, therefore that it is best not to let its guard down. Hence Raad’s press conference, only a few days after the party arranged an interview between one of the suspects and an unidentified correspondent of Time magazine.

Hezbollah subsequently denied that any such meeting had taken place, alleging that it was all part of the plot directed against the party. However, there have been persistent reports in Beirut that the denial came at the urgent request of Najib Mikati. It didn’t take much for the prime minister to realize that he and his government’s credibility would disintegrate after the suspect claimed that the “Lebanese authorities know where I live, and if they wanted to arrest me they would have done it a long time ago. Simply, they cannot.”

Taking willful blindness to new heights, Interior Minister Marwan Charbel, whose every remark provokes dubiousness and consternation, avowed that the Time interview was “dangerous and targets Hezbollah.” Charbel, like Mikati, knows that the Time interview happened, was Hezbollah’s doing, and served to reiterate how the party controls state policy when it comes to the tribunal.

Hezbollah’s discomfort aside, as Lebanese we are entitled to begin asking whether there will be further indictments. There have been numerous unconfirmed leaks to that effect, and even members of prosecutor Daniel Bellemare’s team have said in private settings that the indictment process would come in stages. It may be useless to speculate, but we can appreciate why Hezbollah is so nervous. The party may conceivably find itself holding the gun alone in what was, plainly, a much vaster conspiracy that also involved Syrians and other Lebanese – to borrow from the reports of United Nations investigators Peter Fitzgerald, Detlev Mehlis, and Serge Brammertz.

The Time interview only reaffirmed how rigidly Hezbollah has addressed the special tribunal, highlighting implicit contradictions in its defense strategy. The suspect in question said things that may potentially jar with the party’s line on the institution. Of course, he echoed Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s view that the tribunal had issued false accusations so as to discredit Hezbollah, when the real culprits were in Israel. However, a sincere declaration of innocence, as the suspect engaged in and which Hezbollah orchestrated, would appear to have been unnecessary had the tribunal been an Israeli project. Does a victim of political intrigue really need to prove his bona fides?

And second, the suspect revealed that he had an alibi proving that he was not at the crime scene. He recalled, “I was even surprised when I heard the news that Hariri was assassinated, and I stopped with a friend of mine in one of the coffee shops to watch it on TV.” The most ardent Hezbollah partisan could legitimately ask why the party doesn’t allow the suspect and his comrade to speak to the special tribunal by satellite link-up. If they can establish that the suspect was far from the hotel district, that would seriously undermine Bellemare’s case.

Hezbollah will not authorize any such statements, because that would mean recognizing the tribunal’s authority. And yet such a fear did not prevent the party from permitting the Lebanese authorities to pass on to Bellemare its evidence pointing to purported Israeli responsibility for the Hariri killing. And why must Hezbollah engage in speech after speech and press conference after press conference, and lately organize an encounter between a suspect and a journalist, if it is so apparent that the party has been framed? Not only is this a case of protesting too much, we now have a suspect saying that he has ways of confirming that he, therefore Hezbollah, is blameless. This is never a good argument when you want to convince the public that you gain by steering clear of a judicial process. If Hezbollah can legally destroy a fraudulent indictment, then surely the party gains by taking the tribunal up on its challenge and providing information to that end.

Hezbollah may have boxed itself into a corner on the special tribunal. What worries the party is that not everything was disclosed in the indictment. As more data is gradually uncovered by the prosecution, the party will have to respond publicly with a shifting defense that must remain convincing. If telephone conversations lead to the Great Prophet Hospital, even Muhammad Raad may be speechless.

The maestro of envy

2011-08-12T08:22:00.000+03:00

Among the more dismal spectacles in an already dismal political landscape is that of Michel Aoun talking about Syria.

In the past two weeks, since the assault on Hama, Aoun has played down the Syrian repression. This week he observed that Syria was calm and advised the Syrian people to make their demands known through the ballot box—in a country celebrated for its democratic standards. Aoun also invited President Bashar al-Assad’s opponents to come to their senses and essentially embrace his rule.

It’s been clear for many years that as far back as his abortive “war of liberation” against Syria, the general’s devouring fantasy was to become Lebanon’s president. That plan failed time and again, despite Aoun’s acrobatics and his alliance with Hezbollah against the majority that emerged from the 2005 elections. Today, Aoun pursues a lesser objective, namely to guarantee that his children, with their spouses, inherit his political mantle. The boy of modest means from Haret Hreik has made good, and aspires to bequeath a dynasty.

In that respect, Aoun is no worse, or better, than most other Lebanese political players. However, only the foolish fail to see through his ambition, regarding him as something of a reformer. Look closely at the laws the general is advocating—even ask his allies in government what they think—and they will laugh and quietly tell you that the initiatives Aoun has packaged as “reform” are merely accelerated means of catching up for all those years when he was exiled by Syria, incapable of securing the benefits accruing to most of his peers.

Perhaps that’s why the general’s comments on Syria are so grating. The supreme egoist carried Lebanon into a ferocious conflict against the Syrian army in 1989 purportedly in defense of freedom—the same freedom sought by Syrians now—causing massive numbers of casualties. Aoun’s subsequent decision to turn his guns on the Lebanese Forces killed many more, accelerating the Christian exodus from Lebanon. Despite the wreckage, the general’s followers still regard him as a communal champion and have never held him to account.

Now, Aoun has not only reconciled with the Syrian regime—he is not only among its most vocal, and willfully blind, partisans—on top of that he and many of his supporters will blithely tell you that the Assad regime, which has done more harm to Christian influence in Lebanon than just about anyone, is in reality a protector of Christians.

Yet hold a snap parliamentary election in Mount Lebanon, the Christian heartland, and Aoun would probably do as well as he did in 2009, if not better. The man has been as acrobatic as Walid Jumblatt in his reversals—has transformed contradiction, demagoguery and hypocrisy into powerful weapons—and all the while he has managed to retain a solid core of Christian admirers. Aoun may embody the very worst features of the Lebanese political class that his supporters once claimed to oppose, but nowadays they are willing to overlook all that because deep down, their principle difficulty with the political system was envy. They wanted what everyone else had.

You have to admire Aoun’s cynicism. He always grasped that envy was the key to the hearts and minds of many Christians after the war ended. It was envy directed against the national reconstruction effort, from which many Christians, rightly or wrongly, felt excluded; envy directed against Taif, which took power away from the Maronite president and placed it in a cabinet led by a Sunni prime minister; and envy directed against mainstream politicians who had cut a deal with the Syrians, thereby monopolizing the instruments of patronage while Aoun rotted in exile (and Samir Geagea in prison).

When Aoun returned home he continued to manipulate envy. The old resentments were still alive, to which the general added fresh ones. He directed his flock’s envy against the March 14 coalition, which had denied him the presidency; against Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, whose loathing of Aoun was written all over his mitre; against President Michel Sleiman, who occupied the office that Aoun coveted. Envy was everywhere. Aoun became a maestro of acrimony, issuing bilious declarations, deploying libel and imprecation, his body language radiating annoyance as he insinuated that he and his own were entitled to much more than they were getting.

The more ridiculous Aoun’s performances became, the more ridiculous his devotees appeared for applauding his every asinine semi-colon. And yet many have remained with him, so that those of us who wrote Aoun off too readily must admit that we were partly wrong. The man has lost ground, without question, offers nothing, is arguably the most destructive politician the Christians have had in decades, has no vision worth mentioning, and embodies, as do others, the brutish pursuit of naked self-interest. But his survival is ensured for as long as he can feed off the flaws and fears of his community.

Aoun’s durability tells us much, too much, about the Christians. The general is not alone in meriting condemnation, and the fact that the community’s principal leaders are figures who became prominent during the war years is hardly a badge of honor. But not a few Christians want Aoun nonetheless. As they follow him through his labyrinth of self-serving policies, anti-democratic diatribes and corrosive envies, it is beyond time for them to ask if Michel Aoun offers them a better future, or more disenchantment.

Assad's overreach pushes former allies into a corner

2011-08-11T11:25:00.000+03:00

Hama was one massacre too many for Syria's President Bashar Al Assad. In recent days, Turkey, the GCC and the Arab League have condemned Damascus, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain recalling their ambassadors. It didn't need to be that way. Yet Syria's regime, awash in brutality, has not lacked in hubris either.

For months Syrian security forces have been slaughtering protesters at will, with no response from the Arab world. So Mr Al Assad could be forgiven for imagining that he might get away with his assault on Hama, on the eve of Ramadan. But as the Syrian president has shown on several occasions, in Lebanon above all, he frequently sins by gambling a round too many.

GCC silence on Syria was a consequence mainly of Saudi reluctance to favour the Syrian revolt, because of concern that the shockwaves might destabilise the kingdom. With crises in Yemen and Bahrain as well as an uncertain transformation in Egypt, the Saudis had less time to focus on Syria. This attitude became untenable when the Syrian death toll rose and Mr Al Assad proved unable to crush his foes.

The Hama massacre put the Saudis on the spot. The kingdom could not continue to avert its eyes from what many in the region now view as the repression of a Sunni majority by Syria's Alawite minority. For King Abdullah, such a perception threatened to undermine his unofficial role as paramount Sunni figurehead in the Arab world and champion of the faith.

There is also the symbolism of Hama. In the interpretation of many Islamists, the carnage in the city three decades ago under Hafez Al Assad marked a key moment in the snuffing out of a Sunni revival in Syria. To allow another such calamity today was difficult for Riyadh, both symbolically and because it might have led to radicalisation among Islamists that could ultimately blow back against the Saudis themselves.

More prosaically, the Saudis and their Gulf partners, like Turkey, have plainly concluded that the policies pursued by the Assad regime are not only failing, they are heightening regional volatility in dangerous ways. The Syrian leader was quietly given time and room to put his house in order, but couldn't deliver. This now permits Saudi Arabia to review its options and look at how it might use Mr Al Assad's exit to its own advantage.

Turkey has taken a more roundabout path to the same conclusion. Before the Turkish elections, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was highly critical of the Assad regime's behaviour, particularly after the military campaign in Idlib province that forced thousands of Syrians to flee into Turkey. At the same time the Turks are said to have proposed that the defence minister, Gen Ali Habib, an Alawite, head a transitional committee after Mr Al Assad's departure. This was turned down by the Assads. The general's dismissal on Monday, a day before Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu arrived in Damascus to deliver a rebuke to the Syrian president, could have been an irrevocable rejection of the Turkish plan - a way of saying that it's either the Assads or chaos.

Now Turkey is bracing for the repercussions. Mr Davutoglu left Damascus moderately optimistic that Mr Al Assad would implement reforms, but the absence of specifics was worrying. Thousands of Syrian refugees remain in Turkey and the Assad regime's tactics make it more likely that Syria will dissolve into ethnic-sectarian conflict. Fragmentation might lead to de facto autonomy for Syria's Kurds, which could affect Turkey's Kurdish community. Moreover, in the event of civil war, Alawites in Turkey's Hatay province might demand intervention on behalf of their Syrian brethren.

With the regional doors slamming shut, the options are narrowing for Mr Al Assad. There is no military answer to his regime's problems. Even the method the Syrians have traditionally adopted to protect themselves, namely wreaking havoc in their neighbourhood to negotiate advantageous resolutions, has been virtually neutralised. Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki has backed the Assad regime, fearing the emergence of a Sunni-dominated Syria to Iraq's west; while Lebanon, a perennial outlet for Syrian power games, is governed by a coalition sympathetic to Mr Al Assad. Syria can convey limited warnings through both countries, but cannot readily subvert their civil peace.

The Assads also benefit from Iranian assistance in their bid to stay in power. Yet even Tehran and its Lebanese ally Hizbollah appear to be preparing for a post-Assad Syria. According to a recent news story in France's Le Figaro, Hizbollah has moved its arsenal of weapons hidden in Syria back to Lebanese soil. It is doubtful that the party will provoke a war with Israel to earn the Assad regime breathing space, or take measures against the Sunnis that lead to sectarian strife in Lebanon. Hizbollah will not commit suicide for the Assads.

If all looks bleak for Mr Al Assad and his illegitimacy as president is beyond question, one thing is equally true: there is no clear transition plan for Syria. Unless the Alawites can be divided and induced to abandon the Assads, they will pursue their panic-stricken scheme of suppression as a step toward communal survival. Now is the time for diplomacy to chip away at the Syrian regime's resilience. The hard part will be to avert a sectarian war, the Assads' last bullet.

We need talking heads, the Lebanese way

2011-08-11T09:53:00.000+03:00

In an interview with Al-Akhbar Wednesday, Samir Geagea, the head of the Lebanese Forces, described Druze leader Walid Jumblatt as the “Sergeant Shultz” of Lebanese politics. In the old television series Hogan’s Heroes, set in a prisoner of war camp in Germany, Shultz was the guard who perennially caught the prisoners engaging in illicit activity, but who, after a bribe or threat, would assure them of his silence: “I see nothing, nothing,” was his catchphrase.

It’s true, Jumblatt has an uncanny gift for willfully forgetting his acrobatic turnarounds. However, one thing the Druze leader has consistently sought to do in recent months is advance internal dialogue to avert discord over the myriad issues dividing the Lebanese. And that comes from his ability to see clearly what lies ahead for Lebanon, particularly what is least reassuring.

What is least reassuring today in the country is the potential for blowback from the ongoing repression in Syria. The regime of President Bashar Assad is doubtless in its death throes. However, these can be drawn out and wreak havoc if the Assads decide to bring their foul temple down on the heads of their countrymen and others. Unfortunately, Lebanon is getting increasingly sucked into this Syrian maelstrom, to its detriment.

This is not an easy situation for the Lebanese to manage. Lebanon is still a place, in theory at least, that guarantees free expression. And what is more meritorious of expression than solidarity with the Syrian people in their struggle against a consortium of criminals that has been butchering them for five months? If Assad rule has a saving grace, it has eluded almost everyone for four decades. On Monday I, too, participated in the gathering at Martyrs Square in support of the Syrian intifada. While such events rarely achieve much, it is essential, particularly for the Lebanese, to take an ethical stance on Syria while reminding several pro-Assad Lebanese parties, who have regularly assaulted anti-Assad demonstrators, that their intimidation will fail.

At the same time, however, Lebanon’s politicians should be careful when using Syrian events to feed their domestic disputes. One’s stomach churns when hearing the parliamentarian Michel Aoun declare that Syrians must resort to the ballot box to articulate their demands, and must regain their senses by embracing their autocrat. Aoun would be pitiable if he believed such drivel, and mendacious if he did not. But what the general says has repercussions, both in Lebanon and Syria, and can only damage communal ties.

The same holds for Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general. The self-described champion of the downtrodden was the first to side with the Assads against the downtrodden in Syria. His excuse was that if the Syrian regime went, the resistance axis would suffer a mortal blow. Here was a nice way of saying that Hezbollah’s political survival depends on the suffering of the Syrian people. For many Lebanese Sunnis, whose Syrian coreligionists make up the majority now suffering, this statement was taken as a declaration of war.

By the same token, when Saad Hariri comes to the defense of the inhabitants of Hama, a move both laudable and overdue, he must yet be conscious of how this will be perceived by his Lebanese rivals. For many, the former prime minister was making a bid for the loyalty of his Sunni brethren in Syria after the Assads’ downfall, as well as looking to undermine Prime Minister Najib Mikati among his own communal followers. It’s too much to ask of Aoun, Nasrallah and Hariri to avoid politics, but when their statements have a deep impact on sectarian perceptions, in the shadow of what may become a full-fledged sectarian confrontation in Syria, then they must beware.

Here is a proposal that will sound absurd today, as Hariri and Nasrallah remain irreconcilably divided over just about everything. But it is necessary, given the deterioration in Syria and the possibility that the Assads will provoke an armed conflict with devastating consequences for Lebanon, that the two leading Lebanese Sunni and Shiite representatives open channels to one another, and very soon.

As I have argued before, these channels can remain secret and be maintained through trusted aides of both leaders. They need not cover at first more than limited measures required to stabilize conditions on the ground. However, they must also be flexible enough to later be expanded if necessary. A Hariri-Nasrallah exchange would not be a substitute for a broader national dialogue, nor should it become one; but it must be conceived in a medium-term timeframe, because Hezbollah will need such a conduit before long if the Assad regime falls and the party finds itself facing circumstances that compel it to reassess its status with its Lebanese partners.

From Hariri’s perspective, such a channel could create political openings while imposing few concessions. If Hezbollah suffers a major setback in Syria, the former prime minister could find himself with substantial leverage. A direct line to Hezbollah would allow Hariri to address several vital issues with Nasrallah, which could then serve as the basis of a national debate. No one has an advantage in allowing the party to panic and devastate Lebanon in order to protect its own autonomy in the aftermath of a change of regime in Damascus.

Hezbollah won’t disappear when the Assad edifice collapses. Nor is it wise to wait for that outcome before speaking with the party. That’s because Nasrallah may, rashly, feel that he first has to pave the way for such a conversation by improving his own leverage, through military means. It’s best to preempt such an alternative by initiating discussions now, and that applies as much to Hezbollah as to Hariri.

Sooner or later, Hariri and Nasrallah will have to sit and converse, as distasteful as this may be for either man. Lebanon’s fate is already being defined by Sunni-Shiite relations, which are far from satisfactory. Political reconciliation is not in the cards, but the disintegration of Syria is bringing that deadline closer. And when it comes we will need a mechanism to persuade Hezbollah, and more importantly the Shiite community, that its preservation of a massively armed, parallel mini-state is simply no longer tenable.

Hama becomes the new battleground of Lebanese politics

2011-08-04T11:26:00.000+03:00

A rare Arab politician who reacted publicly to the violence in the Syrian city of Hama last weekend was Saad Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister. That was odd. Since he left Lebanon some months ago, Mr Hariri has been almost invisible on the Lebanese scene. The intervention raised interesting questions about his motives, but more significantly about whether Lebanon might find itself sucked into a growing sectarian maelstrom in Syria.

In a statement on Sunday, Mr Hariri said that it was no longer possible to remain silent about Syrian events. He condemned "the massacre to which the Syrian city of Hama is being subjected, and the bloody killings in Homs, Idlib, Deir Al-Zor, Deraa and several Syrian towns and areas on the eve of the holy month of Ramadan". In a phrase reflecting lingering resentment, he noted that the inhabitants of Hama had "witnessed the worst massacre in the 1980s".

Several things might explain why Mr Hariri chose to speak up. In implicitly defending Syria's Sunnis against the exactions of the minority Alawite leadership, Lebanon's pre-eminent Sunni leader may have been making a bid for influence over his Syrian coreligionists. That game can be risky. It was because the Assad regime feared that Mr Hariri's father, Rafiq, might extend his financial and political sway to Syria's Sunnis that he was contained, frequently threatened, and eventually killed during the time that Damascus lorded over Lebanon.

For some observers, Mr Hariri may also have been signalling a change in Saudi attitudes toward President Bashar Al Assad. Riyadh, the former prime minister's political patron, has been quietly supportive of the Syrian regime, avoiding any criticism of the brutal crackdown against protesters. Some say the Saudis have also provided financial aid to keep Mr Al Assad afloat. It's not that they especially like the Syrian leader; rather, they have been keen to hold back the tide of revolt in the Arab world, fearing it might destabilise the kingdom.

There is a view circulating that Mr Hariri would not have said what he did had he not received a Saudi green light. Perhaps, but it is more probable that the former prime minister was pressing his political advantage in a zone of Saudi ambiguity. The Saudis have no stake in alienating Syria's Sunnis, and Mr Hariri helped in that regard. He, in turn, finally said what he had evaded saying until now, namely that he is with the Syrian revolution - sharply differentiating himself from the Hizbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who has praised Mr Al Assad.

There may also have been a domestic Lebanese calculation in Mr Hariri's declaration. The former prime minister has sought to marginalise Najib Miqati, his successor. Mr Miqati, who heads a government dominated by Hizbollah and other pro-Syrian groups, hails from the Sunni stronghold of Tripoli, where outrage at the fate of the Sunni brethren across the border is rising. By taking a critical position on Hama, Mr Hariri trapped Mr Miqati: if the prime minister turns against Syria, he will alienate his allies in government; if he fails to do so, he risks losing part of his political base.

Mr Hariri's ambitions notwithstanding, Lebanon is caught between bad alternatives with Syria. The former prime minister was well justified in expressing his anger with the killings in Hama and the deadly consequences of the muted reaction from Arab capitals. On moral grounds alone, it is no longer tolerable for Lebanese officials, above all those in Mr Miqati's cabinet, to engage in omerta about the Syrian slaughter because of political expediency.

At the same time, the Lebanese are divided when it comes to the Syrian crisis and much else. The prospect of prolonged sectarian confrontations in Syria has risen alarmingly. Such a calamity could have ominous repercussions for other countries with mixed societies in the region, including Lebanon, where Sunni-Shiite relations have worsened in recent years.

And yet on the basis of national interest, Lebanon must be on the right side of the Syrian revolution. Mr Al Assad's policy in the last four months has been folly. Higher levels of repression cannot conceivably resolve the metastasising challenges that his regime faces. The military operation to reconquer Hama may represent the end for Assad rule, even if this takes time. Unless Lebanon prepares for such an outcome sensibly, it could find itself on the wrong side of a new post-revolution leadership in Damascus, to its disadvantage.

The reality is that those in power in Beirut are virtually guaranteeing that there will be antagonism if Mr Al Assad goes. And it is not just Mr Miqati and his ministers. President Michel Suleiman has been ostrich-like when addressing matters Syrian, blandly echoing official Syrian rhetoric. The speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, has long been a Syrian echo chamber. Sensing the danger, particularly with regard to his own Druze community, Walid Jumblatt alone has tried to dodge and weave, counselling that the Syrian regime introduce true reform, even as he has endeavoured to avoid a rift with Mr Al Assad.

Mr Hariri may have no remedy for how to spare Lebanon the turbulence next door; indeed, his comments on Hama have surely made matters trickier. But the former prime minister is wagering that the regime in Damascus is not long for this world. If he's correct, Syrians in the streets will not soon forget his backing. However, ultimately it is state-to-state relations that count. And for now the Lebanese state still has all its eggs placed in the Assad basket.

Give Obama an ‘F’ in the Middle East

2011-08-04T10:05:00.000+03:00

We can learn a great deal about President Barack Obama’s approach to the Middle East from the contentious way that he handled the recent debt ceiling dispute with the U.S. Congress.

Earlier this year the administration warned Congress that the debt ceiling would be breached by August. Some weeks ago Obama entered into negotiations with congressional Republicans over a debt reduction package that would include raising taxes and slashing spending. Republicans rejected a tax increase and broke off talks, leaving Obama in limbo. The president then stood back and watched as Congress tried to devise a solution, reinserting himself into the process when this failed, fearing that a default would harm his re-election prospects. Ultimately, he brokered a deal that conceded quite a bit to the Republicans, angering many among his Democratic base.

Transpose those lessons to Obama’s actions today on a variety of Middle Eastern issues, and a pattern emerges. What we have is a president with undeniable intelligence, but without particularly strong convictions, whose preference for standing away from the fray often allows his political rivals to outmaneuver him, and who will raise expectations then come up short in carrying through on them. Obama is an opportunist ill adept at creating opportunities.

For instance, the president made many promises on the Palestinian-Israeli track during his election campaign and afterward, but never worked hard to finalize a solution. Maybe one was impossible, but it is remarkable how little Obama immersed himself personally in an undertaking that he accused his predecessor, President George W. Bush, of ignoring at his own peril. One person who promptly got the president’s measure was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He recently forced Obama onto his hind legs by mobilizing Congress against the president’s conditions for a final settlement between Israelis and Palestinians – conditions that merely reflected United Nations resolutions and the outcome of negotiations past.

Obama has been even worse at developing a broader strategy for the region. Some blame can be placed at the door of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but it is up to the White House to provide strategic guidance. There has been none, only management, usually inconsistent and tardy, of proliferating crises. What are the American priorities in the Middle East? No one knows. If it is containing Iran, then Obama’s accelerated drawdown in Iraq makes little sense; if it is protecting America’s access to oil, then the president has done a terrible job of managing the relationship with Saudi Arabia; if it is fighting terrorism, then why did Obama pursue a nation-building project in Afghanistan, which he then abandoned a year later after Osama bin Laden was assassinated? And if it is realizing Arab-Israeli peace, Obama has done far less than Bush, who could have done far more.

There is disarray in Washington on the Middle East because the president has repeatedly shown that, deep down, he just doesn’t want the region to draw his energies away from addressing America’s domestic priorities. That may be defensible in a narrow, parochial way, but it also has been catastrophic at a moment of far-reaching transformations in the Arab world and beyond.

Bush was often accused of being insular. By way of contrast, many have pointed to the current president’s cosmopolitan upbringing. When the Nobel Committee awarded Obama the peace prize in 2009, it was, partly, a sigh of relief that “someone like us” was back in the White House. In retrospect, Bush was the truer globalist, with a better grasp of the intricate relationship between American power and international commitment. There was much to criticize in Bush, but he never allowed a lack of ambition to dictate his agenda. Obama, in turn, has become a hostage to America’s financial constraints by failing to devise an integrated foreign policy plan to ensure that the country’s limited resources could be used to maximal advantage overseas.

The most troubling aspect of Obama’s performance has been his frigidness, exacerbated by indecision, when it comes to human freedom – the major issue of the day, and of the post-Cold War world. For a man supposed to embody the triumph of an African-American community long denied its freedom at home, Obama has been unusually reluctant to employ American power – military, ideological, and diplomatic – to assist those abroad denied their freedom. Whether it was his response to the demonstrations in Iran against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen Syria, or even Libya, where the U.S. is involved in the NATO campaign, the president has been evasive and hypocritical, incapable of transcending his innate analytical detachment to seize the high emotions of the moment and shape them to his benefit.

Morally, Obama’s behavior in the Middle East is objectionable; diplomatically, the president has been without inspiration, a leader who has prompted few genuinely profitable foreign policy openings. His three major speeches on the region – those in Ankara and Cairo, and his more recent effort at the State Department, in which he vowed that the United States would “promote reform across the region, and … support transitions to democracy” – have become embarrassing reminders of how little the president has achieved. Even Obama’s urge to engage in a dialogue with the Muslim world was vacant, the whim of a college professor, a meaningless exercise in self-flagellation – for who but the U.S. alone, the president plainly implied, was responsible for the misunderstanding with the Muslim world?

For a long time, the benchmark of foreign policy mediocrity was President Jimmy Carter’s administration. But Carter did manage some significant achievements, such as the Camp David treaty, the Panama Canal treaties, and SALT II. Three years into Barack Obama’s term, what legacy has he left, especially in the Middle East? He’s missed every major regional turning point, disappointing even ardent partisans. Obama may win re-election next year, but his is hardly a memorable presidency. It’s just that no one wants to admit it yet.

Ban Lebanon’s sillier laws

2011-07-29T10:03:00.000+03:00

The arrest this week of singer Zeid Hamdan for allegedly defaming President Michel Sleiman provides a good example of why Lebanese law can, now and again, be an inexhaustible fount of amusement.

Wednesday, Hamdan was taken into custody on orders from the interior minister, Marwan Charbel, before later being released. The reason was that in 2010 he recorded the music video of a tune he wrote in 2008, in which he sang, “General Sleiman, you’re a mean old man,” before inviting him to “Go home, General Sleiman.”

The remarkable promptness of our security agencies in detecting this year-old violence directed against the presidential office was only marginally less peculiar than Hamdan’s oddly respectful use of the word “general” in addressing our head of state. Genuine insolence would have dictated ignoring rank altogether and dangling Sleiman by his last name. But indeed nothing is more odious to Lebanese presidents than a request to go home. Even when constitutionally obligated to abide by that command, most prefer to linger.

This is not the first time that someone has been arrested for showing disrespect to Sleiman. A year ago, several supporters of Michel Aoun were detained for doing so on Facebook, before the incident petered out. We can expect the same thing with Hamdan. His arrest has sparked outrage; observers have decried the absence of freedom of speech; the courts may take up the matter, or pretend to; and in the end the dispute will slide off the radar, with no one punished.

In a sense such an ending is fitting. It would be an embarrassment to the president if a private citizen were to spend any lengthy period of time behind bars for saying unkind things about him. After all, many a politician has done so publicly, without paying a price. The third paragraph of the preamble of the constitution describes Lebanon as a democratic republic that is “based on respect for public liberties, especially freedom of opinion and belief, and respect for social justice and equality of rights.” That’s why it is neither sensible to apprehend people for expressing reservations with Sleiman, or anyone else, nor fair to sanction only those who are not politically connected.

There are many constraints in our “democratic republic,” both official and unspoken. One cannot attack “friendly” Arab countries, and for a long time one took a risk by criticizing Syria or Saudi Arabia publicly. Yet no policeman was dispatched to haul in Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, when he condemned Bahrain’s regime some months ago. And while the Lebanese can call politicians all sorts of names, and mock them on satirical programs, this is off limits when it involves Nasrallah himself, because his supporters might block the airport road and deploy toughs to register their discontent.

In 1998, Emile Lahoud was appointed president (the word “elected” seems so inappropriate), and for a moment naïve Lebanese imagined that humility and integrity had entered Baabda Palace. Usually bright people would enthusiastically mention the president’s simplicity, the fact that he drove his own car without bodyguards. Whether these stories were true, no one could affirm. However, soon military officers were calling newspapers to point out that they were better off not depicting the president in political cartoons. The purportedly simple man was apparently soaking with vanity.

And even when Lahoud was on the ropes in 2005, the intelligence services were still active in protecting the sacred icon. At the March 14 rally that year, a group of agents forced demonstrators to take down a large sign poking fun at the president. You had to admire their tenacity in the midst of a colossal, unfriendly rally, though they didn’t quite work up the nerve to arrest those slandering “sisterly Syria.”

Lebanon is not alone in restricting certain types of activities in ways that transcend social necessity to sometimes verge on the petty. In Singapore, for example, chewing gum is prohibited. In the United Kingdom, engaging in loud sex can earn you a citation for anti-social behavior. More seriously, in France it is illegal to deny the Holocaust. Each case is considerably different from the other, but all in their way reflect an intention of the state to enforce behavior deemed desirable, but where the law also jars with freedom of action and expression.

The same logic has gone into Lebanese laws to prevent offending this politician or country or that. As in Singapore, the UK or France, we can see that the urge to write into law specific conduct—including conduct deemed to be moral—extends the state’s power to domains that citizens are better off managing informally, between themselves. It is not up to the state to tell people what they must think and say, any more than it is to instruct them what to consume.

The impulse to over-legislate also rarely works well. You still cannot chew gum in Singapore. However, in the UK the wide dissemination of so-called anti-social behavior orders under previous governments provoked a negative backlash. The French Holocaust law has also sparked controversy, regardless of the vileness of Holocaust deniers.

Lebanon merits some credit. Hamdan’s tribulations will end up being a tempest in a teapot. It’s a relief that Lebanese still react with indignation to arrests like his. But Michel Sleiman would gain much by recommending that the law justifying them be banned altogether. Among his roles is safeguarding the constitution, and the preamble is clear about freedom of expression. Representatives of the state should stop wasting their time and ours by keeping on the books silly legislation that their self-respect prevents them from applying.

Pathos in Beirut, and new directions

2011-07-28T10:46:00.000+03:00

Pathos has become standard fare in Beirut lately. There was something pathetic in the bearing of Prime Minister Najib Mikati during his recent interview with CNN’s Richard Quest. And no less pathetic have been the assurances of March 14 figures that Saad Hariri will return to Beirut during the month of Ramadan.

With Mikati the pathos came in the prime minister’s unpersuasive effort to put a brave face on a bad situation. He told Quest that the four individuals indicted by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon were being actively sought by his government, even as the dubious reporter reminded him that Hezbollah’s secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, had vowed never to surrender the men. Mikati, too smart to engage in self-delusion, instead spread a pitiful illusion.

As for March 14, there was something just as wretched in the statements heralding Hariri’s homecoming. The former prime minister’s bloc and allies have been embarrassed by their leader’s disappearance and the contradictory explanations for this. Now Hariri is coming back and a zephyr of hope has kicked up in the coalition’s ranks, as no more explanations have to be offered.

Lebanon is being damaged by fragmentation in the political game. Nasrallah is flying the banner of defending our offshore gas fields – in search of new relevance for a party that has lost its meaning beyond being the armed sentinel of the Shiite sect, and that may soon be deprived of a valuable Syrian ally; Mikati is engaged in an elaborate act that all is dandy in Lebanon, to reverse waning confidence in stability; March 14 is all sound and fury, but signifying nothing as it fails to define an alternative to the vague program on the other side.

In this otherwise dispiriting context, there may yet be interesting things to watch for that will shape Lebanon’s political future. One, is whether the notion of a government of “one color” can provide a model of sorts, or alternatively will turn into a practice best avoided. Another, is whether such a “one-color” government will help spawn in positive ways a responsible opposition.

As much as a national-unity government is preferable given our present political predicament, because Lebanon needs a forum for dialogue in volatile times, that choice has not been the norm in modern Lebanon. One must differentiate between a representative government and a national-unity government: the first brings in a range of political forces who agree on the basics of policy, but does not necessarily integrate all major forces in the way that a national-unity government does. Lebanon has frequently had representative governments that were not national-unity governments.

It is too early to judge how the Mikati government will perform. However, the signs are not heartening when the prime minister finds himself on a different wavelength than Hassan Nasrallah, his far more powerful confederate. Oddly, this may not end up mattering much. Whatever the outcome for the government, success or failure, it may help bolster the view that a government of compatible political partners is better than a national-unity government.

Here’s why. If the Mikati government succeeds, then many Lebanese will, of course, applaud the experiment, seeing little to condemn in a politically compatible governing team. Conversely, if the government fails, then this is likely to discredit Mikati and those around him in their political capacity, but not at all the principle of a like-minded government. In other words, disappointment with the current ministers and their sponsors could create a backlash leading to the establishment of a substitute Cabinet of March 14 and its comrades.

Many Lebanese are tempted to favor compatible governments over national-unity governments. But that can only work if partisanship is kept in check and there is broad agreement over Lebanon’s social contract. When government actions and political and security appointments serve mainly to consolidate a politician’s or party’s interests at the expense of the majority, inside or outside government, then the advantages of compatibility break down.

And what of the opposition? March 14 has disappointed on a host of questions since Mikati took office. Tactically, the coalition has sought to highlight the flaws of the government, and the prime minister in particular. But it has been wishy-washy on sensitive issues, from addressing declining economic conditions, where the responsible position requires backing Mikati, to taking a stance on the Syrian situation, to providing a convincing counter-offer to the majority’s tendentious vision for a national dialogue. Demanding that Hezbollah’s weapons be included in a dialogue is natural, but this will not serve as the basis of serious discussion until March 14 corners the party by presenting a detailed project for disarmament that incorporates a political quid pro quo.

If we were to predict the popularity of March 14 in an election, what might we discover? Looking through a narrow but useful prism, if elections were held today in the different districts of Mount Lebanon, which accounts for a hefty number of parliamentarians, I would wager heavily that Michel Aoun would again win a lion’s share of seats. That’s not because the general is more popular than in 2009, but because his adversaries have lost ground. It was no coincidence that Michel Murr, an astute electoral operator, voted confidence in the Mikati government after his list’s disastrous results in the Metn two years ago. Expect him to negotiate with Aoun in 2013.

This should be a cautionary tale for March 14. A government of one color imposes obligations on an opposition. Even if the public has doubts about those in authority, that doesn’t mean it will side with their critics. Until now the opposition has appeared strident, devoid of ideas, and focused on provoking Mikati’s collapse. That’s not a serious strategy and it’s not working. It makes Mikati look good when his difficulties should expose how feeble the prime minister really is.

Lebanon's political bellwether turns away from Syria

2011-07-28T10:04:00.000+03:00

It is often said that where Walid Jumblatt goes, Lebanon follows. More accurately, where Lebanon is going, Mr Jumblatt goes first, his powers of anticipation having kept the leader of the country's Druze community politically onside and relevant for almost four decades.

This is worth recalling as Mr Jumblatt has begun to realign once again to prepare for the probable collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. For many weeks now the Druze leader has quietly written off the survival of the Syrian leadership, arguing that the real question is under what conditions President Bashar Al Assad will leave office - by way of a peaceful transition or following a civil war.

Last weekend, in a speech in the district of Rashayya, Mr Jumblatt went further than ever before in condemning the crackdown in Syria. Simultaneously, Lebanon's pre-eminent political acrobat harked back to the Syrian revolt against French imperialism in 1925, which spread to Rashayya and in which many Druze lost their lives; he declared that those who had committed crimes in the ongoing Syria revolt be held accountable, that prisoners be released and that a new Syrian constitution be drafted. And he lamented that while Mr Al Assad had promised reform, there were those around him opposed to this.

In a phrase rife with meaning in the Arab context, Mr Jumblatt proclaimed: "Only a free people can free persecuted and oppressed peoples, and the theory of a resistance system has no value." His dismissal of a "resistance system" was effectively a denunciation of states and organisations - principally Syria, Iran and Hizbollah - that have taken pride in forming a unified front to combat what they deem to be Israeli and western dictates.

Mr Jumblatt may be agile, but even by his standards the past two years have imposed substantial gymnastics. After the assassination in February 2005 of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, the Druze leader became a principal figure in the March 14 coalition hostile to Syria, which was blamed for the crime, and Hizbollah. Under threat of assassination, Mr Jumblatt spent four years as a prisoner in his home, watching Syria reassert its power in Beirut.

Then, in February 2009, something changed. At an Arab economic summit in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah initiated a reconciliation with Mr Al Assad. The Saudis and Syrians had been bitterly divided over Lebanon, and the Saudis concluded they had lost more than Syria in that bruising encounter. Mr Jumblatt realised that it was a matter of time before King Abdullah compelled his protégé Saad Hariri, Rafiq's son and Lebanon's pre-eminent Sunni representative, to reconcile with Mr Al Assad. Once that happened, the Druze leader knew, he would be left hanging, ripe for elimination.

So Mr Jumblatt drifted away from his March 14 allies, hoping to settle his differences with Syria before Mr Hariri did, thus preserving his political sway by placing himself advantageously in a revitalised, Saudi-blessed, Syrian-led arrangement for Lebanon. The gambit failed as Mr Al Assad ignored his advances. Once Mr Hariri visited Syria in December 2009, understandings between Syria and its other ex-Lebanese enemies became possible. Mr Jumblatt endured Syrian-imposed humiliations to be received in Damascus in April 2010 - weak, mortified, but still alive. I saw him on the night of his return and we actually walked to a local restaurant, something unthinkable weeks earlier.

Mr Jumblatt's strategy has been to employ manoeuvrability to compensate for his minority status and the fact that even among Lebanon's minorities his rural community is demographically negligible.He has made his share of mistakes, issued an infinite number of apologies to comrades forsaken then reunited with after his myriad reversals. However, since 1977 when he inherited power from his father Kamal, who was murdered by the Syrian regime, Mr Jumblatt has remained at the centre of Lebanon's political stage, his pragmatism, indeed his cynicism, always a mortal weapon.

It has become a cliché that Mr Jumblatt is a paradox in being a traditional, autocratic, sectarian mountain patriarch as well as the head of the Progressive Socialist Party. For him contradiction is no vice in protecting his Druze community, and his paramount authority over the community. This helps explain Mr Jumblatt's calculations when it comes to Syria, where some 300,000 Druze reside.

The Assad regime never took kindly to Mr Jumblatt's influence among his Syrian coreligionists. The Druze leader always avoided challenging this Syrian red line, but with Mr Al Assad's rule sliding he has sought to ensure that Syria's Druze are not viewed as being on the regime's side, therefore open to retaliation in a post-revolution Syria. That is why Mr Jumblatt called for reform from the early days of the uprising, even as he implied that Mr Al Assad must lead it. His doublespeak has irritated Syrian officials, at times forcing Mr Jumblatt to backtrack. His latest remarks, the strongest yet, indicate that the Druze leader senses the Assads are on their last legs.

It is a source of merriment in Beirut that Mr Jumblatt, who jumped through countless rings back into the Syrian fold, now finds himself frantically reversing himself with regard to Damascus. His former March 14 allies, like his untrusting new partners in the Hizbollah-led majority, will observe that the man has betrayed one time too many and is politically finished. But Mr Jumblatt is a master of reinvention and has a gift for creating spaces and provoking crises to make himself indispensable. Only the naive readily write him off.

Sami Gemayel and Christian insecurity

2011-07-22T12:14:00.000+03:00

The “false witnesses” controversy is back on the table. According to news reports, the justice minister has devised a formula to transfer the matter of alleged false witnesses in the investigation of Rafik al-Hariri’s murder to the Justice Council, long a Hezbollah demand.

Maybe this was a consequence of the ridicule Sami Gemayel heaped on the government recently during the parliamentary debate prior to a vote of confidence; or maybe it was not. However, when Gemayel accused the new cabinet of hypocrisy for failing to mention false witnesses in its policy statement, even though Saad al-Hariri’s government had been brought down because the prime minister had resisted transferring the matter to the Justice Council, he hit a nerve.

In fact, go back to Gemayel’s speech, and you will notice that he hit quite a few nerves. For some time, I’ve been uneasy about the young parliamentarian’s exclusivist Christian nationalism. It’s fair to say, and his speech and previous remarks have implied this, that Gemayel aspires to a Lebanon where Christians live largely among Christians; where they remain as shielded as possible from the political zephyrs affecting their Muslim countrymen. This may mean creating a federal structure, a confederal one, or what have you. But Gemayel plainly believes that the Lebanon of 1943, based on a centralized system of power-sharing between religious communities, can no longer work.

The problem with this is that Gemayel’s views are almost certainly shared by a majority of Christians. Return to that parliamentary session a second time. Recall that as Gemayel was orating, the Hezbollah parliamentarians looked on in stony silence, while the Aounist representatives were equally subdued. I will wager that Hezbollah’s bloc knew very well that it was listening to views widely held by the followers of its own Aounist allies—and that includes Gemayel’s references to the double standards enjoyed by the party and the Shia community when it comes to abiding by the law.

This is a reality Hezbollah should heed. Despite five years of political collaboration between Michel Aoun and Hezbollah, the partnership has not percolated down in any significant way to influence social relations. The supporters of Aoun and Hezbollah still live in separate worlds. The party has benefited from Christian, particularly Maronite, fears when it comes to the Sunni community, but this has not translated into a long-term embrace of Shia aspirations, let alone a willingness to pay a heavy national price for Hezbollah’s pursuit of an armed struggle.

Never have Lebanon’s Christians been as closed in upon themselves as they are today. In light of this, the future of the community may be determined much more by exclusivists such as Sami Gemayel than by defenders of the 1943 formula. This would be a pity and would show the Christians at their worst in terms of self-confidence. However, it’s also true that Lebanon’s Muslim communities have a responsibility to show that they respect the institutions of Lebanese coexistence.

Hezbollah has consciously exacerbated Shia misgivings about Lebanon. As Hezbollah’s parliamentarians heard Gemayel speak, they must have sensed a double irony. On one level, here was a great skeptic when it comes to the traditional Lebanese power-sharing arrangement, yet he was badgering Hezbollah for refusing to bend to a more equitable power-sharing arrangement. And on another level, Gemayel, otherwise a member of the March 14 coalition, was voicing reservations about Hezbollah that the Christian partisans of Michel Aoun haven’t dared voice because their movement’s leadership is in bed with the party.

One can challenge Gemayel, but it’s rather difficult to point to anything in Lebanon today that would prove how wrong he in pursuing, effectively, greater Christian isolation. Take the false witnesses dispute. Hezbollah wants to force down everybody’s throat that the party is the victim of an Israeli and American conspiracy. This will only further enrage Sunnis, who are being asked to adopt under duress an entirely spurious hypothesis to explain the murder of their onetime communal champion. In that context, and most unfortunately, it’s not difficult to see why someone like Gemayel will affirm that Christians are better off distancing themselves from Sunnis and Shia.

The Lebanon of 1943 is certainly in need of profound reform. However, greater communal segregation cannot be in the country’s best interest. When people like Sami Gemayel condemn, quite rightly, the perils of a Hezbollah-dominated state within a state, they should also be aware that their own doubts about Lebanon as it is today will encourage many of their coreligionists to aspire to a Christian state within a state—even if Gemayel personally has no desire to go that far.

Gemayel’s speech before parliament was an important moment both in the budding politician’s own career and in bringing to light Christian insecurity in a Lebanon shaped mainly by the interaction between Sunnis and Shia. This will not go away. Muslim representatives should be conscious that whatever the Christians choose will have a significant impact on Sunni-Shia relations. It may be easy to dismiss Sami Gemayel and those like him as inexperienced diehards, but in times of uncertainty they are the kind of people who set the agenda.

Indictments II, a disappointing sequel?

2011-07-21T12:10:00.000+03:00

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon is lucky to have Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah as a foe. On Tuesday, he again described the institution’s accusations as part of a conspiracy against Hezbollah. Were it not for the secretary-general, whose anxiety tends to confirm the tribunal’s seriousness, observers might have examined more critically the shortcomings in the United Nations investigation of Rafik Hariri’s assassination and those of many others between 2005 and 2008.

There are reports, which may well be true, that further indictments are forthcoming. Last year officials from the tribunal’s prosecution office were privately declaring the indictments would be issued in stages. Any final verdict on the success or failure of the legal process is premature. However, from what we know, there is reason to doubt that the outcome of the trial will be the identification and conviction of all, or even a large number, of those behind the Lebanese killings.

The principal reason for this is that the U.N. investigation altered its strategy in mid-stream between 2005 and 2006. This left the third investigator, and current special tribunal prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, with little that was tangible when he began his mission.

Under Detlev Mehlis, the first commissioner of the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission, investigators directed their suspicions at the upper echelons of the Syrian and Lebanese political and security leadership. As Mehlis explained to me in an interview in 2008, “The Hariri case is an unusual one. Usually in investigations you start at the bottom and work your way up. In the Hariri case we started pretty much at the top and worked down. We had an accurate view of how the assassination took place from above, but less clear a view of what happened on the ground.”

Mehlis based his strategy on a number of factors. First, on the deductions of Peter Fitzgerald, an Irish policeman who had prepared a preliminary U.N. report shortly after Hariri’s death. He concluded that the former prime minister had been the victim of a conspiracy involving “considerable finance, military precision in its execution, [and] substantial logistical support.” While he did not name culprits, he described a situation that made it virtually impossible for the Syrian and Lebanese security services not to have known of the crime. He also cast doubt on their intentions by revealing that Hariri’s state-provided security detail had been cut back, and accused the Lebanese security services of contaminating the crime scene.

Mehlis also had his personal experiences to go on in devising his approach to the investigation. He was familiar with the conduct of the Syrian intelligence services from the time he had investigated a bomb attack against the French cultural center in West Berlin. A Syrian diplomat who turned evidence carried the bomb used in that attack from East Berlin, under the orders of Syrian intelligence operatives.

And finally, once his investigation took off, the testimony Mehlis collected further justified a top-down approach. This included the statements of Syrian intelligence chiefs, as well as that of the former Syrian vice president, Abdel Halim Khaddam. All could attest to the centralized, hierarchical nature of decision-making in Damascus.

Under Serge Brammertz, the strategy was reversed. Mehlis’ successor adopted a bottom-up approach, reduced the pace of the police investigation, brought in more analysts, and generally slowed the investigative machinery down. Shortly before his term ended two years later, the commissioner was telling his Lebanese counterparts that he had not substantially advanced in his inquiry; and proof of this was that he had made no new arrests.

If we are to believe a much-discussed documentary produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation last summer, Brammertz was also lax in pursuing the analyses of telephone communications. Reportedly, he waited until late 2007 to bring in a British firm to look more closely at the evidence, after significant progress had been made in evaluating the telecommunications data by Wissam Eid, a Lebanese police officer who was assassinated in January 2008.

While this issue continues to provoke considerable disagreement, two things are undeniable: It made no sense whatsoever for Eid and the Lebanese to be handed the lead in probing by far the most sensitive facet of the U.N. investigation, namely telecoms. The Lebanese did not have the technical expertise to conduct such an exercise, and Brammertz had, earlier, ordered his team to minimize communication with the Lebanese security forces, fearing that they had been infiltrated.

Something else is undeniable: Eid was killed, and he had long anticipated his violent ending. This suggested that the officer had made some sort of breakthrough on telecoms, a view shared by Lebanese judicial figures dealing with the Hariri investigation.

Given these circumstances, when Bellemare came in he most probably found himself lost in an investigative no-man’s land. On the one side he had the testimony garnered by Mehlis pointing in the direction of senior Lebanese and Syrian political and security figures. On the other, he had the fruits of Brammertz’s limited endeavors focusing on the minutiae of the case, an approach that, effectively, undermined Mehlis’ hypothesis by failing to build on it. And yet Brammertz had repeatedly reconfirmed the detention of the four Lebanese generals, implying that he presumed that they were culpable. This mess, many maintain, obliged Bellemare to begin from scratch.

By most accounts the telecoms information was instrumental in preparing the first indictment. But future indictments, if there are any, may be more problematical precisely because they may be damaged by the disconnect between the way Mehlis investigated the Hariri killing and the very different way Brammertz did. So, for example, if Syrians are accused – and Bellemare may have to accuse Syrians because he desperately needs a motive for the crime – he would have to rely on material gathered under Mehlis that was never sufficiently supplemented by Brammertz. That means Bellemare may have to put together a case dependent to a great extent on circumstantial evidence, which is tougher to prove in court.

Much of this is speculation. However, there is nothing reassuring in recognizing that Bellemare, in all likelihood, was obliged to extensively rebuild the Hariri investigation as of 2008, a full three years after the former prime minister was murdered. We may see new indictments, but will these will be solid? Don’t bet too heavily on it.

Obama’s great escape on Syria

2011-07-08T13:16:00.000+03:00

The Obama administration has embraced evasion and self-delusion in dealing with the ongoing repression in Syria. Until now it has avoided demanding an end to Bashar al-Assad’s rule, even though all the conditions for such a demand have been met, while peddling the absurd possibility of a dialogue between the regime and the opposition.

Assad has interpreted this irresolution as a green light to pursue the carnage. However, if we momentarily abandon the moral argument for supporting Syria’s emancipation movement and look at America’s performance in light of its own national interests, what do we see? Behavior, again, characterized by evasion and self-delusion.

When Barack Obama became president, Washington’s principal priority in the Middle East was containing Iran and ensuring that its nuclear program would not serve military ends. Yet the administration never developed a cohesive strategy to achieve those objectives. Obama accelerated the pullout of American soldiers from Iraq, to Iran’s delight, and while the US backed new sanctions against Tehran, this often seemed a substitute for a more multifaceted, versatile American approach to addressing the Iranian challenge.

One news item this week shows what the Obama administration is up against. On Wednesday, in a highly significant event, the Iranian first vice president, Muhammad-Reza Rahimi, traveled to Baghdad to preside over the signing of six cooperation agreements between Iran and Iraq. The more profound import of the visit was that Tehran is consolidating its ties with Iraq as Washington prepares to withdraw its remaining forces from there by the end of the year. Rahimi declared that “the pain of the past” was behind the two countries, and added that Iran was willing to help restore security in Iraq.

In the ambidextrous language of diplomacy, an offer to help restore security is another way of saying that one can create insecurity. Rahimi’s statement was, implicitly, a warning to the Iraqis that Iran would really much prefer that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki not extend the American military mission in Iraq beyond 2011. To push that message home, in recent months Iran has supplied sophisticated weaponry and equipment to Shia militias in Iraq, allowing them to mount more effective attacks against American soldiers. Last week, for instance, three Americans were killed in a rocket attack at a base near the Iranian border.

What has the administration done to counteract this Iranian bid to expand its already substantial influence over Iraq? Very little. With Obama so keen to terminate America’s long Iraqi interregnum, his latitude to sanction Iran has been greatly reduced. This alacrity has exacerbated Washington’s vulnerabilities in Iraq, but has also severely damaged its relationship with the Gulf allies, Saudi Arabia above all. The Saudis have little faith in American protection, and the great danger is that their anxiety will lead them to further destabilize Shia-dominated Iraq by manipulating its sectarian antagonisms.

Even more puzzling, the Obama administration does not appear to have seriously debated the advantageous role Syria’s crisis might play in thwarting Iranian ambitions. It doesn’t take a particularly discerning mind to understand that the fall of the Assad regime would represent a major blow to Iran in the Levant. Yet instead of thinking the option through, Washington has continued to uphold, against the wishes of a majority of Syrian protesters, the possibility of a dialogue over reform between a sanguinary leadership and its victims.

We are not talking about Washington imposing its hegemony over Syria, let alone resorting to armed force in the country. This is not about repeating the ill-thought-through Libyan experience. Rather, the US can, and must, take a principled position in favor of democracy in Syria, which means openly advocating the departure of the Assad regime, which has lost all legitimacy. Only Washington has the authority to oversee an Arab and international diplomatic endeavor to prepare for a smooth Syrian transition.

This wouldn’t be easy, but it is doable. The Saudis and Egyptians could be persuaded to lead Arab action if they are convinced that Assad’s exit would weaken Iran. At the United Nations, the Obama administration would have a hard time with the Russians and Chinese. But as the regime in Syria loses ground, the likelihood that the confrontation there will take on an overtly sectarian coloring can only increase. Such a development would be a disaster for Syria; it could also be one for its neighbors with mixed sectarian societies. Regional peace would suffer, justifying Security Council intervention.

If the Arabs, the Security Council, and Europe (where France and the United Kingdom have been far ahead of the US on Syrian matters) can reach a consensus on a transition in Damascus, they might be able to induce the Assads to leave quietly, given certain guarantees. It is not set in stone that the family will fight to the last man, but it will fight on for as long as it sees the Americans and everybody else dithering.

The humanitarian, principled case for insisting that the Assads cede power is the most compelling. But Washington’s lethargy has been little shaken by the potential strategic benefits of a democratic change of regime in Syria, guided by Syrians. Iran is watching Syria with trepidation. However, it must find terribly reassuring Barack Obama’s ostrich-like yearning to escape fresh involvement in a Middle East trouble spot, and his incongruous assumption that Iran can somehow be restrained by an America reversing at full-speed in the region.

Najib Mikati, our own dead man walking

2011-07-07T13:09:00.000+03:00

Last Saturday, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general, did more to discredit Prime Minister Najib Mikati than did all the sour statements issued by March 14. In rejecting any cooperation with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Nasrallah undermined Mikati’s acrobatic efforts to reassure the international community that Lebanon would fulfill its international obligations.

Rather than react to this humiliation by responding to his alleged political comrade, Mikati instead warned March 14 last Monday, on the eve of the parliamentary session preceding a vote of confidence, that “sabotaging the nation is a crime.” Such an act would indeed be a crime, one the former majority should stray away from. But one has to be serious: If anything will sabotage the nation, it’s a statement to the effect that the special tribunal, and implicitly the Lebanese authorities, will never arrest the four suspects in the assassination of Rafik Hariri. “They cannot find them or arrest them in 30 days or 60 days, or in a year, two years, 30 years or 300 years,” Nasrallah told his audience, explaining most transparently that he bows to no nation, least of all the nation in whose government he has two ministers.

Mikati must feel himself being sucked into a maelstrom he cannot withstand. Things looked simpler in January, when he took a political risk in standing against Saad Hariri and getting the nod as prime minister. Mikati thought that he could embody a Saudi-Syrian understanding over Lebanon, which had escaped Hariri. He also believed that he enjoyed support from France and Qatar, and no opposition from the United States. Perhaps he even imagined that these advantages would compel March 14 to enter a national-unity government.

These were more or less defensible calculations to make, except for two things: The Saudis and Syrians had explored ways to break off altogether Lebanon’s relationship with the special tribunal. Mikati, in contrast, has never publicly shown a willingness to go that far. And he knew that foreign endorsement of his team, as well as acceptance by March 14, would hinge on displaying clarity toward U.N. resolutions.

Mikati’s fortunes took a slide immediately after his appointment. Syrian friends, the Turks and the Qataris were more unhappy with Hariri’s ouster than it initially appeared, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed this to President Bashar Assad at a February meeting in Aleppo. Damascus paused, as it did again when demonstrations began against President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Why impose a hasty outcome in Beirut, the Syrians seemed think, amid so much regional volatility? Better to wait and see.

So, Mikati waited and what we saw was the outbreak of an emancipation movement in Syria. Suddenly, the prime minister-designate’s world started unraveling. Mikati had counted on his good rapport with Assad to provide a counterweight to his new and troublesome political associates, Hezbollah and Michel Aoun. The Syrians were, at least for the moment, out of the picture, focusing on repression at home. Mikati realized that a poorly balanced Cabinet could mean his utter marginalization. His Sunni base in the north was surveying events in Syria with growing discontent. And so Mikati had no choice but to delay putting a government together.

Shrewdly, Aoun read Mikati’s motives correctly and pursued his maximalist demands on ministerial portfolios, sensing there was no point in conceding anything if a government was deferred. Like Hezbollah he waited for the situation to change, and it did once the Assads realized that they had a full-blown insurrection on their hands, one with existential implications. Lebanon had initially been viewed by the Syrian regime as a hostage which it could destabilize to warn outside countries against weakening the Syrian regime. Then Bashar Assad and his acolytes reconsidered, sensing that the country would be more useful as a pliable weapon in Syria’s hands.

After Walid Jumblatt met with Assad on June 9, word came down that the Lebanese had to reach an agreement quickly on forming a government. Mikati managed to get two more Sunnis than Shiites, and with Jumblatt and President Michel Sleiman has 11 ministers. This provides the three, who make up a so-called “centralist bloc,” with veto power over government decisions. However, the numbers are symbolic. The prime minister knows perfectly well that Jumblatt’s and Sleiman’s margin of maneuver, like his own, is almost nil.

Then Nasrallah put everything into perspective Saturday night. What should Mikati do about it? It’s probably too late for him to salvage his political career. The prime minister is the prisoner of partners whose priorities can only sink him and his agenda. With the tribunal indictment out, Mikati will find himself protecting Hezbollah against a widespread perception among Sunnis that the party helped murder their pre-eminent communal representative.

As the carnage continues in Syria, Mikati can prepare for more headaches. His electorate fears for Syria’s Sunnis against an Assad-led military onslaught. As for the prime minister’s latitude to resign against Syria’s wishes and bring down the government, it is very narrow indeed. Such a move would not only spell an end to Mikati’s brief political audition, it would probably come with a financial price, since Mikati’s M1 Group owns the largest single share in a South African company operating one of the mobile networks in Syria.

Now, with Nasrallah renewing his condemnation of the special tribunal, Mikati’s government is on a collision course with the U.N. and the international community. The prime minister pitiably articulated that Lebanon, even if it was not quite committed to international resolutions, nonetheless would “respect” them. But in just a few sentences Nasrallah affirmed that the government could employ whatever language it desired, but the reality was that Hezbollah defined the red lines of the government’s actions, not Najib Mikati.

The prime minister’s fate is now tied to Bashar Assad’s. If the Syrian regime goes, Mikati will follow. The problem is that if Assad stays, Mikati will remain a cipher, even less consequential than was Salim al-Hoss when he headed the first government under President Emile Lahoud. Mikati’s foes want to see him politically debilitated; but the prime minister’s problem is that most of his colleagues in government want that too, for it ensures that he remains their man.

Even partial justice leaves Lebanon in a quandary

2011-07-03T07:02:00.000+03:00

On Thursday, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon sent an indictment in the assassination of the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri to Lebanon's judiciary. Many cheered that justice had finally arrived. The optimism may be misplaced. After six years of investigation only four suspects were named, although Mr Hariri was the victim of a vast conspiracy.

The Lebanese government has 30 days to arrest the individuals, believed to be members of Hizbollah. The indictment was sealed yet their names were immediately leaked. Two of the men are Mustapha Badreddine, a cousin, brother in law and collaborator of Imad Mughnieh, the party's late military leader; and Salim Ayyash, who allegedly led the cell participating in Mr Hariri's killing. The others are unknown. Both may be Hizbollah militants, but their role and affiliation will only be known once the indictment is made public.

The tribunal has divided the Lebanese for years. The fact that Hizbollah's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, revealed last summer that party members would be implicated (although he used the disclosure to dismiss the tribunal as a "politicised" institution) cushioned the blow of last week's announcements. However, on the political front, the government of Prime Minister Najib Miqati, which is dominated by Hizbollah and its ally Michel Aoun, is in for difficult times ahead, even as it has barely begun to function.

If Lebanon fails to take the suspects into custody, this will lead to heightened tension between Mr Miqati and his domestic opponents in the March 14 coalition. Just as seriously, the international community, and the special tribunal in particular, will not take it lightly if the cabinet, over which Hizbollah has substantial sway, announces that it is unable to detain the suspects. Lebanon could find itself facing Security Council opprobrium, which will otherwise not prevent the tribunal from trying the suspects in absentia.

Mr Miqati has declared that his ministers would behave "responsibly" with respect to the indictment. However, the prime minister is the weak link in the impending phase of sharpened political polarisation. On the one hand he will have to satisfy the demands of Hizbollah and the Aounists, who have condemned the tribunal. On the other, he cannot afford to lose support among his Sunni coreligionists by appearing to cover for a party they believe helped to murder Mr Hariri, a communal champion. If Mr Miqati loses what Sunni legitimacy he retains, his days in office will be numbered.

What worries the prime minister most is the reaction overseas. Mr Miqati, a well-connected businessman, has an acute sense of how international displeasure might lead to measures undermining economic confidence in Lebanon, essential for stability and civil peace in the country. The US House of Representatives is drafting a bill to prevent American funding from reaching Hizbollah through the Lebanese government. A Lebanese bank has been in the US Treasury Department's crosshairs for money laundering on Hizbollah's behalf. Mr Miqati does not need a dispute with the United Nations, especially with its permanent Security Council members, over Hizbollah's refusal to surrender suspects to the special tribunal. Nevertheless, that could be where Lebanon is heading, unless Hizbollah changes its mind or Mr Miqati resigns.

From a judicial perspective, the scope of the tribunal's indictment is disappointing. A preliminary United Nations inquiry after Mr Hariri was killed in February 2005, like the international investigation that followed, concluded that the crime had been a plot that included the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services. The theory was never abandoned, even if the last UN investigator, Daniel Bellemare, now the tribunal prosecutor, only had evidence to focus on Hizbollah.

In a 2006 report, UN investigators advanced an important hypothesis that "there is a layer of perpetrators between those who initially commissioned the crime and the actual perpetrators on the day of the crime, namely those who enabled the crime to occur". If we assume, as investigators did at the time, that the Syrian regime, then all-powerful in Lebanon, commissioned the crime; and if the perpetrator was a suicide bomber, as the investigative commission established; then this implies that the suspects named in the indictment will most probably be accused of having enabled the crime.

But what about those who ordered the crime? It is unclear whether Mr Bellemare's indictment will stop where we are today. He may issue new indictments, encompassing Syrians, perhaps a necessary step to identify a motive for Mr Hariri's elimination. Media reports have hinted this could soon happen. However, nothing yet proves it will happen, or that fresh indictments will be confirmed. Nevertheless, how odd, if the prosecutor has enough to arrest Syrian suspects, for him to start the indictment process against relatively low-level figures who only facilitated the action.

We should give Mr Bellemare the benefit of the doubt. However, in researching my book on Lebanon after the Hariri assassination, I interviewed Lebanese officials and former international investigators who criticised his predecessor, Serge Brammertz, for his lethargic approach to the Syrian angle of the investigation. Detlev Mehlis, the first commissioner of the international commission, told me in 2008, as Mr Brammertz was preparing to leave office, that he had seen no real advances in the investigation. "When I left [at the end of 2005] we were ready to name suspects, but [the investigation] seems not to have progressed from that stage," Mr Mehlis said.

If true, Mr Bellemare's indictment, with its concentration on Hizbollah, may be all we see from the special tribunal for now. That will not reassure Mr Miqati as Lebanon's prime minister, but the limited reach of the prosecution's case would be easier to contain than a trial drawing in senior Syrian and Lebanese figures. That said, years of work for so small a catch is hardly something to celebrate.

Syria’s partition could crack Lebanon

2011-07-01T11:46:00.000+03:00

It is difficult to see how President Bashar Assad will prevail over the growing protests demanding an end to his regime. More than two months of carnage by the Syrian army and security forces have failed to shake the demonstrators’ determination, and surely will not.

There are many scenarios for what might happen in Syria. Lebanese should pay attention to one in particular. As it dawns on the Assads that their days in power are numbered, we should consider the option that they and the minority Alawite community will move to an alternate plan. Unable to subdue Syria, the regime may contemplate falling back on an Alawite-dominated statelet in northwest Syria.

There is little certainty surrounding such a scheme. In recent weeks the army and security services have been active in Idlib province along the Turkish border, after their assault near the Lebanese border, particularly in Talkalakh – accompanied by an ongoing campaign to pacify the Homs to Aleppo axis. Even if the Assads’ priority is to reimpose their writ over Syria in its entirety, the actions in these areas may, simultaneously, serve another purpose: to consolidate Alawite control over the margins of a future mini-state.

Alawites are concentrated in the mountain region and cities of Syria’s northwest, even if they have moved elsewhere during the past decades. Notably, they have moved into the plains of Homs and Hama, where they generally live around the main cities. If the community sought to establish a statelet, it would have to implement a three-tiered process. This would involve preparing a forward defense line near areas of Sunni urban concentration, along the Homs-Hama-Aleppo road. It would also entail strengthening Alawite control over the community’s heartland further to the west, particularly over the coastal cities, while arming Alawite villages.

The third stage of the process would necessitate securing a parallel line of defense along the eastern edge of the Alawite mountains, above the plains leading toward Homs, Hama and Aleppo. Not coincidentally, perhaps, the northern hinge of this boundary is at Jisr al-Shughour, while the southernmost hinge is at Talkalakh. These are places allowing the regime to close off access to predominantly Sunni districts across the borders. However, the terror tactics adopted by the Syrian army, security forces and irregular pro-regime militias are disturbingly similar to those of the Serb-dominated army and Serb paramilitaries during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Is the aim to cause permanent population displacement? That’s unclear. However, there is a geographical rationale behind the Assads’ strategy, and its repercussions cannot but affect sectarian relations.

As Lebanese watch developments next door, how might they react? If the Assads manage to retreat to an Alawite fortress, the repercussions in Lebanon (not to say Iraq) could be frightening. Attention would be drawn to Lebanon’s Shiites, but also Christians, to see if they might envisage a similar route toward communal self-preservation.

The Shiites are far less likely to be tempted by the idea of forming a communal statelet than are the Christians, for obvious reasons. The areas of Shiite concentration are not contiguous. Dispersed among the northern Bekaa Valley, the western Bekaa, southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, the Shiite community would be unable to bind these regions together into any sort of cohesive whole.

In reality, the hazards lie elsewhere. If the Assad regime were to collapse, this would represent, potentially, an existential setback, for Hezbollah. The party would strive to defend itself, and its options are limited. Some have speculated that Hezbollah might try to tighten its grip on the state and weaken its adversaries decisively, perhaps through a military strike broader than that of May 2008. However, that would almost certainly fail, instead provoking civil war.

Hezbollah must be aware of this. The party is immensely potent as an armed force, but the only real solution to its dilemma if Assad rule were brought down is a far-reaching domestic political compromise. The party would be reluctant to engage in one, however, at least from a position of weakness. The reason is that any serious internal dialogue would necessarily have to address Hezbollah’s disarmament, which the party’s leadership will not sanction.

The ensuing deadlock could push Hezbollah to do two apparently contradictory things: maintain its presence in state institutions at all costs in order to protect its interests; but also, facing an invigorated Lebanese Sunni community bolstered by an invigorated Syrian Sunni community, further separate territories under its influence from the rest of Lebanon, both physically and psychologically. In other words, even as it rejects a Lebanese sectarian breakup, Hezbollah may be compelled to pursue that very path to survive. And this could be accompanied by an impulse, even a political need, to collaborate with other friendly sectarian entities, an Alawite entity above all.

Which leads us to the Lebanese Christians. There is profound alienation among many Christians from post-Taif Lebanon, and from the idea of coexistence with the country’s Muslim communities in the context of the centralized state that emerged after independence in 1943. This has been debilitating for Christians, accelerating the community’s isolation and sense of decline. Yet virtually all mainstream Christian political groupings deep down aspire to a Lebanese state – federal, confederal or otherwise – that allows a majority of Christians to govern themselves and live among their own.

This mad project is more likely to lead to communal regression and suicide. And yet many Christians will look closely at a Alawite statelet, if one were to take shape, and see how it might serve or buttress their own aspirations. And if this were to come at a moment when the Shiites themselves were experimenting with some de facto scheme of disconnection from Lebanon, it could intensify the centrifugal forces in the country and even eventually prompt a sizable number of Christians and Shiites to join efforts against a perceived Sunni threat.

For now, and hopefully well beyond, this may be political fiction. But ours is not a healthy national mood to defend the Lebanese entity as we know it. Even during the war, Lebanese unity was, paradoxically, more solid than today. The fire lit in Syria could feed Lebanon’s divisions. Unless we’re sensitive to the risks, Lebanon could burn.

Much ado about almost nothing?

2011-07-01T11:34:00.000+03:00

Now that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has confirmed an indictment in the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and subsequent crimes, we’re in a better position to assess the success of the investigation that led to this long-awaited moment. And what we’re seeing is not encouraging.

Until now, the tribunal appears to have accused Hezbollah members of involvement in the Hariri killing. Four Lebanese are said to be in the crosshairs of Daniel Bellemare, the tribunal’s prosecutor. From what we know, mainly information in documents leaked to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which used them last year as the basis of a compelling documentary, several of the suspects were identified through analyses of cellular telephone conversations.

This is all fascinating stuff, and may well be true. However, if the indictment stops there, then we will at best have been offered a narrow glimpse of what actually took place. After six years of investigation led by three separate commissioners, with millions of dollars spent, the results would be desperately short of expectations. In fact, it would represent a black mark on the United Nations.

Unconfirmed reports on Thursday suggested that the special tribunal team was preparing to head to Damascus after Beirut, to announce the indictment of Syrians. This was untrue, and yet the credibility of the investigative phase, and of the special tribunal itself, will very much depend on whether Syrians are called to the suspects’ dock.

Here’s why. Soon after Hariri’s elimination, the United Nations sent an Irish policeman, Peter Fitzgerald, to Beirut to look into the matter. In his report, Fitzgerald concluded that it had taken “considerable finance, military precision in its execution, [and] substantial logistical support” to carry out the assassination. In other words, the former prime minister had been the victim of a conspiracy that the Syrian and Lebanese security services could hardly have avoided noticing.

If there were any doubts, in a report from October 2005, Detlev Mehlis, the first commissioner of the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission, wrote something very similar. Given the “infiltration of Lebanese institutions and society by the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services working in tandem,” he observed, “it would be difficult to envisage a scenario whereby such a complex assassination plot could have been carried out without their knowledge.” Once again, a seasoned investigator was describing an extensive conspiracy, one that went well beyond a small group of Hezbollah participants and their superiors. Fitzgerald and Mehlis bluntly implicated Syria and their Lebanese proxies in the plot.

Mehlis’ successor, Serge Brammertz, continued to suspect Syria. This we know because in 2006 he revealed to the US ambassador in Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, that he believed only a single Syrian intelligence agency had participated in Hariri’s murder. “If anything, you probably had one security service involved, and the order came from on high and, how high, we’ll have to figure out,” Feltman quoted Brammertz as telling him. An educated guess suggests that the commissioner was referring to Syrian Military Intelligence, which had a vast network already in place throughout Lebanon.

However, Brammertz, according to Lebanese and non-Lebanese sources I spoke to very familiar with his work, did not much advance in his investigation. Whether this was intentional or not is unclear. However, he took a momentous decision in altering the investigative strategy set by his predecessor. Mehlis had approached his inquiry using a top-down approach. As he told me in a Wall Street Journal interview in January 2008, “The Hariri case is an unusual one. Usually in investigations you start at the bottom and work your way up. In the Hariri case we started pretty much at the top and worked down. We had an accurate view of how the assassination took place from above, but less clear a view of what happened on the ground.”

With Brammertz, however, there was a very noticeable decline in interviews of high-level suspects, in Lebanon and especially in Syria. According to onetime commission members, the commissioner brought in analysts but cut back on police investigators needed to gather and assess witness testimony. The top-down approach was shelved in favor of a de facto bottom-up approach, albeit a deficient one. If the CBC report is to be believed, Brammertz was as lethargic in the telephone analyses as he was in other aspects of his investigation. For example, he only brought in a British firm, FTS, to examine telephone data near the end of his term, and that only because of valuable work done by Wissam Eid, a Lebanese police officer.

It’s no surprise, then, that when Bellemare took over he had relatively little in his files. Yet he pursued Brammertz’s bottom-up approach, meaning that he could not benefit from Mehlis’ labors. This left, principally, the telephone material to build on. Bellemare’s intention today may be to crack open that angle of the conspiracy, which as it happens implicates Hezbollah, in the hope that it will lead upwards to those senior officials who gave the order to kill Hariri.

If so, Bellemare could prove too optimistic by half. The two years of dallying during Brammertz’s time in office may have fatally crippled the Syria side of the investigation, though we have to wait to see if the Syrians are off the hook. However, no one seriously believes that Hezbollah, if the party’s involvement is proven, acted alone against the former prime minister. For now, and until proof of the contrary, the tribunal’s indictment is the mountain giving birth to a mouse.

Maronites and the two Michels

2011-06-24T14:24:00.000+03:00

Here is one argument for why Lebanon’s Christians, and the Maronites in particular, should seriously consider surrendering the presidency. We can sum it up in just three words: the two Michels—as in Michel Aoun and Michel Sleiman.

With Aoun we have a familiar figure in Lebanese political tradition: a Maronite ravenous for presidential power who has illustrated better than most the destructiveness of his ambition. From the days that President Amin Gemayel appointed him to lead a transitional military government in 1988, until 2008, Aoun has dreamt of becoming our head of state. He dreamt of it in the darkest days of his exile at La Haute Maison, amid the open fields of an isolated hamlet in the distant periphery of Paris. He dreamt of it when he allied himself with Hezbollah after his return to Lebanon, imagining that the party’s weapons and Syrian patronage would impose him on his enemies.

And when they didn’t, Aoun still dreamt of Baabda. He concluded that even though Michel Sleiman had been elected in May 2008, it was Michel Aoun’s right to be president in place of the president. And here we are reminded of what the great French historian René Grousset once wrote of the Roman general and politician Pompey. Somehow, he also offered up a succinct, incisive portrait of Michel Aoun:

“What was it his ambition to attain in the Republic? A sort of moral presidency to which, after the services he had rendered, he had some right? To rule, with our without a formal title? Especially to accumulate honors, many honors, which would have satisfied his vanity and his irresolution, but which his secret mediocrity would have prevented him from turning into something redoubtable?”

Having won a lion’s share of ministers in the new government, Aoun may have succeeded in attaining a moral presidency and will now strive to rule without a formal title. But his secret mediocrity will get the better of him, as his attempts to display resolution will expose his innate recklessness. All that will be left is vanity, discolored by cynicism deriving from Aoun’s corrosive dissatisfaction.

Aoun’s rival, Michel Sleiman, has only a formal title and the honors accompanying it to hold up as a bulwark against irresolution. Hailed as a savior in 2008 at the pinnacle of his career, the president has left no vale of hesitation, of reversal, unvisited since that time. Having been handed two of the four sovereign ministries in Fouad Siniora’s government of July 2008, and those again and more in Saad Hariri’s government of December 2009, the president should have built himself sturdy political foundations. Instead, he has relegated himself to the status of political nonentity, the latest insult being his obligation to “share” the Interior Ministry with Aoun.

Perhaps the ultimate statement on the presidency was provided by Emile Lahoud. Though the man benefited from the backing of Syria, Hezbollah, and the intelligence services, he ended up toothless, reviled, a casualty of the impossible incongruities of presidential office. Sleiman is learning a similar lesson. To be potent, a president must be a Maronite chieftain and play the communal game hard-nosedly, without inhibition—isolating foes, picking fights to rally the partisans, driving opponents into minefields of disputation. But Sleiman, whose conceit compels him to disregard the fray, stands blankly, godfather to a government over which he has little influence.

This reality should invite a profound reassessment in the community. Is the Maronites’ continued insistence on retaining the presidency a source of strength or weakness? Not only has competition over the office become a source of inter-communal cannibalism, but the presidential institution has lost much of its punch. Worse, it has become a repository for those embodying the lowest common denominator of agreement among Lebanon’s diverse political actors, who must appeal to everyone because they threaten no one.

Recently, Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rai made an ill-considered statement on the matter. He called for the Taif Accord to be renegotiated in order to give the president more power. It didn’t seem to occur to the patriarch that amending Taif might well push the Muslim communities, quite legitimately, to demand that the accord be implemented in full, which would imply abolishing political confessionalism. And if Lebanon abolishes political confessionalism, then the presidency would no longer be reserved for Maronites.

It’s a pity that Rai and Maronite leaders in general refuse to address that possibility. Yet picture a system that gradually erodes confessionalism, or sectarianism, and that allows, at least in an interim period, for the different communities to rotate between the top posts. In that context we might envisage Lebanon as a real country rather than an assemblage of religious tribes. As spirited citizens of a nation rather than the fearful offspring of a dwindling minority, Maronites could begin reinventing themselves in a reinvigorated society.

The presidency is no more a guarantor of Maronite strength than Michel Sleiman represents the highest aspirations of his coreligionists. How demoralizing that for months the community has been driven by the calculations of the two Michels over cabinet portfolios. If you missed that clash, it’s a good sign. It means you understand the triviality surrounding presidential maneuvering.

An economic vice squeezes Assad's patronage system

2011-06-23T14:31:00.000+03:00

In his speech on Monday, President Bashar Al Assad made pointed reference to the dangers that Syria's burgeoning protest movement posed for the country's economy. What he didn't say, however, was that a prolonged economic crisis also threatened his regime. The crisis may be nearing the tipping point if one is to believe a report prepared in May by European Union diplomats based in Damascus.

The report paints a dire picture of what lies ahead economically for Syria. The diplomats do not make political predictions, but they do not need to. For an Assad regime fighting for survival, the economy is an Achilles heel, undermining the leadership's patronage power and its ability to keep onside a demoralised business class that is a pillar of the system.

The document warns that Syria's political predicament "could potentially lead to a long-term recession or even a collapse of the economy if the unrest continues". The European diplomats cite projections by the Institute of International Finance of a 3 per cent contraction in GDP this year. Liquidity has been running low, forcing the closure of companies, while the Damascus Securities Exchange, the report continues, has lost 20 per cent of its value since January.

Syria's tourism industry has been hit especially hard, with zero occupancy rates reported in major hotels for the foreseeable future. This is ominous for a sector that accounts for 15 per cent of GDP and employs, officially, 6 per cent of the workforce. Trade has also declined, even if the figures are sketchy. Internal trade has been interrupted by insecurity on the ground, while the transit trade from Turkey to the Gulf is estimated to have declined by 30 per cent. The demand for imports has also declined, eating into customs revenues.

The European diplomats are particularly troubled by prospects for inflation. In an effort to alleviate public displeasure, the Assad regime earlier this year raised public-sector salaries and pensions by around 25 per cent, effectively doing the same for those in the private sector. This, along with other recent governments commitments, represents an additional budgetary burden equivalent to $2.4 billion (Dh8.9 billion). The report predicts that the government will probably have to finance its deficit "through expansion of the monetary base (ie, printing money) as the availability and cost of international financing is set to be influenced by the lack of stability in Syria".

In plain English, the regime is pursuing clashing policies. On the one side it urgently needs to stabilise the Syrian pound, and on the other it may have to adopt inflationary measures that will most probably generate contrary dynamics. The regime has sought to cope with this contradiction by increasing the demand for pounds through higher interest rates on deposits. However, the diplomats warn that "the hike in interest rates will make credit more expensive which might discourage investment even further".

The authors point to "concern among influential Syrian business people and investors" with the turmoil and the possibility that the regime will impose more protectionist economic policies, reversing liberal reform. In other words, the regime may seek to use the economy as an instrument in its political struggle, which would be very damaging for investments, particularly from the private sector.

This points to a second disconnect in the Assads' approach to the unrest. The regime needs to maintain the loyalty of the business class, but few of its actions today will encourage business people to tie their fate to the president and his family in the long run. That is already increasingly apparent. Lebanon is awash with stories of Syrians having removed their funds from Syrian banks in order to place them in Lebanese institutions. Moreover, if investments plummet further in Syria, this will heighten unemployment, exacerbating social unrest.

The European economic report does not address patronage, which will be vital to the regime's staying power. The praetorian units of the Syrian army, notably the Republican Guard and the 4th Armoured Division, have long benefited from higher salaries and favours than their peers, even if one should not overestimate this in absolute terms. There have been stories of members of the elite corps having to take a second job to make ends meet. As for the regular army, opposition sources claimed in May that salaries had not been paid the previous month. The information has not been verified, but if true it would be serious, perhaps illustrating the liquidity shortfall.

As the regime feels the harder economic pinch, as pressures mount on the Syrian pound, and as the popular upheaval continues, there will be more stress on the army and the security forces. There is something deeply debilitating for a soldier or officer, even the most dedicated, to engage in mass repression and murder without respite. Numerous observers believe that the fatalities and arrests in Syria are much higher than those being publicised. If the regime's power of the purse deteriorates while the psychological load and fatigue felt by its security bulwarks intensify, the Assads will be more vulnerable.

It is difficult to see how the Mr Al Assad and his acolytes will be able to put Syria's genie back into the bottle. They know that time is of the essence, that popular resistance must be overcome swiftly in order to avert a meltdown. But they are working at cross-purposes. Syria's economic health requires social health and confidence. Massacring one's own population is not ideal for securing that outcome.

Many Christians are blind on Assad rule

2011-06-23T07:30:00.001+03:00

Last week I happened to catch a program on OTV, the Aounist television channel. The topic was Syria and at one stage the host described how he had seen footage of people recently demonstrating in the city of Hama. A sign held up by a protester read “We will not forget Hama 1982,” or some similar phrase. For the host this illustrated the “vengeful intentions” of the Syrian uprising.

It was revealing that the presenter should have interpreted the perfectly creditable remembrance of an episode of mass murder, one in which tens of thousands of innocent people are estimated to have lost their lives, as something reprehensible. What the Aounists believe, as do quite a few Lebanese Christians with them, is that if the Alawite-dominated Assad regime falls, this will play out to the advantage of the Sunnis, and more specifically of Sunni Islamists.

Throughout his political career, Michel Aoun has been adept at making bad choices. He sided with Saddam Hussein just before the Iraqi leader became an international pariah in 1990. He flirted with Syria and its envoys before returning to Lebanon in 2005, only to see the Syrians withdraw their army in April after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister. In pursuit of the presidency in 2006 and 2007, Aoun allied himself with Hezbollah against the parliamentary majority whose support he needed to win office, on the assumption that the party, along with Syria, would impose his election. They didn’t, and during the 2009 elections Aoun was unable to secure a parliamentary majority with his partners, actually losing Christian votes when compared to the results four years earlier.

Today, Aoun and his followers may be on the verge of making a far more critical mistake: They are wagering that Syrian President Bashar Assad will crush the ever larger demonstrations against his authority. Indeed, they are hopeful that this will happen. However, in the process they are setting themselves up, and Christians in general, for a potentially decisive, long-term rupture with Lebanon’s Sunnis, but also down the road with a post-Assad government in Syria.

Aoun is not alone responsible for this situation. However, he merits the greater blame for allowing his entourage to articulate most forcefully the foolish notion that Christians have an interest in allying themselves with other Middle Eastern minorities, against the Sunnis. It has been alarming to hear a sizable number of Lebanese Christians expressing fear that the Assads’ defeat would spell disaster for their community. They forget that no one has done as much as the Syrian regime to undermine Lebanese Christian power in the past decades.

It should be obvious by now to those watching the unrest in Syria that those hostile to Assad rule have mostly avoided resorting to sectarian symbolism. Rather, sectarian violence has been largely the work of the Assads’ praetorian units and security forces. Not many people, inside Syria or out, believe the regime’s narrative that the protests are the work of armed Sunni Islamists, nor have the Assads’ propaganda outlets provided any convincing evidence. An inept Information Ministry spokeswoman was fired for pointing out that the thousands of refugees flowing into Turkey from Jisr al-Shoughour were merely visiting family members across the border. But her bankruptcy, both professional and moral, only reflected that of the leaders she served.

And yet there are those Lebanese Christians buying into the Syrian government’s fabrications. Aounist spokespersons will pen stories in foreign publications echoing uncritically the disinformation peddled by Damascus. They seem incapable of reading the Syrian unrest in political, as opposed to sectarian, terms. For them it’s about religion, about the Sunni menace, not about a multi-sectarian population striving for emancipation from a despotic clique. In defense of Christian interests, they deem it justifiable to endorse scoundrels.

You would have expected the Christians to learn from their coreligionists in Iraq. The fate of Iraqi Christians is often cited by the Lebanese as an example of the dire future awaiting them and their Syrian brethren if the Assads disappear. How odd, for the real lesson offered up by Iraq’s Christians was that siding with Saddam Hussein against a majority of the Iraqi population was an existential blunder.

The safety and security of minorities cannot possibly reside in taking a stance against their fellow countrymen – especially joining with another minority in stifling the legitimate aspirations of a majority. The wheel of fortune turns. That is why the only solid protection for Arab Christians lies in transcending their minority status by reinforcing links with other communities, and between communities, while preserving their own individuality and ensuring that the rights of all are respected within a consensual, democratic context.

It is difficult to see how Bashar Assad’s regime will survive what is going on in Syria today. His regime may last for awhile, or it may collapse more rapidly than we imagine, but Syria is not going back to where it was three months ago. In the framework of domestic Lebanese communal relations, how should Christians prepare for this eventuality? Praying for the Assads to crush the revolt is morally outrageous and politically shortsighted. By the same token, cynically gambling on a Sunni victory in Syria makes no sense, because the revolt may proudly impose itself as a non-sectarian phenomenon.

A third alternative seems more promising. The Christians of Lebanon may be on the verge of a rare and valuable moment in their modern history, one in which they can contribute to forging a historical reconciliation between a democratic Syria and a democratic Lebanon. Rather than playing religious politics, they should think in terms of values – those of liberty, of pluralism, of representative government – and define their behavior now and in the future by such values.

This may sound terribly naïve. However, Michel Aoun and his supporters conveniently forget that they once portrayed their confrontation with the Assad regime in precisely those terms. The best safeguard for minority rights in the Arab world is democracy and the rule of law, within free societies. It is not, and cannot ever be, a dictatorship that readily exterminates its own people.

Echoes of Arkan in Syria

2011-06-17T07:50:00.000+03:00

What is Syria’s leadership up to as it mounts a nation-wide armed onslaught against its own people? The simple answer, and it would be an accurate one, is that it is engaged in mass repression. However, we may be missing something more subtle, and more specific. The angry condemnation of the Assad regime’s brutality last week by senior Turkish officials could provide us with a clue as to what this is.

In recent weeks, the brunt of the onslaught has been conducted by predominantly Alawite units under the orders of Maher al-Assad, the brother of President Bashar al-Assad and commander of the regime’s praetorian guard. Action has taken place along two lines. After earlier concentrating its attacks on Tal Kalakh and Arida, located along the northern Lebanese border, the military shifted its attention to Jisr al-Shughur, near the Turkish border. At the same time, the Syrian army and security forces have pursued operations in a parallel corridor along the Homs-Aleppo road. The latest assaults have been directed against Maaret al-Naaman, between Hama and Aleppo.

According to eyewitnesses, the pattern of aggression lately has been similar. The army surrounds and bombards a town or village, or shoots at protesters, accusing the inhabitants of being members of “armed groups.” In a number of localities, the population, mainly Sunnis, has chosen to flee or has been forced out, before soldiers and security agents enter, accompanied by Alawite gangs unleashed primarily to sow terror. In Jisr al-Shughur, for example, refugees have reported rape, theft and the burning of crops.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, then perhaps you have a good memory for the tactics used during the wars of the former Yugoslavia. At the time the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army and the regime of Slobodan Milosevic sponsored a number of paramilitary groups, most notoriously the Serb Volunteer Guard under Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as Arkan. Working in conjunction with the army, these groups were responsible for ethnically cleansing swathes of Croatia and Bosnia in order to create a contiguous Serb-majority territory.

Might we be witnessing something similar in select parts of Syria? It’s very difficult to say. However, look at a map of northwestern Syria where the Alawites are concentrated, particularly the mountain range known as Jabal al-Nusayriyya, or Jabal al-Alawiyeen, that runs in a north-south direction from the Turkish border to the foothills above Lebanon’s Akkar plain. If you draw a meridian from Tal Kalakh to Jisr al-Shughur, it runs along the eastern edge of that range, where the plain begins and stretches further east toward Homs and Hama. To consolidate the Alawite heartland, the Assad regime needs to hold that meridian, particularly its northern and southern hinges at Tal Kalakh to Jisr al-Shughur, as well as a third hinge at Arida.

At the same time, over the decades Alawites have migrated into the plain, moving to areas around the mainly Sunni agglomerations of Homs and Hama, as well as to other places in Syria. It makes sense for the regime, in order to maintain its power, to regain control of the Homs-to-Aleppo passage. However, it is also true that if the Assads are thinking in sectarian geographical terms, this passage would be the first line of Alawite defense along an Alawite-Sunni fault line.

A good argument could be made that the policy of the Syrian regime has little to do with any scheme to establish an Alawite mini-state, the presumed outcome of any ethnic cleansing campaign. After all, dominating Arida and Tal Kalakh, like Jisr al-Shughur, may just be efforts to seal off potentially dangerous border transmission points to and from Sunni districts in neighboring Lebanon and Turkey.

But that only begs three other questions: Why has the Assad regime so heightened sectarian animosities by playing on alleged Sunni-Alawite differences, when anti-regime demonstrations have sought to avoid sectarianism altogether? Why has the behavior of the Syrian army, security agencies and irregular forces in some areas been plainly designed to cause panic specifically among Sunnis, thereby displacing populations and ensuring they would not soon return? And why has the regime, by most accounts, been arming Alawite villages?

In the statements of Turkish politicians last week, as well as those of American officials, there was palpable alarm with the potential sectarian consequences of the Assad regime’s measures to eradicate dissent. The Turks are understandably worried that if Syria were to break up into ethnic mini-states, Turkey would face not only the prospect of an Alawite entity across from the province of Hatay – which the Syrians call Alexandretta, where an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 Alawites live – they would also have to deal with the real possibility that Syria’s Kurds would go their own way, with dangerous repercussions for Turkey’s management of its own Kurdish minority.

While the Assad regime may not be pursuing a broad ethnic cleansing strategy, in and around Jisr al-Shughur and Tal Kalakh specifically it is doing something suspiciously similar. The plan beyond that, especially in the plains of Homs, Hama and Aleppo, may conceivably involve a two-stage process: first, to try to neutralize the situation on the ground through offensive action in areas with a large Sunni urban presence; and if that fails and the regime’s survival is threatened, to lay the groundwork for a defensive strategy leading to the eventual consolidation of a territory in which Alawites can protect themselves.

There are plenty of problems with this theory. Alawites are spread throughout Syria, and there are very substantial Sunni populations in Syria’s coastal cities that would, presumably, be integrated into any Alawite statelet. For now nothing suggests that the Assads have given up on re-imposing their writ over all of Syria. However, quite a few incidents in the northeast also suggest that the regime is calculating in sectarian terms and pursuing a sectarian strategy. Only time, and the continuation of the uprising, will elucidate the Assads’ endgame.

With allies like these, Beirut will not be able to rule itself

2011-06-16T14:36:00.000+03:00

Syria's President Bashar al Assad may be struggling with problems at home, but he still has pull in Beirut. On Monday, Lebanon's prime minister designate, Najib Miqati, finally formed a government after a five-month delay. Syria's fingerprints were all over it.

Confirming this, Mr al Assad immediately called Lebanese President Michel Suleiman to congratulate him, and did the same with Nabih Berri, the parliament speaker. Last week, in a meeting with the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, the Syrian president had signalled his desire to see a new government soon. This sense of urgency pushed Mr Berri to break the logjam by conceding a Shiite seat to the Sunnis.

What is it that suddenly altered the mood in Damascus? After all, the Syrian leadership had not previously applied pressure on Mr Miqati and its friends in Beirut, strongly suggesting that it welcomed a Lebanese vacuum. One can only speculate, but the widening revolt in Syria and the regime's growing regional and international isolation, particularly its divorce from states such as Turkey and Qatar, were surely factors. With so much shifting around Mr al Assad and his acolytes, they apparently concluded that it was preferable to employ Lebanon as a tool in their confrontation with the outside, by forming a favourable government, rather than exploiting the void in the country.

This does not bode well. Mr Miqati insisted that his cabinet would represent all Lebanese, a reminder that the March 14 coalition led by the caretaker prime minister, Saad Hariri, has refused to join. That Mr Miqati is not a national-unity government will create tensions in a country pathologically wedded to political balance. Aside from Syria, those bolstering the new team are Hizbollah and Michel Aoun, whose hostility to March 14 is profound. Mr Miqati and his "centrist" allies in the government - Mr Suleiman and Mr Jumblatt - will labour to ensure that their partners do not settle political scores.

Mr Berri's decision, and more important that of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's secretary general, to accept a smaller Shiite share of ministers was not fortuitous. It facilitated Mr Miqati's task, therefore aiding the Assad regime. The lower Shiite profile also was destined to achieve two other objectives: it allows Mr Miqati to say that his government is not controlled by Hizbollah, lending it Sunni legitimacy inside Lebanon while also reassuring Arab states and the international community. And, more perniciously, it places the onus of failure on the prime minister, even if Hizbollah knows that it will have great sway over cabinet decisions despite having few ministers.

Hizbollah has two priorities. The party wants a clear policy statement by the government officially sanctioning its weapons; and it wants the state to take its distance from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon dealing with the assassination in 2005 of Rafiq Hariri, the former prime minister. The tribunal is expected to issue an indictment within three months, and there have been indications that Hizbollah members will be accused of involvement. Indeed, the collapse of Saad Hariri's government in January was a consequence of domestic differences over how to address the indictment.

However, Hizbollah also has a more overarching ambition. The party anxiously realises that Syria's regime is facing an existential threat, and that its collapse would transform power relations in the Levant to Iran's detriment, and therefore its own. It has no ready solution to this predicament, but Hizbollah will strive more than ever to anchor itself in the institutions of the Lebanese state, and to dominate them and marginalise its political adversaries in order to resist potentially disadvantageous change. That is why Mr Miqati's government will hit turbulence, especially over whatever affects Hizbollah's future.

The prime minister can already anticipate three major headaches. The first is that Hizbollah will push for the government not to cooperate with the special tribunal. It's difficult to see how Mr Miqati, against the wishes of Syria, Hizbollah and Mr Aoun, will be able to resist this demand, despite his worries that it could place Lebanon on a collision course with the United Nations Security Council, which established the institution. Even Mr Jumblatt has little room to manoeuvre on the tribunal, having repeatedly denounced it as a "politicised" body.

Mr Miqati was also obliged to accept an appointee of Suleiman Franjieh, a prominent Syrian ally, as defence minister. This will further discredit the Lebanese army in the eyes of the United States and many in the international community. American military assistance will almost certainly dry up. Equally worrisome is that several countries participating in the UN force in southern Lebanon believe the army to be under the influence of Hizbollah. This impression, not altogether unjustified, could well determine their continued commitment to maintaining troops in Lebanon, when some contingents have already expressed an intention to leave.

A third problem for Mr Miqati will be internal political discord. The foes of March 14 today have wide latitude to dismantle the political, security and financial edifice the coalition put in place after the Syrian withdrawal in 2005. While Mr Miqati will try to limit the damages, such measures will provoke a backlash from March 14, particularly the partisans of Mr Hariri, the dominant Lebanese Sunni figure. These conflicts, at a time of crisis in Syria and volatility in the region, could destabilise Lebanon in dangerous ways.

That's not to mention the myriad other challenges Mr Miqati will wrestle with - above all a potentially serious decline in economic confidence and the strains following from the state's support for the Assad regime, when most Lebanese Sunnis sympathise with the Syrian opposition. Lebanon's new government may mean the country is out of the frying pan, but nothing suggests it will avoid the fire.

March 14 may regret boycotting Mikati

2011-06-16T06:56:00.000+03:00

There is no doubt that President Bashar Assad’s regime played an essential role in accelerating the formation of the Lebanese government.

Only a Syrian nod could have compelled President Michel Sleiman to approve a Cabinet lineup that will thoroughly marginalize him, and could have made Speaker Nabih Berri surrender a Shiite seat to the Sunni community.

Despite this, we have to wonder whether March 14 did well not to participate in the new team.

From the moment that Saad Hariri’s government was brought down last January, the March 14 parties took an uncompromising position on Najib Mikati, the prime minister designate. Hariri, justifiably, felt betrayed by Mikati and there was much talk of a “coup.” Syria, Hezbollah and their allies did stage a coup, but a constitutional coup within the confines of state institutions.

Mikati, whether by persuasion or compulsion, won over a majority of parliamentarians, which should have been a lesson to March 14: If institutions could be used against the coalition, March 14 could use institutions in its own favor. When you denounce a coup, your duty is to obstruct it.

Instead, the order came down that March 14 was to stand aside and isolate Mikati. There were exceptions. The former prime minister, Fouad Siniora, kept a low-key line open. The former president, Amin Gemayel, tried to find common ground with the prime minister designate.

However, to distance himself from the endeavor, Hariri flew to France. March 14 made unrealistic demands on Mikati, asking him to clarify in writing his position on Hezbollah’s arms and on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. When he refused, this was portrayed as a lack of seriousness about integrating March 14 into the government.

Was that true? Had March 14 declared from the outset that it would participate in the government on condition that it be granted veto power, things might have been different. The veto provision had earlier been respected for March 8 and the Aounists, and March 14’s share in Parliament justified it.

Mikati would have resisted at first, but as his efforts to put together a government floundered, he might have reassessed in order to expand his margin of maneuver, accepting the conditions set by March 14. But had he persisted in his refusal, that would only have weakened him further, confirming that he was beholden to Hezbollah and Syria, damaging him among Sunnis.

Assume that March 14 did the right thing at the time. Did it do the right thing in not reconsidering its attitude once the situation in Syria began unraveling? Suddenly, the issue was no longer whether Najib Mikati would gain legitimacy if March 14 took part in his government.

It was no longer whether Hezbollah had staged a coup, since the signs, after weeks of deadlock over the Cabinet, were that the momentum of such a coup had been slowed by uncertainty in Syria. The issue was whether March 14 would be in the government or out at a critical juncture in Lebanon’s history, with the Assad regime facing an existential challenge. March 14 did not even debate the question.

So where are we today? Instead of adapting to developments in the region, March 14 is still locked into a very parochial reading of the political situation. It has criticized the government for being a Syrian creation, bolstered by Hezbollah.

Undeniably it is. No less true is that Damascus, through this government, intends to enlist Lebanon in the Syrian confrontation with the international community. The country is in for a bumpy ride in the months ahead, which will impact on the economy and on financial confidence in negative ways.

March 14 may welcome such circumstances for discrediting the Mikati government. However, this is short-sighted. The state, whose promotion March 14 has claimed as its principal concern, benefits not at all when the welfare of the Lebanese becomes a weapon in domestic disputes.

Nor is it obvious what national project March 14 offers in contrast to that of the current majority. During the months of stalemate the March 14 leadership did little to exploit the political bankruptcy on the other side, whereby alleged reformers haggled like fishwives over their share of ministers and lucrative portfolios.

The conventional wisdom is that the Mikati government is not long for this world; March 14 spokespersons have linked its longevity to that of the Assads in Syria. That may be true, but the Assads could linger for some time.

The view displays great passivity on the part of the former majority, giving a wide berth to Hezbollah and the Aounists to dismantle what March 14 spent years patiently building up. Remarkably, at the very moment when Syria’s allies and sympathizers appear most vulnerable, March 14 has managed to hand the reins of government over to them.

As the Lebanese look ahead, what they see is worrisome. On the one side a government bound to increase Lebanon’s misery, with a core of revanchist Aounists and an armed organization whose overriding preoccupation is to turn the country into a sandbag to protect its weapons and preserve its autonomy.

And on the other side, a coalition without a persuasive vision for a sovereign Lebanese state, whose paramount figure has been absent for weeks (reportedly because of death threats), which is presently wagering on the failure of the new government, regardless of how the Lebanese might suffer from this.

In this context, a government of national unity, no matter how mediocre, would have been better in carrying Lebanon through this period of transformation in Syria, and in managing the aftermath. We missed that opportunity and now we have a government that is infinitely worse, one that may not vanish as soon as we think.

Michael Young on France24

2011-06-15T21:24:00.001+03:00

http://www.france24.com/en/20110615-debate-syrian-crisis-lebanese-fears-najib-mikati-hezbollah?ns_campaign=editorial&ns_mchannel=reseaux_sociaux&ns_source=FB&ns_linkname=20110615_debate_syrian_crisis_lebanese_fears_najib&ns_fee=0#

UN discord will be measured in Syrian dead

2011-06-10T06:12:00.000+03:00

The lead role played by France and the United Kingdom in presenting a draft resolution to the UN Security Council condemning the brutality of the Syrian regime is laudable. This comes not long after the two countries led the pack in preventing Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi’s forces from overrunning Benghazi. Such advocacy has been in refreshing contrast to the Obama administration’s lethargy.

It is a coincidence, but a revealing one, that the Europeans are again showing nerve soon after the arrest of the Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic. Bosnia was a watershed for Europe, a test the continent ignominiously failed. It was the military intervention of the United States that tilted the balance against the Serbs, leading to the signing of the Dayton Accords. For a time afterward the Europeans went through a crisis of confidence, but what makes French and British foreign policy activism today so intriguing (and that may explain why such activism is on display) is that it comes as the European unification project is moving through considerable turbulence.

In Washington, meanwhile, a glum Barack Obama is watching the polls. Americans are expressing displeasure with the president’s economic performance, while the brief bounce he earned from Osama bin Laden’s assassination has evaporated. With money on everyone’s mind, and so little to go around in the United States, Obama may be contemplating a rapid drawdown in Afghanistan. Even as the French and British are in an expansive mood, the Americans appear to be in shopkeeper mode: counting their dollars and cents and complementing their dearth of funds with a dearth of ambition.

That has been most unfortunate for the Syrian people. Washington was compelled to follow the European lead in Libya, but it has been more or less standoffish in Syria. In a May 19 speech at the State Department, Obama declared that President Bashar al-Assad had a choice of leading a transition to democracy in Syria or leaving. But he has yet to ask Assad to step down, even though, since then, the Syrian regime has pursued its violent campaign of repression, showing no inclination to embrace democracy. According to anti-regime activists, roughly 1,300 people have been killed. The real figure is probably much higher, since thousands have gone missing and are presumed dead. Some 10,000 Syrians are said to have been arrested.

The Europeans, notably British Foreign Secretary William Hague, have echoed Obama’s phrasing. However, American and European diffidence has become increasingly embarrassing in light of the Syrian carnage. That’s why France and the United Kingdom have again pressed for a Security Council resolution. A few weeks ago the Russian and Chinese refused to endorse one. This time around, however, the French and British appear willing to confront the two naysayers, even if it means the resolution will be vetoed.

The Obama administration has backed Paris and London. However, the intentional weakness of the draft resolution, even if it exhibits a desire to co-opt Russia and China, also may take into consideration continued American reluctance to advance too quickly on Syria. The text condemns the behavior of the Syrian regime, demands that it put an end to the crackdown, and warns that the “attacks currently taking place in Syria by the authorities against its people may amount to crimes against humanity.” It also calls for a lifting of the siege of Daraa and Jisr al-Shoughour by the army and the security forces.

However, the resolution fails to impose sanctions, and repeats the absurd logic of Barack Obama in presuming that the Assad regime might yet lead a democratic makeover. The draft reads that the “only solution to the current crisis in Syria is through an inclusive and Syrian-led political process,” one taking into consideration “the stated intention of the Government of Syria to take steps for reform.”

No one, certainly not British and French diplomats at the United Nations, are under any illusion that this will happen. The problem is that, given the Libya precedent, no one wants to make a push in Syria that might ensnare the international community in a new conflict it cannot manage. That’s understandable. But this approach ignores that the Arab states and the international community don’t have the luxury of wasting more time over Syria, where the breakdown may soon affect the Middle East in especially dangerous ways.

The new resolution is designed to be a wedge, one that commits the Security Council to future action. If the document is passed and the Syrian regime refuses to implement its clauses, as we can expect, there will have to be a follow-up resolution imposing penalties on Damascus. The problem is that this will buy the Assad regime weeks of international vacillation, during which it will kill more Syrians.

The Assad regime has been its own worst enemy. It is plausible that it will escalate the butchery at home in the coming days and weeks, virtually begging the Security Council to accelerate, and escalate, its response to developments in Syria. Already, Turkey is facing thousands of Syrian refugees crossing the border. The draft resolution states that the Syrian crisis represents a threat to international peace and security. If the Russians and Chinese admit to this by voting in favor, it would be a major concession. Until now they have insisted that international peace and security are not in jeopardy.

Most disappointing has been Barack Obama. In his State Department address, the president vowed that the United States would henceforth bolster democracy in the Middle East. But Obama is worried about his re-election. He doesn’t want to take on overseas tasks that detract from the economy. When he does come around on Syria, as he had to on Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, the president will once again appear tardy and unconvinced, therefore unconvincing.