March 14 urgently needs a new impetus

March 14 urgently needs a new impetus
By Michael Young
Thursday, June 26, 2008

No one likes to take a prediction back, but last week I wrote that Michel Aoun would be unable to win as large a parliamentary bloc in next year's elections as he controls today. Three developments in the past week indicate why this reading may have been over-optimistic; and why those of us who focus on Aoun's undoubted loss of power in the past three years might also be guilty of overstating his failings to our own peril.

The first development is the precariously insular mood of the Christian community, which the beatification of Yaaqoub Haddad last Sunday illustrated well. Christians assembled massively for the event, which was understandable, but by way of contrast (since nothing political could have similarly galvanized them) this affirmed how detached the community is toward the larger issues afflicting Lebanon - Syria's persistent efforts to reimpose its writ and Hizbullah's challenges to the sovereignty of the state.

Many things explain this Christian lassitude. Like most Lebanese, Christians have had enough of the political deadlock. Where Haddad's story was inspirational, Lebanon's today is anything but. More disturbingly, the community feels itself in permanent decline, therefore politically irrelevant. All this favors Aoun, who feeds off Christian frustration. While the general has lost ground, while many Christians now look at him with as much cynicism as they do other politicians, he still has a loyal core of followers who will mobilize amid the ambient indifference, even as his Christian adversaries gain little from his setbacks.

A second reason is that Michel Murr, the powerbroker in the Metn, may be more vulnerable than we thought - which means that Aoun will be less vulnerable in the Metn next year. In past elections, Murr's strength has come from two phenomena: his alliance with the Armenians and his ability to act as a bridge between the disparate Metn constituencies - his own voters, Amin Gemayel's electorate, the Armenians, the Aounists in 2005, and other smaller groups, such as the Syrian Social Nationalist Party's sympathizers. The situation appears to be changing today.

Murr's priority appears to be to ensure that his son, Elias, will be appointed defense minister. Because the portfolio is important to determine who will be named to top military posts, including that of commander of the army and head of military intelligence, the Murrs are under pressure from the opposition to offer guarantees on these appointments before a government can be formed. It also appears that the Tashnak Party's alliance with Aoun is stronger than many suspected and does not necessarily pass through Michel Murr. If so, this may compel the Murrs to recalculate in 2009. Reports in recent days, for example, have suggested that Michel Murr may be trying to reopen a channel to Aoun. He needs Armenian votes to win in the district; the Armenians are not about to abandon Aoun, but are hostile to Amin Gemayel after the way he condemned the community after his loss in the 2007 by-election; and the Murrs are not in the best of postures because of their Cabinet demands. What you may have in the making is a winning Aoun campaign, which Aoun's substantial funds from various patrons will help lubricate.

A third reason why writing Aoun off could be premature is that the March 14 coalition, particularly in the past week, has only confirmed how devoid it is of stirring ideas. If many Christians are far less enthusiastic than they were about Aoun, they have not transferred their enthusiasm to the majority. And yet there are things the March 14 leadership can and must do to behave like a majority and regain the initiative nationally.

For starters, the government and March 14 need to show more imagination when dealing with the social and economic crisis - the main concern today of all Lebanese. What has the government done to make this a priority? What has the majority done? There is no lack of money among states supporting March 14, no lack of interest from the Lebanese diaspora, to fund projects that might increase employment and reinforce the impression that the parliamentary majority, like Rafik Hariri once, stands for economic prosperity. The government may have limited constitutional powers today, but nothing prevents it from proposing practical measures alleviating the socioeconomic burden on the Lebanese that a new government could take up. In its rhetoric, March 14 almost never constructively tackles the population's declining purchasing power.

Much more also needs to be done by the majority to outline a vision of a Lebanese state that can eventually overcome Hizbullah's vision of a non-state. Christians won't embrace that vision if they believe the majority is no better than Hizbullah. But the reality is that Saad Hariri cannot define such a vision when he appears to be losing control over his justifiably angry Sunni community - in Saadnayel, Taalbaya, and Tripoli. Nominally, most Sunnis are staunchly behind the Future Movement, but on the ground the dynamics say the Hariri camp is being overtaken by events.

It is troubling, for example, that Hariri has not traveled once to Tripoli and the Akkar since the fighting last May. Yet it is essential for him to place his stamp on developments in that area, show his face with a Sunni base that has become, for better or worse, his street muscle, and most importantly prevent the Sunnis of the North from taking their resentment of Hizbullah too far, because the result will be open war. Hariri has no choice. A moderate, he will nonetheless be blamed for any upsurge in Sunni extremism. There are reports he is reorganizing the Future Movement. That's long overdue, but his priority must be to see to it that Tripoli and the Sunni areas around it, like the Sunni areas in the Bekaa Valley, are not lost to the state as are the areas under Hizbullah control.

March 14 still has a great deal in its favor, but it needs to develop a strategy that draws maximal benefit from these advantages. It needs, first of all, to talk to the Christians on their own terms. Muslim leaders in March 14 rarely ever address the concerns of Christians, never even make an appearance in their districts, abandoning too many of them to Michel Aoun. A single visit by Saad Hariri to St. Joseph University to exchange ideas with students, to lay out his plan for a future Lebanon, to discuss the anxieties of the young, perhaps also to defend, or conversely apologize for, the quadripartite electoral agreement of 2005, would have a tremendous impact. If March 14 represents a majority, then it should show it.

March 14 also needs to develop a coordinated election strategy to make certain that Christian rivalries inside March 14 won't facilitate a new Aoun victory in Mount Lebanon next year. This means forming consensual candidate lists as soon as is feasible, preferably in coordination with Michel Sleiman, who enjoys Christian support. It also means initiating required reconciliations where possible. Amin Gemayel, for example, needs to quickly resolve his differences with the Armenians in Metn, while Saad Hariri should explore a new relationship with Tashnak in Beirut, even if he loses a parliamentary seat in the process. The long-term gains from that could well counterbalance the disadvantages.

And most importantly, in defending a state project March 14, particularly the Future Movement, needs to show that it has a tight rein on what is today a humiliated and confused Sunni community. Hariri cannot defend the project of a stronger state while allowing the Sunnis outside Beirut to slip further into a war mentality. That Hizbullah's recklessness is to blame for this goes without saying. But national suicide, to borrow from Michel Sleiman, will spare no one. And if Lebanon goes down that path, Syria will very likely again be tasked with imposing order on the country, ending the fragile freedom we won three short years ago.

No method to Aoun's destructiveness

No method to Aoun's destructiveness
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, June 19, 2008

There is a scene in the film "Apocalypse Now" where two characters, Captain Willard and Colonel Kurtz, are talking. Kurtz rules over a mad, mini-kingdom in the heart of the jungle and the US Army wants him assassinated. That's what Willard has come to do. Kurtz asks: "Are my methods unsound?" Willard responds: "I don't see any method at all, sir."

Much the same thing can be said about Michel Aoun's strategy in the aftermath of Michel Sleiman's election as president last month. That is unless the sum total of Aoun's method is to block the emergence of a new government as revenge for not having been elected himself - in other words to undermine the Doha Accord. And while the general is at it, he seems impatient to undermine the Taif Accord as well, whose death was, not coincidentally, announced a few days ago on Aoun's OTV channel by Wiam Wahhab, one of Syria's megaphones in Lebanon. When he's cornered, Aoun resorts to attacks against Sunni prerogatives to rally the Christians, and it was Wahhab's message the general was channeling on Tuesday when he declared: "It is unacceptable that the executive branch also be granted supervisory authority [over the public administration]; all the inspection agencies are under [Prime Minister Fouad Siniora]."

However, this time the Christians are almost certain not to bite. Aoun's method has been to pick a fight with all those who threaten his standing among his coreligionists. The general fears, quite legitimately, that Sleiman will pick up many of those Christians who voted for Aoun's candidates in 2005. Aoun's impetuous plan, however, may well bring about the very outcome that he is most trying to avert.

By going after Michel Sleiman, but more specifically by trying to curtail his ability to select ministers, Aoun has not only made an enemy of the president, he has done so at a moment when Sleiman is most popular and embodies much-wanted stability in the mind of people. Aoun has also proven to the Christians that he is indifferent to the prerogatives of the president, unless the president happens to be Michel Aoun. In continuing to impede the formation of the government, Aoun is also preventing the implementation of a state project, which was allegedly his project until Sleiman was selected in his place. For many Christians, as well as most Lebanese, this is objectionable. Aoun's reputation will continue to wane if he remains the main obstacle to post-Doha normalization.

When Aoun implied in his weekly press conference that the formation of a new government would not take place until one month before parliamentary elections, you could almost hear the Lebanese groan. Yet the general, to our advantage, rarely hears the sounds of his own ruin.

Then there is the preparation for the parliamentary elections, where Aoun's absence of method has been particularly conspicuous. If Sleiman is Aoun's worst nightmare, if the president turns into a major electoral player next year, then you would assume Aoun has a strategy to guard against this. Traditionally, this situation has led to alliances between Christian leaders who felt collectively vulnerable when facing a strong president. However, Aoun has burned his bridges with potential allies.

By opposing the appointment of Elias Murr as defense minister, for example, Aoun has made his dispute with Michel Murr personal. Since Michel Murr is the kingmaker in the Metn region, this is downright foolish. Murr will ally himself with the Armenians, most probably with Amin Gemayel, and is likely to include Sleiman's choices on his list. But one thing he may not want to do is leave slots open for the Aounists, which means they could be eliminated electorally from Metn.

Similarly, Aoun has no advantage in cutting himself off completely from the Lebanese Forces, who are also wary of Sleiman's influence. But that is precisely what he has done by allowing OTV to recently broadcast a program on the killing of Tony Franjieh, an operation in which Samir Geagea was involved. The aim was transparent: to keep alive the animosity between Geagea and Suleiman Franjieh in the North. However, by so doing, Aoun crossed a red line in his relationship with the Lebanese Forces and now stands accused by Christians of unnecessarily dividing the community by reopening old war files better kept shut.

In all probability Aoun will not be able to again win the large bloc he now has in Parliament. In the Christian heartland of Jbeil, Kisirwan, and Metn, he will at best win a handful of seats. Only in Baabda might Aoun have a decisive advantage, thanks to Hizbullah's electoral weight, but even there it is uncertain how the vast majority of voters, who are Christians, will vote. If Sleiman plays his cards right, if he can position himself as the patron of a state project and grand conciliator, Aoun's amorphous base of support might dissolve as quickly as it materialized in 2005.

Sleiman's best stratagem is to allow Aoun to hang himself. Rather than enter into a collision with Aoun, at least for now, which would mean a collision with Hizbullah and Amal, who are quietly backing Aoun, the president should restate the principles of the Doha Accord, continue in his endeavor to provide a constructive alternative to the vacuum that Aoun offers, and build up his networks in the Christian community. The decision to host an inter-communal dialogue in Baabda was a smart idea, since success is guaranteed in such platitudinous forums. It also bolsters Sleiman's image as a national leader, whereas Aoun is looking pettier by the day.

The real question is what to do with Aoun's parliamentarians. It may be time for Michel Murr and Sleiman to begin breaking apart Aoun's bloc. Murr has considerable sway over most of the Metn parliamentarians, who know they need to be on good terms with him in order to be re-elected. Sleiman has already won over Walid Khoury in Jbeil. In Kisirwan most of the Aoun parliamentarians are unsure about their future, meaning they are more predisposed to advances from the president, particularly if Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir blesses such moves.

Rarely has a politician been as adept at transforming his victories into defeats as Michel Aoun. Rarely has a man in a position of responsibility been as incompetent in reading the mood around him. The problem with Aoun's political self-immolation is that it is taking too much of everyone's time. The general is drifting off into a sea of inconsequence from where, very soon, most people may hope he never returns.

A logic of power that threatens Lebanon

A logic of power that threatens Lebanon
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, June 12, 2008

If there is one thing that has characterized commentary on the Middle East in the United States in recent years, it is self-flagellation. One article after the other, in tedious succession, tells us the same thing: The Bush administration's policy in the region has been a disaster and America has lost all standing among the Arabs. "Why do they hate us," the American lament after 9/11, has been picked up by a commentariat confirming that "they do indeed hate us," and it's all Washington's fault.

To an extent that is mainly George W. Bush's fault. When a president provokes such derision, he's lost the confidence of his people. But that doesn't make the criticism necessarily right, and it doesn't mean critics should be allowed to inaccurately represent US relations with the Arab world.

I've argued here before that, in retrospect, once tempers have cooled and Bush has gone home, analysts will see that, other than the Iraq war in its early stages, this administration has pretty much acted in the Middle East through an international consensus, United Nations institutions, and in support of international law; in other words in the very way that Bush's critics demanded he behave in Iraq. This applies to US policy toward Lebanon, Iran, and the Palestinian-Israeli track, even if there are those unhappy that the administration has not engaged Hamas. However, that refusal is neither new nor self-evidently misguided, and only echoes what previous administrations did, particularly that of Bill Clinton. Even in Iraq, soon after the end of the invasion in 2003 the US was obliged to go back to the international community to gain UN sanction for its presence. Examined more closely, unilateralist American neoconservative impulses in the region have been greatly overstated by Bush's detractors.

Lebanon, more specifically, has suffered from the backlash against Bush. American policy here, though it has been based since 2004 almost entirely on UN resolutions as well as on enforcing international law by finding out who murdered the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, has been condemned, as has the isolation of Syria, though its regime was certainly behind Hariri's assassination. And now it is all the rage to suggest that recent negotiated breakthroughs in the Middle East, including the Doha agreement that ended the recent fighting in Lebanon, have been the work of regional parties often ignoring or acting against the preferences of the United States. This has been repeated in articles by Rami Khouri and David Ignatius, and the latest version came to us from Robert Malley and Hussein Agha in a June 3 New York Times piece.

Malley, a former Clinton administration official who directs the Middle East program at the International Crisis Group (ICG), has often paired up with Agha in penning articles, including, most prominently, a much-debated revisionist view of what take place at the Camp David summit between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak in 2000, for The New York Review of Books. In their Times opinion piece, the authors wrote: "In the last few weeks, three long-frozen conflicts in the Middle East have displayed early signs of thawing [in Gaza, Lebanon and on the Syrian Israeli track] ... That so many parties are moving at the same time in so many arenas is noteworthy enough. That they are doing so without - and, in some cases, despite - the United States is more remarkable still."

Malley and Agha went on to observe that "[i]ntent on isolating its foes, the United States has instead ended up marginalizing itself. In one case after another, the Bush administration has wagered on the losing party or on a lost cause." This conclusion is of particular relevance to Lebanon, because the authors believe that the recent Doha agreement was a victory for Hizbullah and a defeat for America's allies in the March 14 coalition. They ask, "How much stronger would Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon and his colleagues have been had they agreed two years ago to the very power-sharing accord they were forced to swallow last month?"

Their thesis, intriguing though it is, merits scrutiny. For one thing the Doha agreement, as several commentators have pointed out, was perhaps not a case of the US being marginalized. As the fighting in Beirut flared up, the Bush administration held a conference call with its Friends of Lebanon partners. Rather than object to Qatari mediation in the Lebanese crisis, Washington, for a change, strongly endorsed Arab League action, in this case to end the fighting. Far from being irrelevant, the administration may actually have added some teeth to the Qatari efforts. And as Malley and Agha know well, there is more to Arab diplomacy than just pleasing the US. The Qataris also needed Saudi and Egyptian backing to mediate in the Lebanese crisis, and American support for the Qatari mission must have encouraged Cairo and Riyadh in that regard.

Then there is the question of whether US allies in Lebanon actually lost. In fact, no one was an outright loser in Doha, and Malley's and Agha's focus on the fact that the opposition received veto power in the government, what they refer to as a "power-sharing accord," is simplistic. Lest we forget, Hizbullah shared power in the government until November 2006. But more significantly, that veto power, while it was a gain for the opposition, came at a price: the election of a president, when Hizbullah and Syria preferred to maintain an open-ended vacuum in the presidency to bring in a more pliant government, and a new president, on their own terms. One of their conditions, often restated, was that Siniora not return as prime minister. The Qatari initiative derailed that strategy. Siniora is back, Michel Suleiman has been elected, and while it would be a mistake to see this as a loss for Syria, his election has allowed a political process to resume in Lebanon with which Damascus feels uncomfortable, as it risks consolidating a post-Syria order. That is precisely why the Syrians are still pursuing, and will continue to pursue, their destabilization of Lebanon. And it is why the Saudis and Egyptians still refuse to reconcile with the regime of Bashar Assad.

But there is something else. In encouraging the US to take the realities of power into consideration when it comes to addressing the Middle East, Malley and Agha send a disturbing message. Their advice seems to be that if America's allies are losing, then Washington should consider picking up with the winners. Malley and the ICG have long advocated, for example, that the US resume its collaboration with Syria, but they have thought little about guaranteeing that this will not harm Lebanon and its fragile sovereignty. Lebanon is not a priority to them, and now that Malley and Agha have all but declared that Syria's Lebanese foes have lost, there seems to be no further reason to ignore a call for engaging Damascus.

Yet nowhere in their article do we see a word on what Hizbullah recently did and is still doing in Lebanon. Malley and Agha accuse the US of "[pushing] its local allies toward civil wars ... [including by] financing some Lebanese forces against Hezbollah." They might want to provide some evidence for so vague and misleading a statement, which suggests that both sides in Lebanon are equally guilty; that Hizbullah is armed and so are its enemies. Not a word is offered on Hizbullah's massive advantage in weapons and training over its rivals; no mention is made of its mini-state that on a daily basis defies the authority of the legal Lebanese state, or the brutality of the party's armed takeover of Beirut last month; nothing on the party's conscious intent to humiliate the Sunni community in the capital; nothing on its openly expressed pride in what it did, or on the dangerous, hubristic belief among its officials that when Hizbullah decides to resort to its weapons, against the Lebanese state or the Lebanese in general, there is simply nothing anyone can do about it.

If that is not behavior certain to provoke a new civil war in Lebanon, then what is it? Are Malley and Agha suggesting that the US get real, abandon those in Lebanon who, for all their shortcomings, seek a sovereign and independent state, and instead deal with Syria and by extension Hizbullah, the stronger parties by virtue of their capacity to intimidate and kill? That is precisely where they are leading us. The US does need to overhaul its credibility in the Middle East, but if a new strategy is based on looking the other way while Syria and Hizbullah and Hamas use violence to advance agendas that cannot possibly be in the US interest, then you have to wonder if the ritualistic denunciation of the Bush administration is not feeding into a policy approach devoid of any moral center, and worse, that will only end up favoring those destabilizing the region.

Next step: undermining Resolution 1701

Next step: undermining Resolution 1701
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, June 05, 2008

The most worrying development in the coming months in Lebanon may be only partly visible today: a concerted effort by Syria, Iran, and Hizbullah to undermine United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which, with Resolution 1559, is at the core of international decisions to bolster a sovereign Lebanese state with absolute control over its territory.

In an NBN interview on Tuesday, Hizbullah's Nawwaf al-Musawi said something both revealing and remarkable. He observed that upcoming security appointments were important because they "affect the security of the resistance." At this stage it's official, any government decision that Hizbullah opposes can be described as harming the resistance. But more disturbing was another reading of Musawi's statement, one we should place against the backdrop of the Abdeh bomb explosion at a military intelligence post last weekend, for which Fatah al-Islam claimed responsibility.

Michel Suleiman's election as president means a successor needs to be found as army commander, which suggests that someone new is also expected to take over as military intelligence chief. The Abdeh explosion was Syria's message to Suleiman and the army that it wants individuals it can trust to be named to senior military positions. That's because for all the debate over Fatah al-Islam's origins during the Nahr al-Bared fighting, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the organization, or what remains of it, is mainly an instrument of Syrian policy today - a stick to destabilize Lebanon under the guise of Sunni militancy.

If so, what does this have to do with Resolution 1701? Here is a scenario we should watch out for. The Syrians, who have not given up on re-imposing their writ in Lebanon and whose offer of diplomatic relations with Beirut will do little to change this, have several priorities. The first is to open a dialogue with the United States once the Bush administration leaves office. The way ahead is to pursue negotiations with Israel over the Golan Heights. However, Syria is less interested in the final outcome of such negotiations than in the process itself, because it is that process that might ensure improved relations with Washington while eroding international determination to press forward with the Hariri tribunal, whose establishment is already proving to be lethargic at best.

It is very doubtful that Syria will carry on serious negotiations without ensuring, first, that it has military leverage over Israel through the southern Lebanese border. Damascus may not necessarily want talks to reach a conclusion now, but it does have to prepare for the possibility of an eventual breakthrough. As far as President Bashar Assad is concerned, a Golan deal is important principally if Lebanon is part of the package. In other words, Syria gets the Golan but is also granted effective hegemony over Lebanon - an arrangement with which the Israelis have no problem, nor did when they were bargaining with Hafez Assad during the 1990s.

The Syrians can hit these two birds with one stone by ensuring that Hizbullah resumes its military operations in South Lebanon. The attacks would provide Syria with the leverage it seeks but also revitalize a Hizbullah threat that Assad will insist only Syria can resolve by again being granted considerable leeway in Lebanon. Ultimately, the Syrians hope, that would mean a return of their army and intelligence network in some capacity. Iran and Hizbullah would, for a time at least, see an advantage in this as it would protect Hizbullah's weapons against the growing demands for disarmament of the party inside Lebanon while allowing it to resume fighting, despite resolutions 1559 and 1701.

For Hizbullah to reopen the southern border, three conditions must be met: Resolution 1701 must be rendered ineffective; Hizbullah must not be seen as responsible for reigniting the southern front, since most Shiites have no desire to be brutalized by Israel yet again; and the Lebanese Army command must cooperate with Hizbullah in the border area. That latter prerequisite explains the Abdeh explosion and Musawi's statement.

Resolution 1701 is only as effective as the will of the international community and of UNIFIL, the United Nations force in South Lebanon. What better way to break that will than to restart bomb attacks against UNIFIL's contingents, and blame Fatah al-Islam - in other words Sunni Islamists - for this? Given France's impetuousness in wanting to reopen ties with Syria after the Doha agreement; given that neither Italy nor Spain, two other key members of UNIFIL, is likely to stand firm if the bombings begin in earnest; and given that ongoing Syrian-Israeli talks will considerably lower international incentive to punish Damascus for whatever goes wrong in the border area, this may prove quite easy. The fact that the attacks are allegedly the work of Sunni militants would cover Hizbullah vis-a-vis its own electorate, allow the party's media to once more highlight the alleged links between Fatah al-Islam and the Future Movement, and let Hizbullah exploit instability in the border area to provoke Israeli actions justifying a resumption of armed resistance.

What would the objective be? Some have suggested Syria, Iran and Hizbullah want a new arrangement in the South similar to the April Understanding of 1996, legitimizing Hizbullah military action through new "rules of the game" between the party and Israel. That seems a plausible theory, if it can be managed. But there are some question marks. In the long term, Hizbullah would welcome a Syrian return to Lebanon, but realizes that any final Israeli-Syrian settlement, even with Lebanon in Syrian hands, could be curtains for the resistance. It's equally unclear how Hizbullah might use possible attacks by alleged Sunni Islamists against UNIFIL to validate its own military operations. And will the Lebanese Army be as pliant as Hizbullah and Syria want it to be, or does the presence of Michel Suleiman, no enemy of Syria but also the main beneficiary of a stronger Lebanese state, make this less likely?

These uncertainties notwithstanding, Resolution 1701 has been in the crosshairs of Iran, Syria, and Hizbullah for some time. With the Bush administration on its way out, the Europeans ripe to end Syria's isolation, Syria's Arab foes anemic, Israel little interested in reinforcing the UN's credibility in Lebanon, and the Hariri tribunal looking like an afterthought, now may be the ideal time to begin chopping down the edifice built up in Lebanon by the Security Council between 2004 and 2006. Assad is in the driver's seat and no one seems willing to stop him.

Hassan Nasrallah is trapping himself

Hassan Nasrallah is trapping himself
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, May 29, 2008

Listening to the speeches of President Michel Suleiman and Hizbullah's Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah earlier this week, it is becoming apparent that there are really only two projects in Lebanon today: There is the project of the state, which Suleiman and the parliamentary majority embody, assuming the president abides by his public statements; and there is the project of a non-state, supported by Hizbullah and its allies.

If that wasn't plain enough, then consider what happened on Monday night, after Suleiman had spent his first day at the Baabda Palace. Hizbullah and Amal partisans, as has become their habit lately, fired in the air to celebrate Nasrallah's speech, then took to the streets and began firing at their political adversaries. In the Bekaa Valley much the same thing happened. There was a message there, perhaps more a Syrian than an Iranian one this time around, and it was that the new president should not imagine he will be able to build up a state against Hizbullah.

Thanks to the Israelis, who may soon hand a grand prisoner exchange to Hizbullah, Nasrallah may earn a brief reprieve for his "resistance." It's funny how Hizbullah and Syria, always the loudest in accusing others of being Israeli agents, are the ones who, when under pressure, look toward negotiations with Israel for an exit. Hizbullah has again done so to show that its "defense strategy" works and to deflect growing domestic insistence that the party place its weapons at the disposal of the state.

Nasrallah has started peddling what he thinks Lebanon's defense strategy should be. Hizbullah's model is the summer 2006 war, he explained this week. But if the defense strategy Hizbullah wants us to adopt is one that hands Israel an excuse to kill over 1,200 people, turn almost 1 million civilians out into the streets for weeks on end while their villages are bombed and their fields are saturated with fragmentation bomblets; if Nasrallah's strategy is one that will lead to the destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, the ruin of its economy, the emigration of its youths, the isolation of the Shiites in a society infuriated with Hizbullah's pursuit of lasting conflict; if that's his defense strategy, then Nasrallah needs to get out of his bunker more and see what is really going on in Lebanon.

The only good thing that came out of the 2006 war, the only thing that both a majority of Lebanese and the Shiite community together approved of, was the deployment of the Lebanese Army to the South, the strengthening of UNIFIL, and the pacification of the border area. The Lebanese approved of this because it made less likely a return to Nasrallah's inane defense strategy. Unless of course the Hizbullah leader is now telling us that the neutralization of Hizbullah's military activities along the frontier with Israel was also a part of that strategy, because in practical terms it too was a result of the 2006 war.

Nasrallah's speech only reaffirmed that Hizbullah cannot find an exit to its existential dilemma, other than to coerce its hostile countrymen into accepting its armed mini-state. Very simply, the days of the national resistance are over. The liberation of the Shebaa Farms does not justify Hizbullah's existence as a parallel force to the army, and it does not justify initiating a new war with Israel. After all, the Syrians have a much larger territory under occupation and have preferred negotiations to conflict in order to win it back. As Suleiman implied, the best thing that can happen now is for Hizbullah to share with the state its resistance expertise, which was a gentle way of saying that the party must integrate into the state.

Nasrallah's defensiveness also revealed something else, almost as worrying as his untenable position on Hizbullah's defense strategy. It revealed that the party views Doha as a setback. Nasrallah is right in that respect. The agreement negotiated by the Qataris was several things. It was, above all, a line drawn in the sand by the Sunni Arab world against Iran and Syria, telling them that Lebanon would not fall into their lap. In this the Qataris were part of an Arab consensus, and the Iranians, always pragmatic, backtracked when seeing how resolute the Arabs were.

But the Doha agreement was mainly a failure for Syria. Damascus had planned to use the open-ended political vacuum in Beirut as leverage to bring in a new president and government on its conditions, to negotiate Syria's return to the Arab fold from a position of strength, to torpedo the Hariri tribunal, and to prepare an eventual Syrian military return to Lebanon. The Qataris thwarted this, and in a conversation between Syrian President Bashar Assad and Qatar's Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Assad was pushed into approving Suleiman's election. As a last measure he tried to prevent the granting of 16 ministerial portfolios to the March 14 coalition - a simple majority in the 30-minister government allowing the coalition to have a quorum for regular Cabinet sessions. Sheikh Hamad rejected this and Assad had no choice but to relent, before instructing Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to accept the Qatari plan.

Hizbullah's plan was little different than that of the Syrians, so the Qataris substantially complicated Nasrallah's calculations as well. Suleiman is still an unknown quantity, but if he sticks to the principles highlighted in his inauguration speech, Hizbullah will be squeezed. Unlike the time when Emile Lahoud was still around and formed, with Berri, an alliance against Siniora, if the next prime minister and Suleiman can craft a joint strategy to strengthen the authority of the state, it is Berri, as the senior opposition figure and Shiite in office, who may find himself out on a limb.

Speaking of Berri, Hizbullah's bloc may have made a grave mistake in choosing yesterday to name no favorite as prime minister. That means that the bloc is ignoring the wishes of the Sunni community to bring back Siniora. Recall that when Berri was elected as Parliament speaker in 2005, those parliamentarians voting for him defended the choice on the grounds that "the Shiites want him." By inference, in not naming Siniora yesterday, mainly because the Syrians oppose him, the opposition has given the future majority in Parliament, if it happens to be a majority opposed to Hizbullah and Amal, an opening to reject Berri's re-election as speaker in 2009, regardless of whether the Shiites want him.

The ink on the Doha agreement is barely dry, but already Hizbullah and Syria are trying to water down its terms. Nasrallah's speech showed that he has no intention of entering into a substantive discussion on his party's weaponry. His promise not to use his guns in the pursuit of domestic political goals was meaningless, as he has already done so. In fact, his reading of what he can do with his weapons is much more advantageous to Hizbullah than what the Doha agreement stipulates. But Nasrallah has a problem. Most Lebanese want a real state and most Shiites don't want another war with Israel. Hizbullah, in contrast, doesn't want a real state but needs permanent war to remain relevant. That's Nasrallah's trap.

Something radically new after Doha

Something radically new after Doha
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, May 22, 2008

Whatever else is said about the agreement between Lebanon's leaders reached in Qatar on Wednesday, it will likely transform the country's political landscape. With the election of a president, alliances will change and with that we may see growing intricacy and reversals in the relationships between March 14 groups and opposition groups.

One thing that will not change, however, is the attitude of a majority of Lebanese when it comes to Hizbullah's behavior. Party officials have recklessly downplayed their armed occupation of Beirut two weeks ago, but no one, least of all the Sunnis, will soon forget what happened. So even if genuine politics return, those of compromise and shifting calculations, the structural inability of Hizbullah to coexist with a sovereign Lebanese state will not disappear. This may push domestic parties to acquire weapons for when Hizbullah again uses bullets to overcome its political shortcomings.

Like most compromises, the Doha agreement has created winners and losers on all sides - but remains nebulous enough so that the losers still feel they might gain from it. But it's difficult not to interpret what happened in Qatar as a definitive sign that Syria's return to Lebanon is no longer possible. No doubt the Syrians were in on the arrangement, and the suspicious delay in establishing the Hariri tribunal until early 2009 makes one wonder whether a quid pro quo is taking shape behind the scenes. Reports of a breakthrough on the Syrian-Israeli track, the Iraqi Army's entry into Sadr City, certainly with an Iranian green light, and signs that a truce may soon be agreed in Gaza, suggest a regional package deal may have oiled the Lebanese deal.

If there was one message emerging from the recent fighting, it was that Syria could not conceivably return its army to Lebanon without reconquering the country. Hizbullah committed several mistakes, of which two were especially egregious for Syria: The Sunni community, like the Druze and many Christians, are mobilized and will fight any Syrian comeback; and the Lebanese file is more than ever an Iranian one, because Hizbullah's destiny is at stake. Syria's allies, other than Hizbullah, were ineffective in Beirut and the mountains, in some cases even siding with the majority. This confirmed that Damascus has less leverage than ever when it comes to employing those smaller armed groups it completely controls.

The election of a president, even if he is the troubling Michel Suleiman, opens a new phase in Lebanon, one in which it is possible to imagine consolidating a state gradually breaking free from Syria's grip. That's the priority today, and has been the priority since April 2005 when the Syrian Army withdrew from the country. Whether Suleiman likes it or not, from now on he is a president, not a candidate maneuvering to become a president, which will require him to take a strong position on defending the sovereignty of the state both vis-ˆ-vis Syria and Hizbullah. That could either push him closer to the position favored by March 14 and most Lebanese, or it could damage him if he proves to be indecisive.

Will March 14 survive after this? It probably will in the face of an armed Hizbullah and Syria's foreseeable efforts to regain a foothold in Beirut. But the parliamentary majority may transform itself into a looser alignment, united on the large issues but with its leaders behaving parochially when it comes to elections and patronage. Once Suleiman is elected, he becomes an arbiter, an axial figure, in the political game. Politicians will have to position themselves either for or against him, as the president strives to build up a power base for himself in the state, particularly in Parliament. Expect Suleiman to use the army as his bludgeon, which would be regrettable, and expect tension between the officers and traditional politicians.

One unanswered question is who will be prime minister. If it is Saad Hariri, and it is difficult to imagine it won't be, the relationship between him and Suleiman will determine the face of Lebanon in the coming year before parliamentary elections. Neither of the two would relish a return to the discord between Emile Lahoud and Rafik Hariri. On top of that, if Saad becomes head of the government, he would benefit from using that position as a foundation to create networks of alliances transcending those of March 14. An electoral compact with the Armenians, particularly the Tashnag Party, would be a smart move, and could shift the balance in Beirut decisively away from Hizbullah, Amal and Syrian peons.

Another question is what happens to Walid Jumblatt? The Druze leader has placed himself at the center of March 14 - a key mediator and usually prime initiator of the coalition's policies. With a new president in place, Jumblatt's role will be largely determined by the relationship between Suleiman and his prime minister. If the prime minister is Hariri and Hariri and Suleiman work well together, Jumblatt could find himself isolated. In that case, and if history provides any lessons, he will soon be contesting Suleiman and the officers the president relies upon. Jumblatt also will have to keep Suleiman away from his Christian electorate in Aley and the Chouf. Expect him, in that case, to move closer to Christians as unenthusiastic about Suleiman: Samir Geagea and Michel Aoun.

Aoun is the great loser from a presidential election. It's not like the old general wasn't warned. He could have used his parliamentary bloc to be presidential kingmaker; instead he decided to obstruct everything in order to be elected himself. Now he has only dust to feed on, and in his final years he may find himself trying to protect his shriveling flock from the overtures of Suleiman, who, if he is clever, will pick up a large share of the disoriented Christians. One can already imagine most of Aoun's parliamentarians in the Metn gravitating toward Suleiman, knowing that their re-election depends on the goodwill of Michel Murr, who will be instrumental in moving the district the president's way.

Samir Geagea is in a better position than Aoun, both because of his close ties to Hariri and the Christian community's propensity to create counterweights to its presidents. However, his power in the Cabinet is uncertain and he too will have to fight off Suleiman's poaching among his voters. That's why his rapport with Aoun is bound to improve.

The matter of Hizbullah's weapons will be the first test for Suleiman once he is elected. The president risks losing the Sunnis if he comes out with a limp formula that sidelines any serious discussion of the topic. Now is the time to put the question of weapons on the table seriously, and Suleiman, as a former commander of the army, is in an ideal position to propose a sensible compromise. A second test for the president will be the choice of a new army commander. The head of military intelligence, George Khoury, is pining for the post, but given the army's indolence during the fighting in Beirut and Hariri's deep doubts about what happened, Suleiman may need all his dexterity to propose a successor who satisfies all sides.

Can Hizbullah be pleased with the result? It will now be able to say that it received veto power in the government and that the matter of its weapons was not discussed in Doha. It will also be able to convince its supporters that this was its latest victory after the government's decision to withdraw the two decisions last week that Hizbullah found offensive. But that may be only half the story. By so foolishly taking over Beirut militarily, the party only scared the other communities into sustained hostility. The two decisions the government went back on were decisions it could never have implemented anyway, so Hizbullah effectively revealed its coup plan at an inopportune time and for little gain. The party also has lost two cards: It has dismantled its downtown protest camp and won't be able to close the airport road for some time. Its weapons have become a subject of legitimate national discussion. And what kind of war can Hizbullah hope to wage against Israel in South Lebanon when most Lebanese, and quite a few Shiites, have no desire for war? Most importantly, Hizbullah has been about the negation of the state. If the post-Doha process is about the building of a state, then the party and that state will eventually clash.

Much will depend on Michel Suleiman. That the president will get only three ministers in a new Cabinet affirms he has serious credibility problems on all sides. Suleiman is an unknown quantity. Will he be a faithful partner of Syria, as when he was army commander? Or will he realize that he can be more than that? In many ways Suleiman is a peculiar creation as president, someone never destined to inherit the office. Now he has a chance to become the long-awaited patron of a new and consensual Lebanese political order. Let's hope he's up to it.

Pity Lebanon’s Shia community

The failure of Hezbollah’s latest effort to tilt the political and military balance in its favor was visible in the eyes of the mild inhabitants of the Shia village of Qomatiyeh on Tuesday, as they buried a young Hezbollah man killed by Druze fighters. According to the villagers, the young man, Suleiman Jaafar, was first wounded then executed by members of the Progressive Socialist Party. Such frightful ferocity will greet Hezbollah in every hostile location it would ever wish to control.

There is great poignancy in the fate of the people of Qomatiyeh. With Kayfoun, the village is one of two Shia enclaves in the predominantly Druze and Christian Aley district. The inhabitants, far more than their brethren in the southern suburbs or the South, must on a daily basis juggle between a past in which they coexisted with their non-Shia neighbors and a present and future in which the neighbors view them as an existential threat. That story written large may soon be the story of Lebanon’s Shia community after the mad coup attempt organized by Hezbollah last week. In the past decade and a half, Hezbollah has injected regional animosities and an antagonistic and totalistic ideology of confrontation into tens of thousands of Shia homes, quarters, towns and villages where such attitudes have no place. Whatever brings the Iranian concept of wilayat al-faqih – the guardianship of the jurisconsult – to Qomatiyeh? Suleiman Jaafar may have been a Hezbollah member, but he was more than anything else a village boy caught in a fight far bigger than him, than all of us.

A solution appears to have been found for the immediate crisis that began last week. The airport and roads have been opened, but there never was a way for Hezbollah to emerge successfully from the conflict it created. Militarily, the only way the party could have momentarily broken the deadlock in the mountains was to mount a massive invasion of Aley and the Chouf, using thousands of men and its most sophisticated weaponry. The Druze would have remained united – as Talal Arslan’s supporters and other Druze opposition members were united with Walid Jumblatt’s followers at the weekend. There would have been carnage, and had Hezbollah prevailed, it would have had to hold unfriendly territory indefinitely, locking down resources and manpower. Then what? An invasion of Metn? Kesrouan? Jbeil? The North? Not even the most ardent Hezbollah believer would have seriously argued that such a project was feasible. Military stalemate would have prevailed, and even if the stalemate had collapsed in one area, it would have been followed by myriad stalemates elsewhere, denying Hezbollah any real political gain.

But worse, Hezbollah’s actions of last week have brought terrible misfortune upon the Shia community. As the Christians learned to their detriment during the 1975-1990 war, fighting the Sunni community in Lebanon is tantamount to fighting the Arab world. The Northern Islamists have been awakened, and with them Sunni Islamists everywhere in the region and beyond who will rally to do battle against the apostate. As Saad Hariri said in his press conference on Wednesday, fitna, or discord between Muslims, already exists; things may still be under a measure of control, but not for long if the situation worsens. As Hariri implied, if Hezbollah chooses to break the Future Movement and the Sunni moderates, it will soon have to face the most extremist Sunnis.

The Shia community is obeying a leadership that cannot be said, in any way, to have ever understood the essence of the Lebanese system. Hezbollah and its secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, will often insist that sectarian compromise requires handing the party, and Shia in general, veto power over political decision-making. But that’s not what the consociational system is about; the point of the sectarian arrangement is not to build a system based on mechanisms of obstruction. It is to force the different communities to reach compromises in order to avert mechanisms of obstruction. Hezbollah has repeatedly tried to ignore this by imposing its will in the street or through its guns. The result has been a gathering, strengthening alignment of adversaries that will fight hard before allowing Hezbollah or the Shia to gain hegemonic power.

But wasn’t this reaction always obvious? Apparently not to Nasrallah and his Iranian sponsors, who never had any liking for the baroque but necessary give and take of the Lebanese order – let alone respect for the retribution that has always crippled those ignoring its fundamental rules. Through its contempt for Lebanon, Hezbollah has left itself with two stark choices: either to integrate fully into the state or to control the state. But since it will or can do neither, we are in for a long and harsh standoff between Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanese society.

The clock began counting down in May 2000, when Israel withdrew from Lebanon. This threatened to deny the party its reason to exist, even though it tried to keep “resistance” alive through the Shebaa Farms front. In 2005, once the Syrians departed, everything collapsed. The party found itself having to justify its private army against a majority of Lebanese that opposed Hezbollah’s state within a state and its lasting allegiance to the Syrian regime. In 2006, as the national dialogue prepared to address the issue of Hezbollah’s weapons, Nasrallah sought to turn the tables by kidnapping Israeli soldiers and imposing his version of Hezbollah’s defense strategy on March 14. The plan backfired when Israel responded by ravaging Lebanon and the Shia in particular. And now, having fully discredited its “resistance” in the eyes of its countrymen, having ensured that an antagonistic population will be to its rear in the event of a new war with Israel, having weakened its non-Shia allies, Hezbollah, as both an idea and a driving force, is in its death throes. The party may yet endure, but the national resistance is finished.

It is undeniable that Hezbollah has over the years given Shia a heightened sense of self-respect. But regrettably, it has taken the party’s accumulation of arms to do so, even as Hezbollah has utterly failed to clarify the Shia role in any new Lebanon. In fact the party has consciously undercut that debate to retain its grip over its co-religionists and block the emergence of a sovereign country free of Syria. What kind of party places its own community in such dire straits? Certainly not one that can ever hope of finding itself at peace with its fellow Lebanese.