LEBANON: After the Cedar Revolution Book Launch Michael Young February 21, 2013 - Beirut
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LEBANON: After the Cedar Revolution Book Launch Michael Young February 21, 2013 - Beirut Thank you. Not having been a part of this book project, I’m not quite sure how I can add to the discussion. So I have decided to look back on the past 8 years since the assassination of Rafik Hariri, and try to draw out what I view as the salient messages that emerged from that period, and doubtless the frustrations they engendered. I wrote a book on this period and have discovered through the changes in my own outlook that it’s difficult to find much that is constant, reassuringly so. In that sense, the post-2005 period is quintessentially Lebanese in the transformations of the political actors, their shifts and adaptability in pursuit of self-interest. One thing is morally inescapable, however, and it’s important that we state it outright. The events of 2005 began with a crime. What happened was quite simply an outrage against decency to many Lebanese, an insult to their sense of what was right, no less so than was the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia or the torture of children in Deraa, and many in our society reacted accordingly. Yet this obvious fact that it was a crime, and a contemptible one at that, largely became a source of discord in the post-2005 period. Hariri’s partisans have said that as he was the victim of a heinous offense, and that Lebanon, with the help of the international community, had to investigate what happened to ensure that there was no impunity for the murderers. Opponents replied that, yes, Hariri was the victim of a crime, but then promptly emptied this of all meaning by asking why he alone should have benefited from a major investigation when others had not? They argued, instead, that Lebanon would suffer from an investigation over which there was no national consensus. This broad disagreement was at the heart of Lebanon’s political divisions after 2005, even if we find ourselves today in a situation where the reality of Hariri’s elimination appears to have become secondary amid Lebanon’s myriad disputes and other urgent problems, not least the impact of the war in Syria. 1 Yet opposition to crime writ large has been at the heart of the Arab uprisings, from Tunisia to Egypt, from Libya to Syria. And it sparked the uprising in Lebanon, the Independence Intifada, which I prefer as a term to the too ambitious Cedar Revolution of Paula Dobriansky, because there was never a revolution at all. Instead, Hariri’s killing led to an assault on a system of control and intimidation, run by Syria and its Lebanese allies that had been in place for decades. This for me is the second most salient point of 2005. What we had, and which we cannot deny today, was a felicitous removal of a security apparatus that had done much damage to Lebanon, its constitutional institutions and rules, the economy, and much more. Syria had allies in Lebanon, but few, by 2005, could defend Syria’s system as beneficial any more for Lebanon. And this rejection of the instruments of repression—primarily those exercised by Syria’s ubiquitous intelligence network—only presaged what we would see in the Arab world starting in January 2011, which many, if not most, Arab societies viewed with great sympathy. In Lebanon’s case this push back was only partial, since the army’s intelligence service and Hezbollah, both close to Syria, remained in place, and were not held accountable for actions directed against Lebanese. Indeed, we would emerge from this period with a certain schizophrenia: one part of the political spectrum condemned the continued presence of a major instrument of Syrian influence, namely Hezbollah; while the other affirmed that Hezbollah embodied a resistance ideal in which the alliance with Syria held a special place. The problems emerging from this disconnect plague Lebanon to this day in the divisions between March 8 and March 14, and amid the Syrian conflict. A third observation about the post-2005 period is that the talk of a revolution at the time was empty. As any of those who followed the details of events in February-April 2005 know, there was no impetus of the political leadership to permit a challenge to their authority. And the March 14, 2005, demonstration, I have argued, though remarkable, was a distillation of confessional thinking. And yet this did not mean a rift between the leadership and base of the March 14 parties. On the contrary, subsequent tensions only hardened the base’s devotion to the leaders. I have also argued that sectarianism, for all its flaws, is what has allowed the emergence of a pluralistic order, which has itself created spaces for liberal behavior. Yet it also facilitated this loyalty to often-illiberal sectarian leaders. If there is one thing that I’ve learned since 2005 it’s that the sectarian leaders managed to keep a tight rein on developments, and played on sectarian tension to enhance their own agendas. But it’s also that we should not hasten, in a wave of middle class self-righteousness, to write off the sectarian leaders. They will retain influence and weight, particularly in so unstable a Lebanon as the one today. And these leaders were instrumental in carrying their interactions into the post-February-April period, and in that way taking the initiative out of the hands of the public that had gone into the streets after Hariri’s killing. Not surprisingly, what would ensue was a prolonged period of political conflict, as Syria sought to re-impose itself in Lebanon with the help of its Lebanese allies, and as the March 14 political leaders sought, in their turn, to consolidate their grip over post-Syria Lebanon. These dynamics led to growing divisions within society, and most dangerously to Sunni-Shia tensions, whose continued shocks we are feeling today. 2 The core of this dispute was the kind of Lebanon to which the different parties aspired. For March 14, it was one in which there would no longer be coexistence with an armed Hezbollah, particularly after the war of 2006; for Hezbollah and March 8, it was a Lebanon that could pursue the resistance path. Michel Aoun, never a major defender of resistance against Israel, went along, assuming this would favor his ambitions to become president and paramount Christian leader. These dynamics fed into regional dynamics, characterized by the Saudi-Iranian rivalry, which in turn exacerbated the successive crises in Lebanon, as both countries relied on their local allies and backed them up in domestic battles. This reality led to another of the great reversals of 2005, namely the effort by Saudi Arabia to effect a reconciliation between Saad Hariri and Syria, the price of which would have been Hariri’s denunciation of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. This process broke down in early 2011, partly because of U.S. opposition, and it precipitated the ouster of Saad Hariri, who had never been enthusiastic with the Saudi initiative, but had no choice but to play along. So, in early 2011 we witnessed an effort to draw a line through the crime of 2005, a step that would facilitate the return of Syrian influence, and this came in the context of a Saudi effort to consolidate Hariri’s role in Lebanon and break Syria away from Iran. This ultimately worsened Sunni-Shia relations following the indictment in the Hariri assassination of 5 Hezbollah members. The Saudi effort failed failed, and what we have been living since then is the aftermath of this breakdown. Soon thereafter, the Syria conflict began and further widened the breach between sects in Lebanon, above all between the Hariri-dominated Sunni community and the Hezbollah-dominated Shiite community. A further ingredient was tossed into the mix when Hariri left Lebanon in 2011, effectively ceding the ground to his political adversaries. This corresponded to the formation of Najib Mikati’s government—the same Najib Mikati who had taken over from Omar Karami in 2005, following the prime minister’s resignation. Now, ironically, Mikati was taking over from Hariri, who had been a main political beneficiary of Karami’s downfall. I think you can see where I’m leading. The post-2005 period has been one in which Lebanon has been politically divided, which we know, but also in which many of the positions of the leading political actors were contradicted by their behavior: • Hariri, whose primary self-stated objective, was to uncover the truth about his father’s death, advanced for a time in a Saudi-sponsored project that would have undermined that effort; • Hezbollah, which in 2006 said that it was at the vanguard of defending Lebanon, in May 2008 turned its guns against fellow Lebanese, after saying it would never do so, and overran western Beirut; • Walid Jumblatt, who was instrumental in mobilizing opposition to Syria in 2004-2005, reversed himself in 2009 and began shifting toward Damascus, until his reconciliation with Bashar Assad in March 2010. The first public sign of his intention was his leaking of a telephone video in which he criticized the Maronite community as “jins atil” – a step I believe was specifically meant to send a conciliatory message to Syria. • Aoun, who had destroyed half of Lebanon in his “war of liberation” against Syria in 1989, and had played a key role in the Independence Intifada of 2005, returned to Lebanon to ally 3 himself with Syria and argue, against all evidence, that Syria was no longer politically present in Lebanon.