Post-colonial Syria and Lebanon In memory of my beloved mother, Nadia Youssef Bek El-Zein POST-COLONIAL SYRIA AND LEBANON THE DECLINE OF ARAB NATIONALISM AND THE TRIUMPH OF THE STATE Youssef Chaitani Published in 2007 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com In the United States and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © Youssef Chaitani, 2007 The right of Youssef Chaitani to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. ISBN: 978 1 84511 294 3 Library of Middle East History 11 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Typeset in Minion by Dexter Haven Associates Ltd, London Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Foreword ix Introduction 1 1The Syrian Arab Nationalists: Independence First 14 A. The Forging of a New Alliance 14 B. The Higher Council of the Common Interests 18 C. The Transfer of the Contested Troupes Spéciales 24 2 The Functional Aspects of Bilateral Relations 33 A. Discord over Customs Revenues and Taxation Policies 33 B. The Common Interests and Lebanese Sensitivities 43 3The Customs Union: The Cause of Discord 54 A. Taxation Policies 55 B. Diverse Perceptions on the Future of the Customs Union 62 C. Syrian Trade Escapes to Lebanon 68 4 Oil and Grain 74 5 Functional Separation 90 A. The Monetary Issue 94 B. Arab League Arbitration 109 C. Restriction of Imports 117 D. The ‘Azem Government: An Attempt to Change 125 the Status Quo 6Military Rule in Damascus and Relations with Beirut 128 A. The Interlude of Husni al-Za’im 129 B. The Interlude of Sami al-Hinnawi 141 C. The Liquidation of the Customs Union 145 Conclusion 159 Notes 165 Selected Bibliography 199 Index 207 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special thanks go to Dr Raghid el-Solh for his constant encouragement, understanding and valuable advice. Dr Solh took a personal interest in seeing the completion of the study in a manner that corresponds to his high research standards and dedication to Arab regional integration. The study could not have been concluded without him. I would also like to specially thank Prof. Sami Zubeida. Prof. Zubeida’s support goes far beyond the intricacies that went into the preparation of the manuscript. My special thanks go to Dr Patrick Seale, Prof. Roger Owen, Prof. Kamal Salibi, Prof. Eugine Rogan, Prof. Charles Tripp, Prof Atif Kubursi and Prof. Paul Kingston for their suggestions and constructive criticisms. They took the time to read the manuscript and proposed improvements. In addition, I extend my sincere thanks to Mr Nadim Shehadi, who provided the crucial support in tackling the numerous difficulties I faced related to the archival material utilised in the study. My profound gratitude goes to my former professors at the History Department at the American University of Beirut, in particular Professors Samir Seikaly, Abdel Rahim Abu Hussein and John Meloy, as well as to the dedicated staff of the Jaffet Library at the American University of Beirut for facilitating my access to the research material I needed. I thank Mr Fadi Shaker, whose research skills and dedication contributed to the enrichment of the study. My gratitude also goes to Mr Sarmad Salibi, Daniel Neuwirth, Abigail Fielding-Smith and Gretchen Ladish for their unfailing support. My eternal gratitude goes to ESCWA Executive Secretary and Under-Secretary General Mervat Tallawy for her boundless support. Most importantly, I shall be eternally indebted to my parents, Nizar and Nadia, as well as my brother Hussein and sisters Randa, Riem and Hana, for their enormous sacrifices. Without them I would have never been able to have got as far as I did. Sacrifices and unlimited support were also made by my in-laws, Mahmoud and Haifa Nasreddine, my sister-in-law, Ruwan and my uncle Abdel Latif el-Zein. Last but not least, my heart goes out to my wife Lara and our two children, Karim and Yasmine. Their love makes all the hardships and hard work easily endurable. vii FOREWORD fall the Arab world’s political relationships, none displays such a tormented combination of attraction and repulsion, of love and hate, O as that between Syria and Lebanon. Although indispensable to each other, they have often found coexistence onerous and troublesome. They cannot live together, yet they cannot live apart. They seem forever trapped in a repetitive cycle of conflict and reconciliation. The most recent falling out – and a spectacular one – occurred in 2005, when outrage over the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the billionaire former Premier and architect of Lebanon’s post-civil war revival, aroused a groundswell of anti-Syrian feeling – a veritable political tsunami – which forced Syrian troops to leave the country after a stay of nearly three decades. Lebanon seemed determined to break free from what had become a suffocating Syrian tutelage. The protagonists seemed irreconcilable and the breach final. Yet, peering into the uncharted future, one can be certain of only one thing – that Syria and Lebanon will eventually make it up. A permanent estrangement is indeed unthinkable. For one thing, ties across the common border of family and friendship, of commerce and strategic interest, are so dense as to rule out the possibility of divorce. What Syrian family does not have a relative that has married in Lebanon, or has a Lebanese business partner, or an account in a Lebanese bank, or has been treated at a Beirut hospital, or has perhaps settled there to escape one or other of Syria’s authoritarian or socialist regimes, or has humbly worked in Lebanon on a building site or laboured in the fields at harvest time? And what Lebanese has not bargained and shopped and eaten and traded in the souks of Damascus, always so much cheaper and more ‘authentic’ than those of cosmopolitan Beirut, and has not then carried home a precious box of Syrian sweetmeats, without dispute the best in the world? Whatever their quarrels, the one issue that has united Syria and Lebanon is their hostility to Israel, the common enemy to their immediate south. Israel seized Syria’s Golan plateau in the 1967 war and shows no inclination to return it. Israel also invaded Lebanon, not once but twice – in 1978 and then again on a larger scale in 1982, when it killed some 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians and besieged and bombarded Beirut with the aim of driving out the Syrians, destroying the PLO ix POST-COLONIAL SYRIA AND LEBANON (which had set up house there after being expelled from Jordan in 1970) and bringing Lebanon into its orbit. These aggressive aims might well have succeeded had Syria and its local allies not managed to wrest Lebanon out of Israel’s grip and abort an agreement – in effect a separate peace – which the United States brokered between Israel and Lebanon in 1983. Nevertheless, Israel remained in military occupation of a substantial slice of southern Lebanon for 22 years until finally driven out by Hizballah guerrillas in 2000. With Damascus less than 20 kilometres from the Lebanese border and the heart of Syria vulnerable to a thrust up the Beqa’ valley, a fundamental principle of Syrian policy has been to prevent any hostile power, and Israel in particular, from establishing itself in Lebanon, or mounting hostile operations against it from Lebanese soil. Syria has thus striven to keep Lebanon within its own sphere of influence and away from any relationship with Zionism (an option that some Lebanese Maronites, seeking allies against their Muslim environment, flirted with from time to time throughout the twentieth century). Big-brotherly control of Lebanon has in recent decades served Syria well: it has lent it regional and international weight; it has provided a buffer against Israel; and it has been a source of wealth for well-placed Syrians in the army and security services, in the political elite and the business community. These assets and advantages were threatened by the crisis over Hariri’s murder, but there is no evidence that Syria is ready or willing to give them up altogether. With its local friends and allies, it will fight, and perhaps even kill, to retain a measure of real influence in Beirut, if no longer of direct control. There is another imponderable. Deep in the Syrian consciousness, among the public and the leadership alike, is the feeling that Lebanon is not really a foreign country, but rather more like a long-lost province over which Syria has some ancient if indeterminate claim. For some four hundred years until 1918, the countries we now call Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel, together with what is left of Palestine, were known collectively as ‘Syria’, or rather as the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. These countries cannot easily opt out of their common history or their common environment, however much one or two of them may long to do so.