Post by Bozur on Jul 3, 2005 23:02:24 GMT -5
A Fine Line Between Civil War and Politics
By JOHN KIFNER
Published: June 26, 2005
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Throughout the darkest days of 15 years of civil war, the paradox of Lebanon was always that what enabled its people to survive and even prosper were the close bonds of family, clan, village and ultimately religion, while these were the very forces that tore the country apart.
Now Lebanon is struggling to become a whole, genuine country after 29 years of Syrian domination. It has just held parliamentary elections that, on the one hand, held the promise of a new politics envisioned in the "Cedar Revolution" of massive independence demonstrations earlier this year, but on the other hand featured the same political faces and sectarian tensions that have always defined politics here.
At a time when democracy in the Arab world is the subject of endless discussion, it is worth a good look at Lebanon and the way the lingering, perhaps overriding, question of identity - do people belong to a country or to their tribe? - is playing out here.
Lebanon is a complex society - with some 17 different sects - and a sophisticated one, long a meeting place between East and West, Islam and Christianity. Its elections, held over four weeks in districts where distinct religious identities were a crucial issue, were as complex, convoluted and sometimes contradictory as the country itself: It is at once the most urbane and Westernized of Arab countries, but also a place where power has long been held by near-feudal local strongmen known as zaims, and where the primordial loyalties lie with one's sect.
"The plain fact remained that the religious communities in Lebanon were essentially tribes, or in any case behaved as tribes, and the game that came to be played between them was a tribal game," the Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi wrote in "A House of Many Mansions."
And so there are longstanding tensions among the various groups here: Christians to the north and along the mountain ridges who fear being submerged in a sea of Muslims; Shiite Muslims, a mostly rural underclass in the south and the Bekaa Valley, who are resentful because they were probably the majority; Sunni Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians, the more sophisticated city dwellers; and the smaller group of Druse mountain tribesmen whose belief in reincarnation made them fearless fighters and thus not to be ignored. There has been no census since 1932, because of the potentially unsettling political ramifications.
Those religious differences led to civil war from 1975 to 1990, in which some 150,000 people died. The cliché used to explain the fight was Christian right vs. Muslim left, but it was far more complicated. Some of the most vicious fighting came within communities, as when the Shiite Hezbollah took on the rival Amal movement and the Christian militia loyal to the Gemayel family massacred members of those loyal to the Chamoun and Franjieh families.
"At one time or another, each one of the dozen or so major armed groups fought against each other, at least for a short while," a British military expert, Edgar O'Ballance, wrote in "Civil War in Lebanon, 1975-92." "Machiavelli would have been out of his depth in this web of intrigue and violence."
Muslim-ruled Syria entered at Christian request in 1976, and in 1990 the United States gave a green light to Syria's ambitions here in exchange for a symbolic troop deployment in the first Gulf war. Gen. Michel Aoun, a Christian who led the Lebanese Army, took on the Christian militias, then the Syrians, but lost a climactic battle to the Syrians. He went into 15 years of exile and became a symbol of resistance, particularly for many young Christians.
Then, last fall, after Syria's ruler, Bashar al-Assad, ordered the Lebanese Parliament to amend the constitution to give his chosen president, Émile Lahoud, three more years, a resentful opposition united with a former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. When a car bomb killed him and 19 others, Lebanese mounted mass rallies to protest - and demanded that Syria get out. Syria withdrew troops in April, but is thought to have left intelligence agents behind.
All of that history set the stage for the elections just held. In them, old clan rivalries were set aside by some under the banner of a new national unity. Mr. Hariri's son Saad, a Sunni, and the Druse chieftain Walid Jumblatt, formed an unlikely political alliance among families that had been civil war enemies, and were joined by outlawed Christian militias, in hopes of ousting President Lahoud. But the strong-willed, egotistical General Aoun, returning from exile, broke with their slates and ran on his own.
The final result gave the broad opposition coalition 72 seats, a majority. But when Parliament meets next week, religious prerogatives may yield an impasse frustrating to many Lebanese. Without many Christian legislators in the opposition, it will be hard to vote Mr. Lahoud out of the presidency, which is reserved for a Christian. And it seems likely that the post of Parliament speaker, reserved for a Shiite, will again go to Nabih Berri, another ally of Syria.
Still, for all the complaints of rising sectarian tensions and vote-buying (mainly from the losers), this was a remarkably free and open election for the Arab world. Instead of guns and bombs, rivals sparred with brightly colored T-shirts and caps, standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the polls without even much in the way of harsh words, as they pressed preprinted candidate slates on voters. Perhaps, the journalist Rami Khouri suggested, what was happening was not so much the dissipation of hopes for national unity raised in the demonstrations in March, but the start of a long, slow process.
"How refreshing!" he wrote in his column in The Daily Star. "An Arab parliamentary election whose results were not known three months ahead of time, and did not result in the ruling party winning a victory of over 90 percent, as has been the norm in many Arab countries in the last half centuries."
By JOHN KIFNER
Published: June 26, 2005
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Throughout the darkest days of 15 years of civil war, the paradox of Lebanon was always that what enabled its people to survive and even prosper were the close bonds of family, clan, village and ultimately religion, while these were the very forces that tore the country apart.
Now Lebanon is struggling to become a whole, genuine country after 29 years of Syrian domination. It has just held parliamentary elections that, on the one hand, held the promise of a new politics envisioned in the "Cedar Revolution" of massive independence demonstrations earlier this year, but on the other hand featured the same political faces and sectarian tensions that have always defined politics here.
At a time when democracy in the Arab world is the subject of endless discussion, it is worth a good look at Lebanon and the way the lingering, perhaps overriding, question of identity - do people belong to a country or to their tribe? - is playing out here.
Lebanon is a complex society - with some 17 different sects - and a sophisticated one, long a meeting place between East and West, Islam and Christianity. Its elections, held over four weeks in districts where distinct religious identities were a crucial issue, were as complex, convoluted and sometimes contradictory as the country itself: It is at once the most urbane and Westernized of Arab countries, but also a place where power has long been held by near-feudal local strongmen known as zaims, and where the primordial loyalties lie with one's sect.
"The plain fact remained that the religious communities in Lebanon were essentially tribes, or in any case behaved as tribes, and the game that came to be played between them was a tribal game," the Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi wrote in "A House of Many Mansions."
And so there are longstanding tensions among the various groups here: Christians to the north and along the mountain ridges who fear being submerged in a sea of Muslims; Shiite Muslims, a mostly rural underclass in the south and the Bekaa Valley, who are resentful because they were probably the majority; Sunni Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians, the more sophisticated city dwellers; and the smaller group of Druse mountain tribesmen whose belief in reincarnation made them fearless fighters and thus not to be ignored. There has been no census since 1932, because of the potentially unsettling political ramifications.
Those religious differences led to civil war from 1975 to 1990, in which some 150,000 people died. The cliché used to explain the fight was Christian right vs. Muslim left, but it was far more complicated. Some of the most vicious fighting came within communities, as when the Shiite Hezbollah took on the rival Amal movement and the Christian militia loyal to the Gemayel family massacred members of those loyal to the Chamoun and Franjieh families.
"At one time or another, each one of the dozen or so major armed groups fought against each other, at least for a short while," a British military expert, Edgar O'Ballance, wrote in "Civil War in Lebanon, 1975-92." "Machiavelli would have been out of his depth in this web of intrigue and violence."
Muslim-ruled Syria entered at Christian request in 1976, and in 1990 the United States gave a green light to Syria's ambitions here in exchange for a symbolic troop deployment in the first Gulf war. Gen. Michel Aoun, a Christian who led the Lebanese Army, took on the Christian militias, then the Syrians, but lost a climactic battle to the Syrians. He went into 15 years of exile and became a symbol of resistance, particularly for many young Christians.
Then, last fall, after Syria's ruler, Bashar al-Assad, ordered the Lebanese Parliament to amend the constitution to give his chosen president, Émile Lahoud, three more years, a resentful opposition united with a former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. When a car bomb killed him and 19 others, Lebanese mounted mass rallies to protest - and demanded that Syria get out. Syria withdrew troops in April, but is thought to have left intelligence agents behind.
All of that history set the stage for the elections just held. In them, old clan rivalries were set aside by some under the banner of a new national unity. Mr. Hariri's son Saad, a Sunni, and the Druse chieftain Walid Jumblatt, formed an unlikely political alliance among families that had been civil war enemies, and were joined by outlawed Christian militias, in hopes of ousting President Lahoud. But the strong-willed, egotistical General Aoun, returning from exile, broke with their slates and ran on his own.
The final result gave the broad opposition coalition 72 seats, a majority. But when Parliament meets next week, religious prerogatives may yield an impasse frustrating to many Lebanese. Without many Christian legislators in the opposition, it will be hard to vote Mr. Lahoud out of the presidency, which is reserved for a Christian. And it seems likely that the post of Parliament speaker, reserved for a Shiite, will again go to Nabih Berri, another ally of Syria.
Still, for all the complaints of rising sectarian tensions and vote-buying (mainly from the losers), this was a remarkably free and open election for the Arab world. Instead of guns and bombs, rivals sparred with brightly colored T-shirts and caps, standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the polls without even much in the way of harsh words, as they pressed preprinted candidate slates on voters. Perhaps, the journalist Rami Khouri suggested, what was happening was not so much the dissipation of hopes for national unity raised in the demonstrations in March, but the start of a long, slow process.
"How refreshing!" he wrote in his column in The Daily Star. "An Arab parliamentary election whose results were not known three months ahead of time, and did not result in the ruling party winning a victory of over 90 percent, as has been the norm in many Arab countries in the last half centuries."