Editor's Notebook: Critics of Lebanon 's Independence Uprising Attempt a New Spin on Syrian Occupation

By Elie Chalala

The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri is both a personal and political tragedy, a loss for his family and for Lebanon.

For Lebanon, the loss is immeasurable. Rafik al-Hariri was no ordinary prime minister. While he was not a charismatic personality or a great orator like former prime minister Rashid Karame who was also assassinated, Hariri was a visionary leader. His accomplishments stand out among Lebanese public figures past and present. Unlike many Lebanese politicians, he was neither a militia commander nor an active participant in the 15-year-old civil war. On the contrary, he is most remembered for his key role in ending the war. Among Hariri's many legacies is the Taif Accord, the new constitution which many viewed as the solution that ended the war and to which most Lebanese pledge support. Moreover, Hariri distinguished himself from the entire Lebanese parasitical class by breaking away from traditional politics when he refused to surround himself, whether in government or in business, with his kin or co-religionists. He adopted a modern merit system that replaced old Lebanese patronage politics.

Hariri can be remembered for three major contributions. First, Hariri leaves his stamp on rebuilding the city of Beirut and helping it to emerge from the ruins of the civil war. Yes, there are many voices who claim that Beirut has been a business venture for companies associated with the late prime minister; and indeed it is. Some complaints about Hariri's policies, particularly regarding the huge debt the nation has amassed ($35 billion) or the reconstruction taking place at the expense of the city's archaeological heritage, are valid; we have published our share of criticism about the latter issue.

On several occasions, I have expressed concern about linking the financial well-being of a country to one man or one company, despite all good intentions. Criticisms aside, Hariri proved to be the only one with large enough financial and political capital to bet upon the future of Lebanon. That he made or was about to make a profit from his investments should not be surprising for those who understand basic economics. The alternative would have been a war-ravaged Lebanon, dependant upon subsidies and loans from foreign countries and institutions; this option would not have sufficed to rebuild the city even if those resources materialized. Hariri's approach rested on a harmony of his own interests and those of his country. Certainly this is positive when compared to those who wanted to maximize their interests by perpetuating the war, promoting death over life.

Further, at a time when Lebanon was engulfed by war and destruction, with most of its institutions, including those of higher education, paralyzed or crippled, Hariri responded by forming a foundation that carried his name. The Hariri Foundation assumed the responsibility for offering scholarships to tens of thousands of Lebanese students for study abroad, an unprecedented philanthropic project. This commitment to education pre-dated Hariri's ascendancy as prime minister in the post-Taif period.

Hariri's policies and investments in the arena of culture, particularly print and electronic media, yielded a tolerant, secular, and enlightened vision of Lebanon. Both the Lebanese daily Al Mustaqbal and the television station of the same name illustrate Hariri's dedication to cultural diversity and freedom of expression. For those such as myself, who left the country before the civil war, Hariri's project is reminiscent of bygone days when Lebanon, regardless of its flawed political institutions, was a cacophony of voices, left, right and center, arguing amongst themselves but doing so in a tradition of civility and tolerance.

Though he was a billionaire construction magnate, and despite his newly-discovered power, I wonder if Hariri was nostalgic for that period, a period in which the socialization of an entire generation of Lebanese brought tolerance along with freedom of artistic and cultural expression. Many of Al Mustaqbal's TV programs are reminiscent of the spirit that prevailed in the pre-civil war period. His daily, Al Mustaqbal, has distinguished itself as a major Lebanese publication and, though owned by Hariri, his influence upon its pages was not overwhelming to the extent of excluding others. (Regrettably, this applied only to when Hariri was alive, not since his death.)

The cultural pages of Al Mustaqbal, which are of great interest to me, have been very rich in reviews, essays, interviews, and lively debates about various aspects of Arab culture and arts. When we compare Al Mustaqbal with Al Manar, the Hezbollah TV station, a strikingly different picture emerges; the latter is a monolithic presence that does not represent the whole of Lebanon, glossing over the religious, cultural, and political diversity that the world witnessed during the one-million-strong demonstration in mid-March. Hariri's vision for Lebanon was in tune with those who took to the streets to both bid him farewell and to denounce his killers.

Hariri appointed Mohammed Kishli, once an Arab nationalist and later a communist, as an advisor on labor issues. Kishli confided in Hariri regarding topics that were on his mind to write about, but explained he was hesitant because of his official association with the late prime minister. Hariri's answer, according to a recent column by Kishli in the Lebanese daily An Nahar: "Mohammad, have I prevented you from writing anything?" Of course, the late prime minister had not. This anecdote further demonstrates Hariri's vision of an open and tolerant Lebanon, a vision that did not sit well with certain groups inside and outside of Lebanon.

Much of the analyses of the recently unfolding events in Lebanon is troubling and disorienting, whether one reads critics from both the liberal and "leftist" camps in the electronic and print media, or looks to bloggers on the Middle East. Aside from downplaying the uprising of independence by not dignifying it with appropriate coverage, when the press was forced to write about it under the pressure imposed by intensive mainstream media attention, they questioned the legitimacy of this exceptional event. A number of critics, here and in some media circles in the Arab world, question the popular sentiment directed toward the Syrian occupation and even go so far as to blame the Lebanese for their whole predicament.

While it is commonplace for the media to criticize double-standard policies on one issue or another, I cannot refrain from leveling the same charge against the critics of Lebanese opposition to Syrian occupation. Many of these critics oppose the American occupation of Iraq, as do I, but not the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Unless they believe in good and bad occupation, their position makes little sense. Occupation is occupation, and had the Lebanese been the occupiers of Syria, they too would have behaved as do all occupiers, Syrians or otherwise. At the risk of repeating a cliché, "power corrupts" - it does, and not selectively.

Consider what happened at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. The abuse revealed to the outside world should have belonged to the dark world of Saddam Hussein rather than Iraq under American occupation. The torture and humiliation reveal that despite stark differences with Baathist Iraq and professed U.S. goals of ridding Iraq of Saddam's torture machines, the very fact of being an occupying regime may result in some segments of its forces resorting to methods generally reserved for dictatorial regimes.

It is naive to suggest that Syria's treatment of the Lebanese is different simply because most of Lebanon was once part of Syria and the two peoples share common culture, language, and religion - all components which make up a national community. Moreover, this attitude ignores the Lebanese yearning for self-determination as well as Syria 's concretely un-"sisterly" policies toward Lebanon.

Perhaps much of what the Lebanese suffered had not been publicized because many of protesters who flooded the streets in mid-March had previously repressed their pain due to the "sisterly" commonalities between Lebanon and Syria. Their silence had left only anti-Syrian Rightist Lebanese Christian groups at the forefront of the opposition to Syria.

Much of the reasoning behind the spin on Syria 's occupation is linked to the war in Iraq and the faulty and disastrous rationale of the Bush administration for waging it. If Bush repeatedly calls on Syria to leave Lebanon, his reason must be suspect in the context of the war against Iraq. Even if we put aside Syria's own interests, which were served by the intervention, the Asad regime can be indicted on several grounds: it acted as occupier and laid down an authoritarian political and security infrastructure, that would either keep the country under direct control or continue indirect influence even if the Syrians left.

Al nizam al-amni translates to security system or, more precisely, the dominance of the military over civilian authorities. The system was initiated in 1990, at the end of the war and after Syria had legitimized its domination by both ensuring the election of sympathetic civilian and security leadership and appointing them to top governmental and security posts. These strategic positions ranged from the presidency down to security chiefs in the army, police, and intelligence services. This security apparatus has run the state since 1990, breaking with the pre-1975 system in which military security services played a minimal role in civilian political life, meddling in domestic politics only when ordered by civilian government officials. Intelligence chiefs, who became king-makers under Syrian hegemony, had a different role in pre-occupation times - they were mere tools in the hands of civilian leadership.

Critics argue the valid point that Lebanon officially asked Syria to intervene in 1976; the initial intervention was not anti-Christian, but rather its goal was to defend the Christians from an uncertain future should their Palestinian and Muslim "enemies" be allowed to advance toward their positions. Furthermore, Lebanese politics lack of a sense of community with the sectarian divisions making loyalty to outsiders sometimes stronger than loyalty to the Lebanese nation-state. Few would quarrel with the accuracy of the first two claims.

Even the third claim is partially true, for if the Lebanese were unified and integrated as a national community, they would have been able to close ranks, mend their differences, and deny any external power justification for intervening and depriving them of their independence and sovereignty. However, what the critics leave out of their analyses is how the Syrians dealt with these realities during the post-intervention period which stretched until their withdrawal at the end of April of 2005.

As a student of international politics, I have always believed that circumstances create unforeseen opportunities for political players. Thus, I disagree with the premise that Syria had deliberately planned the intervention and subsequent annexation of Lebanon. The vacuum created in Lebanon and the dangers that followed are the responsibility of the Lebanese themselves. This puts me, of course, at odds with those who subscribe to the external explanation of the Lebanese civil war, i.e., that the Lebanese civil war was the product of devious plans or plots conceived by either Israel or Syria.

Blaming Syria for intervening in Lebanon is a weak argument at best. Blaming the Syrians for their conduct after the intervention makes more sense; upon examination of the situation one understands why the language describing the Syrian role in Lebanon has changed - even in this essay- from "intervention" to that of "occupation." The alliances Syria formed in Lebanon, its treatment of Lebanese dissenters, and the authoritarian infrastructure of a new political system speak volumes about the presence of an occupying force and cast serious doubt on arguments minimizing the harm suffered by the Lebanese.

Syria's strategy of alliances was based on anything but "sisterly" relations, instead pointing to an overriding goal of consolidating Syrian control. Syrian behavior demonstrates exploiting Lebanon 's vulnerability, fear, and weakness - the communal structure - rather than helping, healing, and counseling "sister" Lebanon.

Syria 's journey of troubling alliances began when the Christians battled against the Muslims, Leftists, and Palestinians as the Syrian army often stood idly by. When their alliance with the Christians soured, Syria turned to the other side: the Muslims, Palestinians, and whatever was left of the Lebanese National Movement. Syria 's changing alliances sparked a round of strife between the Syrians and the Christians as well as with Syria 's latest allies, Hezbollah.

Hezbollah's emergence posed a challenge to Syria 's steady ally, the Shiite organization Amal. Fearing this Iranian-supported organization, Syria strengthened its alliance with Amal, and supported it in what was known in the 1980s as a "proxy war" between Amal and Hezbollah. In the late 1980s, Syria found itself in an informal alliance with the U.S. against Lebanon's Christian leader at the time and Asad's nemesis, General Michel Aoun. Aoun's foolish pro-Iraq policy provided the Syrians the ideal opportunity to force him into exile – with U.S. blessing – and install a pro-Syrian regime.

In the meantime the Syrians succeeded in splitting another Christian force, the Lebanese Forces by allying themselves with the faction headed by Elie Hobeika. Hobeika was killed in a bomb explosion on January 24, 2002, under mysterious conditions.

None of Syria 's alliances had anything to do with ideology, whether Baathist or other official Syrian policies such as anti-Zionism, support for the Palestinian cause, or anti-Americanism. The only logic one can discern is a pure Syrian state interest in policies that insured continuing control of Lebanon, and an application of the old colonialist mantra "divide and rule" in order to expedite progress toward this goal.

The powerful bomb that blasted Hariri's motorcade on February 14, 2005, killing 18 people along with the prime minister, revives a part of Lebanon's bloody past that most Lebanese want to put behind them; thus the one-million-plus multi-confessional demonstration, where almost one-third of the population arose to protest the crime.The debate continues over who killed Hariri and former Minister Basil Flayhan, as well as who is responsible for the failed assassination attempt that severely wounded Marwan Hamade, a former minister in Hariri's last cabinet and an ally of Walid Jumblatt. However, there is little convincing evidence that the Valentine's Day killing is any different from past assassinations. The list of dissenters who have vanished - and whom many Lebanese allege were killed by Syrian forces - is long indeed. Of course, nothing has been proven, even concerning the vicious crime that claimed Hariri.

Walid Jumblatt spoke to a small group of faculty and graduate students at UCLA during one of his many visits to the United States in the early 1980s, while I was a graduate student. I asked him about who may have killed his father, Kamal Jumblatt, a leader who had enjoyed great respect among Lebanese progressives who longed for a different Lebanon, different from both the old feudal-sectarian state and from the state dominated by the security apparatuses that was produced by Syrian hegemony.

Jumblatt, aware of what was on the mind of this graduate student, provided a vague and unsatisfying answer. He waited until the assassination of Hariri to openly and unequivocally answer the question of who had killed his father. Jumblatt was reported to have accused the Syrians of killing him, a revelation that lends credibility to widespread speculation that Kamal Jumblatt's strained relations with the Syrian regime had sealed his fate.

Perhaps the gravest danger caused by Syrian occupation, aside from the transformation from a system with the semblance of a democratic process into an authoritarian, repressive one, is the introduction of a new electoral law reportedly designed and written by Syrian and Lebanese pro-Syrian security chiefs.

This law, referred to as the 2000 electoral law, is believed to have been written by Maj. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, General Rustom Ghazaleh, and Maj. Gen. Jamil al-Sayyid. Kanaan is the ex-head of the Syrian intelligence in Lebanon (1982-2001), considered at the time to be the king-maker or paramount power broker in Lebanon. Ghazaleh replaced Kanaan as the head of the Syrian Intelligence Forces in Lebanon (2001-April 2005), and al-Sayyed is the most powerful Lebanese security chief, believed to have reported directly to Kanaan, often bypassing his civilian superiors. In the wake of the Hariri assassination, al-Sayyed was dismissed from his job.

Lebanon 's new electoral law has produced the current, predominantly pro-Syrian parliament. This parliament made it possible to amend the constitution to extend the mandate of President Emile Lahoud by three years. Through this law, Syria hoped to produce a pro-Syrian majority in the 2005 new parliament, with or without the withdrawal of its forces.

The 2000 law adopts a system of proportional representation, with elections taking place within large provinces instead of Lebanon 's old division based on small districts. The drawing of the electoral districts has proven, so far, to be a classic case in "gerrymandering" - deliberately rearranging the boundaries of the legislative districts to influence the outcome of elections.

The Taif Accord had already produced a constitution that redistributed the parliamentary seats evenly between the two major religions, trimming the Christian ratio from 60 to 50 percent of parliamentary seats. The new law creates large districts with Muslim majorities so that only Christian candidates accepted by the Muslim majority could win. While the Taif Accord rightly corrects the sectarian imbalance, the pro-Syrian Shiite leadership wants to go as far as to deny the other sect the right of even electing its representatives under a fair and balanced law.

A first and superficial reading leads you to believe that proportionality is more representative, or more democratic, fostering ties between different communities which otherwise would be confined to their small districts, districts that tend to be more homogenous compared to the more "desirable" heterogeneous proportionality. This arrangement seemed to fit well within the ideological framework of the apologists of Syrian occupation.

Abolishing sectarianism is a noble goal indeed. But the apologists seem to have forgotten the fallout from 15 years of death, dislocation, and depopulation that heightened the fears of the different sects rather than assuaging them. The war created deep scars which the 2000 law can only inflame, rather than heal. The Christians perceived themselves to have lost and the Muslims to have won as a result of the Taif Accord. The 2000 electoral law aims to impose upon the Christians a sort of "Treaty of Versailles," handing them a humiliating law that would deny them the right to select their own representatives through a fair method.

Dividing the country into large provinces with predominantly Muslim majorities will allow two-thirds of the Christian deputies to be chosen by Muslim voters. A single or smaller district system, used from 1960 and until this latest law, does also allow some distorted representation: in certain districts Christians would be choosing the representatives of the Muslims, while in others the Muslims would choose representatives of the Christians. But these faults are nothing compared to the results of the 2000 law.

Few overlook the experience of countries that adopt either full proportionality (Israel) or partial (post-WWII Germany and Russia since 1993). What distinguishes these countries from Lebanon is that their citizens have greater loyalty to the nation state than to their sects and clans, and that they have a modern party system that runs campaigns based on alternative programs and issues rather than campaigns clustering around feudal-traditional and sectarian leaders who command loyalty to their own persons on the basis of mere tribal and sectarian affiliations. Regrettably, since sectarianism remains the defining factor of loyalty in Lebanon, the electoral choice is bound to reflect this reality.

No wonder then that Syria 's ardent supporters, the two major Shiite organizations Amal and Hezbollah, are the only outspoken supporters of the 2000 electoral law. Ironically, Hezbollah, which is hardly non-sectarian, is numbered among the groups who are accusing the Christians of sectarianism by adopting the small district law.

The 2000 electoral law is a Syrian legacy with a dual purpose: to consolidate control over the political process should Syria find itself able to maintain the occupation, and if Syria were forced to leave, it would leave the country divided and unstable. Now that the occupation has ended, the goal sought through the security apparatus has crumbled, while the remaining one, the political influence manifest in the 2000 electoral law, has been discredited though not changed. Though it will survive the 2005 coming election round, it may not live long enough to guide the following election. Nevertheless, the 2000 law's harmful effect on the democratic process has been evident already because scores of credible candidates have declined to run, and more than 60 deputies have won before the election has even started, due to either the lack of any challengers or challengers who pose a serious contest.

One would hope that the Lebanese have matured enough to not return to the bloody and dark days of the civil war - the independence uprising is certainly an encouraging sign. One can hope the division created by 2000 electoral law, as well as the intensified sectarian discourse which reached its height on the eve of the 2005 elections, will be corrected.

In short, much of the criticism of the Lebanese opposition is based on simplistic ideological notions, disguising itself under the rhetoric of grand abstract ideas that ignore the facts of occupation. We should not forget that these facts made occupation unacceptable to most Lebanese, never mind what President George Bush says.

This essay appears in Al Jadid, Vol. 10, no. 49

Copyright (c) 2004 by Al Jadid