Haram Lubnan, “poor Lebanon.”
As if hosting more than 1 million refugees from the Syrian war next door, an economy in free-fall, and COVID-19 were not enough, now the catastrophic destruction of the Port of Beirut has left more than 170 dead, more than 6,000 injured and about 300,000 — 5 percent of the population — homeless. What can end this tale of woe for a country whose capital once saw itself as the Paris of the Middle East?
Sadly, that image is long gone, destroyed by the 1975 to 1990 civil war, corruption and regional turmoil. The hapless Lebanese government called a state of emergency in the wake of the port blast, only to be confronted by demonstrators chanting the slogan that almost a decade ago sparked the Arab Spring: “Al-sha’b yurid isqat al-nizam” — “the people want the overthrow of the regime.”
Although the government has now resigned, popular fury is set to grow: on Tuesday next week, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the Hague is to issue its verdict on the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri. Four members of Hezbollah, the Shiite militia and political party backed by Iran and Syria, have been tried in absentia for the bombing of Hariri’s motorcade.
The verdict had been set for Friday last week, but was postponed “out of respect for the countless victims of the devastating explosion” in Beirut three days earlier.
Whatever the tribunal’s verdict, political tensions will rise. Hezbollah, classified as a terrorist organization by the US and the EU, enjoys widespread Shiite support. Its militia is more powerful than the Lebanese army and it has a powerful bloc in parliament.
Just as the presence of Palestinian guerrillas and their “state within a state” was a factor in the civil war, so Hezbollah’s “state above the state” will provoke still more calls — by Lebanese and outsiders alike — to end a system in which political and economic power is allocated not by merit, but by religious sect.
However, is that what “the people,” with their banners calling for thawra (revolution) really want? Lebanon, carved out of the Middle East a century ago by the Sykes-Picot accord between Britain and France, is a mosaic of Christians, Muslims, Druze and others — about 18 sects are officially recognized.
In 1943, when France ended its League of Nations mandate, independent Lebanon’s political leaders declared an unwritten “National Pact” under which the president would be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Shiite Muslim.
As Lebanon’s first prime minister, Riad al-Solh, put it, the aim was to “Lebanonize Lebanese Muslims and to Arabize Lebanon’s Christians.”
The Christians were to distance themselves from the West, and the Muslims were to abandon the idea of Lebanon as part of a larger Arab nation.
The original premise was that Christians and Muslims were more or less equal in number, but the last census in Lebanon was conducted in 1932 and it is clear that Christians have become a minority in the decades since.
With a lower birthrate and a higher propensity to emigrate — thousands fled during the civil war — Christians now comprise just one-third of Lebanon’s citizens.
Why adjust the system to reflect demographic reality if the result would be another bout of sectarian warfare? The Taif agreement that led to the end of 15 years of civil war only tinkered at the edges, giving Muslims parity with Christians in parliament and enhancing the power of the prime minister.
Lebanon’s demonstrators have long demanded an end to confessional power-sharing and an end to meddling by a host of foreign powers, from the US and Israel to Syria and Iran. Their one success was that domestic and international revulsion at the murder of Hariri forced Syria to withdraw its troops in 2005, 29 years after they began “safeguarding” Lebanon.
The paradox is that the system protesters decry has given them a degree of personal liberty and freedom of speech that is all too rare in the Arab world. Moreover, when jobs depend on patronage, ending the system might bring personal loss.
In an experiment by a Lebanese think tank, 70 percent of interviewees agreed to sign a petition calling for an end to the system, but the figure dropped to 50 percent when participants were told that their names would be made public.
Lebanon has always been a fragile construction.
When I lived in Beirut in the 1970s, the city was indeed the cosmopolitan “Paris of the Middle East,” until the civil war, abetted by outside powers, fragmented it into heavily armed neighborhoods in which the religion listed on one’s identity card could mean life or death.
Given the sophistication and entrepreneurial energy of the Lebanese, it is conceivable that ending the confessional system would turn fragility into strength.
However, I doubt it.
In other Arab countries, religious minorities have relied on dictators to protect them — and, as in Iraq and Syria, have suffered as soon as national unity is threatened. Would those Maronites who claim a Phoenician rather than Arab identity happily accept majority rule by Muslim Lebanese? Would the Shiite accept Lebanon’s Sunnis, now bolstered by Sunni refugees from Syria, as overlords?
The real challenge is to enforce accountability. It is shameful that the warlords of the 1970s and 1980s have become not statesmen, but mafiosi in charge of protection rackets — power cuts, for example, provide easy money for suppliers of diesel generators.
It is shameful that selfish bankers and official reluctance to guarantee urgent economic and financial reform have stalled negotiations with the IMF.
The Lebanese deserve better. In the wake of the disaster in Beirut, the open question of how they will achieve it has become more difficult than ever to answer.
John Andrews is a former editor and foreign correspondent for The Economist.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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