LCCC ENGLISH
DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
August 29/07
Bible Reading of the day
Holy
Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 23,23-26. Woe to you, scribes
and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and
have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity.
(But) these you should have done, without neglecting the others. Blind guides,
who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel! Woe to you, scribes and
Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside
they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the
inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean
Opinions
UNIFIL must break
out of its confinement.By
Timur Goksel. August 28/07
Sarkozy needs to lay the groundwork to achieve his
goals in the Middle East.The
Daily Star. August 28/07
The contradictions of confidence in the Middle East.By
Dominique Moisi. August 28/07
Rallying Around the Renegade.Middle East Report Online -
Washington,DC,USA. August 28/07
Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources
for August 28/07
Cabinet Considers Severing Hizbullah Network Connections.Naharnet
Lebanon tightens security after Arab envoys threats.Middle
East Times
Cabinet Considers Severing Hizbullah Network Connections
That Have Reached Beirut.Naharnet
Sarkozy for Dialogue with Syria if Damascus Facilitates
Lebanese Presidential Elections.Naharnet
Barak: Hizbullah has bigger arsenal than last summer
war.Naharnet
Israeli Says Hamas Is Training Hundreds Abroad.New
York Times
Lieberman in Farsi interview: Sanctions best way to deal with Iran.Ha'aretz
- Tel Aviv,Israel
Barak: Hezbollah arsenal bigger than before war.Jewish
Telegraphic Agency
Nahr al-Bared fighting persist as authorities sort out
evacuees-Daily
Star
Sarkozy: Presidential poll Lebanon's only recourse-Daily
Star
Sayyed says political concerns preventing his release-Daily
Star
Officials denounce threats against Saudi ambassador-Daily
Star
Italian official says Lebanon's problems will be solved
when its sovereignty is respected-Daily
Star
France 'frustrated' with Lebanese political crisis-Daily
Star
Government to pay war compensation to Sri Lankans-Daily
Star
Lebanon renews diplomatic relations with Costa Rica-Daily
Star
Israeli drones, warplanes continue to violate Lebanon's
sovereign airspace-Daily
Star
Order of Engineers launches campaign to donate money to
families of killed troops-Daily
Star
Israeli minister says Hizbullah has 20,000 rockets-Daily
Star
LAU receives grant to establish medical school-Daily
Star
Turning the rubble of war into a temporary residence-Daily
Star
Cabinet Considers
Severing Hizbullah Network Connections That Have Reached Beirut
Prime Minister Fouad Saniora's government was considering severing private
Hizbullah phone network connections that had started out in south Lebanon and
ended up in Beirut and its suburbs. "We agreed to draw a plan of action for a
peaceful resolution of this issue, but we are serious about resolving it because
it is a dangerous matter," Information Minister Ghazi Aridi told reporters after
a lengthy cabinet session on Monday. Aridi said the government formed a
committee to draft a report on recent information that Hizbullah had installed
its own communication infrastructure south Lebanon.
He said initial reports has shown that the Hizbullah networks "went beyond (the
southern village of) Zawtar Sharqiyeh … to reach Beirut and the suburbs of
Beirut which are outside the security areas of the leadership of the
resistance." Aridi said the government was "determined to protect the Resistance
(Hizbullah) and the symbols of the resistance from the Israeli enemy but the
information that we gathered do not follow this logic." He did not give further
details.
The daily An Nahar, however, citing cabinet sources, said Tuesday that a report
prepared by a ministerial committee confirmed that Hizbullah had privately
installed phone netwworks that have reached Dahiyeh, or the southern suburbs, as
well as the Ring and Riad Solh districts in downtown Beirut.
The sources said the cabinet instructed Lebanese security forces to perform a
"specific task" under which "appropriate measures" would be taken to deal with
Hizbullah's move. They said the cabinet was considering authorizing a "security
and technical team" to sever the phone network connections.
Saniora was quoted by a source as responding to Hizbullah's act, which was
considered a violation to Lebanon's sovereignty, by sarcastically saying: "All
we need is (Hizbullah) to ask a musician to compose a new national anthem." The
issue of the death threats directed at the Saudi and United Arab Emirates
ambassadors to Lebanon was also discussed during the five-hour cabinet meeting
that ended late Monday. An Nahar said that according to information obtained by
the government, a third unidentified European ambassador has also received death
threats in addition to a number of journalists via the Internet.
Cabinet members also tackled the issue of the Fatah al-Islam "terrorist network"
and outcome of the investigation with Islamists of the al-Qaida inspired group
who are in Lebanese custody. Aridi said Lebanon has tightened security following
these threats.
"Security measures have been increased ... and all the security agencies are on
alert ... particularly after the latest threats," Aridi said. He said recent
arrests of suspects in Lebanon "have helped the army and the internal security
forces prevent dangerous acts by groups in several areas" across the country.
Saudi Ambassador Abdel Aziz Khoja, whose country is a leading supporter of
Lebanon's beleaguered government, left Beirut on August 17 in the face of attack
warnings, a senior Lebanese official said on Saturday. The Saudi embassy
declined all comment but Khoja told the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat daily on
Saturday that "there were threats against the Saudi embassy and against my
person." Oil-rich Saudi Arabia and the UAE are key financiers of Lebanon and
staunch backers of the Saniora government. Khoja had been involved in efforts to
broker an end to the political crisis with pro-Syrian factions that has
paralyzed Saniora's legislative agenda. A member of the appointed Saudi Shura
(Consultative) Council, Mohammad al-Zulfa, has pointed the finger at Syria,
claiming that proxies of Damascus in Lebanon could be behind the alleged
threats. Riyadh and Damascus were recently involved in a tit-for tat tirade.
Lebanon has been hit by a wave of attacks in recent years targeting anti-Syrian
politicians, most infamously the 2005 murder of five-time premier Rafiq Hariri,
a billionaire businessman.(Naharnet-AFP)
$30 Million
in U.S. Aid for Iraqi Children to Study in Lebanon, Other Arab Countries
The United States announced on Tuesday it will give U.N. agencies 30 million
dollars to help tens of thousands of Iraqi child refugees to go to school in
neighboring countries. "It gives me great pleasure to be able to announce today
that the United States is contributing 30 million dollars" to a joint UNHCR-UNICEF
education initiative for Iraqi children, U.S. official Ellen Sauerbrey said in
Amman. In July the U.N.'s refugee and children's agencies issued a joint appeal
to send 155,000 Iraqi children, living mostly in Jordan and Syria, back to
school during the 2007-2008 academic year. The two agencies said they were
seeking 129 million dollars to allow 100,000 children to go to school in Syria,
50,000 in Jordan, 2,000 in Egypt, 1,500 in Lebanon and 1,500 in other countries
in the region. "We encourage all potential donors to join us in supporting this
appeal," Sauerbrey said. "I am convinced that educating Iraqi children is one of
the most critical ingredients for a peaceful and prosperous Iraq." Jordan
decided this year to allow 50,000 Iraqi children enrol in state schools after
scrapping a previous requirement for residency permits. There are an estimated
750,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan, a number exceeded only by neighbouring Syria
which has been home to over one million Iraqis who have fled the violence
tearing apart their country.(AFP)
Beirut, 28 Aug 07, 13:01
UNIFIL must break out of its
confinement
By Timur Goksel
Commentary by
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was set up in 1978 after
Israel's invasion of South Lebanon in response to a Palestinian bus hijacking in
Israel that ended killing more than 30 civilians. The United States realized
that the occupation of South Lebanon by the Israeli Army was threatening to
unravel the momentum for peace created by the visit of Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat to Jerusalem. Yet Washington ignored the objections of experienced UN
staff against placing a peacekeeping force in a country without central
authority and wracked by civil war and armed conflict between Israel and the
Palestinians, and pushed for the creation of UNIFIL anyway.
UNIFIL, a lightly armed peacekeeping force with no enforcement powers and an
unrealistic and ambiguous mandate, was thus thrown into the conflict without a
properly defined area of operations, sandwiched between heavily armed,
undisciplined militias and Israel. Over the years, it became a habit to refer to
UNIFIL as a toothless and ineffective symbol of UN peacekeeping. But UNIFIL
turned out to be a resilient force that held its ground despite suffering more
than 100 fatalities.
In the aftermath of the July-August 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, some Western
leaders took their cues from Israel and naively called for UNIFIL to be replaced
by a fighting multinational force that would go in and teach Hizbullah a lesson.
Both Hizbullah and the Lebanese government announced they would not allow the
deployment of a quasi-occupation force that could set off a new round of civil
war. In any case, no country came forward to seriously discuss such a force.
Thus the idea of a robust UNIFIL II under peacekeeping rules of Chapter VI of
the UN Charter emerged, not one under the enforcement stipulations of Chapter
VII.
Actually, nothing has changed except that UNIFIL now has better armed units that
still won't use their guns unless attacked. UNIFIL, for all its impressive
weaponry, will not get involved in any military confrontation with Hizbullah
because it cannot sustain a prolonged clash. Moreover, in today's South Lebanon
with its militant villagers loyal to Hizbullah, UNIFIL cannot last if it starts
killing civilians. The talk of robust peacekeeping quickly subsided and UNIFIL,
to Israel's chagrin, began to operate as a classic peacekeeping force in support
of Lebanon's army.
The outstanding feature of the new UNIFIL was to mobilize leading European
countries as its key components. With self-sufficient, well-trained and
well-equipped infantry troops from France, Italy and Spain, and with the
addition of Germany heading a naval unit and the participation of other European
nations, UNIFIL acquired political clout the UN could never claim by itself. The
new UNIFIL caught on quickly that it was meant to be a conflict management tool,
with emphasis on winning the hearts and minds of the population. It saw that
good relations with the people of the South would also be key to force
protection because useful intelligence information would come from them.
The mood in South Lebanon began to change and the people began to rely more and
more on UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army for their needs. South Lebanon is now
experiencing a period of calm and peace it has not known in decades. But, unless
a permanent peace is put in place, the conflict will re-erupt. There are UN
resolutions that call for the disarming of militias, including Hizbullah, and
stopping the flow of weapons across the Lebanese borders. Some think the UN
should do it. But the Lebanese government says that disarming cannot be done by
foreign armies as that would lead to internal conflict, and that the Lebanese
will do it their way. Countries contributing troops to UNIFIL are not willing to
change their peacekeeping mandate no matter how hard Israel wants them to.
UNIFIL is now at a crossroads. After the car-bomb attack that killed six
peacekeepers of the Spanish contingent, UN personnel were confined to bases and
could only move in heavily guarded, armored convoys. A vital link to the people
that could provide warnings against similar attacks was severed. The UNIFIL
command is aware of the problem, but to achieve consensus among the 30 countries
making up the force is a formidable task. A multinational force of 30 countries
is not the right structure in southern Lebanon. Differences in national
interests, training, doctrine, officer quality, communications and other
capabilities make a mockery of any claims to unified and effective command and
control structure.
In the Middle East, if you are designated as a target, no amount of body armor
and machineguns on your vehicles will protect you; only advance intelligence
warning will. The most reliable and maybe the only way to receive such
information is for peacekeepers to stay in touch with the population. That
population, if treated with compassion and respect, will in turn protect the
troops.
**Timur Goksel served first as the official spokesman and then as the senior
adviser of UNIFIL between 1979 and 2003. He now consults on conflict and
peacekeeping and teaches at the American University of Beirut. This commentary
first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.
Cabinet
Considers Severing Hizbullah Network Connections That Have Reached Beirut
Prime Minister Fouad Saniora's government was considering severing private
Hizbullah phone network connections that had started out in south Lebanon and
ended up in Beirut and its suburbs. "We agreed to draw a plan of action for a
peaceful resolution of this issue, but we are serious about resolving it because
it is a dangerous matter," Information Minister Ghazi Aridi told reporters after
a lengthy cabinet session on Monday.
Aridi said the government formed a committee to draft a report on recent
information that Hizbullah had installed its own communication infrastructure
south Lebanon.
He said initial reports has shown that the Hizbullah networks "went beyond (the
southern village of) Zawtar Sharqiyeh … to reach Beirut and the suburbs of
Beirut which are outside the security areas of the leadership of the
resistance." Aridi said the government was "determined to protect the Resistance
(Hizbullah) and the symbols of the resistance from the Israeli enemy but the
information that we gathered do not follow this logic." He did not give further
details.
The daily An Nahar, however, citing cabinet sources, said Tuesday that a report
prepared by a ministerial committee confirmed that Hizbullah had privately
installed phone netwworks that have reached Dahiyeh, or the southern suburbs, as
well as the Ring and Riad Solh districts in downtown Beirut.
The sources said the cabinet instructed Lebanese security forces to perform a
"specific task" under which "appropriate measures" would be taken to deal with
Hizbullah's move.
They said the cabinet was considering authorizing a "security and technical
team" to sever the phone network connections.
Saniora was quoted by a source as responding to Hizbullah's act, which was
considered a violation to Lebanon's sovereignty, by sarcastically saying: "All
we need is (Hizbullah) to ask a musician to compose a new national anthem." The
issue of the death threats directed at the Saudi and United Arab Emirates
ambassadors to Lebanon was also discussed during the five-hour cabinet meeting
that ended late Monday. An Nahar said that according to information obtained by
the government, a third unidentified European ambassador has also received death
threats in addition to a number of journalists via the Internet.
Cabinet members also tackled the issue of the Fatah al-Islam "terrorist network"
and outcome of the investigation with Islamists of the al-Qaida inspired group
who are in Lebanese custody.
Aridi said Lebanon has tightened security following these threats.
"Security measures have been increased ... and all the security agencies are on
alert ... particularly after the latest threats," Aridi said.
He said recent arrests of suspects in Lebanon "have helped the army and the
internal security forces prevent dangerous acts by groups in several areas"
across the country.Saudi Ambassador Abdel Aziz Khoja, whose country is a leading
supporter of Lebanon's beleaguered government, left Beirut on August 17 in the
face of attack warnings, a senior Lebanese official said on Saturday. The Saudi
embassy declined all comment but Khoja told the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat
daily on Saturday that "there were threats against the Saudi embassy and against
my person."
Oil-rich Saudi Arabia and the UAE are key financiers of Lebanon and staunch
backers of the Saniora government.
Khoja had been involved in efforts to broker an end to the political crisis with
pro-Syrian factions that has paralyzed Saniora's legislative agenda.
A member of the appointed Saudi Shura (Consultative) Council, Mohammad al-Zulfa,
has pointed the finger at Syria, claiming that proxies of Damascus in Lebanon
could be behind the alleged threats. Riyadh and Damascus were recently involved
in a tit-for tat tirade.
Lebanon has been hit by a wave of attacks in recent years targeting anti-Syrian
politicians, most infamously the 2005 murder of five-time premier Rafiq Hariri,
a billionaire businessman.(Naharnet-AFP) Beirut, 28 Aug 07, 10:06
Rallying
Around the Renegade
Heiko Wimmen
August 27, 2007
Back in the fall of 2006, student elections at the American University of Beirut
produced an unexpected aesthetic: female campaigners for the predominantly
Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) of the ex-general Michel Aoun sporting
button-sized portraits of bearded Hizballah leader Hasan Nasrallah on their
stylish attire. “Hizballah stands for the unity and independence of Lebanon,
just as we do,” went the party line, as reiterated by Laure, an activist
business student clad in the movement’s trademark orange. “And imagine, the
Shi‘a and us,” she mused, off-script and with a glance at her co-campaigners,
covered head to toe in the black gowns of the staunchly Islamist party, but
spiced up with bright orange ribbons for the occasion. “How many we will be.”
Just how many became clear soon enough, when Aoun joined Hizballah’s attempt to
bring down the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora through public pressure
later that year. While actual numbers are notoriously hard to come by,[1] the
two main rallies held on December 1 and 10 clearly rivaled the demonstration
that brought about the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon 18 months before.
Followers of Aoun, who stand out in their blazing orange gear, accounted for an
apparent third of the masses. Once again, predictions that Aoun’s alliance with
the “Party of God” would dispel his support in the Christian community were
proven wrong.
RETURN OF THE RENEGADE
Throughout his political career, Michel Aoun’s bold maneuvering, boisterous,
often ranting discourse and utter disregard for the complex rules and false
niceties of the Lebanese political scene have made him one of the most divisive
figures therein. To his admirers, he is the strong leader who can rise above the
fray of perennial internecine conflict, clear out a divided and despised
political class bent on the pursuit of factional and personal interest, and
achieve longed-for, but ever elusive national unity. Likewise, Aoun has earned
himself the intense loathing (even by Lebanese standards) of the members of
exactly this political class (and their followers). Rather than a champion of
secularist nationalism, they consider Aoun to be an irresponsible rabble rouser
who threatens to upset the delicate balance of sectarian power sharing, and his
calls for reform and a shakeup of public institutions to be thinly veiled
Bonapartism. Aoun’s loud populism is seen as not only gauche but also a
challenge to the country’s Byzantine political game, whereby decisions and
distributions of spoils are supposed to be worked out behind impenetrable
smokescreens of lofty principles and diplomatic cant. For the Christian part of
this political class, he is also an upstart trespassing on territory that is
rightfully theirs. “To his supporters,” as one journalist sums it up, “he is a
Lebanese Charles de Gaulle seeking to unite this fractious country and rebuild
trust in its institutions. To his critics he is a divisive megalomaniac willing
to stop at nothing to become president of Lebanon.”[2]
Another constant feature of Aoun’s volatile career is the persistence with which
his popular support has bounced back every time his opponents have declared it
spent. In 2005, after 15 years in exile, most observers and competitors
considered the retired general, then 70, a figure of the past.[3] His announced
intention to descend upon Lebanese politics like a “tsunami” was widely derided
as being not only in bad taste (coming, as it did, only a few months after the
disastrous tsunami in the Indian Ocean), but the delusion of an empire builder
who had missed his moment. Already in the 1980s, Aoun’s assertive posture, in
contrast to his physical stature, had led wags to give him the nickname “NapolAoun.”
The returned exile was taken lightly in the lead-up to the May-June 2005
parliamentary elections that followed the collapse of the pro-Syrian government
and the departure of Syrian troops. In the absence of real political parties --
most parties restrict their activities to organizing support for their powerful,
sect-based leader and the field of candidates riding on his ticket -- Lebanese
election campaigns are typically dominated by complex bargaining over joined
lists and alliances between these confessional chieftains. Expediency is often
the only glue keeping such alliances stuck together, though often not far beyond
election day. Within the bargaining, the number of “safe” slots offered to a
potential ally on a joined list usually reflects his expected electoral
strength, or the number of votes that he would be able to mobilize in support of
the joined list. During the traditional bazaar in 2005, Aoun was offered a
meager seven to eight seats at best in return for joining the unified opposition
list. He refused, causing the first major rift in the broad “Syria out!”
alliance.
Riding on the wave of mass gatherings peaking with the demonstration of March
14, 2005 -- the date which would provide the name for Lebanon’s current
governing coalition -- the alliance forged between Druze leader Walid Jumblatt,
the son of the slain former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, Saad, and an array
of anti-Syrian Christian politicians was confident of winning a parliamentary
majority, or even the two thirds of parliamentary seats necessary to impeach
President Emile Lahoud,[4] the most stubborn pupil of Syrian tutelage in the
country. The March 14 forces even struck a deal with the Shi‘i parties Hizballah
and Amal, who had just expressed their gratitude to Syria with a huge
demonstration of their own, hoping that Shi‘i votes would tip the balance in
enough districts to achieve the coveted two-thirds majority.
Reality intruded during the elections in Mount Lebanon on June 12, when Aoun’s
slate of no-names trounced the united opposition list in the Christian
heartlands, winning 21 seats and leaving the opposition with only a modest
majority (72 out of 128) in the new parliament. To the surprise of everyone, it
emerged that a significant majority of the Lebanon’s Christians, and a good
percentage of those who had taken to the streets to fight for independence and a
Syrian withdrawal only two months before, were actually supporters of Michel
Aoun.[5] “Countrywide, Michel Aoun garnered around 42 percent of the Christian
vote in 2005,” says Lebanese pollster Abdo Saad. “In some parts of the Christian
mountains, that percentage would reach above 70.” Counting political allies in
the north and the Bekaa Valley, some two thirds of Lebanon’s Christians were
rallying under the orange banners of the renegade general.
PULLING THE LION’S TAIL
One major reason for Aoun’s recurrent mass appeal doubtless lies in his
long-standing anti-Syrian credentials. The military resistance he mounted in
1989-1990 to the Saudi-sponsored and US-approved Pax Syriana intended to tamp
down the Lebanese civil war turned out to be a costly failure. Yet his warnings
against welcoming Syrian involvement in the country were soon enough proven
correct. Among Christians, in particular, resentment festered throughout the
1990s over the arbitrary and parasitic reign of the Syrian secret services and
their Lebanese stooges. But after the disbanding of the Lebanese Forces, the
strongest Christian militia-cum-party during the late 1980s, there were no
political structures to organize and feed on this resentment. Aoun did not leave
behind a party either when he fled the country, but he did inspire an amorphous
movement of mainly young followers. Galvanized by his hyperbolic Lebanese
nationalism and his bold confrontation with the feared Syrian regime and the
loathed militias, these supporters (with many Muslims among them) eventually
imagined the general as a national redeemer, and flocked to the presidential
palace by the thousands in late 1989, in order to form a “human shield” against
an expected Syrian attack.
After Aoun’s defeat, his backers returned to their universities, from whence
they continued political action against the Syrian presence in impromptu
networks. While sometimes quixotic or even chauvinist in character -- as with
their harassment of migrant Syrian workers and greengrocers -- the Aounists won
a reputation of standing tall in the face of the relentless repression of
Syrian-controlled government forces and thugs. When the Pax Syriana started to
crumble after Hafiz al-Asad’s death in 2000, their university-based networks
already stretched into the fourth post-civil war cohort, while many of the
activists who had congregated around the presidential palace in 1989 were now
urban professionals, often working in communications and the media. Thus, when
the time came for action in early 2005, the Aounists were able to field a
uniquely effective crowd: experienced in spontaneous, decentralized political
action under adverse conditions, media-savvy and endowed with a Westernized
veneer that would capture the sympathy of an international audience. Says
Khalil, an information technology engineer in his late twenties: “I got involved
through friends from the university, who were on these electronic networks. Yes,
we wanted to get rid of the Syrians -- that was our goal, and back then, [the
Internet] was the only place where you could say that. So that’s where I felt I
belonged, and when word was spread that action was supposed to take place here
or there, I would go. But I’d never think of becoming a member of a political
party.”
While this anti-political, or rather, anti-Establishment, posture found among
many Lebanese who grew up during the last years of the civil war resonates with
Aoun’s hostile relationship with many Lebanese politicians, some 40,000 Lebanese
-- nearly 70 percent of them below the age of 30 -- have decided otherwise, and
become card-carrying FPM members through a registration process initiated in
late 2006, after the movement officially converted itself into a political
party. “All these young people who took to the streets back in 2005 learned one
very important thing,” says Sami Ofeish, a political scientist at the University
of Balamand in the north of Lebanon. “Politics to them is no longer something
that happens on a different planet. They had the experience that if they take
action, they can actually make things happen. So one would expect that this
generation would develop an attitude very different from that of the preceding
years.”
“It was one of the most moving days of my life,” recalls Alain Aoun, the
general’s nephew and one of the major party activists, over a cup of coffee in
the trendy Christian neighborhood of Gemayzeh. “It showed that Lebanese can come
together over an issue, and forget about religion and sects for the sake of the
country. That was a very emotional experience.” Switching to the more recent
demonstrations mobilized in alliance with Hizballah, his assessment turns
significantly more sober: “These rallies prove that if you have leaders who make
a conscious effort to find common ground, their followers will be able to meet,
even if they have never talked before. Yes, we are very different, culturally,
socially -- but those are also people who live in this country. They are one
third of the population, and we have to live with them. As long as difference
causes offense, this country won’t get anywhere. So this also was a step ahead.”
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
Beyond such heady arguments in favor of a more inclusive society, one central
motive for Aoun’s move toward Hizballah in early 2006 undoubtedly lay in the
consistent attempts of the March 14 coalition to freeze the FPM out of the
political process even after it emerged as the strongest player in the Christian
camp. Just why an alliance that ostensibly saw Syrian influence as the paramount
threat to Lebanese sovereignty made no serious effort to coopt such a staunchly
anti-Syrian, Lebanese-nationalist partner, and instead formed a government
including Hizballah and Amal, who made no secret of their continuing strategic
partnership with Damascus, remains something of a mystery. While some may have
entertained the optimistic (and, in hindsight, delusional) idea that involving
Hizballah in government offered a chance of containing or even redirecting its
resistance activity,[6] the difficulty of removing the remaining vestiges of
Syrian influence while coopting Syrian allies soon became clear enough. No
two-thirds majority materialized to impeach President Lahoud (despite the fact
that the parties now making up the government controlled more than four fifths
of Parliament), and when the majority pushed for the establishment of an
international tribunal to try the assassins of Rafiq al-Hariri (presumably
including people high up in the Syrian regime) in late 2005, the Shi‘i ministers
responded with a six-week walkout prefiguring the current government crisis.
So what stood in the way of including Aoun instead, a move that would have
provided the new government with the support of 93 MPs with no pro-Syrian
leanings, well in excess of the desired two-thirds majority? For one thing, it
was clear that the FPM would only support an impeachment motion against Lahoud
if the name of the one and only candidate to replace the sitting president would
be Michel Aoun -- meaning that, rather than filling the position with a
compliant nominee of their own, the majority would have had to deal with an
independent player with significant popular support. “For all of their
anti-Syrian rhetoric, Hariri and Jumblatt preferred to leave Asad’s man in the
presidency rather than bow to the wishes of nearly three quarters of the
Christian electorate and accept Aoun’s ascension,” concludes Gary Gambill, a
seasoned Lebanon analyst with obvious sympathy for the general.[7]
But even without ascension to the presidency, assuming a key government
portfolio would have finally allowed Aoun to rid himself of his greatest
handicap: the image of erratic brinkmanship he acquired during the war and, in
the minds of his opponents, retains (witness his alliance with Hizballah and
formerly pro-Syrian politicians). Newly endowed with “stateman-ish”
respectability and official leverage and commanding the majority of the
Christian popular vote, Aoun would almost certainly have been able to erode the
position of his opponents in the Christian camp even further.
HOSTILE BROTHERS IN FAITH
The long-standing mutual antipathy between Michel Aoun and the traditional
Christian leadership may have been a key reason why the ruling coalition shunned
the FPM. Many observers attribute this animosity to unsettled accounts, in
particular between Aoun and the leader of the Lebanese Forces, Samir Geagea, the
two of whom fought a devastating war in 1989. Both men and their followers, so
the argument goes, are still fighting the battles of the past. Considering that
in Lebanon not only political office but also political and party allegiance are
often hereditary (even in supposedly ideological currents like the Communist
Party), such hypotheses seem to make sense at first glance. But they still fail
to explain how Aoun’s party was able to wrest such a significant amount of
support away from the traditional Christian leadership, represented first and
foremost by the Gemayel family, whose scions Bashir and Amin were both
presidents of Lebanon. In the 2005 elections, Pierre Gemayel (assassinated in
November 2006) scored only 29,412 votes on his family’s home turf, compared to
48,872 for the least successful Aounist candidate, and was only elected to
Parliament because the FPM list left one Maronite slot free.
One reason may be the continuous decline of the traditional Christian leadership
in the second half of the 1980s, after the assassination of Bashir Gemayel
removed the one figure capable of maintaining the precarious alliance between
Lebanon’s powerful Christian bourgeoisie (of all denominations) and the
increasingly militant Christian lower middle class (mainly Maronite) by means of
personal charisma. With his brother Amin increasingly sidelined by the ruthless
militia-based leadership of Samir Geagea, and the political project of a
Christian-dominated Lebanon under US and Israeli auspices falling apart, more
and more Christians despaired of their future in the country. Large-scale
displacement of Christians in the mid-1980s (wrought to a great extent by
Geagea’s ill-conceived military adventures in the southern parts of Mount
Lebanon) also meant that parochial means of mobilizing support would reach fewer
and fewer people. The displaced, on the other hand, would either be hell-bent on
revenge and join or support the militia, or would turn their resentment against
a leadership that had failed them, and become susceptible to the discourses of
national redemption that Aoun successfully projected.
“The FPM fared best where there was no locally based Christian leadership,”
observes pollster Abdo Saad of the 2005 elections. “Political families like the
Gemayels in Matn or the Franjiyyas in the northern province can still hold some
ground since they traditionally represent the area. But where people vote for a
political program rather than for a political tradition, the FPM swept the
Christian constituencies with next to no resistance.”
Preliminary research into the social composition of the FPM and the Lebanese
Forces also suggests that class is a defining difference between the groupings
in the Christian camp, adding a dynamic to their frequent clashes. The French
geographer and anthropologist Beltram Dumontier, who has conducted fieldwork in
the Beirut suburb of ‘Ayn al-Rummana, describes the two groups this way: “Youths
who do not pursue a university education will often be either unemployed or
doing menial jobs. So their social networks, as well as their financial
situation, are conducive to making hanging out in the streets of their quarters
their main pastime and mode of socializing. And so they get involved in a very
male subculture of street life, prone to violence, centered on the idea of
‘defending the quarter,’ and this is how the foot soldiers of the Lebanese
Forces are recruited. On the contrary, those who do advance in the educational
system spend most of their time away from the neighborhood. Their environment of
political socialization is the university, where they meet people from other
areas or communities on an equal footing, and where political action will tend
to be around more complex issues. I have encountered more than one family where
one brother was with the Aounists and the other with the Lebanese Forces, and
always the political preference corresponded to education.”
STRUGGLE FOR THE STATE
The profile of a comparatively well-educated and upwardly mobile following,
which hence shows a strong preference for meritocracy, sits well with the
perennial spiel of the FPM: attacking corruption, and arguing for a strong and
efficient state. In contrast to the authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Syria,
the corruption and clientelism in Lebanon are actually results of a weak state.
Power traditionally resides with an alliance of ruling families who divvy up the
state and its prerogatives among one another according to the relative balance
of power, and obtain loyalty by redistributing parts of the proceeds among their
constituencies. Conventionally, this arrangement is of course described as a
“national pact” between religious communities designed to enable coexistence and
protect minorities from marginalization. But while Lebanese politicians are
always concerned to be seen as vigilant guardians of communal interests, they
typically have no problem joining ranks with representatives of other
confessions to marginalize their co-religionists. Even long-time foes will
suspend their differences as soon as any serious attempt is made to shore up the
independence of the state, and join ranks to ward off any such challenge to the
order of things. The system is also open to newcomers empowered by political
and/or macro-economic change, for instance, Amal leader Nabih Berri, propelled
into prominence by Syrian backing in the 1980s or Rafiq al-Hariri, elevated by
petrodollars and Saudi patronage in the 1990s. Such newcomers may push out some
of the traditional players, but are usually careful to preserve the rules of the
game.
Politicians speaking about the national interest, the constitutional process or
the integrity of institutions are rarely doing more than paying lip service, and
are typically using these concepts as weapons in the eternal struggle for more
influence and positions, which can then be used to twist the rules of the game
even more in one’s favor, so as to dole out even more government favors to one’s
followers. A classic example is the paving of roads in rural areas in election
years, expected to translate into votes for the candidate whose “influence” in
the capital supposedly enabled him to “secure” such services, and to discourage
votes for less well-connected challengers. Politicians of this type are referred
to as “asphalt MPs” in local vernacular, a play on the double meaning of the
Arabic word for asphalt (zift), which also means “dirt” or “crap.”
“When my son left high school, there was an opening for some 200 recruits in
General Security,” recalls a Sunni from Beirut. “We found out that some 70 would
go to Sunnis. And to get one of those, you needed to go to Rafiq al-Hariri. It
was as simple as that: Sunni jobs are distributed by the strongest Sunni leader.
So we used a contact to a person very close to Hariri, and things worked out.
After that, we all became his followers. Because if he doesn’t care for us, then
nobody else will.” In Lebanon, everybody knows at least ten stories of this
category, and while contempt for the politicians involved is universal, so is
the urge not to be left behind in the scramble for the spoils. Yet Alain Aoun is
determined that the rules of the games must be changed: “Until now, the logic
is: I take office, so now it is my turn to steal and patronize my people. We
need to break this cycle. A few honest guys on the top level can make a hell of
a difference, and send a message down through the ranks.”
The most capable and honest guy to initiate this process, one infers, will be
nobody but the general himself. Drawing on his personal history as a career
officer who rose up from poverty due to diligence and integrity (Aoun famously
had to skip a year of high school due to lack of funds and made up for it by
squeezing the curriculum of two years into one), Michel Aoun is presented as an
unlikely Hercules uniquely qualified to clean out the Augean stable of Lebanese
politics.
That might be easier said than done, agrees his nephew, after weathering several
cell phone calls from party affiliates trying to arrange for jobs at Orange TV,
a new Arabic-language TV station set up by the FPM. “See, this guy who just
called wants me to hire a girl who has a degree in theater and no experience in
TV. I have no problem to arrange an interview for her, but that’s not what he
expects from me. He doesn’t want me to give her a fair chance. He wants me to
give her a job without any competition or check of her qualifications. To
eradicate such a mentality will take a long time, but you have to start
somewhere, and that somewhere is at the top of the pyramid. If the rulers are
corrupt, and not even ashamed, then what do you expect from society?”
Often dismissed as sheer populism, the FPM’s call for imposing transparency and
stamping out corruption and clientelism -- however realistic an objective it may
or may not be -- thus threatens to disrupt the very system on which the power
structure is built. With trademark exaggeration, Michel Aoun vowed to “confront
political feudalism” upon his return from France in May 2005. While clearly a
swipe at the likes of Walid Jumblatt (who happens to be the heir of a “real”
feudal line), Saad al-Hariri and Amin Gemayel, such pronouncements cannot have
been pleasing to any of the politicians who prefer the rules of the games as
they are. As Gambill puts it: “FPM control of a major ministry is a red line for
the [March 14] coalition mainly because Aoun would have absolutely nothing to
lose by acting on his pledges to clean up government, even if his motives are
completely self-serving.”
While potentially endangering vested interests, a program emphasizing
transparency and meritocracy is likely to appeal to the educated middle classes
forming the backbone of the FPM, whose life chances are hampered by systemic
clientelism and sectarian red tape that often extends into the private sector.
Barred from many attractive jobs for lack of connections, unable to initiate
meaningful economic activity of their own for lack of capital and, again, lack
of opportunities in an environment where many market segments are controlled by
fat cats who easily squeeze out new competitors, they stand to gain from any
change. Accordingly, the economic outlook of the FPM shows conservative or even
neo-liberal leanings, with a high premium on encouraging free competition, world
market integration and downsizing a state bureaucracy bloated by clientelism.
“Aoun’s followers are those who lose out in the Lebanese clientelist system,”
concludes Dumontier, “not those who are near the bottom of the social ladder.
The latter need protection to get their very modest jobs and benefits, and wasta
(connections) for them is a matter of survival. And not those on the top level,
either -- they are the ones who hold the keys, and more transparency would take
away from their power. It is those who could do better for themselves if the
system were to become more open and meritocratic.”
SECTARIAN SECULARISTS
Still, and despite the secularist rhetoric wielded by Aoun and his lieutenants,
one of the most important cards for the FPM among its predominantly Christian
following appears to be the sense of being once again excluded in the post-civil
war political order -- only this time, and worse, not by the Syrians, who were,
after all, outsiders and occupiers. This time the Aounists feel marginalized by
other Lebanese and, still worse, by nobody less than their age-old nemesis, the
Sunnis, manifest in the overbearing presence of the Hariri family and its
political machinery, the Future Movement. Secularism as professed by the
Aounists thus shows a tendency to turn into a sectarian discourse[8] directed
mainly against a perceived Sunni takeover of state institutions, and prone to
resurrect the eternal Christian fear of being “drowned” in a sea of more than
250 million Muslim Arabs surrounding Lebanon, the only country in the region to
guarantee them full legal equality.
The “mother of all injustices” against Christians quoted by supporters of the
FPM is the election law, drawn up in the year 2000 by the chief of Syrian
intelligence in Lebanon, the late Ghazi Kanaan, and applied again in 2005.
Designed with the clear intention of minimizing the impact of the notoriously
anti-Syrian Christian electorate, the Kanaan law “diluted” the Christian vote in
many districts by combining Christian with significantly more populous Muslim
areas.[9] As a result, only 18 out of 64 Christian MPs were elected in
majority-Christian districts, while the remaining Christian MPs were practically
elected by Muslims -- Sunnis and hence Hariri in the north and Beirut, Shi‘a and
hence Hizballah and Amal in the south, Druze and Shi‘a in the southern part of
Mount Lebanon. There is irony in the fact that what was meant to further Syrian
interest back in 2000 -- largely by favoring Hariri, who was then still a loyal
supporter of the Pax Syriana -- vastly skewed the results in favor of the
anti-Syrian coalition in 2005.
Such irony, however, was completely lost on the majority of Christians
represented by the FPM. From their perspective, the election of 2005 and its
aftermath only continued their post-war decline, a process marked by
Muslim-dominated governments with fig leaves of Christian participation. This
impression was reinforced by the less than impressive performance of the
Christian representatives in the Siniora government. Saudi money (the younger
Hariri holds Saudi citizenship, and his business network is entwined with Saudi
interests), it was induced, had replaced the tutelage of the Syrian secret
services, with the blessing of the US, who would sign Lebanon over to a regional
power it needed for greater designs, just as it did in 1990 when Syria was an
indispensable part of the coalition to free Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. So
pervasive became this impression that the Conference of Maronite Bishops felt
compelled to issue a stern warning against an impending “Islamization” of
Lebanon in late June, and Samir Geagea was quoted (and promptly denied) saying,
“I don’t even talk to the Saudis. I talk to their masters, the Americans, and
they talk to them on our behalf.”
From the perspective of Christians close to Aoun, however, talking to the
Americans was pointless, for the Sunni ascendancy was seen as not at all
accidental, but rather part of a strategic realignment that puts Sunni Arab
regimes, and in particular Saudi Arabia, at the center of a pro-US alliance
against purported radicals. “In the fall of 2005, Washington was facing a stark
choice of what to support in Lebanon,” wrote Jean Aziz, who has since become the
director of Orange TV. “It could choose either a pluralist, consensual system
that may have set an example for the dialogue rather than the clash of
civilizations, or a Sunni Muslim system with American leanings and pliant to
American interests, a model for American presence in the region.”[10]
But then why turn to Hizballah, another party with a clearly Muslim character,
and with a political agenda liable to embroil Lebanon deeper and further in
regional struggles, something Lebanese Christians have always been loath to do?
For Aoun’s detractors, the answer is simple and straightforward: Both Shi‘a and
Christians are tiny minorities in a region dominated by Sunnis. In a system
where sectarian considerations trump everything else, their alliance against a
powerful Sunni-dominated regime now backed by Lebanon’s Sunni neighbors appears
almost natural. With only 30-40 percent of the population, and with non-Arab
Iran as its main sponsor, Lebanon’s Shi‘a have no hope of ever dominating the
system, unlike the Sunnis, who draw economic and demographic strength from
neighboring countries such as Egypt, Syria, Jordan or Saudi Arabia, all liable
to be controlled by Islamists in the not too distant future. Additionally,
Hizballah, with its disciplined fighting units, appears less scary in comparison
to Sunni extremists such as Fatah al-Islam, who have been battling the Lebanese
army for three months in the refugee camp of Nahr al-Barid, after allegedly
being under the protection of the Hariri family -- developments dwelt upon by
media sympathetic to the FPM.
Alain Aoun does not deny his misgivings about the Sunnis throwing their weight
around, but insists that the intentions behind the alliance with Hizballah go
beyond sectarian zero-sum games: “One, this country needs to be governed in a
very delicate way, and putting only one group in the driver’s seat is a sure
recipe for disaster. Two, at the end of the day you need to sit down and talk
out all these issues: Under which conditions would Hizballah give up these
weapons? How are we supposed to deal with Syria and Israel? We have tried to do
exactly that, and the memorandum of understanding that we signed with them
contains some positive commitments from their side. Does anybody have a better
idea? Does anybody seriously believe that by isolating and pressuring Hizballah,
or even threatening them with force, you can make them give up their weapons and
behave like a normal political party? I surely hope not.”
EPILOGUE
The narrow victory scored by Aoun’s candidate in the Matn by-election on August
5, 2007 showed the Christian community to be deeply divided, with both sides
claiming moral victory. Judging by the numbers, support for the FPM was dented
(40,000 votes, about one third less than the 2005 result), while support for the
pro-government Christian camp went up (also by one third). Yet the virtually
unknown FPM candidate entered the race in a clearly uphill battle: For one
thing, he confronted no less a personage than Amin Gemayel, a former president
and the head of one of the most influential Christian families in Lebanon, and
on his home turf, giving his opponent ample opportunity to mobilize along
parochial and tribal lines. Second, he was running against the father of the MP
whose assassination made the by-election necessary in the first place, lending
his bid an air of callousness, as many voters felt that the seat rightfully
belonged to the family of the murdered man. Finally, the assassination was
widely ascribed to remnants of the Syrian secret service network in Lebanon, and
Aoun’s attempt to, as it were, reap political gain from the killing provided
ample ammunition for portraying his movement as unwittingly or opportunistically
paving the way for renewed Syrian influence in Lebanon.
“This is the most damaging accusation,” says pollster Abdo Saad. “The polls show
that Aoun’s supporters have no problem with Hizballah as such. What they mind is
Hizballah’s attachment to Syria. They have no problem with Aoun’s political
decisions, but they take issue with his alliances with formerly pro-Syrian
forces. My own wife, who is Christian, used to be all-out for Aoun, but now, the
media campaign portraying him as pro-Syrian has succeeded to turn her against
him.”
Yet the fact that, at the end of a long election day, Amin Gemayel was unable to
capitalize upon these considerable advantages shows that the core support for
the FPM remains resilient, and makes it appear unlikely that any force in the
Christian camp will be able to challenge Michel Aoun’s position in the near
future. For Lebanon, this appears to be a mixed blessing at best: On the one
hand, a (most likely sizable) majority of the Christian community seems prepared
to look for guarantees of their presence in a majority-Muslim country and an
overwhelmingly Muslim region in the institutions of a secular state, rather than
hanging on to the doubtful security offered by a ghetto of sectarian privilege.
This is a momentous development, when one recalls the 1970s. Yet the party
galvanizing such sentiment feels compelled to appeal, once again, to sentiments
that all too obviously feed on longing for lost privilege and resentment of the
arch-competitor for power in the state. Likewise, for the first time in their
history, a (probably less sizable) majority of Christians is prepared to make
common political cause with a mass movement following an explicitly Islamist
political outlook. And yet it appears that prejudice and racism against Muslims,
mixed with resentment deriving from class, have been transposed onto Sunnis and
only muted toward Shi‘a, for the time being. Despite the remarkable
politicization of young Lebanese that fueled the success of the FPM, the new
party also remains a movement centered around a single leader, who is venerated
to the verge of personality cult, with a notable tendency to establish a strong
family presence in the top echelons, and again, despite a significant number of
female activists, to exclude women nearly totally from the upper ranks.
Finally, the inconclusive test of forces between Amin Gemayel and Michel Aoun
bodes ill for the already intractable conflict over the upcoming election of a
new president -- a post traditionally reserved for Maronite Christians -- where
both men are candidates. Without a compromise, the presidency, which also wields
the high command of the armed forces, may be the next victim of the chain
reaction of stalemate, disputed legitimacy and mutual boycott that has already
paralyzed most of the political institutions in Lebanon. A further
disintegration of the state now looks like a real possibility.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Ever since mass demonstrations in Lebanon began, in the wake of ex-Prime
Minister Rafiq al-Hariri’s assassination in the spring of 2005, all sides have
engaged in inflation of numbers to absurd proportions, without any serious
regard to material facts, such as the actual surface area of the spots where
people congregated. Interview with Lebanese pollster Abdo Saad, Beirut, June
2007. Saad is the director of the Beirut Center for Research and Information
(http://www.beirutcenter.info, mainly in Arabic), which conducts frequent
opinion polls on political issues.
[2] Hassan Fattah, “Lebanon Divided on Presidential Hopeful Michel Aoun,”
International Herald Tribune, January 19, 2007.
[3] Such disregard finds its reflection in the lack of any serious research on
the “Aoun phenomenon” thus far -- an omission that this article can only hope to
start addressing. This article is based on a series of interviews with party
officials and activists conducted in June 2007, in addition to party literature,
encounters with activists since the spring of 2005, particularly during the mass
demonstrations in December 2006, and preliminary results of a field study
conducted in the spring of 2007 by the French geographer Beltram Dumontier in
‘Ayn al-Rummana (a predominantly Maronite Christian quarter of Beirut adjacent
to the Hizballah strongholds of Shiyah and Harat Hurayk), which Dumontier
generously shared with the author.
[4] It is a point of contention whether the Lebanese constitution actually
allows Parliament to impeach a sitting president by any kind of majority. Since
a two-thirds majority was not available anyway, attempts at exploring the legal
dimension were soon abandoned.
[5] Again, there are no reliable figures as to what extent the Aounist movement
contributed to this movement. If the huge turnout attending Aoun’s return from
exile on May 7, 2005 is anything to go by, however, it appears safe to assume
that the demonstrations in February and March would have looked significantly
less impressive without their participation. March 14 is also the anniversary of
Aoun’s abortive “war of liberation” (from Syria) launched in 1989 and annually
celebrated by his followers.
[6] According to Hizballah, there has been more than one US offer to broker a
deal that would trade Hizballah’s weapons for a significant improvement of Shi‘i
representation in the political system. Interview with Hizballah expert Amal
Saad-Ghorayeb, October 2006. Such ideas resurfaced in the wake of the 2006 war
in the columns of government loyalists. See Michael Young, “Offer Reform for
Hizballah’s Weapons,” Daily Star, September 28, 2006.
[7] Gary Gambill, “Lemons from Lemonade: Washington and Lebanon After the Syrian
Withdrawal,” Mideast Monitor (June-July 2007).
http://www.mideastmonitor.org/issues/0705/0705_1.htm.
[8] Such was also the case in the 1970s, when Lebanese Muslims argued for
secularism in order to do away with the constitutional privileges accorded to
Christians.
[9] The law provides for a first-past-the-post majority system differentiated by
sect. For instance, one seat in the district Beirut-I was reserved for a Greek
Orthodox Christian, so the Orthodox candidate with the most votes would win one
seat, and all votes cast for other Orthodox candidates would have no impact on
the composition of Parliament. As in most majority systems, gerrymandering has
the potential to distort the popular vote, and has been a temptation for sitting
presidents and governments ever since the foundation of Lebanon. Accordingly,
each and every parliamentary election in Lebanon is preceded by heated debate
about how electoral districts will be demarcated, with the decision typically
taken only shortly before election day.
[10] Al-Akhbar, July 28, 2007.
***(Heiko Wimmen is a program manager for the Middle East office of the Heinrich
Böll Foundation, a German organization supporting civil society and social
movements around the world.)
For background on Lebanon’s political paralysis, see Jim Quilty, “Winter of
Lebanon’s Discontents,” Middle East Report Online, January 26, 2007.