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Disorder in Lebanon
No nearer to national reconcilliation
By Samir Kassir
Le monde diplomatique: February 1997
Prospects for national reconciliation seem more distant than ever. Israel's Grapes of Wrath intervention in 1996 was a setback to Lebanon's recovery from long years of civil war. But Syria's ongoing control of the country is the major obstacle to national rebuilding. Israel's Grapes of Wrath operation against Lebanon in the spring of 1996 blew a hole in the image of a country slowly rebuilding itself after war. Despite last December's Washington meeting of the Friends of Lebanon, which freed up financial aid and pulled down the curtain on Beirut's previous regime, the people of Lebanon have watched the growing war of words between Israel and Syria with an uneasy feeling that they will be the ones paying the price of renewed tension in the region. The threatening noises made by Israel's coordinator in Lebanon, Uri Lubrani, have added to the heightened mood of psychosis among the country's politicians. The nervousness was palpable among Lebanon's security forces on 17 December 1996 when, for reasons not yet revealed, a Syrian civilian minibus was attacked about 12 miles outside Beirut. They reacted immediately with a series of raids on Christian opposition forces, even though there was no concrete evidence linking them to the attack. It has been suggested that this was a deliberate ploy to destroy the relatively harmless remnants of this opposition. Whatever the reasons, the anger aroused by the arrests and the subsequent maltreatment of detainees meant that the head of state had to disown his own police. Furthermore, the effect of the police round-ups, which took place only a few days before Christmas, was to aggravate the existing disarray in the Christian community. The prospect of national reconciliation is receding fast, the return of the displaced still has a long way to go and many among them feel that they are the only ones to pay the price for the mistakes of the war. They believe that the 1989 Taif accord effectively signals the replacement of the old Maronite hegemony with a Muslim hegemony. The fact that Christian politicians of the war years are being excluded from state institutions - whether they are in exile, as are General Michel Aoun and former president Amin Gemayel, or in prison, as is Samir Geagea - has exacerbated the unease. The planned national elections were seen as an opportunity for a fresh start in Lebanese politics. The opportunity was wasted. There were already signs of problems in the autumn of 1995 when a tailor-made amendment to the Lebanese constitution was introduced to enable president Elias Hrawi to extend his mandate. It seemed to some that the government, in pleading emergency measures, could effectively write its own rules as long as they suited its Syrian protectors. Since then the government has made no attempt to redress the effects of its strong-arm tactics. The political process leading up to the summer elections was wholly under Syrian influence. The elections were to be held under a new electoral law, to be brought before parliament. Under the Taif accords, the boundaries of electoral constituencies were supposed to have followed those of the muhafazat (equivalent to the French departemen). Before the war it had followed that of the caza (the French arrondissement) but it was decided that a new administrative division needed to be created. But in the 1992 elections, the first since the end of the war, this principle was not followed. Only two departements were expanded into wider electoral constituencies (Beirut and the north). Two other constituencies maintained the same boundaries as previously (Nabatiya and the south), and the remaining two stayed with the arrondissement system (Mount Lebanon and the Bekaa). The phantom parliament This unequal treatment was one of the reasons behind the electoral boycott by most of the political forces active in the Christian community, which resulted in a turn-out of barely 30%. This statistic, plus the fact that the 1992 electoral law was framed explicitly to cover the immediate situation alone, made it obligatory for a new electoral law to be brought in for 1996. Despite a vigorous public debate, the government adopted a wait-and-see attitude, even encouraging speculation that the elections might be postponed. Finally, barely six weeks before their starting-date (they were to be spread over five Sundays), the new electoral boundaries were unveiled. Under the pretext of observing the provisions of the Taif accords, the 1992 boundaries were maintained in the case of the three enlarged constituencies (Beirut, the North and Nabatiya-South), and the Bekaa was assigned as a single constituency. Only Mount Lebanon remained divided into electoral arrondissements, six in number, in order to prevent a veto by the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, who had little desire to be dependent on the Christian votes which made up the majority of this subdivision. The new electoral law was rushed through, only to be invalidated by the Constitutional Council. A second attempt was cobbled together even faster, and this stated that the unequal arrangement would apply only this once. By now there were only five days to go before the first ballot, due on 18 August. This round was notable for its irregularities: manipulations of electoral lists; ballots from deceased and expatriate voters; opposition electoral observers thrown out of polling stations; tampering with ballot boxes; confiscation of the identity cards of recently-naturalised voters bussed in to polling stations; voters barred from the polling-booths; and beyond that, the buying of votes and administrative (and police) pressure on voters. The effect of this manipulation, coupled with the perverse effects of majority voting in the enlarged electoral constituencies, was to produce a non-viable parliament (2) in which there were insufficient opposition members to raise the ten signatures needed to reconvene the Constitutional Council, should the need arise. The opposition paid dearly for its division. It was made up of the so-called "Christian group", which had consistently challenged the post-war institutions, the traditional opposition (reform-minded and multi-denominational), and the anti-government but pro-Syrian grouping (also multi-denominational). The first of these put themselves out of the game when they boycotted the 1992 elections. But there were signs that they were tempted to rejoin the process, given the nature of the stakes. However, procrastination by the government and its insistence on a hybrid system of electoral constituencies left them with boycott as their preferred option. This was confirmed by the formation of a tripartite front in Paris that brought together General Aoun, the former president, Amin Gemayel and Dany Chamoun, head of the National Liberal Party and resident in Beirut. The boycott was also supported by Raymond Eddé, a voluntary exile in France. Despite serious grievances with the government, the majority of Christians had allowed themselves to be won over by the state administration over the intervening four years, and various political leaders decided that the political costs of 1992 had been too great and were not prepared to make the same mistake again. The boycott option came under attack, partly because of the number of Christian leaders standing as candidates, and partly because of a respectable turn-out at the polls - around 50% in the wholly Christian constituencies. Where former abstentionists opted to stand as candidates, they did not fare particularly well, since they were contested by former friends who generated quantities of leaflets and graffiti under the benevolent eye of security forces not usually noted for their tolerance of such things. The candidates from the institutional opposition who had announced their candidacy during the outgoing administration suffered a similar fate. A few, such as Selim Hoss and Nassib Lahoud, were successful. But otherwise, electoral alliances between various pillars of the regime worked to eliminate some of the leading opposition figures. This was the case with Habib Sadek, who was eliminated in South Lebanon by an ad hoc alliance among prime minister Rafik Hariri, the Shia Amal movement of Nabih Berri (president of the National Assembly) and Hizbollah. This alliance was made at the urgent insistence of Damascus. It was almost a caricature of the contradictions operating between these unlikely allies -- a situation not particularly comfortable for Lebanon's prime minister, but involving close links and continuing support from the Syrian state. This paradox reflects the divisions between the two principal power blocs in Syria itself. One bloc is represented by Syrian vice-president Abdel Halim Khaddam, who has traditionally been linked with the chief-of-staff, Hikmat Shehabi. The other bloc brings together the key figures in Syria's security services, including one who is symbolic - at least as regards the position in Lebanon - namely President Assad's son, Bashar. He has a number of friends in sectors of Lebanese political life who are resolutely hostile to Hariri, who, in turn, enjoys the unwavering support of Khaddam. In many ways Prime Minister Hariri appears as the main winner in the election. But he suffered a symbolic setback in his own personal campaign in Beirut (he only succeeded in outclassing his two principal rivals, Selim Hoss and Najah Wakim, making use of a carefully contrived electoral machine, not to mention various polling irregularities). Nonetheless, it now seemed that he would be able to count on a solid parliamentary foundation that he had previously lacked. He had the backing of parliamentary allies who had stood by him during the past four years, in particular Walid Jumblatt and Elie Hobeika. This solid grounding should assure him, if not of a majority, at least a position of strength in relation to the heads of both parliament and state. It seemed that he would be able to impose his policy for the reconstruction of Lebanon, which was receiving increasing public criticism. Syria's policy of divide and rule To everyone's surprise, this has turned out not to be the case. Jumblatt, formerly Hariri's most trustworthy ally, lost no opportunity to attack him. When the government was finally formed on 7 November 1996, people were astonished to discover that some of the outgoing ministers who had been closest to Hariri had been ousted. By contrast, Jumblatt, who was more critical than ever, kept his position. Furthermore, two critical ministers whom Hariri had gone to great lengths to shed in May 1995 - Suleiman Franjieh and Talal Arslan - were now back on the scene. The change in political climate was evident in the vote of confidence in parliament: this was a lot more difficult for Hariri than his electoral successes two months earlier would have led one to predict. In the meantime, relations between Hariri and the Syrian authorities have imperceptibly deteriorated. Had there been a shift in the corridors of power in Damascus? It was suggested that General Shehabi had moved to distance himself from his traditional partner, Khaddam. Or was it that the Ba'ath leadership was annoyed about Hariri's visit to Washington in September 1996? Or was Lebanon simply reflecting the effects of the mounting tension in the region as a whole? Given the impenetrability of the political scene in Damascus, it is hard to identify the precise reasons for the sudden change of mood. Certainly, Syria's conduct after the Friends of Lebanon meeting in Washington suggests, at the very least, that Syria no longer views its own situation in Lebanon with such equanimity. Beneath the complacent utterances issued by the semi-official press in Damascus regarding the West's willingness to give financial support to its "brother country", it appears that Syria's rulers have interpreted Washington's undertakings in a negative light - namely that the US is no longer prepared to allow them a free hand in Lebanon. The prospects for national reconciliation seem more distant than ever. Furthermore, this latest crisis has confirmed the extent to which the multiplication of centres of decision-making, all under the thumb of one faction or another of the Syrian regime, has generated disorder. The risk is that trying too hard to control Lebanon will have the effect of making the country ungovernable except by repeatedly calling in the Syrian state as godfather, protector and ultimate arbitrator.
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