Lebanon does not have a president, and has only a caretaker government. The deadlock over how the next ruling coalition (president plus PM plus cabinet) is to be composed continues… There have been a couple of incidents in the south of the country– one in which a UN peacekeeping patrol was targeted, and one in which a couple of Katyushas were fired over the border into Israel… Many parts of the broader Middle East are tense because of President Bush’s imminent visit to the region and the near-clash between US and Iranian naval forces yesterday in the Persian Gulf. Normally, any such regional tensions could be expected to lead to a rise in tensions inside Lebanon.
But here’s the thing: the little part of Ras Beirut where I’ve been staying since Friday seems remarkably calm and free of tensions or fears of imminent escalations of violence. And so, as far as I can see, do the major Lebanese media.
I’d expected that talk about the political crisis here and the fears of descent into renewed civil strife might dominate the conversations of Lebanese friends and colleagues. They really haven’t. People seem, in general, to be sullenly habituated to the idea that the present uneasy status quo might continue for quite a while. It’s not that things are great here; everyone seems to recognize that. But there is not the degree of fear, and of concomitant political and physical mobilizations for fighting that I thought I might find.
I guess the big confrontations among internal forces came in 2005: the big Hariri memorial march of March 14; and then the equally big pro-Hizbullah and FPM march of the month that followed. Since then there has been, basically, a stand-off between these two huge blocs within the Lebanese body politic. The M14 people won some gains, of course, with the Syrian withdrawal and other developments at that time. But the Hizbullah-led bloc made some gains with the political outcome of the 33-day war in mid-2006. Neither of those shifts was decisive.
In December ’06, Hizbullah and FPM launched their big “sit-in around the Serail” to try to force the M14’s PM, Fuad Suiniora, out of office. But that didn’t work– and neither were the government forces able to end the sit-in by force and open up the Hariri-created New Downtown for (Saudi shopping-led) “business as usual.” So the stalemate between the two sides became routinized. The large forests of the protesters’ tents still stand in many open areas of the downtown– but they are largely empty.
Not having a president or a government continues the routinization of the stalemate. The atmosphere, in general, seems to be, “It’s not wonderful, but we can live with it. And it sure is better than doing anything that could risk another war.”
I’d like to note the wisdom and maturity with which all those legitimately involved in internal Lebanese politics have worked to prevent any resumption of (or slide into) outright civil war over the past three years. Of course the country hasn’t been violence-free in these years: there have been 14 or is it 15 ghastly car-bomb attacks against pro-M14 figures; between them, these have killed scores of people. There was also the really inhumane fighting in and around the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp over this summer, which was provoked by salafi jihadists who had congregated there from many parts of the Muslim world. They were then answered with a massive use of force on the part of the Lebanese army, accompanied by many horrendous atrocities against the residents of the camp…
Once again, the poor Palestinian civilians there, who have no protection against either the implantation of the salafists or the depradations of the Lebanese Army, were showing that being stateless in today’s world is to exist in a situation of extreme vulnerability.Once again, they were the punching bags of Lebanese political forces who sought to use violence against them for their own political ends. (In this case, the anti-Palestinian battles served to unite Lebanese from many factions around Army Commander Michel Suleiman, as the next President… The streets here are now plastered with posters hailing him as “The saviour.”)
So it is not that there is no political violence here. There is. But still, it feels very different from I was here when the country was poised on a knife-edge, in April 1975.
I am willing to admit I could be completely wrong! I have only been here four days, much of it doing things other than doing reportorial investigations. Maybe somewhere just out of my current (necessarily constricted) line of sight, some political forces or small dedicated networks are working hard to produce some kind of massive crisis that could embroil the whole country– and maybe, a large enough proportion of Lebanese would become jolted by that into resuming their civil war. But somehow, things just don’t feel that way…
4 thoughts on “Calm in Lebanon?”
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H,
Thanks for the update-important and informative!
What do you make of the 2 incidents that you have reported? Last time that this occured, Timur Goksel stated that they were “contract rockets”…
Kasak,
KDJ
H,
Are you aware of some of the tensions in Basta? Just last week some violent clashes nearly broke out over postering of Rafik Hariri…the army broke up these potential clashes-further reason for the general population to feel that the army is Lebanon’s salvation-What else do the Lebanese have?
The army is what makes people in Lebanon feel secure, hence it is natural that they would gravitate toward a sense of national pride in this institution-of course, for Palestinians in Lebanon, it is a source of fear-
An excellent analysis of the UNIFIL attack
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=87925
a departure…however an important op-ed from Haideh Moghissi on the horrific murder of teenager who rebelled against her father’s wishes…
Of “Cultural” Crimes and Denials
Haideh Moghissi,
Shahrzad Mojab*
A zealot Muslim father killed her daughter in Toronto in a rage over
her refusal to wear hijab. Racist Muslim-phoebes had a field day;
Islamist leaders denied that this tragedy had anything to do with
Islam; and many Canadian feminists, human rights activists, and the
left stayed silent in order not to be accused of Islamophobia or racism.
Media reports and commentaries, ranged from a few unconditional
condemnations of this horrific act of patriarchal violence and the
cultural and religious beliefs behind it to a cautious disapproval,
insisting that this is only another example in the general pattern of
violence against women. Still others identifying this as an isolated
case, warned us not to jump into any conclusions.
No doubt, violence against women is a cross-cultural social problem
rooted in patriarchal control of women. In this case, it used
religious justification, Islamic moral codes of conduct, to take life
out of a teen who had rebelled against the forceful imposition of a
dress-code that her father saw as central to his faith.
The fact is that in Canada we are facing a very serious and growing
problem of the rise of religious zealotry. Canadian multiculturalism,
failing to combat racism and Muslim-phobia, is gradually moving
towards adopting faith-based multiculturalism, allowing the formation
of cultural ghettoes immune from social and legal scrutiny against
violations of human rights. This politics serves the interests of
conservative Muslim leaders. Enjoying the formal recognition by
different levels of government, they openly reject civic norms of
conduct, and preach their obscurantist and rigid understanding of
“piety” and “modesty” to an audience that struggles to adjust to life
in the diaspora.
The comments made by some religious leaders in a press conference, in
the aftermath of Aqsa Pervez’s murder, were quite instructive. They
indirectly supported the act by warning that culture cannot supersede
religion and urged that their followers should “convince” their
daughters to wear hijab.
Aqsa Pervez’s case represents a revealing example of the lives of
many children of Muslim immigrants who came to Canada predominantly in
the 1990s, and now are coming of age. The vast majority is inevitably
influenced by the dominant Canadian culture and behavioural patterns.
Many parents have no problem with this and adopt a healthy mix of
broader cultural practices and those of their own. A growing number of
families, frustrated by the difficult conditions of life and
influenced by imported orthodox Imams, however, venture the impossible
task of replicating their past way of life in their country of origin.
They try to force their own “choices” on their children. Many of these
young Canadians, particularly young girls and women, live a double
life and have to hide their true feelings and submit to their parents’
imposition.
Aqsa Pervez shed the mask of compliance with the Muslim womanhood her
father wanted her to wear, hence the harshest imaginable punishment in
his hands.
The Canadian society and public policy makers urgently need to
understand and appreciate the remarkable cultural diversity of the
people who come from Muslim-majority countries and their divergent
views about Islamic traditions and degrees of their religiosity and
secularism. Islam itself has had different readings from almost the
very beginning with a strict and rigid literalist reading on the one
hand and a rationalist interpretive reading on the other. For
centuries the latter was the dominant perspective for the vast
majority of Muslims. It is only in recent decades that political and
economic failures, imperialist policies towards Muslim-majority
societies, authoritarianism, and the unresolved Palestinian issues,
have given prominence to the rigid totalitarian ultra-conservative
Islam.
Taking this voice as the voice of Muslims is a fatal mistake with dire
consequences. Worse, wittingly or unwittingly, bowing to their
demands in the name of respecting their cultural heritage is to give
up on principles of citizens’ equality before the law and the hard-won
norms of women’s rights. Still worse, tip-toeing around harmful
cultural practices as some left and feminists are doing is tolerating
for Others what is intolerable to “us.” It promotes patriarchal
control over women who have had a misfortune of not being born white
and Western. It is to deny the agency of millions of women (and men)
who in all Muslim societies, without exception, have launched the most
remarkable challenge to the misogynist, conservative interpretation of
Islamic legal and moral traditions. Abandoning one’s racist gaze of
national and cultural superiority could be done without adopting a
hands-off approach.
All levels of government in Canada need to recognize these facts and
abandon their habit of listening only to the most conservative voices
within the large Muslim population. Family could be, and often is the
site of most serious repression, and violation of rights in this
“private” domain often occurs with active participation of mothers.
Government’s policy in this and similar cases is very important as it
should be both punitive and educational. Its firm stand will show what
is not tolerated and tolerable in this country, regardless of what
sacred cultural and religious values are at issue. It also sends a
strong message to family members, Muslim preachers, and those
community organizations that support zealotry, about the consequence
of their acquiescence, preaching and advocacy.
*Haideh Moghissi is Professor of Sociology and Women’s Study at York
University, and the author of the award winning, Feminism and Islamic
Fundamentalism and the editor of three volume reference Women and Islam.
Shahrzad Mojab, is Professor and Director of Women and Gender Studies
Institute at the University of Toronto, and the co-editor of Violence
in the Name of Honour: Theoretical and Political Challenges