Lebanon: the multi-track version

A dizzying number of different narratives are being unfolded in Lebanon these days. here are the main ones:
Track 1: The facts about the hideous killing of Rafiq Hariri
Track 2: The international “uproar” and rush to judgment
And then, the most fascinating track of all…
Track 3: The birth of an inter-sectarian, nonviolent opposition movement in Lebanon
This is such great news!
I wonder how whoever carried out the grisly deed last Monday is looking at this development? Almost certainly, whoever did it was intending to spark off further, terrible, inter-necine fighting inside Lebanon… Instead of which, we have this great and very mature response from the Lebanese opposition:

Lebanon’s political opposition has called for an “intifada for independence” as it stepped up it attacks on the government.

What is exciting is that the people at the head of this movement are by no means patsies or stalking horses for US or Israeli interests. They are people of real political substance with long histories in left-nationalist organizing inside Lebanon… They are also old, old friends of mine.
Like Walid Jumblatt, the MP and former minister whose father Kamal Bey Jumblatt was killed by the Syrians in 1977 at the time that the Syrians were doing Washington’s bidding by “saving” the Falangists (Maronitist extremists) from being over-run by the Lebanese leftist and Palestinian forces.
Like Samir Frangieh, a wry, longtime Marxist intellectual who has for decades now been one of the notable voices of conscience inside the Maronite community.
Lebanese politics is notably complicated for people who don’t know much about the country’s extremely complex society. The twists, turns, wrinkles, and turnrounds can be confusing enough for anyone!
So Walid Bey Jumblatt is the hereditary “community head” of the Druze community inside Lebanon. As such, he has many quasi-feudal powers within Lebanon’s Druze community– — and also, much influence among Druzes in Syria (including the Israeli-occupied Golan) and among those in Israel itself.
The Druze– in case by chance you didn’t know this?– are a small, fairly secretive religious group that broke off from Shiite Islam in the days of Egypt’s very weird Fatimid ruler Al-Hakem bi-Omrillah [sorry, make that Al-Hakem bi-Amrillah] in the 11th century. The Druze “closed” the call to convert to their sect in 1085, and have had very few converts since. The Jumblatts, interestingly enough, were some of those converts, having come over to Lebanon from somewhere in Kurdistan a few centuries after 1085.
(Read all about this in my 1985 book on Lebanon. If you can get hold of a copy. I’m actually trying to regain my rights to it, to reissue it, right now.)
So Walid Bey has this position of quasi-feudal leadership… And he is also head of Lebanon’s most stable socialist party, the PSP, whose red flags you might have seen waving at Hariri’s funeral.
Oh, and by the way, in a tradition not followed by many socialist parties anywhere else in the world, he also inherited his role as head of the party from his father.
His mother, May Arslan Jumblatt, is a fabulous woman– a pioneering, chainsmoking, volubly French-speaking feminist from the “rival” Yazbecki trend in Druze feudal politics who was divorced from Kamal Bey when Walid was still small. We spent a great evening with her, Walid, and Walid’s wife Nura up in the family’s ancestral seat in the mountains, back in October.
Okay, and then there’s Samir Frangieh, a Maronite Christian who is the second cousin of Suleiman Frangieh, the present Minister of the Interior. Suleiman F., btw, is the grandson of the generally pro-Syrian man of the same name who was President back in the 1970s. Suleiman’s father Tony was killed along with, his wife, a baby daughter, and 31 supporters in an attack set by Maronitist rivals in 1978.
For details of a long list of nasty assassinations inside Lebanon since 1975, go here.
All of which history makes the emergence of a determinedly nonviolent opposition movement in the country even more notable.
(There have been some small attempts to do this before– led mostly by women. But they never got anywhere. The men just couldn’t, in those days, resist grabbing for their guns when the going got tough.)
So according to that same Daily Star report cited above, Jumblatt, Samir Frangieh, and the others declared that they intend to place all the country’s parliamentary business on hold,

until Hariri’s murderers are identified.
Speaking from Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt’s residence in Clemenceau Qornet Shehwan Gathering member Samir Franjieh said: “In response to the criminal and terrorist policy of the Lebanese and Syrian authorities, the opposition declares a democratic and peaceful intifada [uprising] for independence.”

Reporter Nada Raad wrote,

Monday’s upcoming parliamentary session looks set for chaos as the opposition insisted it will not discuss the draft electoral law until a full debate is held on Hariri’s murder and the attempt on the life, last year of Chouf MP Marwan Hamade and Syrian troops are withdrawn from Lebanon.
The refusal to discuss the electoral law could delay this May’s parliamentary elections.
Interior Minister Suleiman Franjieh was dismissive of the opposition but still took time to warn them against inciting tensions in the wake of this week’s tragic events.
He said: “Should security be tampered with, the government will not stand unmoved, and the army will be given the order to act.”
But despite the warning he added: “It is not worth announcing a state of emergency.”
The opposition statement followed a meeting of opposition groups at Le Bristol Hotel in Beirut. Sources close to opposition leader Jumblatt said he did not attend the meeting for “security measures” after receiving what they described as “direct threats.”
In his latest direct attack on President Emile Lahoud, Jumblatt said: “He should be removed from Lebanon in a Syrian truck.”
He added: “They cannot assassinate the one or even two million people who support us.”
Jumblatt again accused Lebanese and Syrian security services of being behind Hariri’s murder. He said: “We ask for an international investigation not involving the Lebanese regime.”

She noted that the meeting in the Bristol Hotel had been attended by,

around 44 MPs, including some members of Hariri’s parliamentary bloc and a dozen of political parties, including exiled former army commander General Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement.
The attendants wore red and white ribbons in support of Lebanon’s independence.
Opposition members also asked Lebanese expatriates to organize sit-ins and demonstrations in front of Lebanese embassies.
Samir Franjieh said: “We ask Lebanese expatriates’ political and financial support for our cause. We demand the United Nations’ support to protect the Lebanese people.”
Hariri’s grave in downtown Beirut has become a shrine since his burial last Wednesday and Samir Franjieh urged the Lebanese people to continue their presence and prayers there.
On Friday, hundreds of Lebanese marched from Phoenicia Inter-Continental Hotel, where Hariri was assassinated, to Gemmayzeh chanting slogans against Syria and calling for “freedom, sovereignty and independence.”
Some students threatened to march “everyday at 7 p.m. until the government resigns.”
Opposition members called for the formation of an “interim government as a supreme national necessity to protect the Lebanese people and ensure the immediate and complete withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.”

Expected responses from the Syrians and the remaining pro-Syrian forces inside Lebanon?
Not clear yet. But there is that news about Bashar having dismissed his military mukhabarat chief somewhat precipitately… Plus, there’s this interesting report from AP’s Zeina Karam in Damascus, who says “some Syrians” are now saying it’s time to withdraw the 15,000 troops their country has in Lebanon.
She gives no further quantification for the degree of support she found for that view, and notes that,

This is not yet the opinion of the Syrian government, which has spent the week denying responsibility for Monday’s assassination and reaffirming its close ties to Lebanon.

One of the Syrians she does quote by name as urging an immeidate withdrawal of Syrian troops and intelligence agents from Lebanon is the left-leaning writer Michel Kilo, whom she describes (rightly) as “prominent”.
Karam also quotes two businessmen as saying that’s not a wise course… But let’s see.
Regarding the pro-Syrian forces inside Lebanon, they seem generally to be acting pretty wisely, and not in an escalatory way right now. But who knows how they will be moving forward? Hard for anyone to guess.