Just World News with Helena Cobban

Today is the one-month commemoration of Rafiq Hariri’s killing. The organizers of the (heavily anti-Syrian) “We want an investigation into the killing!” movement have been organizing a demonstration today, and according to early press reports have been able to pull together a crowd in Beirut that may equal that pulled together by Hizbullah last Tuesday…
In such a highly-charged situation it’s extremely hard to find reporting, including on the estimated size of demonstrations, that is objective enough to rely on. (The BBC’s website was particularly unhelpful on the size and nature of Hizbullah’s March 8 demonstration–though the BBC World News t.v. feed was pretty good on it. Here’s the latest BBC website report on today’s pro-investigation event.)
My present conclusions from the events of the past month in Lebanon– and from my conversations there last fall, and my preceding 30 years of study of and life within the country– are the following:

(1) There has been a huge amount of anger in Lebanon at Syria’s meddling in internal Lebanese politics, though not all of this has been a globally “anti-Syrian” sentiment. Much of the anti-Syrian feeling derived primarily from anger at the gross mis-management of the country and the economy by pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud and his cronies. So last August’s clumsy, over-reaching Syrian insistence on extending Lahoud’s term in office was seen as an outrage. But many leaders of the pro-Syrian-withdrawal movement, including Jumblatt, did not want to see a complete Syrian humiliation; equally, he and many– perhaps most– others in the pro-withdrawal movement never bought at all into Washington (and Israel’s) parallel agenda of combating Hizbullah.
(2) The Syrians now seem fairly serious about effecting a complete withdrawal. They have already started this, and if Terje Larsen is to be believed they intend to finish it pretty soon. This will leave a different political arena in Lebanon– but of what kind?
(3) Deep divisions remain inside the Lebanese body politic, but it’s very important to try to tease apart the complex issue of what these divisions are about. It may be easier for everyone involved to do this once the “lightning rod issue” of the Syrian presence has been removed.
(4) Hizbullah evidently has a large popular constituency that goes somewhat –but it’s not clear how far– beyond the bounds of the country’s Shiite community, which makes up just under 50% of national numbers. If Syria’s heavy political hand is removed from Lebanese politics, Amal– which the Syrians used as a counterweight inside the Shiite community to the more independent-minded Hizbullah– will certainly be weakened considerably; so Hizbullah can be expected to emerge much stronger than hitherto. (I wonder if, during the recent Syrian-Iranian consultations in Teheran, the Iranians effectively urged the Syrians to leave Lebanon, so then Hizbullah could have a freer hand?)
(5) However, Hizbullah is still very far from being able to exercise majoritarian power inside Lebanon. Based on my interviews with H politburo members last November, it seemed evident at that point that they did not seek to do this. Might that have changed since then? I doubt it. They are canny calculators who understand the political dynamics within Lebanon very well, and have been persistent and far-sighted in their campaign to reach out to members of the non-Shia communities in the country.
(6) It’s extremely noteworthy that since the ghastly killing of February 14–and perhaps, indeed, as a reaction to the grisliness of that action itself– the Lebanese people from all political stripes have shown discipline and commitment in not using methods of violence to pursue their continuing political differences. Given how very grievously they suffered from the violence of the civil war, this present insistence on using only nonviolent means of political interaction should be celebrated around the world, and everyone concerned about the fate of the country should commit themselves absolutely to not breaching it.

Today’s mass demonstration thus far looks quite impressive, and evidently represents a constituency of opinion that should be taken very seriously. I’ve been interested to see the reported strong participation of Sunnis in it. It seems that Lahoud’s insistence on renaming Karami as PM may have been politically inflammatory. (I was just reading here that in the municipal elections of last spring, Karami’s bloc was unable to win even in his hometown of Tripoli, which seems extremely lame to me… )
More broadly though, there does seem to be a real crisis of leadership and of community organization within the Sunni community, whose concerns have effectively been brushed aside by the bigger confrontation going on between the Shiites and Maronites…
But I think the bigger story over the weeks ahead will be the twin questions of whether the Lebanese parliament and government can actually organize he parliamentary elections scheduled for May in a way that is recognized by the Lebanese themselves as “free and fair”, and what Hizbullah’s strategy for this electoral period will be.
The first thing we all need to do, then, is refresh ourselves on the arcana of this strange thing that is known as Lebanon’s electoral “system”. This is an excellent source on that.
Okay, class, are you ready? Here is the centrally important part of that description:

Continue reading “Lebanese prospects”

There are quite a few interesting points in this piece by Nayla Assaf in the Beirut Daily Star today.
If y’all are interested you can go read it there. But here’s the lede:

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday that Hizbullah should be allowed a role in the country’s politics. His statements came at a time when sources close to the party told The Daily Star that they were holding ongoing meetings with representatives of Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir to defuse the mounting political tension in the country.

Regarding Lavrov, Assaf makes the point that it was after a meeting with Walid Jumblatt that Lavrov made those comments. And she wrote,

Jumblatt and other members of the opposition have repeatedly called for dialogue with Hizbullah, which they acknowledge as the only legitimate party in the loyalist camp and an essential partner for a national entente.

Regarding the Hizbullah-Sfeir contacts (also called the “Let’s let the two wise Nasrallahs sort the country out between them” project), Assaf writes:

An unnamed source close to the party said two of its members, Nawwaf Mussawi and Ghaleb Abu Zeinab, were holding ongoing meetings with two Sfeir representatives: Samir Mazloum and Hareth Shehab.

Mussawi and Abu Zeinab are both Hizbullah politburo members. Abu Zeinab is in charge of the party’s relations with non-Shiite confessional bodies and leaders in Lebanon and has done a really good job in that role over the years. He was one of the H people I interviewed last November. (Is there still any need to plug my upcoming Boston Review piece, in which snippets from that interview occur? probably not.)
Assaf also adds this significant note:

On Friday, U.S. officials insisted they still view Hizbullah as a “terrorist organization has not changed,” but said that they will recognize any party that can win support democratically.

I’ve also been reading this article by Salama Naamat in today’s Hayat.
I’m still working on the Arabic there. But Naamat is reporting from Washington and the import of the article seems to be that unnamed administration officials have been saying that they’re getting kind of worried that, following the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, Hizbullah will just expand to fill both the security and the political vacuum there, inheriting Syria’s role in both dimensions throughout the country.
H’mmm, back to my Hans Wehr dictionary here…
Shirin? Salah? Anyone? Does any of you want to give that short piece by Naamat a quick read and tell me whether I’ve got the gist of it right?

As a proud member of the reality-based community I am always happy when people who exercise great power deign to join us in the world of real facts… Like, apparently, the Prez, or at least some smart person in his entourage who must be a little open to the real heave and sway of human affairs.
That link there, by the way, goes to the piece by Steve Weisman in today’s NYT, in which he reports,

After years of campaigning against Hezbollah, the radical Shiite Muslim party in Lebanon, as a terrorist pariah, the Bush administration is grudgingly going along with efforts by France and the United Nations to steer the party into the Lebanese political mainstream, administration officials say.
The administration’s shift was described by American, European and United Nations officials as a reluctant recognition that Hezbollah, besides having a militia and sponsoring attacks on Israelis, is an enormous political force in Lebanon that could block Western efforts to get Syria to withdraw its troops.

Let’s just recall the comment posted on this JWN post on Tuesday in which “Timur, Beirut” wrote:

Helena: The turbulence we are now passing through,which seems to be getting worse, is the price we are paying for the monumental of blunder of the authors of Security Council Resolution 1559 for putting the departure of Syrian troops from Lebanon in the same basket as what to do with Hizballah. Even the most ardent opposition figures here now say Hizballah issue will be tackled later on in context of Taef Accord.

Weisman quoted, “a diplomat who is closely tracking the negotiations” [most likely, a high-ranking US diplomat, possibly, the ambassador–HC] as saying:

“There is a realization by France and the United States that if you tackle Hezbollah now, you array the Shiites against you. With elections coming in Lebanon, you don’t want the entire Shiite community against you.”

Duh. It took them that long to realize that?
What, no memories of 1996, the year in which the Israelis tried and failed miserably to smash Hizbullah definitively? (That was the famous time when the late lamented Rafiq Hariri, then the prime minister, proclaimed to the whole world, “We are all Hizbullah now!”)
What, no memories of–at the very least– last spring, when Hizbullah candidates trounced Amal in the municipal election races they competed in in all the Shiite-dominated areas?
It’s as if these people in, what do they call it– the “ideas-based community?– have a deep contempt for history and context, as well as for the “reality” which is the building-block of both of those.
Anyway, as my little contribution to the ability of westerners to regain some focus on historical realities in Lebanon I just put up the text of my 1984-85 monograph on the Lebanese Shia onto the archive portion of this site. And shortly (I hope!) Boston Review will be bringing out my 10,000-word-plus article on Hizbullah (to which the monograph, as it happens, makes a fortuitous preface.)
Before I look at what the events of this week could be said to “mean” for the prospects of Bush’s much-publicized “push for democracy” in the Middle East (a text that we might perhaps sub-title: “Lebanon: A bridge too far”) I just want to come back with a quick little reproach to everybody in the so-called “international community” who should have known better about the realities of Lebanese politics… Of course, the Americans, but equally certainly the French…

Continue reading “US political retreat in Lebanon”

Amazing, the power of the internet! Big thanks to all who emailed me with offers of help on PDF-ing my 1984-85 monograph titled The Shia community and the future of Lebanon. A reader from west-coast USA was able to do it for me from a version that I faxed over to her.
Here it is.
I must have written it in late 1984. I found a copy of it in my father’s estate after he died in 1999; it had in it the letter, dated January 1985, that I tucked in the front cover when I mailed it to him in England, from Washington DC where I was then living.
What a lot has happened since then, eh? It wasn’t till February 1985 that a new, previously unknown organization called “Hizbullah” issued a letter publicly announcing its formation…
In the monograph you can find background material about the Shiite community of Lebanon from which Hizbullah sprang. You can find out about the origins of the Amal movement, the political body from which Hizbullah’s founders had split off. And you can read my “policy conclusions” for the US:

The inter-sect system in Lebanon is a delicate mechanism, often fristratingly bloddy in its operation. At the moment it is undergoing a long-term shift in power [from Maronite dominance to Shiite dominance] which is probably comparable to the one experienced from 1825 to 1861 [from Druze dominance to Maronite dominance]. Neither the US nor any other outside actor can do much to reverse this shift. But the US can change its policies–as the Israelis already have done, in part– to align themselves with rather than against the historical processes at work. That necessarily includes addressing the political dimension of Lebanon’s increasingly pressing Shia question.

Hey, not bad for the pregnant 32-year-old that I then was, eh?
The child in question was safely born, grew up healthy (thank G-d), and is now nearly 20 years old.
As for Hizbullah….
(By the way, apologies for the poor quality of the photos in the PDF file. I may or may not be able to get something done about that. Especially, no offense at all intended to Nabih Berri for the fact that he came out looking a bit bad there. Technical factors were at work considerably beyond my ability to control.)