Lebanon – dangerous days
Thursday, 12 Jun 2008 00:00
Thousands fled Beirut during the 2006 conflict
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Lebanon has narrowly avoided another collapse into civil war. After the compromise, inthenews.co.uk assesses the current situation – and its complex roots in the country's divided past.
The presidential crisis
The assassination of anti-Syrian former prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, which was laid at the door of Syria by many, not only resulted in Syria removing all of its forces from Lebanon under pressure from the international community but also set the framework for the current situation.
Essentially the political gulf between Lebanon's main parties divides those who are pro- and anti-Syria. The latter group is widely seen to be supported by the US, France and Saudi Arabia. It currently holds a majority in the Lebanese parliament, despite the fact that four of its MPs have been assassinated recently. Again, many have blamed Syria for these deaths, though the country has strongly denied any involvement.
Though this group does hold a slim majority, a president must be voted in by a two-thirds vote. Under Lebanon's unique power-sharing system, the president must also be a Maronite Christian, with a Sunni Muslim prime minister, an Orthodox Christian deputy prime minister and a Shia Muslim speaker of the Parliament.
The pro-Syrian opposition is obviously supported by Damascus but also the powerful political and paramilitary organisation Hizbullah. Importantly, this faction also counts Iran among its backers.
Lebanon has a long history of being the battlefield on which other more powerful entities collide. And the current political rift is seen by many as a proxy conflict between America and Iran. The deadline to find a replacement passed in November 2007 and since then no compromise candidate has been found. The situation has now reached crisis point. Fear is rife that a bloody civil war could erupt.
The civil war's legacy
The spectre of civil war is one that Lebanon is already intimately familiar with. From 1975 until the early 1990s, Lebanon and its capital of Beirut were torn apart by internecine fighting. At the same time the PLO was using the country as a base to attack Israel, who in turn invaded on two separate occasions, in 1978 and 1982. It was only in 2000 that Israel completely withdrew from southern Lebanon. But it would return.
Until this conflict, Lebanon was a peaceful and relatively prosperous country. The country was the banking hub of the Arab world. Moreover, Beirut was one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the region and a favoured destination for tourists, including movie stars, politicians and other famous figures. Such was its sophistication and glamour, the city was dubbed the Paris of the Middle East.
Civil war reduced the country, and especially Beirut, to an unrecognisable rubble-strewn nightmare. Only recently had Lebanon and its capital approached its bygone prosperity and gradually drawn the tourists back with its beautiful beaches and snow-covered mountains.
Israel-Hizbullah conflict
But much of the progress made by the country was destroyed when
Israel invaded yet again in 2006. The UN, held in check by the US, looked on as Israel destroyed much of Lebanon's newly rebuilt infrastructure in a bid to destroy Hizbullah once and for all. Bridges, Beirut's international airport, factories and roads were bombed into pieces.
Instead of emerging victorious in the midst of this destruction, the vaunted Israeli Defence Forces was given a decidedly bloody nose by well-organised and prepared Hizbullah fighters. Eventually the UN called for a ceasefire, but not before thousands of Lebanese were injured and displaced.
Still no president
The fragile calm which followed the 2006 conflict turned into a presidential crisis, entering a new phase on November 23rd when Mr Lahoud stepped down without agreement on a replacement.
The political impasse led to postponement after postponement of the vote as politicians struggled to find a compromise.
France, which had been leading the international effort to find a solution to the crisis, stepped up its attempts to drive Hizbullah back into line by breaking off diplomatic relations with Syria in the new year.
But Hizbullah remained unmoved, overtly tying its cooperation to General Suleiman's confirmation to a guaranteed third of all cabinet seats. Such a hold on power, which it has demanded since its conflict with Israel in 2005, would give it a veto in all important decisions.
Hizbullah talks up war
Deadlock continued into 2008.
Militant group Hizbullah insisted on the ability to veto measures in cabinet and is blocking a compromise candidate, Michel Suleiman, to replace Mr Lahoud as president.
Tensions in the country continued to translate into violence, with Beirut seeing ten killed in an explosion on January 25th and seven more dead when a protest against power cuts deteriorated into a gunbattle.
It was against this backdrop that the leader of Hizbullah's military wing, Imad Mughniyah, died in a car bomb attack in the Syrian capital of Damascus on February 12th.
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah accused Israel of masterminding the assassination, threatening: "With this murder, its timing, location and method - [Israel] if you want this kind of open war, let the whole world listen: Let this war be open."
By early May Hizbullah fighters had seized the western half of Beirut with at least 11 people killed in automatic rifle fire and grenade explosions.
"The hand raised against us, we will cut it off," Sheikh Nasrallah told Hizbullah members in Beirut via videolink.
Crisis averted
On the brink of collapse the situation suddenly changed. Five days of talks resulted in agreement: General Michel Sleiman, the compromise candidate previously rejected by Hizbullah, was accepted following government concessions.
He was duly elected president on May 25th – nearly eight months since predecessor Emile Lahoud's term in office expired.