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07/20/2006
Lebanon...another look
In the spring of 2005, prior to and following my trip to Lebanon,
I ran a series on the history of the nation which I re-run now in
light of current events. At the bottom, though, I’ve added a blurb
on the tunnel threat Israel faces from the Palestinians in Gaza.
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[Written April / May 2005]
While I have written of Lebanon extensively in my “Week in
Review” column since the February 14, 2005 assassination of
former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, I want to update the current
situation, as well as provide a brief history of the nation. There’s
a personal reason for my doing so at this time. Unless things
change in the next few days I will be over in Lebanon myself
very shortly.
Lebanon is one confusing country to try and understand. For
starters, there hasn’t been a census since 1932, reflecting the
political sensitivities. Roughly one-half the size of New Jersey,
Lebanon has an estimated 3 million people with up to half living
in the greater Beirut area. [Other figures have the population at
4.4 million with Beirut at one million.] It’s not clear to me if the
figures necessarily include the 400,000 Palestinian refugees
living here, none of whom enjoy the legal rights accorded the
rest of the population.
As to the history, in a nutshell Lebanon is the historic home of
the Phoenicians. It was conquered by the Romans in 64 B.C. and
Christianity was introduced in AD 325. The Arabs arrived on
the scene in the 7th century and while Islam made inroads at this
time, Christian Maronites still predominated. And it’s here you
begin to get a sense of the religious divisions that have existed
ever since. The Maronites go back to Syria and St. Maron, a
Syrian hermit from the late 4th century. 400,000 of 1 million
worldwide live in Lebanon.
Lebanon was one of the principal battlefields of the Crusades,
after which it became part of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish
rule continued until World War I. After World War II, both
Lebanon and Syria were mandated to France and in 1945
Lebanon was granted its full independence, with the French
pulling their troops out the following year.
During the 1950s Lebanon’s economy boomed and it adopted a
pro-Western foreign policy. The Arab populations were none
too pleased, however, and by 1958 U.S. troops were sent in to
quell a rebellion. Later, in the 1960s, Israel began to apply
military pressure against Palestinian guerrillas operating out of
South Lebanon.
Then in 1975 civil war broke out between Maronite, Sunni,
Shiite, and Druse (also spelled Druze) militias. Just to give you
another sense of how complicated it is for a casual observer to
understand all the players, the Druse go back to the 10th century
and are an offshoot of the Ismailis. The Ismailis are one of two
branches of the Shia faith. An estimated 200-300,000 Druse live
in Lebanon with the charismatic Walid Jumblatt as their leader.
During the civil war, 1975-90, anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000
were killed. [Like other numbers here, it’s difficult getting exact
counts.] In 1978 Israel (which has been in a declared state of
war with Lebanon since 1973) invaded the south of the country
in order to suppress attacks from Palestinian bases there. The
same year Hizbullah (Hezbollah), “Party of God,” was founded
with the express mission of destroying Israel.
As the civil war raged, European and U.S. troops were deployed
in 1983 and they were met by a bombing campaign, including
Hizbullah’s attack on a U.S. / French barracks, also in ’83, that
killed 241.
[Hizbullah’s primary sponsor is Iran, which sends a reported
$100 million a year out of which Hizbullah funds schools and
orphanages in their attempt to win over the hearts and minds.
But the lion’s share of the money is spent on weaponry and
maintenance of Hizbullah’s 25,000-strong militia.]
By 1990 a truce was called and Syria was permitted by the
international community to maintain what was to be a temporary
presence in Lebanon which then evolved into far more.
President George H.W. Bush paid this price for Syria’s support
in Gulf War I, though what Syria did then was limited
Lebanon has maintained a democracy since independence,
though power has been split along religious lines with the three
largest sects, Maronite Christians, Sunnis and Shias, sharing the
top positions. But as the rest of the world forgot about Lebanon
after the war, Syria made sure its handpicked leaders had the
most power.
Over the past 15 years, though, during a period of relative
stability, Lebanon was able to mount a reconstruction effort,
thanks to the efforts of businessman / Prime Minister Rafik
Hariri. It was last October that Hariri, who had generally been a
supporter of Syria while he built his business empire, had a
falling out with Damascus and President Bashar Assad over
Assad’s attempt to extend Lebanese President Emile Lahoud’s
six-year mandate. Assad showed Hariri, prime minister for 10 of
the previous 12 years, little respect and Hariri was furious.
But Hariri, no fool, knew he couldn’t fight Damascus from
within so he submitted his resignation and announced he was
going to explore his options.
During this crisis, the United Nations Security Council adopted
Resolution 1559, sponsored by France and the United States, that
called for a “free and fair electoral process in Lebanon’s
upcoming presidential election (and for) all remaining foreign
forces to withdraw from Lebanon.” Nonetheless, the Parliament
rubber-stamped the extension of Lahoud’s tenure.
Then on February 14 of this year, Rafik Hariri was assassinated
in a horrific bomb attack that killed 17 others. While the actual
perpetrators have yet to be identified, all eyes remain on Syria
either President Assad sanctioned it or his intelligence forces
acted on their own.
As the most respected political force in Lebanon, particularly
among the Sunnis, Hariri’s death unleashed forces that shocked
Syria. Fouad Ajami commented in U.S. News & World Report
as hundreds of thousands poured into the streets of Beirut in
mourning, “No one could have foreseen the mass grief of the
captive country.”
“Hariri’s historic role, the gift that his cruel murder gave the
Lebanese people, was the knitting together of a country given to
communal feuds. The ‘cedar revolution’ had been gathering
force; it now had its martyr and a simply rallying cry held atop
banners in Beirut’s plazas – al-haqiqa, the truth. The Lebanese
wanted the truth of their world: the truth about Hariri’s
assassination, the truth about the secret services that disposed of
their public life, the truth about a young, inexperienced Syrian
ruler (Bashar Assad) who had come to believe that Lebanon was
his personal inheritance. People bullied into submission, or
simply indifferent to the call of political causes, wanted their
country back. Arabs had always viewed Lebanon as an ‘easy,’
frivolous land. Now the Lebanese were treating the other Arabs
to a spectacle of peaceful revolt and genuine change.”
Today, as Ajami adds, the “apparition of Hariri haunts the servile
regime in Beirut and its puppeteers in Damascus.”
I’ll pick up the story after my trip to Beirut.
[Continuing reminder, written spring 2005 ]
For starters, I just want to add to previous remarks
concerning former prime minister Rafik Hariri and his role in
helping rebuild the country following the 1975-90 civil war. In a
piece for the May / June issue of Foreign Affairs, Professor
Fouad Ajami (Johns Hopkins) notes that it will never be proven
with certainty just who was responsible for Hariri’s death.
“It is likely that the trail to Damascus will never be found.
Access to the ‘crime scene’ – Lebanon itself – has been limited,
and Syria’s regime of satraps in Beirut has done its best to
hamper a thorough investigation of the crime.”
Well I can speak to this. I was staying at the Hotel Phoenicia,
right across the street from the February 14 attack. My hotel
suffered severe damage in the horrific explosion that claimed 18
lives and my room faced the damage where the main impact was
felt. Yes, I guess you could say access was limited to the crime
scene as there was a barricade about half a block from the area
manned by a few Lebanese army soldiers. But from my room I
could see there was a way to get even closer, though I didn’t try
it myself. My point being in five days I didn’t see any activity at
the crime scene and it’s supposed to be the work of the UN at
this point. The crumpled cars are still there but no one around
them.
As for Ajami’s assertion that access to Lebanon itself has been
limited false. I had no problem entering the country and
neither did I have a problem going to Baalbek where the last
Syrian troops left on Tuesday, April 26. I was there on Sunday,
May 1 though as I’ll explain in my other column I got cold feet
and didn’t exit my car. Seeing posters of Ayatollah Khomeini
and Hizbullah leader Sheikh Nasrallah, plus hundreds of
Hizbullah flags (with the raised fist and a Kalashnikov), has a
way of doing that.
[Beirut itself, however, was terrific. I had zero problems walking
around and not one person bothered me. The people treated me
very well.]
But back to Hariri, with his death he has become a true martyr
for the cause of Lebanese independence. He deserves
tremendous credit for bringing Lebanon back in the post-civil
war days and through sheer force of personality, as well as his
$billionaire wealth, he rallied the business community into
redeveloping many of the bombed out areas of the city.
Hariri, though, could not have accomplished what he did without
cooperating with the Syrian regime that was running things in
Lebanon through its lackeys in the post-war years. And Hariri’s
main patron was Saudi Arabia (he was a Saudi citizen). As
Fouad Ajami notes, “his ties to the House of Saud ran to the very
heart of the dynasty,” adding, “The Saudis are not given to
expressions of public outrage, but one of their own was struck
down in Beirut (and a) huge contingent of Saudi princes came to
Beirut for Hariri’s funeral.”
There is nothing wrong with Hariri’s Saudi ties – it just needs to
be noted – and while it’s true the Saudis put pressure on Syria in
the aftermath of the assassination to exit Lebanon, at the same
time you won’t find Saudi Arabia publicly stating Syria was
responsible for the killing; that’s just not the way things work in
this region.
In closing, though, I came across an editorial from the April
edition of Lebanon’s business magazine “Executive” by editor-
in-chief Yasser Akkaoui. It pretty well sums up the feelings of
the populace in Beirut. [Yet it’s still far more complicated than
this outside the city, as I’ll spell out in “Week in Review.”]
“Dr. Best, Himmler’s right hand man in the Gestapo, once said,
‘As long as the police carries out the will of the leadership, it is
acting legally.’ That mindset allowed for countless political
arrests and murders, during the period of Hitler’s Third Reich.
“The ghost of our late prime minister confronts us with political
murder at the heart of our national dream. He forces on us the
appalling questions: Of what is our constitution made? What is
our citizenship, and more, our lives, worth? What is the future of
a democracy where leaders can be assassinated under
conspicuously suspicious circumstances while the machinery of
legal action scarcely trembles? How many politically disguised
murders will occur before they are exposed for what they are?
“On repression, Huey Long once said, ‘It will come in the name
of your security – they call it ‘National Security,’ it will come
with the mass media manipulating a clever concentration camp
of the mind. The superstate will provide you tranquility above
the truth, the superstate will make you believe you are living in
the best of all possible worlds, and in order to do so will rewrite
history as it sees fit.’ George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth warned
us, “Who controls the past, controls the future.’
“What took place on February 14 was a coup d’etat. Its most
direct and tragic result – and the subsequent terror bombings
aimed at our retail outlets and industrial zones – was a reversal of
Hariri’s commitment to economic prosperity and a declaration of
war, because war is big business, worth billions a year. Our
prime minister was murdered by a conspiracy to protect a state of
war and all the conveniences and excesses that come with it. It
was a public execution of the free entrepreneurial spirit that was
slowly achieving supremacy over the business of war.
“In reality, however, it is the business of peace that is keeping us
afloat. Riad Salameh, arguably the last of Hariri’s economic
musketeers to still hold public office, watched as the coffers
filled with the rewards of prosperity. Today, he is using these
hard-earned savings – won on the field of economic recovery –
to fight the forces of aggression.
“But the worst of all crimes is when a government murders truth.
If it can murder truth, it can murder freedom. If it can murder
freedom, it can murder our own sons if they should dare to fight
for freedom. There are still enough Lebanese left in this country
to make it continue to be Lebanon. We can still fight
authoritarianism, and when we do that we are not being un-
Lebanese; we are being Lebanese. We are sticking our necks out
and that has to be done, because truth does not come into being
automatically. Individual men and women have to work and
fight to make it happen. As long as our government continues to
be like that, as long as such forces can get away with these
actions, then this is no longer the country in which we were
born.”
I’ve decided Lebanon is the most fascinating place on earth
today, in terms of political science, and you can be sure I’ll
address the topic far more often in the future. While success or
failure in spreading democracy in Iraq is critical to the health of
the entire region, you can make the same argument that it is
equally important Lebanon succeed in winning back its
independence in a democratic fashion. Elections are scheduled
for end of May and various terrorist activities should be expected
to occur beforehand as Syria attempts to thwart the will of the
Lebanese people.
Additional Sources:
“The American Desk Encyclopedia”
Dexter Filkins, Michael Young / New York Times
Fouad Ajami / U.S. News
Fouad Ajami / Foreign Affairs, May / June 2005
Ralph Peters / New York Post
Lee Smith / Wall Street Journal
Jackson Diehl / Washington Post
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“Israel Confronts Threat of Gaza Tunnels”
Reported by Barbara Opall-Rome / Defense News, 7/10/06
[Brief excerpt from her story written prior to Hizbullah’s action
on the Lebanon / Israel border. ]
“Despite intensive efforts over the past five years to locate and
destroy terrorist tunnels, Israel’s failure to thwart a recent
subsurface cross-border attack has fueled ambivalence here
[Israel] over the prospects of ever achieving an effective defense
against burrowing threats.
“In a particularly brazen June 25 operation, a squad of Hamas
commandos dressed like Israeli soldiers infiltrated a heavily
fortified Israel Defense Forces (IDF) installation via a tunnel that
originated some 800 meters inside southern Gaza, passed
underneath the border fence and extended another 200 meters
behind Israeli lines.
“The surprise attack from the rear cost the lives of two IDF
soldiers; another was taken captive and inestimable damage was
done to Israeli deterrence and morale.”
The IDF’s internal investigation noted it would have taken
months to dig the tunnel, and in the days prior to the actual
assault, Israel’s security service Shin Bet had warned of an attack
along the southern border area.
Israel is looking into “bore-hole mining” as a way to detect
future tunnels, a process based on high-pressure water jets.
While author Opall-Rome doesn’t mention it, this would be
similar to a process the South Koreans have used to successfully
detect North Korean tunnels under the DMZ, something I
personally observed in a trip to that area this past April 29.
Hott Spotts will return July 27.
Brian Trumbore
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