What’s next in Lebanon? It’s a question no one can answer

Mohamad Bazzi in Beirut

• Last Updated: May 10. 2008 9:39PM UAE / May 10. 2008 5:39PM GMT

The Lebanese woke up on Saturday morning staring into a political abyss. No matter what political faction they support, people wondered: “What’s next?” There were no answers. Lebanon has teetered on the edge of civil conflict for more than a year. In the past few days, it might have tipped over.

On Friday, the Shiite militia Hizbollah dispatched hundreds of heavily armed fighters into West Beirut, and within 12 hours it altered Lebanon’s delicate political balance. Hizbollah and its allies quickly routed Sunni militiamen, took control of their political offices and shut down media outlets owned by the Sunni leader Saad Hariri. The pro-Western government of the Prime Minister Fouad Siniora appeared powerless, while the Lebanese army stood on the sidelines. By Friday night, Hizbollah had withdrawn most of its fighters from Beirut and turned over the offices of Hariri’s Future Movement to the army.

By demonstrating its military superiority and discipline, Hizbollah hoped to force the government to rescind an order declaring that Hizbollah’s private communications network is illegal and a “threat to state security”.

But by Saturday morning, while Beirut remained calm, fighting erupted in other parts of Lebanon. In the afternoon, a gunman believed to be a Shiite shop owner opened fire on a funeral procession in the Sunni neighbourhood of Tarik Jadideh, killing two people and injuring six. This is the danger of Hizbollah’s action: while its fighters might be highly disciplined, they cannot control their allies – or the Sunni-Shiite rift being fuelled by sectarian bloodletting in Iraq.

There is no political settlement on the horizon, and not even the country’s leaders can answer the question of “What’s next?”

Lebanon has been without a president since November, when the term of Emile Lahoud, a Syrian ally, ended with the two main political factions unable to agree on his replacement. Since then, the two blocs – a parliamentary majority led by Hariri and an opposition led by Hizbollah and its Maronite Christian ally Michel Aoun – made a breakthrough and agreed on General Michel Suleiman, head of the Lebanese army, as a compromise for president. But the two factions have been unable to agree on the make-up of a new Cabinet ever since, and the parliamentary vote on a new president has been postponed 18 times.

The Lebanese state has been paralysed since November, when six ministers representing Hizbollah and its allies resigned from Siniora’s cabinet after talks to form a national unity government failed. Hizbollah and Aoun then launched a sit-in in downtown Beirut, erecting hundreds of tents outside the main government palace and holding massive protests to topple Siniora.

Lebanese Sunnis and several Christian factions united around Siniora, while the United States and Sunni Arab regimes rushed to support him. And so the Lebanese predicament became an extension of the ongoing proxy war in Iraq, pitting Iran and Syria (which support Hizbollah) against the US, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab regimes (which support Hariri’s alliance). As soon as Siniora’s government took office, the Bush administration began pressuring it to disarm Hizbollah.

Today, Lebanon’s crises are interconnected in a Gordian Knot: the pressure on Hizbollah to give up its weapons; the need to agree on a new electoral law before parliamentary elections in 2009; the country’s future relationship with Syria; and the disarming of various factions in 12 Palestinian refugee camps scattered across Lebanon. The issue of Palestinian weapons boiled over last May, when a group of Sunni militants inspired by al Qa’eda attacked the Lebanese army, which then besieged the Nahr El-Bared camp near the northern city of Tripoli.

Lebanon’s problems are rooted in a 65-year-old power-sharing agreement among the rival religious groups. The system was designed to keep a balance among 18 sects, dictating that power must be shared between a Maronite president, a Sunni prime minister, and a Shiite speaker of parliament. The power sharing extends from the top ranks of government to the lowest rungs of the civil service. But this “confessional” system has barely changed since its inception in the early 1940s, when Lebanon won its independence from France.

When civil war broke out in 1975, the political imbalance was one of the driving forces that prompted each sect to form its own militia. Because of the confessional system, Lebanese political institutions never got a chance to develop; the country remained dependent on the powerful clans and feudal landlords that held sway in much of Lebanon. The zaeem, or confessional leader who usually inherited rule from his father, became paramount during the war.

Confessionalism leads to a weak state. It encourages horse-trading and alliances with powerful patrons. And it is easily exploited by outside powers (Syria, Iran, the US, and Saudi Arabia being the latest examples). But most of the current players are too invested in this system to change it. And foreign patrons do not want change because it could reduce their influence.

Even if the two factions can diffuse the unfolding sectarian disaster and reach a compromise on the presidency, another political crisis is sure to emerge, unless Lebanon’s leaders and its people address the root causes of the country’s instability. Eventually, the Lebanese will have to tackle the question of what kind of country they want: one built on sectarian gerrymandering, or a more egalitarian way of sharing power.

Mohamad Bazzi is the Edward R Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.