Last October, when Michel Aoun was on the verge of obtaining a parliamentary majority allowing him to be elected president of Lebanon, one thing was clear: Hizbollah was not pleased with the new alignment that had made the election possible. Since then, the party has sought to put in place a system that protects its interests.
Hizbollah apparently sought inspiration for this from a method that the Syrians exploited in Lebanon two decades ago. It allowed Damascus to run the country by playing on the divisions between the president, prime minister and speaker of parliament. This became known as the “troika”.
The troika was made possible by post-war realities in the early 1990s. As the country was rebuilding, tremendous amounts of money were circulating for reconstruction. The prime minister at the time, Rafiq Hariri, had portrayed himself as the primary driver of Lebanon’s revival. By hindering his plans, the president and speaker, not to mention Syria, could hold his political agenda hostage, receiving larger cuts of reconstruction projects and profits to unblock the ensuing logjams.
But Hariri himself was no ingénue. To him the reconstruction effort was useful as leverage to increase his own power in the state. This he did mainly by reinforcing institutions tied to his office that allowed him to circumvent ministries and move his reconstruction plans forward.
The Syrians, who had imposed their rule over Lebanon, saw advantages in this system. They were in a pivotal position to act as mediators when Lebanese politicians disagreed, giving them sway over developments in Lebanon. They also gained from the lucrative proceeds of reconstruction projects. And more broadly, they kept in check a system in which, by necessity, Hariri had to be given power to revive Lebanon– power they feared he might use to slowly break Lebanon away from Syria.
Control was at the heart of the troika system. When Hariri’s son Saad rallied to Mr Aoun several months ago and backed him for the presidency, Hizbollah probably sought a similar arrangement.
With support from Mr Hariri and from another old rival of Hizbollah, the Lebanese Forces of Samir Geagea, Mr Aoun was in a position to be elected president and break a presidential deadlock that Hizbollah had perpetuated.
This worried Hizbollah, which feared that the Aoun-Hariri-Geagea axis could endanger its predominant role in the political system. The first thing the party did was to give green light to its Shia ally, Nabih Berri, the powerful speaker of parliament, to declare his opposition to Mr Aoun and the alliance from which he benefited.
It’s difficult to determine precisely what Hizbollah asked of the speaker, but at the least Mr Berri saw that the party would welcome his playing the role of counterweight to Mr Aoun and to the designated prime minister, Mr Hariri. In effect a new troika was put in place, one in which the mediator in future disputes would be not Syria but Hizbollah, which has maintained good relations with Mr Aoun.
The new arrangement is interesting for other reasons. It is the fruit of necessity. Hizbollah could not prevent Mr Hariri from endorsing Mr Aoun, nor could the party obstruct the Aoun-Geagea rapprochement, which united most Lebanese Christians behind a Aoun presidency. In a similar way, Syria could not prevent Rafiq Hariri’s arrival to power in 1992 as the prime representative of the Saudi stake in Lebanon.
Even if Syria then, like Hizbollah today, could use the checks built into the sectarian political system to maintain their supremacy, their control was never complete. Sudden shifts could undermine their dominant position.
One such shift came in 1998, when the rise of Bashar Al Assad in Syria led to a fresh Syrian way of running Lebanon, one that ultimately precipitated the downfall of the Syrian order there.
That year, the Syrians brought in as president Emile Lahoud, who became the main conduit of Syrian power in Lebanon. This replaced the more diffuse system in place before, when Lebanese politicians had separate patrons in Syria. With Bashar’s rise, policy over Lebanon was increasingly centralised in Damascus, which required a main counterpart in Beirut, who happened to be Mr Lahoud, a former army commander.
Yet all this did was alienate many of Lebanon’s pro-Syrian politicians and make an enemy of Rafiq Hariri.
The revolt against Mr Lahoud created dynamics that later led to Hariri’s assassination in 2005, when he looked as if he would win a majority in a parliamentary election scheduled for that summer. The crime, and the widespread anger that it provoked, forced Syria to withdraw its army from Lebanon.
The situation today is somewhat different. However, Hizbollah is well aware of the unpredictability of the sectarian system. Which is why it reacted to Mr Aoun’s election with caution. But the party should not try pushing too far to reinforce its dominance.
Often, going with the flow of Lebanese realities is safer than trying to fundamentally transform them.
Michael Young is a writer and editor in Beirut
On Twitter: @BeirutCalling
