Lebanon: How to Pull Back From the Brink

Most people on either side of the fault line tend to simplify the current impasse in Lebanon to suite their preconcieved notions and political biases. The truth is that it is a multilayered and complex problem that defies simple-minded classification. Broadly, there is the external factor: Syria-Iran vs the US, but there are also the multiple internal fault lines: rich vs poor (Muslim & Christian), Christian-Sunni-Druze vs Shia, city vs countryside, pan-Arabists vs Lebanon first, secular vs religious to name a few.

The current impasse has made me reconsider my attitudes. I still have major misgivings about Hizbullah's ultimate aims, it Iran connection and the fact that it has an army at its disposal which is independent from the standing government. But I also realize that the Hizbollah-FPM alliance represents a large percentage of Lebanese who feel that they do not get proper representation and that they have missed out on the economic development of the post war years. Their rights as citizens and their vision of what Lebanon is and should be cannot be ignored.

I have long believed that much of Lebanon's current problem is the result of unresolved conflicts and issues dating back to the civil war. Many of these issues were shoved out of site instead of being resolved in a frank and open manner at the end of the war. Yes, the meddling of Syria, Iran and the US are important factors but it is basically a Lebanese problem that has to be resolved by Lebanese.

The New York Time Op-Ed piece (below) about Lebanon is one of the most insightful and on the mark that I have seen in a long time. This all the more surprising coming from a former CIA director of counterintelligence. He certainly was not at the helm when the United States played cheerleader to Israel during last summer's war.

If You Love Lebanon, Set It Free

By ROBERT GRENIER
Published: December 17, 2006
Washington

ONCE more, Lebanon is in political crisis. This time, we are told, it pits “Syrian- and Iranian-backed” Shiite parties (Hezbollah and Amal) and the Christian faction led by Michel Aoun against the “Western-backed” Christian, Sunni and Druze groups that support the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

These very descriptions — citing one external backer or another as a mark of political identification — illustrate the fundamental problem Lebanon must overcome. Call it the Lebanese Disease: rather than sorting out their differences internally and addressing the fundamental injustices at the heart of their disputes, the Lebanese constantly look to outsiders to gain an advantage over their rivals.

Naturally, any advantages thus gained are short-lived, for both the Lebanese and their foreign backers. In the end, the only result is greater popular suffering and instability in Lebanon and the entire Middle East.

Only the Lebanese can cure themselves of this disease, but a bit of enlightened self-interest on the part of the “Western backers” — primarily the United States and France — would greatly help. It may seem counterintuitive, but the best hope for American interests in the Middle East is not to isolate and minimize Hezbollah, but to further integrate it politically, socially and militarily into the Lebanese state.

Let’s dial back half a year, to the start of this latest crisis. The immediate reaction of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel to the cross-border attack by Hezbollah on Israeli troops was his most honest. This was not, he said, an act of terrorism — it was an act of war. And, issues of proportionality aside, it was quite justifiable to hold the Lebanese government to account.

The honesty of that initial reaction, however, was quickly replaced by the old formula to which Israel has resorted since 1978. Israel did not intend to attack Lebanon, its spokesmen insisted, but was just trying to help the Lebanese by attacking Iran-controlled Hezbollah. This was a polite way of saying to Mr. Siniora: We’re going to rid ourselves — and you — of Hezbollah, for which you should be grateful, and you’d better make sure they don’t rise again.

Now let’s try to view this from the perspective of a Lebanese nationalist. To acquiesce to the American-Israeli formula for Lebanon would be to accept that one’s nation should be entirely supine before a neighbor; that any time the Israelis decided to react to a limited provocation or threat, the only defense one could mount would be the tearful pleas of a powerless prime minister.

Thus it should not be surprising that many Lebanese, including Mr. Siniora, at least temporarily put aside their factional mistrust and embraced Hezbollah as the sole available means of national resistance. This, along with Hezbollah’s surprisingly successful resistance, has permanently changed the political calculus of the nation.

For one thing, it is harder today to suggest to Lebanese nationalists that Hezbollah is simply a mindless proxy for the Iranians. Throughout the Middle East, religious extremism and Arab nationalism are becoming identical, with the former becoming the only effective means of pursuing the latter. This is true of the Sunni extremists in Iraq and throughout the Arab world, as well as of the Shiite extremists of Hezbollah in Lebanon, whose resistance to the Israelis, clearly motivated at least in part by a desire to support the Sunni Palestinians, has paradoxically made them a hero of the Sunni Arab street.

Likewise, Hezbollah’s support of the Syrian presence in Lebanon — which should be anathema to any Lebanese nationalist — should be seen less as obeisance to a neighbor than as the cynical price the group must pay to ensure its logistical link with Iran.

As Hezbollah becomes more enmeshed in Lebanese politics, however, domestic political considerations will become increasingly influential in its calculations — a tendency that should be encouraged. Indeed, the closing stages of last summer’s war provided a fleeting opportunity for the Beirut government to gain a greater measure of state control over Hezbollah. (Continued Here)