Pax Syriana: Elite Politics in Postwar Lebanon

Introduction

xv Introduction The recent political history of Lebanon has been defined by the legacy of war. In addition to repeated external invasions and the ongoing presence of foreign troops of diverse nationalities, the Lebanese people have endured the scars of a bitterly contested civil war that began in the spring of 1975 and continued unabated for the next fifteen years. Political normality began to be restored only in the closing months of 1989, in the wake of negotiations brokered by Saudi Arabia under the auspices of the larger international community. Representatives of various Lebanese factions convened in the Saudi Arabian city of Ta’if to hammer out a compromise that eventually put an end to active hostilities. The document produced by these negotiations, which came to be known as the Ta’if Agreement, reestablished the same general form of government that had been in place before the civil war—a system in which political representation is apportioned on the basis of religion. In this system of confessional power sharing, an informally designated number of parliamentary seats and ministerial positions are allocated to each of the country’s diverse religious communities: Sunni Muslims, Shi‘i Muslims, Maronite Christians , and Druze, to name just a few of the largest constituencies.1 Confessionalism has been a feature of Lebanese politics since the country gained its independence in 1943, and this political structure was further institutionalized by the Ta’if Agreement. The seeming intractability of the confessional system, combined with the legacy of ongoing sectarian tension, leads to an important question: does structural confessionalism act to mitigate sectarian tensions in Lebanon by promoting the sharing of power, or does the political structure merely express and exacerbate these tensions by forcing all political interests into sectarian contours? xvi  Introduction The Ta’if Agreement also had the notable effect of consolidating the long-standing influence of the Syrian government in Lebanese politics . Syrian influence was deeply embedded in Lebanon at the end of the civil war, and owing to Syria’s alignment with Saudi Arabia and Western powers during the 1990–91 Gulf War, the international powers allowed Syria to have a free hand in Lebanon. Syria’s ruling regime forced the rebellious general Michel Aoun out of Lebanon’s presidential palace and made Lebanon into a satellite state through a series of agreements that linked the two countries in fields ranging from security to education. Syrian political hegemony and a Syrian military presence would prove to be the rule in Lebanon throughout the 1990s. It was only after the turn of the millennium that criticism against the Syrian presence began to be publicly voiced in Lebanon, culminating in the “Cedar Revolution” of 2005,2 which forced a withdrawal of Syrian troops, and the legislative elections of 2009, which heralded the rise of a new generation of independent Lebanese political elites. Only time will tell whether Syrian oversight was a necessary feature of the political stability that Lebanon experienced after the Ta’if Agreement. Since March 2011, Syria has been rocked by antiregime demonstrations calling for Assad’s removal from power. These demonstrations have been received by the Syrian regime with force. On March 27, 2012, the United Nations estimated the number of deaths to be nine thousand. The outcome of the turmoil in Syria and its impact on Lebanon will be telling regarding the importance of Syria on Lebanon’s stability. Although much has been written about the history of Lebanese politics and especially about the tragedy of the civil war, scholars have not yet turned their attention to a systematic analysis of the evolution of the Lebanese political scene in the years after the Ta’if Agreement.3 In this book I provide such an analysis, based on fieldwork and interviews that I conducted between 2001 and 2006, as well as on my critical readings of news broadcasts, position papers, memoirs, party platforms, and other primary sources. My approach to understanding the Lebanese political scene is focused on the examination of the small cadre of individuals whom sociologists and political scientists call the “political elite.”4 This label refers to people who exercise power in society or who can be said to Introduction  xvii have a personal influence on national decision making. It includes a range of public and nonpublic figures, from high-ranking government officials and military officers, to leaders of professional associations and business and industry representatives, to the heads...