Keep it together


LeadersMay 17th 2008 edition


IT IS tempting to conclude that Lebanon never was, and never will be, a real country whose inhabitants have an overarching loyalty to their state. Historians have argued, with some cogency, that its inhabitants would have had a better chance of living in peace had it been incorporated into a Greater Syria, when the Ottoman empire collapsed at the end of the first world war. Being parts of a larger whole might—but only might—have given the Christians and Druze and perhaps even the Shia Muslims a good slice of autonomy in the areas where they predominate.

But all that is academic. In the past few months, and especially in the past week, Lebanon has looked even less like a real country. It has had no president since November: the parliament is too divided to elect a new one. The opposition, led by the Shias' party-cum-militia, Hizbullah, refuses to co-operate until it wins a right of veto over parliamentary legislation and over the make-up of the cabinet. Last week, after the Sunni-led government tried to sack a Hizbullah man who had been running security at the national airport and tried to dismantle Hizbullah's communications network, the Shia militia briefly took over the very centre of Beirut, the capital (see article). In the fighting that ensued, Hizbullah, which retains its weapons under a special deal on the grounds that it needs them to keep out the Israelis, turned its guns instead on its fellow Lebanese. It rapidly showed it had more clout than Lebanon's national army, a fragile confection often vaunted as the country's sole unifying institution.

Lebanon has not always looked this hopeless. When things have gone well, it has been hailed as a rare example of a multi-sectarian state—a place where everyone enjoys a cosmopolitan, entrepreneurial and mutual tolerance, as opposed to the dead-handed, centralised authoritarian power that is the Arab norm. This hopeful version of Lebanon seemed briefly plausible three years ago, when neighbouring big-brother Syria, which had ruled the roost since the country's last full-scale civil war ended in 1990, was chucked out amid clamorous hopes that members of all 18 of the country's recognised religious denominations would come together in national harmony. That never really happened. This latest bout of sectarian violence raises doubts that it ever will. Yet there is no serious alternative to trying to make Lebanon stick together.

In many respects, Lebanon reflects the fissures and rivalries that have rocked the wider region. Indeed, that is just the trouble. Since the Shias of Iraq and Iran have come more boisterously to the fore in the past few years, their co-religionists in Lebanon have demanded, ever more insistently, a leading, even predominant, role in their own patch and beyond, in keeping with their fast-growing numbers (they are now Lebanon's largest single group) and in view of their past poverty and political inferiority. Moreover, their backers in the region, especially Iran but also Syria, see Hizbullah as their sharp-nailed cat's-paw at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, just to the north of their enemy, Israel.

Better than guns for the few

This makes the region's Sunnis, as well as Jews, twitchy. This week Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, using exceptionally fierce language, accused Iran of “backing a coup” in Lebanon. For its part, Israel is rattled by the growing strength of Hizbullah, which it signally failed to defeat in a woefully ill-advised war two years ago, at the same time as a Sunni Islamist movement, Hamas (also backed by Syria and Iran), controls the Gaza Strip just to Israel's south.

It is not just the Lebanese who will suffer if their country is a cockpit for regional proxies. This week the Qataris, who manage to be among the best friends of America in the Gulf while hosting the Arabist al-Jazeera television network, offered to convene a regional conference to calm Lebanon down. Its problems would be easier to settle if the Israel-Palestine conflict were on the way to solution too, since a proper peace between Israel and Syria, which is surely obtainable, would draw much poison out of Lebanon's festering sore.

Lebanon also needs a new constitution and a new electoral law. Ideally, its parliament should be elected to reflect more accurately the country's demography, perhaps with a Senate constituted by a special formula ensuring that all sects have a say and none can ride roughshod. The Shias led by Hizbullah may emerge as the strongest single group. But if Lebanon is to hold together as a country in more than name, Hizbullah cannot continue to rule a separate state within a bogus state.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Keep it together"

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