Stability in Lebanon The impact of confessionalism and foreign influences

Mathieu Baudier

Mast er of Advanced Int ernat ional St udies Diplomat ic Academy of Vienna Universit y of Vienna Supervisors Prof essor Hanspeter Neuhold, Universit y of Vienna Prof essor Andreas Wagener, Universit y of Hannover

Text , Phot ography, Cover Design and Maps of Chapt er 1 © 2009 Mathieu Baudier Maps of Chapt ers 2 and 7 © 2007 Institut Français du Proche – Orient / CNRS Liban

Mathieu Baudier

Stability in Lebanon The impact of confessionalism and foreign influences

Master Thesis for the Master in Advanced International Studies of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents.........................................................................................4 Introduction..................................................................................................7 Historical Context..........................................................................................................8 Methodology and Theoretical Framework.....................................................................9 Academic Motivations..................................................................................................10 Personal Motivations...................................................................................................10 Acknowledgements......................................................................................................11

Part A What is Lebanon?.......................................................................13 Chapter 1 Historical Geography...............................................................................15 Physical Geography....................................................................................................16 Lebanon Through History............................................................................................19 Origins of the Christian Communities..........................................................................21 Origins of the Muslim Communities............................................................................23

Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions.....................................................................27 Legal Status of the Religious Communities................................................................28 Demography................................................................................................................31 Socio-Economic Factors.............................................................................................36 Beirut...........................................................................................................................38

Chapter 3 National Identity........................................................................................43 From Mount Lebanon to Greater Lebanon..................................................................44 Conflicting perceptions................................................................................................46 The Least Bad Option..................................................................................................49

Part B Power-Sharing............................................................................51 Chapter 4 Theoretical Approaches to Power-Sharing............................................53 4

Table of Contents The Inherent Instability of Power-Sharing...................................................................53 Credible Power-Sharing Agreements..........................................................................55 Confessionalism as a type of confederation...............................................................57

Chapter 5 The Lebanese Political System...............................................................61 Modern History............................................................................................................62 The Electoral System..................................................................................................65 Critical Evaluation of the Political System...................................................................68

Chapter 6 Power-Sharing and Stability....................................................................71 The Issue of Redistribution..........................................................................................72 Redistribution and Power-Sharing...............................................................................73 The Rationale for Power-Sharing in Lebanon.............................................................75

Part C External Factors..........................................................................79 Chapter 7 Two Neighbours........................................................................................81 Syria in Lebanon: Imposing Power-Sharing................................................................84 The Security of Israel...................................................................................................86 The Palestinian Issue..................................................................................................89

Chapter 8 Lebanon and the World............................................................................93 Lebanon Exchanges with the World............................................................................94 A Pawn on the Chessboard.........................................................................................97 The Changing Policy of the Great Powers..................................................................99

Conclusion...............................................................................................103 Bibliography.............................................................................................105 Maps Index...............................................................................................107 Pictures Index..........................................................................................108 Abstract....................................................................................................109

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Picture 1: Flowers and barbed wire in Beirut (January 2007)

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Introduction

Introduction

The purpose of this master thesis is to analyse the stability of Lebanon since the end of the civil war in 1990. •

Why was Lebanon relatively stable between 1990 and 2005, and could this stability have been sustainable?

•

What are the root causes of the renewed instability since 2005?

•

And more generally, what are the conditions for stability in Lebanon today?

In the literature as well as in the streets of Lebanon, it is widely acknowledged that the two main problems of the country regarding stability and security are its political system on the one hand and foreign influences on the other. This study will therefore be structured as a detailed analysis of both of them during the period of time considered. First, we will provide background information about Lebanon and its population not only in order to define the concepts used throughout this thesis, but also to underline which factors tend to give Lebanon a coherence as a state and a nation and which ones put it into question. We will then assess the confessional political system, and argue that its implementation, especially the electoral system, shows the drawbacks typical of such systems with little of the benefits they can provide. It tends to breed instability by allowing contradicting claim to legitimacy and short-term tactical intra-elite understandings without political coherence. But we will also argue that in principle, confession-based power sharing institutions make sense in the fields where the preferences of the people are homogeneous within the religious communities, like in civil law, or more crucially in the guarantee of their own preservation and security. Finally, we will consider the external influences on the stability of Lebanon by distinguishing two circles of external powers. The first one consists of Lebanon's two neighbours, Israel and Syria, who both intervened militarily during the civil war and kept troops in Lebanon until respectively 2000 and 2005, and who both have vital national interests in Lebanon. The second one is made up of regional or global bigger powers (namely the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the EU/France) with a deciding influence but no primary interests in Lebanon. We will argue that while foreign occupation may have had a 7

Introduction stabilizing influence in the past, such an approach is not relevant anymore because of the evolution of the expectations and national goals of many Lebanese on the one hand, and the weakening of Syria and Israel relatively to their Lebanese foes on the other.

Historical Context Lebanon is a small country in the Middle-East, on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. On a small territory, it shows a stunning diversity of landscapes, historical sites and religious communities (see Chapter 1). It was part of the Ottoman Empire, like most of the Levant, and was then under a French mandate between the two world wars. At the time of its independence in 1943, a political system was put in place, the “Lebanese Pact”, which institutionalized a distribution of power between the various religious communities (see Chapter 2). Within this sectarian repartition of the highest offices and of the parliamentary seats, competitive elections were taking place, which created a unique mix of lively democratic debates and clan-based politics (see Chapter 5). In the context of the Arab world, Lebanon initially benefited from the revolutionary turmoil of the 1950's and 1960's and from its position as a unique gateway to the West, the other obvious one, Palestine, having become Israel which was boycotted by its neighbours. But at the beginning of the 1970's, Lebanon, while already hosting many Palestinians refugees from the 1948 war, became the main base for Yassir Arafat's PLO. Palestinians groups were using the south of the country to launch attacks again Israel, while the PLO quickly became a powerful state within the state (see Chapter 7). In parallel to these developments, the “Lebanese Pact” underpinning the political system was coming under increasing strain, this thirty-year-old consensus and balance of power being put into question. The gathering tensions finally erupted into a full-blown civil war between 1975 and 1990. The civil war, in turn, put nearly each major Lebanese community against any other one, and allowed for the direct military intervention of its two neighbours Syria and Israel in Lebanon (see Chapter 7). After a period of relative stability between 1990 and 2005, with most of the country controlled by Syria and the south by Israel (until 2000), Lebanon has experienced renewed instability in recent years. Syria was forced to withdraw its troops in 2005 under popular and (western) diplomatic pressure after the spectacular assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri in the centre of Beirut (see Chapter 8). In 2006, Israel unsuccessfully tried to destroy the powerful Hezbollah militia/resistance which is backed by Iran. During this period, prominent intellectuals and politicians were assassinated, waves of terrorist attacks shook Beirut and its surroundings while the army had to deal with an islamist insurgency in a northern Palestinian refugee camp. Tension between the western-backed government on the one hand and Hezbollah and its allies on the other rose steadily, culminating in street fighting in Beirut and Tripoli in Spring 2007. As the country seemed 8

Introduction poised to fall back to civil war, the Qatari government brokered a deal, the “Doha Agreement”, which allowed for the creation of a government of national unity, easing the tensions in preparation of the parliamentary elections which took place in June 20091.

Lebanon has a lot of characteristics which should allow it to thrive in a globalized world: a mobile, multilingual population, a good education system, a successful diaspora all over the world (especially in the West and in the Gulf states, see chapter 8), a strong economic tradition in the field of services and a geographical situation which makes it a natural cultural, logistical and financial hub between Europe and the Arab world. Moreover, there is a huge potential for development in tourism and in the exploitation of its rich water resources. But, as sketched above, this potential is repeatedly squandered by a chronic instability which jeopardizes the long-term development of the country. This instability has its roots in inter-sectarian tensions and foreign interventions, or more precisely in a complex combination of both.

Methodology and Theoretical Framework We consider here stability in the strict sense of security and provide our own definition of such a stability in the frame of this thesis: A context where the security risks and threats are reduced to a level where they are not systematically among the main factors to consider for most political and economic decisions.

In order to study the stability of Lebanon in this sense, two main levels of analysis will be combined: We will use the Public Choice approach to model the interactions between internal and external actors, and analyse their institutional or diplomatic agreements. The Public Choice theoretical framework applies the methodology of economics to the field of politics by considering the various political actors (voters, politicians, interest groups, states) as self-interested rational agents trying to maximize their own well-being. It provides a broad range of tools to analyse constitutional agreements or electoral systems without requiring any value judgement on the goals to be pursued or the various political actors. For these reasons this approach is well suited to analyse objectively and coldly the complexity of the Lebanese political system and regional environment. 1 As this thesis is finalized, the results of the elections of June 7th 2009 show a clear victory for the westernbacked previous government, and this victory seems to have been accepted by Hezbollah and its allies. It is not clear though how the situation will develop regarding the constitution of a government and the issues of granting the opposition with a blocking minority of seats as was the case under the Doha agreement (more details about this in Chapter 6).

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Introduction On a deeper level, we will also consider how the preferences upon which such rational choices are based were shaped. These preferences are strongly influenced by the perceptions that the various groups have of themselves and of the other domestic or foreign actors. The traumatic experience of the civil war has changed many of these perceptions, which, as we will argue, is one of the main reasons why the last 15 years and the current situation require a new analysis. We will not use the formalism of constructivism as such, but this school of thought definitely influenced our approach for this level of analysis.

Academic Motivations The question of Lebanese stability is deeply interrelated with the main issues currently faced by the Middle East: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rise of Iran and the modernization of Arab political systems, between democratization and the strengthening of political Islam. Lebanon as such is central to none of these issues and it is widely assumed that it depends on the settlement of these issues rather than the other way round. However, the cultural importance of Lebanon in the Arab world should not be underestimated as well as the potential exemplary impact that a long-term resolution of its inter-sectarian tensions could have in the region. We also want to place this master thesis in the more general context of the study of conflicts in the Balkan-Caucasus-Levant triangle which is our main area of interest. For all its diversity, this region shows patterns which are interesting to study comparatively: extremely complex ethnic and/or sectarian settings (which tend to make simple western thinking irrelevant), the long-term legacy of the unsatisfactory resolution of the “Eastern Question” posed by the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the shorter term scars left by the Cold War (whose consequences in the Middle East are too often neglected in contemporary analysis which tends to insist on religious conflicts). From an academic perspective, Lebanon is a complex and interesting case to study and we plan to leverage observations made in the Balkans and in the Black Sea region during this analysis, and to reuse its results for further studies in this field.

Personal Motivations It seems necessary and honest to briefly describe the author's relationship with Lebanon and his motivation in analysing this particular set of issues. I first visited Lebanon for one month in summer 1998. Later on, I lived in the western part of Beirut between June 2006 and June 2007, working as an engineer. I therefore experienced the war between Israel and Hezbollah in July 2006 during two weeks before being evacuated by the French army. I came back to Lebanon via Syria the day after the ceasefire in August and thus shared with the Lebanese population another month of 10

Introduction blockade by the Israeli army. During the following months, I followed closely the political turmoil in Lebanon and also traveled extensively through Syria and other parts of the Middle East. After leaving Lebanon, I may have visited Israel, notably the north of the country which was bombed by Hezbollah in 20062. My choice of this topic is primarily motivated by the desire to structure and confront to existing literature the vast amount of information I gathered through observation and numerous discussions with Lebanese people deeply interested in politics. Since I believe that a deeper and dispassionate understanding is key to help Lebanon reach the stability its population so desperately needa, I would also like to modestly contribute to it.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Caroline Bourgeret for welcoming me in Beirut during my study trip in April 2009 and more generally for doing such a great job as a TV journalist in Lebanon. Along with Laure Paris, this is the occasion to thank both of them for welcoming me in the safety (and relative quietness) of their flat during the War of 2006, and sharing with me for years their love and enthusiasm for Lebanon. Many thanks also to Salim Eddé who took twice time in his busy schedule to discuss with me this master thesis and whose hindsights greatly helped me, first to define my research questions, and then to refine my conclusions. Thanks also to him for providing me with the opportunity back then to work in Lebanon on such interesting and positive projects. Thanks to Rima Chaker for numerous discussion on the past, present of future of her country, for supporting me in practical and moral matters when I was living there and for exemplifying the courage, elegance and openness of a great lady of Beirut. Thanks to Antoine Antoun for helping me to kick-start this project with an interesting talk in which I could benefit from his deep understanding of both the Lebanese and European cultures. Finally, many thanks to my wife Julia, who endured the many months of my research and concretely helped me at many stages. Lebanon and Syria are particular places for us and I am looking forward to keep discovering them with her.

2 People who have already visited Israel are forbidden to enter Lebanon or Syria, I will therefore leave a formal uncertainty here. More generally, we will use the terms Israel and Palestinian Authority to refer to the political entities and Palestine to refer to the area made of the Israeli state in its 1967 borders plus the West Bank and the Gaza strip. Formally, we will consider Israel as a normal state in its 1967 borders and as an occupying power in the West Bank and Gaza (although it withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it is still blockading it). This does not imply a political position on these matters, which are not in our scope of analysis.

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PART A

What is Lebanon?

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Picture 2: Cedar in the Chouf region (September 2006)

Picture 3: Ummayad ruins in Anjar, Bekaa valley (October 2006) 14

Chapter 1 Historical Geography

CHAPTER 1

Historical Geography

In this chapter we will introduce basic geographical and historical facts about Lebanon and its communities. A first goal is to familiarize the reader with terms and names that will be used throughout this thesis. A second one is to underline which characteristics make the specificity of the Lebanese space. In the next chapter we will then leverage this information by describing economical and sociological facts about Lebanon today. In the third and last chapter of this part we will focus on the Lebanese identity and nation-state and the evolution of its perception by its inhabitants and by other countries. As we will see in much more detail in the third chapter, the very definition of Lebanon and its border is problematic. We will argue that the evolution of this perception is key in order to analyse and assess the stability of the country. In this first chapter, we will put this problematic aside and focus on basic objective facts. The area covered by our analysis will be the one currently occupied by Lebanon, but we will not let today's borders stop us when describing geographical features or historical events. This thesis is neither a geographical nor an historical work, and our goal is not to produce here a complete analysis according to the methodologies of these fields. We will rather single out the facts we will later refer to in our analysis of the political economy of Lebanon in recent years. The interested reader should refer to the quoted literature in order to dig into the details of these fascinating fields. We will first describe the main natural features of this area, then describe its history between the Classical Antiquity and the 20th century, and finally focus on the settlement of the main communities (thus introducing them). Please note that the detailed history of the Lebanese political system will be addressed in the second part of this thesis (in the Chapter 5 about the Lebanese political system).

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Chapter 1 Historical Geography

Physical Geography Lebanon in its current borders is a small country (10 400 square km 3) on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

Map 1: Levant region, geographical As we can see on the geographical satellite map4 above (political borders are here for readability), Lebanon (in red) is part of a relatively fertile coastal area stretching from the south of the Anatolian plateau (around the modern Turkish city of Iskenderun) to the Sinai desert (around the modern city of Gaza). The hinterland of this area is the arid regions of Syria and Jordan. An important characteristic of the physical geography of Lebanon is that it is very mountainous. It contains two mountain ranges parallel to the coast: the Mount Lebanon range, in the southern continuity of the Jebel Ansarya range, and the Anti-Lebanon range which marks the border between modern Lebanon and Syria. The Mount Lebanon ranges culminates at around 2500 meters5. This is the only part of the Levant with significant mountains which hasimportant consequences. 3 [CIA Factbook] 4 Map by the author based on material from [NASA WMS Server] and [CloudMade] 5 [Corm, 2005], page 9

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Chapter 1 Historical Geography First, and as we will detail in the next section, this made this area a natural refuge for religious minorities persecuted in the region and it is the single most important factor explaining the diversity of Lebanon at this level. Second, these mountains are catching the wet sea winds from the Mediterranean Sea, blessing Lebanon with significant water resources. The two main rivers originating from it are the Litani river (which stays within Lebanon) and the Orontes river which then flows through Syria and Turkey. This water is especially important in a region which is otherwise very arid. Water is actually the main natural resource of Lebanon. Finally, this makes the area a strategic corridor. Apart from the Hims gap, a depression between the Jebal Ansyria and the Mount Lebanon range near the Orontes valley (which was indeed controlled during crusade times by the famous Krak des Chevaliers), the Lebanese ranges block the access to the Syrian hinterland. This explain why so many battles were fought through history on order to control the thin coastal strip. For example, at the mouth of the Dog River (Nar al-Kalb), north of Beirut, the coastal strip becomes so thin that it always was a strategic point for the control of the whole region. Many invaders across the ages (Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Romans, French...) erected small monuments there in order to commemorate their victories6.

Jebel Ansyria range

Hims gap Dog river

Mount Lebanon range Anti-Lebanon range

Map 2: Levant region, elevation

6 Observed by the author in August 1998

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Chapter 1 Historical Geography The above map7 illustrates this specificity of Lebanon within the region by showing satellite measurement of elevation: red is the lowest, yellow intermediary and green the highest elevation. As we can see, Lebanon stands out because of its mountains. We will now focus on Lebanon itself in order to present its main geographical regions, using a similar map8:

“North” Orontes river

Co

as

ta

ls

Beirut

t ri p Mo un tL eb an An Be on t ika ra Le a va ng ba l e le no y n ra ng e

Tripoli

Saida

Litani river

“South” Golan Heights Map 3: Lebanon, elevation

From west to east, it first shows a narrow coastal strip with the biggest cities (Beirut, Tripoli and Saida), then the Mount Lebanon range, the Bekaa valley and finally, on the border with Syria, the Anti-Lebanon range. The Bekaa valley is actually a plateau at around 800 meters above sea level. Thanks to the rivers that irrigates it and a relatively mild climate, this is a very fertile area and the breadbasket of the region since ancient times. In the north, the coastal strip widen, opening on the Hims gap. The south is mostly made out of hills, getting higher in the south-east before becoming the Golan Heights.

7 Map by the author based on material from [NASA WMS Server] and [CloudMade] 8 Map by the author based on material from [NASA WMS Server] and [CloudMade]

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Chapter 1 Historical Geography

Lebanon Through History Having presented the physical geography of the Lebanese area, we will now briefly review important milestones of its history, to the extent that they are useful for our analysis of the Lebanese identity. We will then particularly focus on the origins of the various religious communities who settled in this area. During the first two millennia BC, the coastal areas of today Lebanon were the heartland of the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenicians were excellent seamen and traders and they built an extensive network of trading posts across the Mediterranean see (see map 9 below, with Phoenician trading posts in green and Greek ones in red).

Map 4: Phoenician and Greek trading posts between 750 and 550 BC The Phoenicians were organized in city states, the main cities being Byblos (today Jbeil), Sidon (today Saida) and Tyre (today Sur), which are still important Lebanese cities nowadays. Although it is debatable whether the Phoenicians actually “invented” the alphabet, they were definitely the ones who spread it across the Mediterranean and the Greek alphabet was based on the Phoenician alphabet.

9 [Atlas Historique], page 16

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Chapter 1 Historical Geography As we will discuss in Chapter 3, this Phoenician heritage is very important for many Lebanese because of how strikingly the Phoenician heartland fitted with the borders of modern Lebanon. The map10 of the previous page shows the extent of the Phoenician states along with the Kingdom of Israel around 1000 BC, at the time of the Kings David and Salomon of Israel. The modern borders have been added, which shows most explicitly what is behind the argument of a “Phoenician” Lebanon. The area fell under Assyrian (9th to 7th century BC), then Babylonian (6th century BC), then Persian (5th to 4th century BC) rules until Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian empire in 333 BC. The conqueror famously besieged Tyre during six months in 332 BC after it had rebelled. From the Map 5: Phoenicia and the Kingdom of Israel around 1000 BC 4th to the 1st century BC, Phoenicia was part of the Seleucid empire, which controlled the eastern part of the empire of Alexander (Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia). During this period the Phoenicians were strongly influenced by the Hellenistic culture. The region was finally conquered by the Roman general Pompey in 64 BC. During Roman times, Lebanon and more generally Syria were a fertile region, one of the bread basket of the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Roman legacy can still be observed in the cities of Byblos, Tyre or Baalbeck (in the Bekaa) as well as in Syria in Apamea (in the Orontes valley) and Damascus which belonged to the same space. Lebanon was naturally part of the Eastern Roman Empire which eventually became the Byzantine Empire. Meanwhile, the Prophet Muhammad had united the various tribes of the Arabian Peninsula around the new religion of Islam. At his death in 632, Arab armies started to conquer rapidly a vast area. At the battle of Yarmuk in 636, the Arab armies

10 Map by the author based on material from [NASA WMS Server] and [Atlas Historique], page 15

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Chapter 1 Historical Geography defeated the Byzantine armies and took control, among others, of Syria and Lebanon11. In the 11th and 12th centuries, crusaders from Western Europe invaded the Levant in order to take control of the Holy Places of Palestine. Until the 13th century they controlled the whole coastal strip from Anatolia to the Sinai. Today Lebanon was then split between the Kingdom of Jerusalem for its southern part and the County of Tripoli for its northern part. The Mamluks (a dynasty of Turkish slave-soldiers controlling Egypt between the 12 th and the 16th century) progressively took control of the area from the crusaders. In 1516, the Ottoman Empire defeated them and ruled the area until its own dismantlement after the First World War.

Origins of the Christian Communities Some Christian communities of Lebanon are among the most ancient in the world. Their diversity is rooted in the numerous theological debates of the early centuries of Christianity especially around the divine nature of Jesus Christ, and in the influence struggle between the Catholic and Orthodox churches12. The monophystic churches (also known as jacobite churches) believe in the unique divine nature of Jesus Christ, they originally include the Syriac Church, the Copt Church and Armenian Church. The Armenian community in Lebanon comes mostly out of emigration from Southern Anatolia, after the massacres that this community suffered at the end of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. The Chaldean or Assyriac churches (also known as nestorian churches) believe in two separate nature of Jesus Christ, one divine and one human of equal importance. The melkite churches (commonly called Greek Orthodox churches) are those who followed the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople after the schism of the 11th century (which further aggravated after the Fourth Crusade in the 13 th century). They were thus basically the mainstream churches in Eastern Mediterranean while the Byzantine Empire still existed, and are mostly to be found in the cities. The Maronite Church, which is the main Christian community in Lebanon, is originally an autocephalous church. It means that it was not reporting to any Patriarchate (neither Rome nor Constantinople). It was founded in the 6th century by Saint Maron and got persecuted by the Jacobites as well as by the Byzantines. Its followers took refuge in the mountains of North Lebanon (which are still their heartland). Some argue that the community was originally monothelist13, but the official historiography of the Maronite Church insist that 11 [Atlas Historique], page 37 12 This section is based on [Corm, 2005] pages 13 and 14, and common knowledge 13 Monothelism is a kind of compromise between monophystism and nestoriarism by arguing for two sperate nature of Jesus Christ but one divine will

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Chapter 1 Historical Geography they were always in theological communion with Rome. Anyhow, the links with the Catholic Church intensified after the Crusades. The opening of the Maronite College in Rome in 1584 and the Council of Louaize in 1736 progressively strengthened these links, although some in the Maronite church resisted this evolution and the church kept Syriac and Arabic as its liturgical languages. This belonging of the Maronites to the Catholic Church had historically two important consequences for our analysis. First, it gave the the Maronites a strong Western orientation from a cultural point of view. Second, France positioned itself as the protector of the Catholics within the Ottoman Empire14, especially the Maronites, which explain the traditionally strong cultural and political links between France and this community. The Latin Catholic community, groups the Levantines (also called Levanters), which are inhabitants of the Near-East of European descent. This is basically a community following the usual Latin rite of the Catholic Church as it is well known in Western Europe and in the Americas. Another factor of complexity, is that, starting from the 18th century, Catholic missionaries were very active in the region and succeeded in splitting many of the non-Catholic communities, who joined the Roman Catholic Church, while keeping their rites (Catholic Churches of Eastern rite). Finally, in the 19th century, American protestant missionaries were active in Lebanon. The Syrian Protestant College was founded by Daniel Bliss in 1866 and later became the American University of Beirut, one of the most famous university in the Middle East. A significant number of young Christians from the various churches converted to protestantism (under different forms). In order to give an overview of this somehow complicated settings, here is a table summarizing the officially15 recognized Christian communities, putting at the same level churches which have split, one part joining the Roman Catholic Church: Catholic

Non Catholic

Armenian Catholic

Armenian Orthodox

Chaldean Catholic

Assyrian Church of the East

Greek Catholic

Greek Orthodox

Syriac Catholic

Syriac Orthodox

Maronite Roman Catholic Copt Evangelical Christian 14 As early as the 17th century, but especially in the 19th century, which is interesting since at the time the French Republic was very secular, but still resorted to this argument in its dealing with the region. 15 See next chapter for more details about the legal status of the Lebanese communities

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Chapter 1 Historical Geography

Origins of the Muslim Communities The basis of the Islamic faith is the Quran Holy Book and the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad who lived in the 7th century in the Arabian Peninsula. A major split occurred quite soon after his death over his succession16. A group claimed that his cousin and sonin-law Ali was his legitimate successor. Ali was the fourth caliph (or leader) of the Muslim community but his rule was contested. He was assassinated and his two sons died during battles against the Ummayad caliphs ruling from Damascus. The followers of Ali, known as Shias, believe that the leadership of the Muslims can only belong to the family of the Prophet, whereas the Sunnis consider that the question of the political leadership should be separate17. The Sunni faith is the most widely spread Islamic faith in the world. It was the official faith of the Ottoman Empire and more generally can be seen as the mainstream faith in the Middle East. In Lebanon, Sunnis are historically people from the cities, with strong cultural links with other other Sunni Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia or other Persian Gulf states. As we will see shortly the Shia faith has itself many branches. The bigest one is the Twelver branch, whose members believe in twelve successors of Muhammad (called imams). They are commonly referred to as Shias (and we will also use this term for them throughout this thesis). This is the dominant faith in Iran and the faith of the majority in Iraq. As a persecuted religious and political group, they took refuge very early in the Lebanese mountains were they had a major influence until the 14 th century. They then got decimated by the Mameluks during their period of domination, and the power balance shifted from great feudal Shia families to Maronite and Druze ones. The Ismailis are a smaller branch of the Shia faith with a presence in the Jebel Ansyria and a small community in Lebanon. Another community related to the Shia faith is the Alawites, mostly present in western Syria. They have a very intense cult of Ali, almost like a divinity, which made them considered as heretic by the Shias themselves. They were marginalised and persecuted during centuries, but have come to the forefront in Syria for a few decades, since the ruling al-Assad family belongs to this community. Although there presence is negligible in Lebanon, it did increase in the North during the years of Syrian control of the country. Finally, the Druze community is a branch of the Ismaili faith which appeared in the 11th century. Their beliefs evolved in a kind of syncretism of various religions or philosophies. They therefore got persecuted by the two other main branches of Islam and became a very closed community, taking also refuge in various mountainous areas of present day 16 This section is based on [Corm, 2005], page 15 and 16, and common knowledge 17 It has been argued that this is an over-simplistic view of the origin on the split, which is typical of Western analysis. However, nobody put into question the importance of the political question here, which is enough for our argument.

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Chapter 1 Historical Geography Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Since the 15th and 16th centuries and the rise of the Maan family they have always played a very important political role in Lebanon.

Two important elements stands out from the geographical and historical analysis performed in this chapter. First, Lebanon is a crossroad. A crossroad of cultures, civilizations, religions and people. It is made out of the Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Arabo-Islamic, Ottoman and European influences which successively added their own layer to this mix. It is a gateway to the Mediterranean or to the Orient depending on which side you come from. On the other hand, because of its mountainous landscape, Lebanon is also a refuge. A place were persecuted people and communities almost systematically gathered in order to enjoy autonomy and to escape the domination of the mainstream. Here we touch the bedrock of the Lebanese dilemma: belonging to so many great civilizations from within such small and threatened communities.

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Picture 4: Young people chatting on the Corniche in Beirut (August 2006)

Picture 5: Buildings in Beirut (September 2006) 26

Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions

CHAPTER 2

A House of Many Mansions

The title of this chapter is borrowed from the title of a famous book18 by the Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi about the history of his own country. Through this nicely coined formula, Salibi wants to underline the inherent fragmentation of the Lebanese society, whose origins he found in its history. In this chapter we will detail this fragmentation, but through a different perspective. We won't look in the past, as we did in the previous chapter, but consider the Lebanese society as it is today. Moreover, although we will consider fragmentation along confessional lines, we will also look at geographical and economical antagonisms, and see to which extent they overlap or contradict the confessional lens of analysis. The purpose of this chapter is to complement the historical factual background of the previous one with current data, in order to provide an objective basis for the analysis of the perceptions of the Lebanese identity and nation. We will first consider the legal status of the Lebanese communities, then review demographic data about the geographical and age repartitions of these communities and finally put these repartitions into perspective with common socio-economical indicators. The maps and graphs of this chapter are from the remarkable Atlas du Liban ([Atlas du Liban]) published by the Institut Français du Proche-Orient in 2007 and are therefore in French. Translations are provided by the author when necessary for the understanding. French transliterations of Arabic names will be used seamlessly since they are in most cases similar with the English transliterations19.

18 [Salibi, 2003] 19 Please just note that Beirut, the capital of Lebanon is transliterated Beyrouth in French, and Lebanon is translated into Liban.

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Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions

Legal Status of the Religious Communities In the previous chapter, we have described a number of religious communities without yet detail nor emphasis to their relative sizes and importances. Our purpose was then to underline on the one hand their diversity and on the other hand the similar dynamics and patterns around their settlement in Lebanon. Throughout this thesis, we will use these religious communities as the main subject of our analysis, if not the only ones. The explanation is simple: the belonging to a religious community has important consequences in public as well as in private law. As we hinted to in the introduction of this thesis and as we will detail in its second part, the political and electoral system are based on a representation per community. Moreover, communal tribunals deal with matters of family law, in particular marriage and succession. Professor Antoine Khair20 defines the Lebanese religious communities as “moral persons of public law”21. The role of communal tribunals in family matters is a factor of complexity and leads to contradictions as soon as cases involve different communities (for example intercommunity marriages, change of religion). As Ibrahim Traboulsi 22 points out, it tends to discourage the mixing of communities. Many Lebanese therefore chose to marry abroad, foreign civilian marriages being recognized in Lebanon without putting into question the domestic law, since they stay under foreign law23. The constitutional basis for this complex personal status is the Article 9 of the Lebanese Constitution, which guarantees at the same time the liberty of conscience (but based on a “homage to the Almighty”) and the respect “of personal status and religious interests”: Article 9 - Liberty of conscience is absolute. By rendering homage to the Almighty, the State respects all creeds and guarantees and protects their free exercise, on condition that they do not interfere with public order. It also guarantees to individuals, whatever their religious allegiance, the respect of their personal status and their religious interests24.

However Lebanon is the only country in the Middle East whose constitution does not define a state religion or explicitly refer to religious principles25. Moreover, the paragraphs h. and i. of the constitution preamble, which was added in 1990 after the civil war, state: h. The abolition of political confessionalism is a basic national goal and shall be achieved according to a gradual plan. 20 21 22 23 24

Professor of Law at the Saint-Joseph University of Beirut, member of the Lebanese Constitutional Court [Khair, 2000], page 1, translated from the French by the author Attorney in Law in Beirut, specialist on family law, lecturer at the Saint Joseph University [Traboulsi, 2001], page 2, translated from the French by the author [Constitution, 1996], translation by Gabriel Bustros, cross-checked by the author with the official French translation 25 [Khair, 2000], page 5

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Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions i. Lebanese territory is one for all Lebanese. Every Lebanese has the right to live in any part of it and to enjoy the sovereignty of law wherever he resides. There is no segregation of the people on the basis of any type of belonging, and no fragmentation, partition, or colonization26

While the following paragraph j. insist on the essentially communal nature of the constitutional contract, illustrating the inherent tension between the goal of a modern secular state and the pragmatic requirements of civil peace: j. There is no constitutional legitimacy for any authority which contradicts the 'pact of communal coexistence'27

There is therefore a concept of “officially recognized community” in the Constitution (for example in the article 19 defining the Constitutional Council or in the article 24 on the composition of the Parliament), but interestingly the list of these official communities is not part of the Constitution. Finding an official list of these communities and understanding which legal texts define them was one of the most challenging research for this thesis, as incredible as it may seem considering their importance as we just underlined. But the history of the definition of this list is actually interesting, because it illustrates how the confessional legal system in its current form is a relatively modern construction and a compromise reflecting the evolution of the balance of power between various communities. The current legal basis for the definition of the official Lebanese communities is actually two decrees by the High Commissioner during the French Mandate: decree 60/LR, dated March 13th 1936, and decree 146/LR, dated November 23rd 1938. These decrees defined and exhaustively enumerated “Historical Communities”, and fixed their domains of legal competences as well as their relationship with the state.28 However, this division was vehemently rejected by the Muslims as a sinful act of division of the Islamic nation (or Ummah)29, and the High Commissioner cancelled the execution of the decrees for the Muslim communities through the decree 53/LR of March 30th 1939. It is only after the independence that the pressure to get a representation and official organization overcame Muslim misgivings and that the communities acquired an official status: the Sunnis through the legislative decree n°18 of January 13th 1955 (modified in 1967), the Shias through the law n°72/67 of December 19th 1967 and for the Druzes with two laws dated July 13th 1962.30 26 [Constitution, 1996], translation by Paul Salem, cross-checked by the author with the official French translation 27 [Constitution, 1996], translation by Paul Salem, cross-checked by the author with the official French translation. Communal coexistence refers here to the confessional system, as put in place by the National Pact of 1943 and updated by the Taef agreement (see the second part of this thesis for more details). 28 [Khair, 2000], page 4 29 [Firro, 2003], page 153 30 [Khair, 2000], page 5

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Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions The official communities are thus defined through laws, of an implicitly organic nature. The Alawite received a recognition and parliamentary representation in the aftermath of the Taef agreement in 199131 and the Copt community was recognized (but not given parliamentary representation) in 199632. Finally it should be noted that the Jews33 are among the officially recognized communities. They have historically always been present in the area although in relatively small numbers. The establishment of Israel in 1948 and its subsequent war with the Arab states (Lebanon among them, which is still technically in a state of war with Israel) did not have much impact on their integration in the Lebanese society. This is only after the Six Days War in 1967 that, as in many other Arab countries, anti-Jewish feelings caused them to leave the country. The community is nowadays estimated to be in the tens but some efforts are under way to revive it, at least symbolically34. The table below summarizes the 18 officially recognized communities: Name

Represented in parliament as

Alawite

Muslims

Armenian Catholic

Christians

Armenian Orthodox

Christians

Assyrian Church of the East

Sharing a single “minority” seat

Chaldean Catholic

Sharing a single “minority” seat

Copt

Sharing a single “minority” seat

Druze

Muslims

Evangelical Christian

Christians

Greek Catholic

Christians

Greek Orthodox

Christians

Ismaili

Sharing a single “minority” seat

Jewish

Sharing a single “minority” seat

Maronite

Christians

Roman Catholic

Sharing a single “minority” seat

Sunni

Muslims

Shia

Muslims

Syriac Catholic

Sharing a single “minority” seat

Syriac Orthodox

Sharing a single “minority” seat

31 [Kerr, 2005], page 172 32 [Traboulsi, 2001], page 1 33 Jews as a community were denominated Israelites by the French High Commissioner but the denomination was changed in order to avoid confusion with nationals of the State of Israel. 34 See http://www.thejewsoflebanonproject.org/, last accessed May 2009

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Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions Georges Corm argues that only seven communities are significant politically35, in general in this thesis and in the next sections of this chapter we will focus on these: Maronites, Greek Orthodox and Armenian36 for the Christians, Sunnis, Shias and Druzes for the Muslims.

Demography Because of its physical geographical, Lebanon shows a very heterogeneous repartition of population. On the following map37, we can see that most of the population is gathered on the coastal strip and the lowest western part of the Mount Lebanon range, which are almost continuously urbanized. The major cities are Beirut, Tripoli and Saida. Another densely populated area is the part of the Bekaa between Zahle and Baalbeck. Before we start analysing demographical differences between the various religious groups, it should be noted that there wasn't any official census since 1932 because of the sensitivity of the issue38. But in another interesting paradox, since the voters have to register their confession, the number of registered voters are a good proxy for the repartition of the population, and that is the one that will be use throughout this section. However it has two side effects, that have to be underlined. First, has it doesn't count the people who haven't reach the age of voting, it understates the population of demographically growing communities such as the Shia (see below).

Map 6: Density of population

Second, many people tend to vote in their village of origin even though they live in other part of the country, typically in Beirut. It thus tend to overestimate the concentration of some communities in their traditional heartlands. It should also be noted that, until the last reform of the electoral law in 35 [Corm, 2005], page 11 36 We will consider the Armenian Orthodoxs and Catholics considered together, this bringing our subjects of analysis to six. 37 All maps and illustrations of this section are from [Atlas du Liban] 38 Since the repartition of power between the communities and their population are linked.

31

Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions September 200839, the many Lebanese expatriates did not have the right to vote and are thus outside these statistics. The Christians represent around 40% of the registered voters, and the Muslims around 60%40. The age pyramids shows very different patterns between the Muslims on the one hand and the Christians on the other. While the pyramids of age of the Christians is typical from a population having passed its demographic transition with a relatively narrow base, those of the Muslims rather shows populations within the demographic transition (to a lesser extent for the Druzes). The patterns for the Christian population are therefore similar to what can be observed in the western, whereas those for the Muslim population are in line with other Middle East countries. This is an important factor in the fear of many Christians to be overwhelmed by a rising Muslim population.

Illustration 1: Age pyramid

39 Lebanese expatriates will be able to vote starting with the 2013 elections, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ middle_east/7643743.stm, last acessed May 2009. 40 [Assessment of the Electoral Framework, 2009], page 16

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Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions As we have seen already, the biggest Christian group is the Maronite community with 21.8% of the registered voters. They are mostly located in the Mount Lebanon range north of Beirut and in the eastern part of Beirut itself. They used to be present also in the southern part of the Mount Lebanon range and in the South proper, but their numbers in these area have fallen during the Civil War.

Map 7: Maronites The Greek Orthodox community counts 7.7% of the registered voters and is mostly a urban population located in the cities of Beirut, Tripoli and Zahle (in the Bekaa valley).

Map 8: Greek Orthodox

33

Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions The Armenians (3.5% or registered voters) are mostly concentrated in Beirut especially in the Bourj Hammoud suburb. A community is also settled in Anjar in the Bekaa, which comes from a second and smaller wave of Armenian immigration after France ceded the part of Syria around present-day Iskenderun (Alexandretta) to Turkey in 1939.

Map 9: Armenians The Sunni community makes 26.8% of the registered voters and is primarily urban, located in the cities of Beirut, Tripoli and Saida.

Map 10: Sunnis

34

Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions The Shia community accounts for 26.3% of the registered voters and is historically a rural population of the South and the Bekaa valley. Since the civil war it has developed a strong presence in the southern suburbs of Beirut as well.

Map 11: Shias The Druze community represents 5.6% of the registered voters. They are mostly located in the mountains south of Beirut. Although a small community, they had a pivotal role during the civil war and are a well organized and unified community.

Map 12: Druzes

35

Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions We can observe than in most cases, each communities is strongly attached either to particular geographical regions or to particular environments (city versus mountains). Actually the cleavage between communities from the cities (Greek Orthodox, Sunnis, Armenians) on the one hand and communities from the mountains (Maronites, Druzes, Shias) on the other hand may be as relevant in cultural terms as the cleavage usually underlined between Christians and Muslims.

Socio-Economic Factors After considering legal and demographic aspects and focusing a lot on the various communities, we will now adopt a different angle of analysis and review some socioeconomical indicators: poverty rates, illiteracy, share of university graduates and rate of employment, as illustrated by the maps on the next page.

Map 13: Poverty

36

Map 14: Illiteracy

Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions

Map 15: Share of university graduates

Map 16: Employment

A cleavage can be seen between on the one hand, a rich western-central core (between Saida and Tripoli through the Beirut area) and on the other hand, a poor periphery in the South the Bekaa and the north of the country. The region of Zahle is somehow in between but rather richer than the rest of the Bekaa, whereas the poorer Maronite Cedars region (south-east of Tripoli) can still be considered as part of the core but to a lesser extent. If we now connect these observations with the repartition of the various communities, we can point out that: •

the Shia areas (South and Bekaa) are significantly poorer

•

the Maronite areas are somehow richer, with definitely higher level of education and employment

•

the cities are richer, where Sunnis and Greek Orthodox are primarily located

Although this should be qualified by the fact that the north of the country is Sunni and very poor and that there are strong inequalities among the Maronites, these significant geographical differences in terms of poverty and education tend to overlap with a related heterogeneity along confessional lines. Another cleavage thus appears, between a relatively poor Shia community on the one 37

Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions hand and the other communities. This is of great importance in order to understand the appeal of the two big Shia parties: Amal (originally a branch of a Shia organization explicitly called the Movement of the Disinherited) and Hezbollah. It should also be noted that the South and the southern suburbs of Beirut, where many Shias live, suffered a lot during the civil war and afterwards, a big part of the South being occupied by Israel until 2000. Both areas were also the main targets of various Israeli operations, most recently the Second Lebanese War of 200641.

Beirut We have talked a lot about cleavages until then, but there is an area where all communities meet and mix and which is of primary importance: Beirut and its near42 suburbs. Actually, Beirut is so central to the economy of Lebanon that it could almost be considered as yet another cleavage in itself. The two following maps show respectively the number of firms (the colour being related to their number per hundred inhabitants) and the number of firms of more than 20 employees (that is, which are not simply local small businesses).

Map 17: Companies

Map 18: Bigger companies

41 We use here the Israeli terminology. This war is also known as the July War or the 34 Days War. We will call it the the War of 2006 hereafter. 42 It could be argued that almost all of the coast between Saida and Jbeil is actually a suburb of Beirut...

38

Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions We can see from the first map that the economic activity is mostly on the coast, especially in Beirut. The second map shows that the complex economy, requiring bigger firms is almost exclusively in Beirut and its area. The diversity of Beirut is shown on the next diagram which describes the region of origin (where their birth got registered) of the people of each region: The first two bars are for Beirut and its suburbs and show people coming from everywhere in the country, whereas the other bars show clearly that most people living in a given region were born there. Beirut is where Lebanon meets, possibly the only single place where it does. This view of Beirut must however be mitigated by the fact that it is itself divided in neighbourhoods along community lines and that it was the main front line during the Civil War, when it was divided between a western (Muslim) and an eastern (Christian) part.

Illustration 2: Regional origins This division left deep scars as can be seen on the following illustration showing the number daily movements in 1994 respectively to the west (in red) and to the east (in blue) and the share (in percentage) of daily movements to the eastern part in yellow (dark for more than 80%, light for less than 20%): However this division of Beirut has eased since then, notably with the reconstruction of the centre which was a noman's land during the civil war. Anecdotal experience from the author who lived in 2006/2007 in the western part but was often going to the eastern part (which is more French speaking and where other expatriates tended to live) is that it was still not a natural movement43.

Illustration 3: Daily movements within Beirut (1994) 43 For example services which are cheaper collective taxis, who adapt their itinerary depending on their passengers, tended to charge a double price since it was not in their interest to go to the other part where

39

Chapter 2 A House of Many Mansions

In this chapter, we could put some figures or concrete legal information on the complexity and fragmentation of the Lebanese space and society. This fragmentation is definitely for a great part along communal lines, however the communities are not the only “mansions” of the Lebanese “house”. Other cleavages can be as much or even more relevant than the religious ones. Moreover such cleavages tend to reinforce and feed each other. For example, in any part of the world, people from poor areas with low rates of education tend to stay poor and illiterate, and reciprocally. The fact that such divisions overlap with community lines because of their strong relation to geographical areas tends to provide an easy communal explanation for each and every difference. The belonging to officially recognized religious communities is a major component of the life of all Lebanese citizens. But this is not the only one, neither the only kind of diversity that the state has to address.

they would probably not finding anybody going the way back.

40

41

Picture 6: Maronites attend a mass on a French navy ship evacuating them (July 2006)

Picture 7: Anti-government demonstrations in Beirut (December 2006) 42

Chapter 3 National Identity

CHAPTER 3

National Identity

In the two preceding chapters we have described and structured the complexity and fragmentation of Lebanon. The question now is whether it makes sense to speak of “Lebanon” at all, as a country, as a nation, as a polity. Is Lebanon more than a disparate collection of communities, occasionally living die by side in peace, occasionally spiralling into violent conflict? Our argument, concluding the first part of this thesis, is that it does actually make sense. A Lebanese identity and a Lebanese nation indeed exist. However, this fact is mostly the product of history on the one hand, but also, on the other hand, of a grudgingly accepted compromise by most of its citizens and elites that constructing a viable state is the least bad option. We will first review the process through which the Lebanese state emerged from the Ottoman times until the independence. Then we will study the opposing perceptions of their own identities that existed especially between Sunnis and Maronites, and which were one of the main cause of the civil war. Finally, we will argue that these questions have to a large extent been solved and that there is now a consensus on the legitimacy of a Lebanese state, if not on what its policies should be.

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Chapter 3 National Identity

From Mount Lebanon to Greater Lebanon The basis of modern Lebanon is to be found in the Druze-Maronite entity which emerged in the 16th century under the Druze dynasty of the Maan family. Under the emir Fakhreddine II (1572-1635), the central region of the Mount Lebanon range was structured as a prosperous and stable autonomous region within the Ottoman Empire. After the end of the Maan dynasty in 1669, another family emerged, originally Sunni but which converted to the Maronite Church, the Chehab family. Under the Emir Bachir II (1789-1841) the region experienced another phase of prosperity and development. Both great emirs entered in conflict with the Ottoman power and ended their lives respectively executed and in exile44. During this period, the three communities of the mountain (Maronites, Druzes and Shias) lived together peacefully. Georges Corm even argued that the very fact that such an entity emerged is due to what he called “the symbiosis of the communities”: the fact that these communities were socio-economically complementary. This is a well known argument from Corm, who is a strong supporter of the Lebanese national idea, beyond communities belongings, and this idea is definitely debatable. However some of his arguments, based on historical facts are worth underlining. First, the (Druze) emir Fakhreddine II, explicitly encouraged the links between the Maronites and the Roman Catholic Church (the Maronite college in Rome was founded during his reign), as a channel of western influence and modernization. Corm also underlines the fact that the border between the communities were actually quite flexible, especially when compared to the prevailing traditions in the region. Conversions were common and well accepted. He finally sees a complementarity between the Druze feudal structure and the economic development of the Maronites, whose peasants started to exploit efficiently the intermediary levels of the Mount Lebanon range, and experienced a demographic boom. However, in the period from 1840 to 1860, tensions emerged between the Druze and the Maronites in what is often described as the first Lebanese civil war. We won't detail here the root cause of this conflict, which have a lot to do with the rivalry between France and Britain for influence in the region, nor the political system which was put in place by the Ottoman Empire45 after it took back the direct control of the area46. What is important for our current analysis is that the Ottoman Empire thus defined a geographical area (in orange on the map47 below) that more or less covered the traditionally Maronite and Druze areas of the Mount Lebanon range and of the coastal strip.

44 Most historical facts of this section are from [Corm, 2005], pages 77-78. The arguments of Georges Corm will be discussed explicitly and are from the same work. 45 Under strong influence of western powers 46 See the second part of this thesis 47 From [Atlas du Liban]

44

Chapter 3 National Identity This is the “Smaller Lebanon” where Druzes and Maronites, themselves minorities in the broader Middle East, shared the (reduced) autonomous power and control granted by the Ottoman Empire. The situation in this region stabilized although difficult economic conditions encouraged a lot of Maronites to emigrate. During the First World War, the Mount Lebanon region experienced a grave famine, which was caused by the Ottomans blockading food delivery to the region. After the end of the war and the demise of the Ottoman Empire, France received from the League of Nations a Class A protectorate on present-day Syria and Lebanon. Class A mandates were mandates for the control of:

Map 19: Ottoman administrative divisions in 1861

Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone.48

Although this implied that such countries should eventually access to independence, the mandates were widely considered as part of the colonial empires of the Mandatory Powers. This could simply not be explicitly said in the context of the aftermath of the First World War and the 14 points of Wilson, which considered the colonial rivalries as one of the main factors to have caused the war. In 1920, France created the “Greater Lebanon” (the current borders of the country), which associated the Mount Lebanon with the (mainly Sunni) coastal trading cities of Beirut, Saida and Tripoli and with the (mainly Shia and Greek Orthodox) Bekaa, thus creating the complex religious and societal mix that we have described in the previous chapters. One of the main reasons for the Maronites and Druzes to accept, and even support 49 this dilution, was their goal to gain access to the trading cities and the bread basket of the 48 [Covenant of the League of Nations, 1919], Article 22 49 [Corm, 2005], page 86

45

Chapter 3 National Identity Bekaa, in order to reach self-sufficiency in terms of food. However the Sunnis found themselves cut from their historical links with the other Sunni trading cities of the coast in Palestine and Syria, and from Damascus. The question of the borders of Lebanon, and through it, its very nature, structured the political debate throughout the 20th century, on many occasions violently. It can be summarized by the two alternatives of a relatively homogeneous but economically not viable “Smaller Lebanon” versus an heterogeneous “Greater Lebanon”, to which citizens will find it harder to belong.

Conflicting perceptions During the French mandate on Lebanon between the two world wars, the Maronites enjoyed a privileged position. During this period, while the country was administered as a protectorate, with the French High Commissioner having the last say, the structure of a modern state were put in place, since the mandates were meant to prepare the countries for independence. As we have seen, the constitution as well as fundamental laws were enacted during this period, and although amended, they are still in force today. This is also during this period that a communal repartition of the highest positions of the state was put in place, also it became so rigid only after independence. In this context, the Christians and especially the Maronites were overrepresented, having 6 deputies for each 11 deputies against 5 for the Muslims. In addition to their strong cultural links to Europe in general and France in particular, the Maronites therefore had a vested interest in the system. Since the end of the 19 th century, Arab national ideas had developed throughout the Middle East, which took different forms. A pan-Arab view was supporting the union of all Arabspeakers around a centre of gravity in the Arabian Peninsula, while a pan-Syrian view rather supported the unification of a strong Syria including Lebanon. It should be noted that prominent Christian intellectuals took part in these movements 50 (in Lebanon but also in Egypt), and it would be extremely misleading to consider Arab nationalism as a “Muslim” idea. However, in the wider population of Lebanon, these ideas were particularly spread among the Sunnis, not because of their particular religious affiliation, but because, as we have seen, they had many more contacts with the wider Arab-speaking space, and strongly felt that they belonged to it. The concept of an independent of sovereign “Greater Lebanon” was therefore unpopular among Sunnis. In 1943, the political leaders of these two communities, which for these very different reasons, did not want the independence of Greater Lebanon, agreed precisely on that. 50 [Corm, 2005], page 85

46

Chapter 3 National Identity Taking advantage of the weakness of France which was occupied by Germany, and of the support of Britain, the Maronite Bechara El Khoury and the Sunni Riad al-Solh agreed on a compromise, which became known as the National Pact and is the basis of the political structure of independent Lebanon. We will detail in the next part of this thesis the institutional consequences of this agreement, but what we want to underline here is its cultural dimension. According to Michael Kerr, the basis of the compromise was that the Christians would forgo western influence and the Muslims give up on Arab unity 51. Al-Solh put it more positively in the Palestine Post of October 10th 1943: My government will found these [foreign] relations on a solid basis, safeguarding for the Lebanon its independence and complete sovereignty as well as its present boundaries, since the Lebanon is a nation with Arab character looking westward for its culture.52

The country was supposed to be neutral, which in 1943, meant primarily not to take part in intra-Arab disputes or in the conflicts between Arab and Western powers. The foundation of Israel in 1948 quickly changed what this neutrality could mean, as we will discuss in the third part of this thesis. The National Pact came under increasing strain in the decades leading to the civil war. An important reason for that was that this compromise on the identity of Lebanon did not really permeate the whole population. The Muslims tended to view themselves as part of a wider Syria or Arab world and were naturally rather supportive of the Palestinians, while the Christians and especially the Maronites focused primarily on preserving their identity, fearing precisely to disappear as a minority within a predominantly Muslim region. A significant illustration of this Maronite exceptionalism is the popular theories of the Maronites not being Arabs, in the ethnic sense, but being “Phoenicians”. We have seen in the first chapter that the area covered by Phoenicia indeed matches to a large extent modern Lebanon, and that it constitutes one of the important cultural layer upon which the specificity of the area is based. We will not argue (too much) about this theory here, but it is hard not to be dismissive. Phoenicians were mostly sea traders based in the coastal cities and they disappeared as a standalone cultural entity around the first centuries AD. The origin of the Maronite community are to be found in Syria and they moved to the Mount Lebanon range after the 6th century. Many Maronite families were originally Muslim families who converted (especially Shias after the 14th century and the Mameluk persecutions). “Scientific” genetic studies are often cited in order to support the fact that Maronite would not be Arabs. This is simply not relevant, because the question of Arab belonging is not a racial matter, this is a cultural and civilisational one: what is commonly viewed as the “Arab World” stretches from Morocco to Iraq, and although there were important movements of population from the Arabian Peninsula during the first centuries 51 [Kerr, 2005], page 120 52 Quoted in [Kerr, 2005], page 120

47

Chapter 3 National Identity of the expansion of Islam, the whole area is an ethnic mix whose main unifying factor is the Arabic language. This is precisely where the Phoenician argument is interesting because it materializes the deep reticence of many Maronites to get integrated into this space, for fear of losing their identity. In the view of those who formed the core support of the militias during the Civil War, the very specificity of Lebanon is that it is Christian, understand Maronite. The fragmentation of Lebanon after almost 15 years of civil war, that is illustrated on the next map, is the concrete illustration of how the area looks like without any centripetal forces: The national Lebanese army led by General Michel Aoun controlled only East-Beirut and its northern suburbs (in dark purple). Although General Aoun was the proponent of a united Lebanon, this was mostly a Christian zone. The Maronite militia of the Lebanese Forces controlled Mount Libanon and the Maronite part of the coast strip (in light purple). The Progressive Socialist Party of the leading Druze family Jumblatt controlled the Druze heartland in the Chouf mountains (in light yellow). The Shia militias controlled the south and the Bekaa (in green). The rest of the country was Map 20: Lebanon fragmentation at the end of the 1980's also distributed between various militia while the Israeli Defence Forces 53 controlled a security buffer in the south (in blue)54. 53 IDF, official name of the Israeli army 54 For completion, although not relevant for our current discussion: the zone with little rounds is the area where the UNIFIL (UN Interim Force in Lebanon, FINUL in French), was deployed and the area striped in red where the Syrian Army was deployed. The “red line” is the line that the IDF had made clear that they did not want the Syrian Army to cross.

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Chapter 3 National Identity

The Least Bad Option There are two main types of definition of what a Nation is. The “civilian” (or voluntarist) definition from Ernest Renan55, as summarized in the French dictionary Le Robert: Fairly big human group, which is characterized by the consciousness of its unity and the will to live together.56

And the “ethnic” (or primordialist) definition from Johann Fichte, as summarized in the German dictionary Langenscheidts: All the people who share the same descent, language and culture, and who live within common political borders.57

In the case of Lebanon, we have seen the problems raised by the primordialist definition. Few disputes that all Lebanese share the Arabic language58, but this definition is otherwise very sensitive to how you define the origins of the people living in this area (as illustrated by the “Phoenician” theories) or whether or not they belong to an Arabic, Levantine, Syrian or specifically Lebanese culture. The first definition fairly well defines the current state of the Lebanese national identity, but rather if we take its contraposition, that is, if we read it in a negative way. The Lebanese are fully aware, after the civil war, that not being united and living against each other led them to disaster. Michael Kerr summarizes it as follow: After 1989 most Lebanese came to accept [...] that [the future of the state] could only be secured by putting Lebanese coexistence above pan-Arab causes or Christian separatist dreams.59

In other words, the alternative had been tried and it proved to be not viable for any of the communities. The centripetal influence of the traumatic experience of the civil war could clearly be observed during the recent period of instability, which started with the assassination of Rafic Hariri in February 2005 and culminated in May 2008 with street fighting between rival parties. During this period, politicians on all sides played with fire, raising the stakes in what was, in the end, a classic power struggle between elites in order to share the spoil of 55 Who made a famous study trip in Lebanon in 1860, around Jbeil/Byblos 56 [Le Robert, 1992], page 670, translation by the author from: “Groupe humain assez vaste, qui se caractérise par la conscience de son unité et la volonté de vivre en commun.” 57 [Langenscheidts, 1998], page 698, translation by the author from: “Alle Menschen, die dieselbe Abstammung, Sprache und Kultur haben, und innerhalb gemeinsamer politischer Grenzen leben.” 58 Without understating the importance of other languages, such as Armenian for the related communities, but also French or English, which are the daily languages in many educated families. 59 [Kerr, 2005], page 188

49

Chapter 3 National Identity government60. But while active militants could get excited, the wider population was clearly reticent to play this game, most of them recalling that the civil war started that way. Anecdotal evidence observed by the author when he lived in Beirut in 2006/2007 and visited it in 2008 and 2009, showed that while the crisis progressively escalated, the broader population became always less strident. This is not to say that Lebanese are not polarized anymore and that the fundamental factors of fragmentation or tensions that we have analysed have disappeared. This would be otherworldly to argue that there is not currently huge political tensions in Lebanon. What we argue here is that people as a whole are not ready anymore to die for such causes, to jeopardize the future of their children and to destroy their state. Most of them are fully aware that for all the grievances and fears they or their communities had before the Civil War, they have lost decades and that the fundamental problems that they are still facing can only be addressed by a united Lebanese state.

The simple fact that it took us these three chapters to define Lebanon, is in itself an argument. Lebanon as we know it today is neither a natural, unavoidable, evolution, nor an artificial and incoherent construction. As any other country in the world, it is simply a product of history, geography and long-term cultural evolutions on the one hand, and on the other, of single events which happened out of the conjunction at given times of the interests of those with power and influence. The definition of the country in terms of borders and coexistence of various communities is not anymore the overwhelming issue. This is a major development, considering how fundamental this question was from 1840 to 1990. This is the first factor of stability that we underline in this work, and undoubtedly a positive one. The question is how to organize and structure the political system of this country, and we will now analyse it in the second part of this thesis. In parallel to the analysis that we have performed in these first chapters, we have also introduced and described the main geographical, cultural, socio-economical and legal environment upon which this political system is built. We now have a clearer view of what is Lebanon, let's see how well (or badly) it is working...

60 See the second part of this thesis

50

PART B

Power-Sharing

51

Picture 8: Hezbollah banner: “This is your democracy”” (Oct. 2006)

52

Chapter 4 Theoretical Approaches to Power-Sharing

CHAPTER 4

Theoretical Approaches to Power-Sharing

In this section we will review a few models from the literature, which are typical of the public choice approach and can be used in order to better grasp the effects of powersharing on stability.

The Inherent Instability of Power-Sharing In this section we review and comment a paper61 by Steven Brams and Marc Kilgour, titled “The instability of Power Sharing”. Details of their demonstrations can be found in the original paper, while we will discuss here only their main results and additionally present part of their formalism for the interested reader62. A first model (Model I) represents power-sharing as a one-shot duel. Two players, P and Q, have agreed on a shared distribution of assets: P has a proportion a of the assets and Q a proportion (1- a). Each of the players has the choice to leave the agreement and “attack” the other in order to get all the assets. P has a probability p to succeed, and Q a probability q. If one of the players tries to eliminate the other but fail, the other player has an opportunity to shoot back and may eliminate the attacker. Therefore we can represent this game with payoffs of this form: (payoff of P,payoff of Q) for the following possible outcomes in the case of attack: none win / P win / Q win. P do not attack

P attacks

Q do not attack

(a,1-a)

(a,1-a) / (1,0) / (0,1)

Q attacks

(a,1-a) / (1,0) / (0,1)

(a,1-a) / (1,0) / (0,1) / (0,0)63

61 [Brams/Kilgour, 2005], http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/brams/instability.pdf, last accessed March 2009 62 Readers not familiar with Game Theory and Public Choice formalism should not be discouraged by the equations. They can just skip them without affecting their understanding, since we will describe the main results in plain English. An introduction to the Game Theory can be found on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory 63 In this case, both attack simultaneously and destroy each other.

53

Chapter 4 Theoretical Approaches to Power-Sharing

The upper-left cell of this table is the status-quo, with both player staying in the powersharing agreement. If for example, P would attack Q and Q would not retaliate, the expected share of power of P would be: E P=1⋅p1− p⋅a=a p⋅1−aa Since a is the current share of power of P it would then always be rational for P to attack. But if Q retaliates (which is likely) with a probability q of destroying P, it may become rational for P to stay in the power sharing agreement, but if and only if the following condition is fulfilled64: p

a⋅q 1−aa⋅q

Applying a similar reasoning with Q attacking first, the following condition needs to be fulfilled so that Q has an incentive to stay in the power-sharing agreement: p

a⋅q 1−a⋅1−q

Substracting both expressions gives the following condition: a⋅q a⋅q a⋅q² − = ≤0 1−a ⋅1−q 1−aa⋅q 1−aa⋅q⋅1−a ⋅1−q  which is impossible since: a⋅q² 0 1−aa⋅q ⋅1−a⋅1−q This means that for any value of a (the proportion of assets), there will always be one player with a rational incentive to leave the agreement and attack the other. The level of power sharing that could provide enough incentive for one player will always leave the other unhappy, with an incentive to attack (that is, to leave the power-sharing agreement). This can somehow be related to the classic “prisoner dilemma” game where both players know that the other will shoot if they don't, so they both shoot. In that case, depending on the value of a (for given p and q), only one of the players may be in a position where he will be better-off attacking first, but it is sure that there will always be such a player. Since the other knows it, this leads to the same outcome: both shoot. Behind the formalism, what this model represents is that power-sharing will always imply to take something too important from one in order to satisfy the other, hence its instability. Brams and Kilgour, also try to model the effect of introducing a damage factor, s. With this 64 After transformation, see the original article for details

54

Chapter 4 Theoretical Approaches to Power-Sharing damage factor, they basically set a cost to shooting: the assets to be shared or fully gained after shooting then become: s⋅a , s⋅1−awith 0≤s≤1 at each iteration of the game (in this case, they model a repetitive game with discounting of assets). Brams and Kilgour show in that case that it becomes theoretically possible to have combinations where the power-sharing agreement stays stable. This damage factor is the cost of the civil war or the cost of anarchy, which will be borne by all players whether or not they won. Since the game is repeated, the cost of previous attempts to shoot is “remembered” via the discounting, which increase for both players the incentive to stay in the power-sharing agreement. The authors of the paper we have just commented explicitly cite Lebanon in their conclusion, as an example of a situation where the memory of the general destruction wrought by the civil war is in itself a factor for stability65.

Credible Power-Sharing Agreements We will now review another paper66, by Leonard Wantchekon, which explores the conditions for guaranteeing the long term stability of power-sharing agreements when establishing them. The game here is about defining a political contract between two political camps (say Left and Right), which determines that the value that each camp derives from holding office will be divided according to their electoral success (unknown at the time of negotiating the agreement). The political camps are thus considered Downsian in the sense that they derive their utility from the spoils of office. When election will take place the value of office will be divided as follow with s the share of the vote of L, g(r) the value derived from holding office and r the resources invested in getting this value (payoff of L, payoff of R): s⋅g r,s−1⋅gr First, Wantchekon considers a power-sharing agreement with legal enforceability, that is that the actors can trust that pre-electoral agreements will be held. In that case, the power-sharing agreement is that a minimal reward is guaranteed for each player in case he loses the election (which reciprocally means that the reward when winning is also bounded). That is, it exists s L such as L gains at least s L⋅g r when

ss L (loses election) and

65 As we discussed in the third chapter of this thesis, about the Lebanese national identity 66 [Wantchekon, 2000]

55

Chapter 4 Theoretical Approaches to Power-Sharing s R such as L gains at most s R⋅g r  when

ss R (wins election).

From R point of view this is equivalent to: R gains at least most 1−sL ⋅g r .

1−sR ⋅g r  , and R gains at

Wantchekon shows that the critical factor here is the payoff of anarchy for each player. With aL the payoff of anarchy for L and a R the payoff of anarchy for R, we have: s L⋅g r =a L and 1−sR ⋅g r =a R Concretely this means that the players must be guaranteed at least as much value as they would derive from a situation of anarchy. The higher the gains from anarchy, the higher will be these minimal threshold and thus the more consensual will be the political system. In that case, power-sharing is viewed as a way to bribe the losing party of an election into not reverting to anarchy67.

This could be seen as a kind of Coase Theorem, where there will always be a way to negotiate with somebody causing or susceptible to cause a negative externality (in that case civil war or anarchy). Wantchekon then analyses the case when one doesn't take from granted a legal enforceability from a higher instance, which would force parties to respect the powersharing agreement. An enforcement mechanism is however needed, otherwise the winner of the election will always have an incentive to take all the power. The enforcement mechanism is here the investment of both parties in what this author names “state power”. This state power (independent judiciary, army, etc.) can be used if a losing party does not recognize defeat or if a winning party abuses its position. The players can choose to invest y resources in order to generate c(y) state power. But these resources needs to be taken away from those used to get the spoils of governing, which becomes g(r-y). If p is the probability for, say, L to gain power violently and thus enjoy all the spoils of government, instead of risking losing an election, one needs to have: s L⋅g r− y≥ p⋅gr− y−c  y  in order for L to stay in the agreement. 67 As of June 2009, when this thesis is being finalized and a few days after the Lebanese elections, this is basically the question faced by the winning western-backed coalition in front of the demands by the losing coalition led by Hezbollah for a blocking minority in government. Hezbollah has pointedly shown in may 2008 that it could wreck havoc across the country.

56

Chapter 4 Theoretical Approaches to Power-Sharing Wantchekon shows that it exists such a value of y which allows to invest enough in state power so that its deterrence c(y) enforce the power sharing agreement68. Wantchekon then applies his theoretical results to the empirical cases of South Africa and Lebanon. In the case of Lebanon he concludes that the enforcing power of the Syrian army controlling most of the country since 199069 is the main factor explaining the stability of the power-sharing agreement during this period. The Lebanese army and police lacked this enforcing capability during the period preceding the civil war.

Confessionalism as a type of confederation After a lecture by Dennis Mueller about the current constitutional issues faced by the European Union, especially the choice between a federal or a confederal system, the author had an informal discussion70 with this expert of the Public Choice school about confessional systems such as the Lebanese one. When asked whether, in theory, a confessional system can be seen as a kind of confederation, his answer was that definitely it could. We will now explore this idea in order to single out criteria which will then be used in our analysis of the Lebanese political system in the next section. The main difference between a federal and a confederal system is that in a confederal system the units interacting with each others are sovereign states which decide in an intergovernmental manner which resources to put in common, while in a federal system, the basic unit is the citizen/voter who can directly vote for each level of government he depends on in a given state. A purely confessional system can therefore bee seen as a confederation where instead of geographical boundaries the entities interacting with each other are the communities. As in a confederal system, each entity has its own internal mechanisms to chose a legitimate government and these various sub-governments interact with each other. In the Public Choice approach, the criteria for choosing the right level of government are the preferences of the people regarding the provision of public goods. As Dennis Mueller put it during this lecture about the European Union: if the preferences are homogeneous at country level then a confederal system is more relevant, whereas if preferences are homogeneous across the populations in groups that could be represented by cross-border political parties a federal system may be better adapted. In our case, a critical question will therefore be: Is the homogeneity of preferences within each community so strong that it makes sense to use it as the primary “sovereign” entity? 68 In the Lebanese context, this would concretely means: investments in the (rather neutral) armed forces or in the independent electoral commission. 69 Please note that the cited article dates back from 2000, at a time when Syria was still controlling Lebanon. 70 Informal discussion with Dennis Mueller (University of Vienna) on February 11th 2009 at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna.

57

Chapter 4 Theoretical Approaches to Power-Sharing As we will see, the Lebanese political system is far from being a pure confessional system. But the question of the preferences is interesting to analyse in order to understand in which fields a confessional system can make sense. Such fields will be those where the preferences of the people regarding the provision of public goods are homogeneous within the communities rather than across them. General Aoun criticises the confessional system as a “kind of federation of confessions”, although he probably means a confederation, since he underlines the fact that the communities are the basic units of the political system and that he wishes to “operate a transfer from political confessionalism to citizenship.71” A natural question at this stage is of course to consider whether a federal system could make sense, since as we have seen in the second chapter of this thesis, the repartition of the population has some markedly geographical features. At first sight, a federal structure could look well adapted since it would follow to a large extent the borders between communities and thus the underlying preferences which have shaped the current system, while being more flexible and allowing for a higher federal level where decisions impacting everybody could be fully democratically taken. However, this is not realistic at least for one (big) reason: Beirut and its area. Although city districts often have confessional identities, the overall area is a mix of all the communities72. Moreover the city is too important economically as well as in terms of strategic infrastructures such as the international airport or the sea port (through which transits most of the trade of the country). If Beirut would be controlled by a single community as such, this community would then have a decisive advantage over the other ones. This is precisely why the fiercest and longest fighting of the Civil War happened there. It would therefore be naive to pretend deal with the control of the capital through classical federal means. But then again, because of the over-importance of the city it would not make much sense to have a federal system for the whole country except for Beirut. As Brendan O'Leary puts it: For the present, the relevant people are too close especially in [...] Beirut, to make that formula [of federalism] possible. [...] They are not segregated at a level of aggregation that makes territorial federalism an option.”73

71 [Aoun, 2007], pages 47-48, translation from the French by the author 72 See the second chapter of this thesis for more details about Beirut within the Lebanese space and society. 73 Brendan O'Leary, in the preface to [Kerr, 2005], “The Realism of Power-Sharing”, page xxii

58

Chapter 4 Theoretical Approaches to Power-Sharing In this chapter we have reviewed different models and approaches and we have seen how they can be applied to theoretical power-sharing systems. We now have a better understanding of what are the implications of such systems: they tend to be inherently unstable, they require enforcement mechanisms and homogeneity of preferences within the constituting groups. We will now analyse into more details the Lebanese political system and try to answer the following questions: •

To which extent is the Lebanese system really a power-sharing system?

•

What are the practical consequences of this particular implementation of a confessional system?

59

Picture 9: Supporters of various opposition parties (December 2006)

Picture 10: Fashion advertisement in Beirut: “Elections... Do I look like I care?” (May 2009) 60

Chapter 5 The Lebanese Political System

CHAPTER 5

The Lebanese Political System

In the previous chapter we have described theoretical models showing how the Public Choice approach can be used to analyse power-sharing systems. In this chapter, we will describe in more details the Lebanese political system from this point of view. The main characteristic of the Lebanese political system is that it is confessional. Although there is a democratic competition, most of the main positions are reserved for particular communities. This concerns primarily: •

The highest positions of the state: the president is a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister is a Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of Parliament is a Shia Muslim

•

The composition of the Council of Ministers: seats are allocated along confessional lines, with a blocking minority of one third of the seats

•

The composition of the Parliament: seats are allocated along confessional lines as well

We will first describe the history of this system and how it got progressively adjusted in reaction to the historical events that we have described in the first and third chapters of this thesis. Then we will analyse in detail the electoral system as an illustration of the limitations of the Lebanese confessional system as a power-sharing system. Finally we will proceed with a critical evaluation of the Lebanese system.

61

Chapter 5 The Lebanese Political System

Modern History As we have seen in the third chapter, between 1840 and 1860 the region of the Mount Lebanon range, which belonged to the Ottoman Empire and was mostly populated by Maronites and Druzes, experienced serious inter-confessional conflicts between these two communities. As part of the wider Eastern Question which was pitting European powers against each other over influence within the weakening Ottoman Empire, the British and the French got involved, the former supporting the Druzes, the latter the Maronites. A special regime of autonomy (mutasarifya) was put in place in this region in 1861, with a confessional system74. In 1920, the France got a Mandate over present-day Syria and Lebanon. They added the coastal cities and the Bekaa valley to the region of Mount Lebanon in order to created what is denominated as “Greater Lebanon” (that is Lebanon as we know it today, see third chapter). The new structure was economically more viable, but ethnically much more diverse. The Maronites were not anymore a majority because mostly Muslim populations had been added. This is during this period that a confessional distribution of the highest positions began to be established, with a dominant position for the Maronites. In the parliament the repartition of the seats was of 6 to 5 in favour of the Christians versus the Muslims. In 1943, the Maronites and Sunni elites leveraged the weakening of France during World War II in order to gain independence. They established the unwritten National Pact, which was basically a power-sharing agreement between the Maronites and the Sunnis. Between 1975 and 1990, Lebanon experienced the Civil War which was partly ignited by the growing dissatisfaction of the Muslims with the power-sharing agreement. During this period powerful militias emerged with shifting patterns of alliances with external actors or other internal groups. This lead to a partition of the country along geographical-ethnic lines, with Beirut being divided and experiencing continuing instability and violence75. The 1989 Taif agreement was brokered by Saudi-Arabia (as part of an US-Syrian understanding) with part of the pre-civil war elite which was eager to regain power from the militias. It basically uphold the same principles with the following changes: •

A 50% / 50% repartition of the parliamentary seats between Christians and Muslims

•

A power shift from the (Maronite) presidency to the Council of Ministers

The Taif agreement is often presented as the Maronites losing a lot to the Sunnis. This is more complicated than that. First, the Maronites had been extremely weakened by the civil war and they still obtained an over-representation in parliament (albeit a reduced ones). As 74 Most of the facts here are common knowledge for people interested in Lebanon. There are many reference sources, two important for the author having been: [Corm, 2005] and [Kerr, 2005]. 75 See the third chapter of this thesis for more details on the partition of Lebanon at this time.

62

Chapter 5 The Lebanese Political System for the power gain of the Council of Ministers, although it clearly favours the Sunnis which traditionally chair it, this also gave some power to the smaller communities which had been de facto excluded of the National Pact. Only the Shias could feel that their growing share of the population had not been properly taken into account in the new agreement. They gain little, except for a longer mandate of the Parliament Speaker, synchronized with the duration of the legislature, which reinforced this position to a certain extent76. The post-war years between 1990 and 2005 have been marked by the Syrian enforcement of the Taef agreement, via its military presence. As Michael Kerr and many other authors argue, Taef was never really implemented, since the Syrians very soon distorted its letter and spirit in order to consolidate their control of Lebanon, by in many cases promoting their supporters without regard for their electoral successes. Moreover, the first elections under the new system in 1992 were largely boycotted by the Christians which denied the new regime a popular legitimacy. This period can be divided in two phases. Between 1990 and 1998, a phase of reconstruction and redistribution, especially with the establishment of the Council of the South whose purpose is to develop the mostly Shia South. Then, between 1998 and 2005, a fiscal crisis jeopardized this policy of redistribution and a mounting of tensions between the various groups could be observed. Lebanese politics during this whole period were dominated by the figure of Rafic Hariri, a billionaire businessman who was Prime Minister many times during this period. In 2005, his assassination of Rafic Hariri unleashed a cycle of instability. Rafic Hariri had been working to undermine the Syrian domination, with US and French diplomatic support, such as with the UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which was calling for the restoration of the Lebanese sovereignty. Rafic Hariri, who had until then rather accommodate to the Syrian domination, had rejected the modification of the constitution in order to extend for three years the mandate of the Syrian-backed Lebanese President, Emile Lahoud77. Syria, which was widely blamed for the assassination, was forced to withdraw its troops in front of popular demonstrations in Spring 200578. In Summer 2006, border skirmishes between Hezbollah and Israel degenerated into a fullblown war which destroyed a significant part of the infrastructures which had been rebuilt after the Civil War. In November 2006, the Shia ministers left the Council of Ministers thus denying it a legitimacy to represent all communities. The opposition around Hezbollah and the

76 [Kerr, 2005], page 164 77 [UN SG Report, 2004], page 6, notes that: “On 3 September 2004, less than 24 hours after resolution 1559 (2004) was adopted, the Chamber of Deputies approved Constitutional Law 585 by a vote of 96 to 29 with three members not present, thereby extending President Lahoud’s term by three years.” 78 A detailed analysis of the events leading to Syrian withdrawal of Lebanon can be found in the eighth chapter.

63

Chapter 5 The Lebanese Political System followers of the Christian leader Michel Aoun79 (known as March 8th camp, vs. the March 14th camp supporting the government) then staged massive demonstrations and started a sit-in in the centre of Beirut. The ongoing political deadlock lasted until May 2008 when fighting erupted between progovernment militants and Hezbollah. With Hezbollah easily gaining control of the situation on the ground, a deal was brokered by the Qatari government (known as Doha agreement) which gave the opposition a blocking minority in the council of ministers and paved the way for new elections held in June 2009. The elections of June 7th 2009 lead to a clear victory of the March 14th camp, although at the time of writing it was to early to analyse their lasting consequences especially with regard to the formation of a new government.

79 Although a fierce anti-Syrian opponent during the 1990's and until 2005, Michel Aoun joined in 2006 the camp of the Hezbollah after failing to find an agrement with the March 14th camp.

64

Chapter 5 The Lebanese Political System

The Electoral System The electoral system is based around the following principles80: •

Vote by electoral district

•

Seats are allocated per confession at the district OR sub-district (qada) level

•

Each voter can vote for as many candidates as there are seats (block vote system), even for those not of his confession

•

For each confessional seat(s) the candidate with the most votes wins

The following table shows the repartition of the parliamentary seats across the communities81:

Illustration 4: Parliamentary seats distribution per community

80 [Assessment of the Electoral Framework, 2009], page 15 81 [Assessment of the Electoral Framework, 2009], page 16

65

Chapter 5 The Lebanese Political System While the following map82 shows the geographical repartition of these confessional seats: Each square represents a parliamentary seat, with the colours showing to which community it is attributed. We can see that it reflects the geographical repartition of the various communities that we have reviewed in the second chapter. Some areas are very homogeneous, while others are a complex mix. For some communities (for example the Druzes or the Greek Orthodox) being scattered across different electoral districts can either increase or dilute their political influence, depending on how skilful the candidates can be in negotiating with the bigger communities.

Map 21: Electoral seats Before looking at the issues of this system, let's first consider its benefits. It attempts to mix various types of representation. There is first a territorial representation. At the same time, the block vote system introduces (in theory) some degree of proportionality. While the system guarantees representation for all communities and thus power-sharing. There are however numerous problems and we will present some of them hereafter. Issue 1 With multi-qada districts, a candidate with less vote can get elected Example: In a given electoral district with two qada A and B each with one Sunni seat, let's consider Sunni candidates a1, a2 (in qada A) and b1, b2 (in qada B). The votes are: V a1V a2 V b1V b2 Result: a1 and b1 get elected although Va2 > Vb1, because the Sunni seat has to be filled in qada B 82 [Atlas du Liban], page 17

66

Chapter 5 The Lebanese Political System Issue 2 Confessions do not always “control” their seats Example: in 2005 in the electoral sector North 2 for a Christian seat, Suleiman Franjeh got 65.4% of the Christian vote while Nayla Muawad (from the Hariri bloc) got only 37.2% of the Christian vote, but 65% of the Muslim vote. Since Muslims are a majority in this district, Nayla Muawad won. 38 out of 64 Christian seats are in this case against 8 Muslim seats.

Issue 3 There are no official ballots and the parties print the ballots with bloc lists Purely tactical agreements between rival parties made some seats uncontested (20% in 2005). This lead to a very low turnout in such districts (e.g. Beirut: 9 out of 19 seats uncontested, turnouts of 32%, 31%, and 21%) Example: agreement between Hariri and Hezbollah blocs in Baabda-Aley district: won all seats

To conclude about the electoral system, we can say that it does not really implement a consociational system: it actually creates more tensions than it solves. Moreover, it clearly favours back-room deals and existing elites. One solution could be a bicameral system, with one political chamber and a confession based senate. This was actually agreed in Taif and in the Article 22 of the constitution but never implemented: Article 22: With the election of the first Parliament on a national, non-confessional basis, a Senate is established in which all the religious communities are represented. Its authority is limited to major national issues.83

The results of the 2005 election (shortly after the Syrian withdrawal and the legislature until June 2009) support this argument. The March 14th alliance (which controls the government) contains: •

Saad Hariri (Future Party, son of the assassinated former prime minister Rafic Hariri), one of the richest man of Lebanon

•

Walid Jumblatt, from a leading Druze family for centuries and former militia leader

•

Samir Geagea (Lebanese Forces) and the Gemayel family, former leaders of Christian militias

83 [Constitution, 1996], translation by Paul Salem, cross-checked by the author with the official French translation

67

Chapter 5 The Lebanese Political System The March 8th alliance contains: •

Michel Aoun (Free Patriotic Movement), allied with former pro-Syrians, although he fought against the Syrian in 1989-90 and his supporters were among the most active against Syrian control of the country

•

Hezbollah, the only militia still armed

•

Nabih Berri (Amal, a Shia party), former militia leader and parliamentary speaker although in the opposition

It should be noted that these alliances were forged after the elections and do not necessarily reflect tactical agreement locally or even the expectations at the time of what would be the coalitions. The alliance of Michel Aoun with the rather pro-Syrian Hezbollah is one of the major surprise at the time, although such an approach could already have been seen in his strategy during the elections.

Critical Evaluation of the Political System The Lebanese political system is far from being a purely consociational system, but it contains power-sharing provisions. It rather reflects the power and rent-control of political elites which are using the loopholes in the system in order to entrench their positions. Power-sharing systems can have two different, possibly complementary, purposes: •

Stabilize a post-conflict situation: a typical example are the Dayton agreements ending the war in Bosnia

•

Provide a long-term stable structure for the government of a country: a typical example in that case would be Belgium84

In Lebanon, post-conflict stabilization has been theoretically provided by a re-balancing of the National Pact of 1943 by the Taif agreement of 1989, but practically enforced by the Syrian military control. In “Imposing Power-Sharing”, published in 2005, shortly after the Syrian withdrawal, Micheal Kerr argues that the Taif agreement was never really tested as such, since the informal balance of power between groups and the Syrian interference prevented its application. He therefore wonders what will happen after the Syrian withdrew. Almost four years own, we can evaluate the results of the application of Taif without external interference. The instability of the 2005-2009 period shows that Taif did not really address some deep political questions such as the representation of the Shias and the redistribution of income 84 For all the current debates in Belgium, we are still mercifully far away from violent conflict between the French- and Dutch-speaking communities

68

Chapter 5 The Lebanese Political System toward their impoverished regions, or the national security strategy, especially with regard to the Israel and the Palestinian issue. The overall approach had not been changed at Taif, only rebalanced, and the pre-civil war period shows that the system does not necessarily breed instability in itself, it rather provides a fertile ground for it. Because of the various bargains that we have seen in our theoretical models, we can see that what is the right equilibrium at a given time, can change very quickly if some underlying or external factors change. Behind the short-term reaction of the system to a change in its external environment, is the question of what would be the stable long-term model for the country and should it be power-sharing? The very fact that Taif did not really change the approach can also be seen as illustrating that most of the elite doesn't want the system to change in the short- to middle-term. There seem to be a consensus on the nature of structure which was agreed between Maronites and Sunnis in 1943 and somehow widened by Taif. The question is then how to better adjust the parameters of the system (such as the amount of redistribution, the role of the army or of the Hezbollah resistance, etc.) in order to address the issues faced by the country.

The Lebanese political system is exemplary of the Public Choice theories: from its beginning it primarily reflects the interest of the ruling elites, be they economic, clanic or military, and the balance of power between them at given points. The confessional system is actually used to entrench such vested interests and does not really provide the benefits that a power-sharing system could bring to a country like Lebanon. But the fact that the implementation of the system is not satisfactory does not mean that considering a communal or more generally a power-sharing dimension is fundamentally flawed. In the next chapter, we will discuss the fields were power-sharing actually does make sense.

69

Picture 11: General strike turning violent in the centre of Beirut (January 2007)

Picture 12: Supporters of Michel Aoun during a demonstration in Beirut (December 2006) 70

Chapter 6 Power-Sharing and Stability

CHAPTER 6

Power-Sharing and Stability

In the previous chapter we have first defined and modeled power-sharing systems, then seen to which extent the Lebanese confessional political system shows their characteristics. In this chapter we will take a positive view on such systems and reverse the widely spread view that such a structure is at the root of the problems of Lebanon to see which aspects should be kept in order to contribute to the stability of the country. First, we will first consider in more details redistribution, and then see how to model it in the context of possible violent conflict. Finally we will review the other fields where a confessional system is well adapted for Lebanon.

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Chapter 6 Power-Sharing and Stability

The Issue of Redistribution In the second chapter of this thesis we have seen than Lebanon shows wide inequalities in terms of income and development, which tend to overlap with community lines especially with regard to the Shia community. It is not uncommon to hear a neo-marxist analysis of the Lebanese conflicts or tensions, which consider that these inequalities were and still are the primary reason for violence, although we could not find serious academic analysis supporting these views85. Ghassan Dibeh, from the Lebanese American University of Jbeil, takes a macro-economic point of view and severely criticizes the strategy adopted in the 1990's in order to rebuild the country86. According to his analysis, the Hariri governments followed a fiscal policy which was finance biased, with very low top marginal tax rates, while at the same time it was required under the Taif agreement to provide funds for a balanced developments of the various regions. This lead to a fiscal crisis in the late nineties, while not addressing the income inequalities, which this author believes to be the main reason for the relatively weak growth of the early post-war period. The preamble of the Constitution87, added by the Taif agreement, shows indeed again88 the tension between two possibly contradicting goals: f. The economic system is free and ensures private initiative and the right to private property. g. The even development among regions on the educational, social, and economic levels shall be a basic pillar of the unity of the state and the stability of the system.

On the one hand, the strengths of the Lebanese economy have always been in activities typically associated with economic liberalism: trade, financial services, tourism. On the other hand, the wide geographical inequalities that we have underlined are explicitly acknowledged as a factor of instability. Two development funds were created in the early 1990's in order to fulfil the goal of geographical distribution: The Council of the South, whose purpose is to develop the (mainly Shia) regions of the South which have suffered disproportionally from the various conflicts since the late 1960's, and the Displaced Fund, aiming at relocating the (mostly Maronite, from the southern Mount Lebanon) people who had been displaced during the conflict. Dibeh's argument is that such a geographical or (in practice) sectarian distribution did not necessarily reach those most in need. 85 An example of such views can be found on http://electronicintifada.net/lebanon/ a portal of western activists about the Middle East conflict, last accessed in May 2009. 86 [Dibeh, 2005], especially pages 9 to 12 87 [Constitution, 1996], translation by Paul Salem, cross-checked by the author with the official French translation 88 See the second chapter of this thesis

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Chapter 6 Power-Sharing and Stability

Redistribution and Power-Sharing This being said, a part of the actual tensions opposing the March 8 th and March 14th camps can be seen in the light of the distributional issue. On the one hand we have poor Shias masses with little to lose and represented by parties (Amal, Hesbollah) with a significant military power, and on the other the rich Sunni or Maronite elites of the cities. The former have the threat of civil unrest at his disposal, while the latter control the resources necessary for redistribution. We propose here a simple model to illustrate this situation. Let's consider P, a poor group with military power and R, a rich group controlling resources that it may decide to partly redistribute (typically via higher taxation). We introduce an asymmetric game were P can either chose to behave peacefully or to violently blackmail R, and R can chose to redistribute or not. The payoffs are of the form (payoff of R, payoff of P)=Total payoff: R redistribute A P peaceful

B (6,4)=10

C P violent

R do not redistribute (8,2)=10 D

(3,5)=8

(3,3)=6

If P provokes civil unrest, R will lose a lot (its payoff becomes 3) since the economy will suffer (as happened during the Civil War, which ruined the previously rich country) and it will be the primary target of attacks by the militarily stronger P. If P is violent, while R can still be forced to redistribute (situation C), P can expect to leverage its dominant position to get the most out of R. We assume here a reduced global payoff because such transfers would not be productive. If P is violent, while R does not redistribute (situation D), it can still expect to gain something through its military power. This is an almost typical “prisoner dilemma” case89, where being violent for P and not distributing for R are dominant strategies. Therefore, the only Nash equilibrium90 is: P is violent, R do not distribute (situation D). That is, the game will systematically converge to this situation. How does this translate to the current Lebanese situation? (keeping in mind that game theory models are just to illustrate arguments, not modelling reality one to one) Situation B would be the current situation, with huge inequalities between the two groups. 89 Readers not familiar with game theory can refer to the excellent summary on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma, last accessed May 2009 90 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium#Examples, last accessed May 2009

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Chapter 6 Power-Sharing and Stability Situation C would be the domination of the poor, militarily strong group (understand the Shias with Hezbollah). This is the absolute nightmare of the rich, cosmopolitan elites of the cities. Situation D would be a return to full fledged civil war. It could be argued that in situation A, a better balanced society would yield increased benefits by fostering development, and that the total payoff should be higher than in situation B. To be frank, we tend to think that it would be the case, but this is a matter of socio-economical convictions, and this is not our purpose to argue on this here. Therefore we leave a constant total payoff, and consider a sum-null redistribution 91. Therefore situation A and situation B are as good, considering the country as a whole, without any consideration of social justice. We have modelled here an unstable game, or more precisely a game whose only stable situation is violent conflict. One method to reach stability would therefore be to restrict the actions of the players. The only case where P could be convinced to renounce violent blackmail, would be if R would guarantee to redistribute, and reciprocally. Each player knows that the other has a strong incentive to breach the agreement since it is definitely better off if the other has given up its trump card while it hasn't itself. How does it translate in the case of Lebanon today? Hezbollah would accept to give up its implicit threat of violence only against guarantees that its constituency would receive significant transfers, while the March 14th elites would not provide such transfers without guarantees of security. In such a context of mistrust, a solution could be shared control over: •

The fiscal policy

•

The Hezbollah weapons (through their integration into he national army for example)

That would typically mean a kind of power-sharing, but not necessarily along the confessional lines that we have discussed until then. It should be noted that in recent years, Hezbollah has been a strong proponent of a consensus-based government where the minority would always have a blocking third of the ministers. However, it also supports the disappearance of the confessional system 92 (obviously in the interest of the growing Shia community, while scary for smaller Christian minorities) and is clearly not ready to relinquish control of its weapons.

91 That is, without increased productivity of the whole. 92 Press conference of Muhammad Raad, leader of the Hezbollah parliamentary bloc, reported by L'Orient Le Jour of Tuesday April 7th 2009.

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Chapter 6 Power-Sharing and Stability

The Rationale for Power-Sharing in Lebanon One of the main purpose and usefulness of power-sharing is to bring trust between conflicting parties. As we have seen in the previous example, it may be a solution to break vicious circles of instability, by forcing parties to restrict their possibilities. Another purpose is to guarantee cultural communities an autonomy in matters that are traditionally important to them, typically religious ones. This is one of the main argument in defence of the confessional system expressed by the former minister and then President of the Maronite League, Michel Eddé, in an interview with the author 93. According to Michel Eddé, the confessional system is not a factor of division between the various communities, but to the contrary is what makes the country possible at all, since such different religious communities would never accept to share the same laws for family matters for example. There indeed seems to be a strong argument for a confessional system at this level, although we have seen in the second chapter of this thesis that it introduces a lot of complexity in legal matters. A solution could be to introduce a personal statute independent of the religious belonging, which would be a secular alternative for the citizens who wishes it. It was actually foreseen in the original decree which created the status of the communities during the mandate94, and there was a failed attempt to revive it in 199895. At the crossroad of these two arguments (trust and cultural autonomy) is to provide the guarantee to smaller communities that their very existence is not threatened. It should not be forgotten that the region experienced many invasions, persecutions and mass deportations across the centuries. Two recent ones which are very sensitive in Lebanon are the Armenian and Palestinian tragedies. Some communities are therefore extremely nervous, especially the Christian ones which have (somehow understandably) a besieged mentality in a predominantly Muslim Middle East, especially at a time of rising militant Islamism. Brendan O'Leary gives three essential features of consociational institutions96: Executive political power is jointly shared across the representative of rival people Rules of proportionality are used to share power, express representation and to allocate resources Each people to the partnership is an equal, entitled to self-rule in matters of profound cultural consequences

93 94 95 96

Interview with Michel Eddé in Beirut on February 6th 2007 See the second chapter of this thesis [Traboulsi, 2001], page 2 Brendan O'Leary, in the preface to [Kerr, 2005], “The Realism of Power-Sharing”, page xviii

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Chapter 6 Power-Sharing and Stability The first (power-sharing) and third (cultural autonomy) points properly address the arguments in favour of power-sharing that we have just discussed. We are much more sceptical about the second one (proportionality) in the case of Lebanon. The inherent problem of such systems is of course that one has to define the peoples/communities in question. For cultural and religious matters, the historical Lebanese communities provide a good framework. However, the systematic institutionalisation of so many communities at all levels leads to absurdities such as those that we have underlined in the political system in the preceding chapter and to inefficiencies such as those which were acknowledged at Taif when the institutional requirement to have equal representation in the public administration as well was scrapped. As we have seen in the distribution example of the previous section, the definition of the relevant groups to be involved in a power-sharing solution strongly depends on the situation being addressed. The fact that the only possible framework is the communal one has led to a rigidification of the political system, which makes it poorly prepared to adapt in order to address the numerous economic and external challenges faced by the country. Our recommendation would therefore be to keep a consociational system based on the community but to restrict it to matters where there is a clear homogeneity of preferences97 within the communities, typically cultural matters and the joint control of security forces. For the rest, Lebanon with its striving press and educated citizenry is definitely ready to discuss issues in a secular and democratic framework, which does not exclude reaching occasional power-sharing agreements on other lines than the confessional ones.

Throughout this part, we have studied the concepts around power-sharing from a Public Choice perspective and we have analysed the Lebanese political and institutional system under this light. We came to the conclusion that power-sharing in Lebanon was sometimes unavoidable, often beneficial but as often counter-productive in addressing the issue of stability. In a typical Public Choice fashion we have also underlined that in many cases the system was used for elites to perpetuate their privileges and was not intrinsically guilty of some of its observed failures. An important dimension, that we left aside and will address in the next part, is that the weaknesses of this system, made Lebanon as a sovereign state a weak actor within the 97 See our discussion of confessionalism as a “confederation” in the fourth chapter of this thesis.

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Chapter 6 Power-Sharing and Stability context of the intense power struggles in the Middle East. In a difficult and violent environment, the system opened many doors for external actors to use in order to destabilize the fragile communal balance and play on the fears and grievances of the various communities to divide and rule. As for the overly complex Lebanese political system, the Public Choice approach teaches us that if a system took a given form, there must be a rational reason. This may be the interests of those in control, or the translation of the intrinsic complexity of the underlying society. Antoine Khair, in the conclusion of his paper about the Lebanese communities as moral person of public law, opposes two citations98. The first is from Jean-Etienne-Marie Portalis who was one of the main writer of the French Code Civil under Napoléon. In his speech for the adoption of this legal work, whose influence went far beyond the borders of France and which could be considered as the anti-thesis of a power-sharing system, he declared: People who depend from the same sovereignty without being regulated by the same laws, are necessarily strangers to each other; they are subject to the same power, without belonging to the same state.

But the Lebanese law expert then cites Friedrich Hegel in his “Elements of Philosophy of Right”: Each people has the Constitution which is adequate to it and which addresses its needs.

98 [Khair, 2000], page 8, both citations quoted by Antoine Khair and translated from the French by the author

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Part C External Factors

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Picture 13: Portrait of then Syrian president Hafiz al-Assad in Beirut (August 1998)

Picture 14: Bridge destroyed by Israeli bombs on the coastal highway (August 2006) 80

Chapter 7 Two Neighbours

CHAPTER 7

Two Neighbours

In this third part, we will analyse how external factors influence the stability in Lebanon. We will take a less technical approach than for the political system that we studied in the preceding part, because due to the complexity and the multiplicity of the actors involved we won't go into that much details, and assume that the reader is familiar with the broad dynamics of the Middle East. However, this is a controversial matter because it deals with themes for which there is no consensus but rather unproductive debates in Lebanon as well as in the Western world: the policies of Israel, the role of Syria in Lebanon during the last decades or the American policy in the wider region. In geopolitical terms, we will structure our analysis around the following model:

Is co rae nf l- S lic y t ria

EU France

Iran

Syria Lebanon Palestinians Israel S. Arabia Gulf st at es ic om sts l on re tia Ec inte ten po

or

Ir st anr fo ug US ri g nf l e lu en ce

US

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Chapter 7 Two Neighbours We define two circles of powers around Lebanon. The first one is made out of its two neighbours, the state of Israel and Syria. They are two countries which directly intervened militarily in Lebanon during the last decades, and both have primary national interests in this country. Moreover these two countries are themselves in conflict, whose main bone of contention are the Golan heights, but whose playing field for this conflict was more often than not Lebanon. We will study in more details this first circle in this chapter. The second circle is made out of major regional or global powers. They have no primary national interests in Lebanon, but have the means to use it when needed in wider geopolitical issues or for various economic reasons. The struggle for influence in the Middle East between Iran and the US is a major dynamic, which also indirectly involves Syria and Israel. The European Union and Saudi Arabia should not however be seen as opposed in this schema. In their case, Lebanon is (or could be) an economic link. Anyhow their interests are primarily economic or in reaction to the active influence games of others. We will deal with this second circle of powers in the next chapter. We will now focus on the two neighbours of Lebanon: Syria and the state of Israel. Both countries had a major influence on Lebanon during the last decades, occupying it militarily and upsetting its internal political balance. We will first discuss whether Syria had a stabilizing influence over Lebanon in the aftermath of the civil war. Then we will consider Israeli military interventions in Lebanon from the perspective of Israeli security. Finally we will discuss the impact of the Palestinian-Israeli issue on Lebanon. We must insist here, that our point here is not to judge whether Syrian and Israeli policies were and are “good” or “bad”. First we don't believe that it makes sense to judge countries from a moral point of view99, second this is not the purpose of analysis. What we want to assess is the impact of these policies on the stability of Lebanon.

99 The acts of individuals, from the simple soldiers to the major politicians are of course another matter.

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Chapter 7 Two Neighbours The following map summarizes the foreign interventions in Lebanon during the 1990's, as well as the main Palestinian refugee camps:

Map 22: Foreign interventions during the 1990's The vertical orange stripes shows the area of significant Syrian military presence and the orange squares the headquarters of the Syrian security services. The horizontal blue stripes shows the area of Israeli occupation100, and the blue ribbon the areas covered by Israeli flights. The stars shows the main Israeli bombings, and the blue area the Chebaa farms which are still considered as occupied by the Lebanese government (see below). The pink area is the area of deployments of UN forces. The green triangles are the main Palestinian refugee camps. 100Syrian presence in Lebanon was formally accepted by the internationally recognized Lebanese governments, whereas the Israeli presence was not, this is why we use the term “occupation” for the latter. This term is not an endorsement of the Syrian military presence in Lebanon during this period.

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Chapter 7 Two Neighbours

Syria in Lebanon: Imposing Power-Sharing In his 2005 work, “Imposing Power-Sharing – Conflict and Coexistence in Northern Ireland and Lebanon”, to which we have often referred throughout this thesis, Michael Kerr develops a central argument: external conditions are one of the main factors driving the proper implementation of power-sharing institutions in the context of internal conflict between communities101. As we have seen in the fourth chapter of this thesis, Leonard Wantchekon supports the idea that the Syrian military presence was the enforcing factor required by its model in order to stabilize power-sharing agreements102. The question is therefore whether the Syrian presence was a stabilizing factor which is now lacking in Lebanon, and that the current instability can be explained by the forced removal of the Syrian presence. The argument is actually reversed by the anti-Syrian forces in Lebanon (March 14th alliance). They see the hand of the Syrian regime behind the wave of assassinations which followed the departure of the Syrian troops, as a mean to provoke instability and justify its influence on its smaller neighbour. This argument is actually worth analysing. It is clear that in 1989 and 1990, the Syrian intervention was the decisive factor which ended the civil war. As Kerr describes, the Taif agreement did not differ significantly from previous peace proposals which had been negotiated as early as 1976 with the Constitutional Document 103 and more importantly in 1985 with the Tripartite Agreement between Elie Hobeika (Lebanese Forces, Maronite), Walid Jumblatt (Progressive Socialist Party, Druze) and Nabih Berri (Amal, Shia). What lacked at the time was an enforcing power. As we will see in the next chapter, it was only until the end of the 1980's that the United States and Saudi Arabia considered the Syrian solution as acceptable. However, Kerr describes how the Syrian regime very soon contradicted the spirit and the letter of the Taif agreement and the Lebanese Constitution, for example with a nomination process for the vacant seats of the first parliament104 or ensuring through various manipulations a low Christian turnout in the election of 1994 105. Kerr thus concludes his analysis of the Taif agreements, written in 2005, by the following words: Under the Syrian interpretation and implementation of Taif exactly the same problems of power and authority exist, and are even more salient in Lebanon today [Note: that is, in 2005] than they were before the outbreak of the civil war. The government is more corrupt, the communal balance is increasingly untenable, and there is a growing 101[Kerr, 2005], page 32 102[Wantchekon, 2000], page 349 103[Kerr, 2005], page 146 104[Kerr, 2005], page 166. In order to implement the change of proportion between Christian and Muslim deputies from 6:5 to 50:50, the parliament size had to be increased. The Syrian regime insisted that these seats would be filled via a nomination process, thus shaping the the new political establishment. 105[Kerr, 2005], page 174. A new electoral law and the gerrymandering of the electoral districts diluted Christian influence, which in turn discouraged Christian voters to vote.

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Chapter 7 Two Neighbours perception within certain communities that they are under-represented in the administration and unfairly treated within the system.106

The main problem with the Syrian influence in Lebanon in the post-war period, is that it perverted the confessional system and prevented democratic expression and debates through the systematic repression of dissent. Such an approach can be stabilizing in the short-term but it allows problems to brew without being expressed. It reminds to a certain extent the situation in Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav state experienced a deep economical and political crisis throughout the 1980's but the structures of the one-party state were unable to address them and the frustration of the population could only be expressed in the increasingly strident nationalism that led to its violent breakdown in the 1990's107. During the last few years since the departure of Syria, interesting developments could be observed. The massive demonstrations which were instrumental in this departure showed young Christians and Sunnis united in their dislike of the occupying power. A few months later Michel Aoun, which had been one of the foremost opponent to the Syrian presence 108 concluded an agreement with the Hezbollah109, one of the parties explicitly allied with Syria. This alliance shocked many and was deemed counter-nature by those who see the Hezbollah as a stooge of the Syrian regime. Its consequences on the electoral support for Aoun will be seen in the forthcoming elections of June 2009110. However, this alliance is consistent with the nationalist stance that can be found in both parties. Moreover, Aoun argues that this understanding between both parties allowed to avoid an internal conflict during the War of 2006111. There are definitely huge differences between the Free Patriotic Movement of Michel Aoun and the Hezbollah, and during the political crisis of 2006 to 2008, Aoun missed many opportunities to broker a compromise, showing that his influence on Hezbollah was probably much more limited than he claims. However, this kind of re-composition is definitely interesting and could never have happened in the context of the Syrian presence. To summarize our argument, we see the instability of the last few years as a reaction to the artificial freezing of the Lebanese debate during the years of Syrian domination. Syria was definitely instrumental in stopping the civil war, not in preventing a potential next one.

106[Kerr, 2005], page 178 107For an interesting analysis of this period, refer to [Ramet, 2002] 108He led a failed “liberation war” against it in 1989/1990 and his supporters were the most active militants against the Syrian regime throughout the whole period that followed 109This agreement was signed was signed on February 6th 2006 and can be found in the annexes of [Aoun, 2007], page 165 110At the time of completing this thesis, a few days after these elections, the effects seems to have rather negative. The poor showing of Aoun's party is the main reason behind the defeat of the Hezbollah led opposition. 111[Aoun, 2007], page 35

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Chapter 7 Two Neighbours

The Security of Israel Lebanon is often described as “Israel's Vietnam”112. The Israeli state invaded Lebanon twice during the civil war: in 1978 (“Operation Litani”) and in 1982 (“Operation Peace in Galilea”). Its goal was to root out the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) of Yassir Arafat, which had been based in Lebanon since it had been expelled from Jordan in 1970/71 (these events being remembered as “Black September”). The PLO and other Palestinian organizations were using the south of Lebanon to launch attacks against Israel. During the 1978 operation, the Israeli Defence Forces113 (IDF) established a security buffer in the South that they controlled until 2000. They also formed a local militia, the South Lebanon Army in order to support them with the control of this area. In 1982, they went up until Beirut, whose western part they besieged during three months, until they could finally obtain the departures of the PLO (which relocated to Tunis in Tunisia). These interventions in Lebanon were long and dirty wars. Although they had quite clear rationale and goals (rooting out the PLO in order to secure the northern part of the country) they tended to weaken the important myth that Israel had only fought defensive wars (the 6-days War of 1967 being with some justifications considered as a pre-emptive war). Moreover the slaughters in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila or the Khiam torture centre, committed by militias allied with the IDF (which denies any direct involvement) are disturbing facts for a society which was built in the aftermath and remembrance of the horrendous crimes of the national-socialists against the European Jews. Throughout the 1990's, Israeli forces in Lebanon were harassed by the Hezbollah guerilla fighters, which became increasingly well trained, disciplined and armed. Armed events such as exchange of shelling or roadside bombs increased from 400 in 1996 to 600 in 1997 and more than 1100 in 1998114. In 2000, acknowledging that costs were far outweighing benefits, the IDF unilaterally withdrew from the zone that it occupied in the South, Hezbollah gaining an immense prestige in Lebanon and in the Arab world. Between 2000 and 2006, Hezbollah was the only significant force controlling the South, since the Syrian army would not go south of the red line, the Lebanese army had not been present in the south since the 1970's and the small UNIFIL contingent with a weak mandate could not be considered as relevant. Hezbollah built up its infrastructure, preparing defensive bunkers and trenches as well as launching pads for its katyusha rockets. On July 12th 2006, Hezbollah launched a crossborder attack, killing eight Israeli soldiers and capturing two.

112For example in [BBC, 1998] 113Official name of the armed forces of the state of Israel 114[BBC, 1998]

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Chapter 7 Two Neighbours The IDF retaliated with a two axis strategy: •

The bombing of Hezbollah strongholds in the South, the Bekaa and the southern suburbs of Beirut, but also of major civilian infrastructure (roads, bridges, communication) throughout Lebanon, officially in order to disrupt the logistics of Hezbollah.

•

Special force operations or relatively small land incursions across the border, especially in the area around the town of Bint Jbeil, which was almost completely destroyed115.

This strategy proved to be a failure as Hezbollah was well entrenched in the the South and integrated in the local population. In order to avoid massive civilian casualties, which would have not been accepted by the international community and the Israeli population, the IDF used what we consider116 as a terrorist strategy: extremely violent bombings on some villages or buses full of civilians, in order to “terrorize” the population, make it flee and so, clear the ground. A wave of around 500 000 refugees from the South (from a Lebanese population of around 4 million117) went up north and settled where they could in parks, schools, etc118. Mounting international pressure, in particular by European countries traditionally close to Lebanon such as France and Italy, finally ended the conflict, with the resolution 1701 of the UN Security Council providing the framework for the cease-fire.

Map 23: Areas of Israel threatened by We will now assess the War of 2006 from the Hezbollah or Palestinian rockets point of view of Israeli security. It is obvious that Hezbollah is a major security threat for the north of the Israeli state as the white area in the north of the map119 from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows. 115Observed by the author on February 25th 2007 116Objectively, but probably controversially 117[CIA Factbook] 118Observed by the author in Beirut in July 2006 119[Israel in Maps], page 53

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Chapter 7 Two Neighbours The goal of Israel during this war was to remove this threat. Ideally (from its point of view) it would have meant destroying Hezbollah or at least removing it from the south, as it did with the PLO in the 1980's. This is probably with this expectation that the United States stand firmly behind the state of Israel throughout the war: as we will detail in the next chapter, destroying Hezbollah military capacity would have completed the change in Lebanon that was initiated with the removal of the Syrian presence. But the parallel with the operations against the PLO show that to reach such a goal would have required a long and difficult war, with a full scale invasion of Lebanon, probably until the southern suburbs of Beirut, which are the heart of Hezbollah command infrastructure, just as West Beirut was the heart of the PLO in the early 1980's. Israel was definitely not ready for that, as his 2000 withdrawal from the South had shown. Therefore, the strategy was meant to restore its deterrence capacity, which it felt had been weakened by this unilateral withdrawal. For all claims of a “Divine Victory” by Hezbollah (and it was perceived as such in the Arab world), Israel succeeded in changing the situation on the ground. UNIFIL was reinforced with a stronger mandate and the Lebanese army took back the control of the South. Hezbollah still has an infrastructure in the region but it cannot develop it openly as it did between 2000 and 2006. However, we think that the very violence of the Israeli answer was counter-productive. By destroying major infrastructures throughout the country and thus reversing a significant part of the development since the Civil War, it united the Lebanese population behind Hezbollah and cut itself from parts of the Lebanese population which could have argued more forcefully against Hezbollah adventurism. Moreover the myth of the invincibility of the IDF was shattered. The Nobel Prize in Economy 2007, Roger Myers, argues, using game theory models, that a deterrence strategy without guarantee of restraint is counter productive 120. We won't go into the details of these models, but summarize their main hindsights. The problem of war and peace between two actors can be modelled as a Prisoner Dilemma game121. Each player has an incentive to be aggressive if the other is peaceful. It means that each player knows that if it is itself peaceful, the other will be aggressive. Each player will therefore be systematically be aggressive, leading both to be aggressive and go to war. One way to avoid this situation is for one of the players to restrict its actions. Myers shows that a deterrence strategy can be defined as one of the player restricting itself to do exactly what the other player will do: if you attack me, I'll attack you, if you stay peaceful, I'll stay peaceful. The main argument of Myers then is that both side of a deterrence strategy needs to be credible: the other player must be convinced that there will be retaliation but also that its peaceful behaviour will be rewarded. 120[Myers, 2007], page 11 121See the sixth chapter of this thesis

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Chapter 7 Two Neighbours Myers explicitly uses the example of the Israeli reaction in 2006 as an illustration for his argument: the heavy and unfocused nature of Israel’s response could raise questions about whether its intention was to not merely deter specific acts of aggression but also to change the nature of the regime in Lebanon to Israel’s benefit. Whatever the true intentions were, such questions could readily stimulate Lebanese fears of a deep invasion that would renew the violence of their civil war. A natural response to such fears of invasion would be to support militant parties who seem more capable of fighting Israel.122

In other words, Israel's disproportionate violence ended up reinforcing Hezbollah legitimacy as the only military force capable of protecting Lebanon.

The Palestinian Issue The Palestinian implantation in Lebanon was during the 1970's one of the major factor which lead to the civil war, and thus to foreign intervention in the country (in addition to Israel's operations, the first Syrian intervention in 1976 was in order to prevent the Palestinians to crush the Christian militias). The UN agency dealing with the Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has officially around 400 000 of them registered in Lebanon123. Most originally come from the north of Palestine and went to Lebanon during the 1948 war. The Christians, which were mostly educated urban populations, got integrated in the Lebanese society and many received the Lebanese nationality, whereas the (mostly Sunni) Muslims tended to gather in refugee camps (see map at the beginning of this chapter) and still live in miserable conditions.

Map 24: Geographical origin and confessions of the Palestinian refugees of Lebanon

For fear of upsetting the fragile balance between the communities, the Lebanese governments always refused to let them properly settle. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon do not have the right to work, theoretically they are not even allowed to build buildings in the refugee camps. Nowadays, the Palestinian presence in Lebanon is not anymore of the major

122[Myers, 2007], page 20 123[UNRWA web site]

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Chapter 7 Two Neighbours factor of instability124, and this is the reason why we won't detail this issue here. However it should be noted that this is still the main problem linking the resolution of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict with Lebanon relationship with Israel. As long as the question of the “right of return” of the Palestinian refugees is not settled, Lebanon simply cannot make peace with Israel. A pragmatic solution would be to give these refugees a (Palestinian) citizenship and then let the Lebanese state normalize their situation as foreign residents. But this would of course require a Palestinian state, which would have accepted to give up the right of return. The Palestinian issue is the main factor which prevents Lebanon to be a neutral state as was originally envisaged in the National Pact of 1943125.

Lebanon is surrounded by two neighbours with both a strong united state and a powerful army. During the last decades they had a strong influence on its stability in directly intervening when they considered that their major national interests were at play. However, in 2005, a popular uprising (with strong Western and Saudi backing) led to the departure of the Syrian troops and in 2006 the July War, although not a clear victory for Hezbollah, definitely showed that the days when Israel could militarily control South Lebanon were over. This new settings could contribute to a normalization of the relationship of Lebanon with its neighbours, on a more balanced basis. Ideally, a Lebanon which could have normal relationships with both Syria and Israel would be much more stable and secure, since each would be a deterrent against the other trying to regain its former influence. Unfortunately, as long as the military might of Hezbollah is not controlled by the Lebanese state it cannot be used as a bargaining chip and provides Israel with a ready argument to intervene. The normalization with Syria seems more durable, but still depends on Western enforcement. Moreover for obvious strategic reasons126 an Israeli-Lebanese peace is linked with an Israeli-Syrian peace, and additionally depends from the resolution of the question of Palestinian statehood. Now as before, Lebanon depends on a wider settlement of the regional conflict.

124Although the misery of the Palestinian refugee camps is a fertile ground for extremist groups. In 2007, the islamist group Fatah al-Islam fought a bloody battle against the Lebanese army. 125[Kerr, 2005], page 20 126Among them the question of the Chebaa farms, occupied by Israel and claimed by Lebanon. Israel reckon that they are part of the Golan Heights (part of Syria annexed by Israel).

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Picture 15: Anti-American poster in the Bekaa valley (August 1998)

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Chapter 8 Lebanon and the World

CHAPTER 8

Lebanon and the World

After detailing the Syrian and Israeli influence on the Lebanese stability, we will now take a broader view and analyse how external actors with no direct interests in Lebanon do also tremendously affect its stability. We will first quickly review some aspects of the integration of Lebanon in the wider world, primarily in economic terms. Then we will describe the channels of influence of the “big” powers of the second circle on Lebanon. Finally we will describe the evolution of policy the Western powers toward Lebanon, from supporting Syrian control to provoking its end.

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Chapter 8 Lebanon and the World

Lebanon Exchanges with the World Lebanon is a small country, geographically and historically oriented towards trade and services, such as banking. It has no significant industry and must import most of the industrial goods. It would have a good potential in high-value agricultural goods but tends to focus on wheat production in the Bekaa which is not very competitive. Its important water resources could also be an interesting export good in the region but because of a lack of infrastructure and investment, most of it get squandered and ends up in the sea127. As we can see on the following maps128, the main trading partners of Lebanon are in the Middle East and Western Europe. Manufactured goods come from the European Union and increasingly Eastern Asia, while it imports mostly energy from the region. The exchanges with Africa and the Americas are mostly exchanges with the diaspora (see below).

There are three important exports of Lebanon that we want to underline: tourism129, culture and people.

Map 25: Exchanges with Europe and Middle East

Although many Europeans have yet to discover the beauty and ancient monuments of Lebanon, it is a major destination for many countries of the Persian Gulf.

There are two main reasons for this. First of all, the relatively mild Mediterranean climate makes it a popular destination in the summer for well-off residents of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula who wants to escape the heat of the desert in summer. Second, the unique liberal atmosphere in the country, where alcohol is perfectly legal and with a significant prostitution industry is valued by some citizens of the more traditional countries of the region.

127Interview with Salim Eddé in Paris on October 24th 2008. Salim Edde is the general director of the Murex group a leading provider of software systems for the financial markets, based in Paris. A Lebanese national, he is deeply involved in finding approaches for the sustainable development of his country. Salim Eddé is the son of Michel Eddé, cited in the sixth chapter of this thesis, and was the employer of the author when he was working in Beirut in 2006 and 2007. 128[Atlas du Liban], page 47 129Tourism is generally considered as an export in national accounting.

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Map 26: Exchanges with the world Lebanon is an important cultural hub in the region as well. Although the golden age of the 1960's where all intellectuals would meet in Beirut are over, it is still very present in the fields of entertainment (especially music and TV programs) and publishing. As an example, the map130 below shows the trade balance in the Arab-speaking world in the field of publishing, showing Lebanon as the main exporter:

Map 27: Trade balances of the publishing industry in the Arab world

130[Atlas du Liban], page 62

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Chapter 8 Lebanon and the World Finally, the most significant impact that Lebanon has on the rest of the world is through its many people who live and work abroad. There has been numerous emigration waves from Lebanon, the first ones, primarily Maronite and toward North and South America, in the late 19th century and after the First World War, when the “Smaller Lebanon” 131 was in regular economic crisis. The most recent one, caused by the Civil War shows different patterns. It was more evenly spread across the communities, with especially the Shias emigrating a lot, sometime settling in countries of previous Lebanese emigration and mixing there with Maronites. This wave was also more diversified in terms of target countries, a major emigration destination being the countries of the Persian Gulf, where many Lebanese leveraged their Western education and knowledge of Arabic to take responsibilities in the technical fields of the building and oil industries. The following diagram132 shows the main geographical areas of the Lebanese diaspora at different periods:

Illustration 5: Main areas of the Lebanese diaspora The industrialist Salim Eddé believes that it would possible to leverage the high quality of the education in Lebanon without emigrating by developing high value-added products and services in Lebanon, such as in the field of software. However he reckons that the political instability and inefficient bureaucracy tend to hinder this development, although this is compensated by extremely low taxes133.

131See the third chapter of this thesis 132Translation of the previous diagram: The main areas are (from top to bottom) Latin America, North America, North Africa, Europa, Australia/New Zealand, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East/Persian Gulf, Asia. The circles show the total estimated amount of emigrated Lebanese still keeping strong links with the country. 133Salim Eddé, “L'informatique et la production Intellectuelle pour renouer avec la croissance / Information Technologies and intellectual production in order find growth back” in [Avenir, 2007], page 136, and in an interview with the author in Paris on October 24th 2008.

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A Pawn on the Chessboard The political scientist turned politician Farid el-Khazen is without illusion about the importance of Lebanon for the greater powers: If regional conflicts are not settled, this does not necessarily bother the great powers. The term Lebanisation has finally come to mean an insoluble matter134.

The influence of the powers of the second circle that we have described previously must always be seen in the light of their wider interests although their actions can have a major impact on the small country. The United States see Lebanon primarily as a security issue. First, to the extent that it may be a threat to its major ally in the region, Israel. From the 1960's to the 1980's, this threat was mostly coming from the Palestinian militants of the PLO, and since the 1990's mostly from Hezbollah (see the previous chapter for more details). Second, it is worried about the influence that Iran could acquire through Hezbollah135. Iran is the main backer of Hezbollah. It provides it with weapons and the financial resources which makes the Shia party a significant provider of social services for its community. From our point of view, the strategy of Iran to develop an influence in Lebanon, which dates back to the beginnings of the Islamic regime in the early 1980's, was always more driven by opportunity rather than by a development of its natural sphere of influence. During the 1980's as the civil war was raging and Iran was at war against a Western/Saudi backed Iraq, Iran wanted to develop counterweights to the Iraqi regime wherever it could. Iraq was supporting some Palestinian militias in Lebanon (in turn as a counterweight to the Syrian influence there) and Iran, as a predominantly Shia country, used naturally the channel of the Shia community to build its influence. As we have seen in previous chapters the original main Shia force is the Amal party (itself coming from the Disinherited Movement of Musa al-Sadr) which was rather allied with Syria. Iran thus supported a splinter group of Amal by militants which were rejecting the more secular stance of Amal's leader Nabih Berri, in what became Hezbollah (party of God, in Arabic). Nowadays, Iran uses Hezbollah as a tool against Israel. But, for all the rhetoric, the interest of Iran in opposing Israel, is in our opinion rather unclear, since this area is not (yet) in the direct sphere of influence of Iran, and that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is primarily an Arab problem. We believe that for Iran this strategy it part of its wider struggle with the Unites States, and that it uses the implicit threat of retaliation by Hezbollah as a bargaining chip in its current negotiations with the US over their respective spheres of influence and its nuclear program. The influence of Iran on Hezbollah should however not be overstated. Hezbollah is a 134Quoted in [Kerr, 2005], page 141 135[Kerr, 2005], page 169

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Chapter 8 Lebanon and the World powerful and well structured party, with a strong legitimacy in the Shia community but also for other Lebanese. In [Domont/Charara, 2004], Frédéric Domont and Walid Charara argue that the nationalist component of the Hezbollah ideology is as important as the religious one. Because of its relative successes against Israel, Hezbollah has gained a great popularity among the Arab masses, especially after the War of 2006. This may definitely be part of a strategy by Iran to make its rising influence acceptable by the Arabs, which are traditionally against Persian influence, but it also creates a basis for autonomy for the Hezbollah within the region. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states in general have mainly economic interests in Lebanon, where they invested heavily (especially in real estate) and which is a gateway to Europe for them. To some extent, there is a feedback loop, because of the strong presence of Lebanese specialists or businessmen in the economy of these countries. The main example was of course Rafik Hariri, who became one of the richest man in the world thanks to its collaboration with the Saudi royal family in the 1970's, and leveraged his contacts during its multiple tenures as Prime Minister in the 1990's and until his death. The European Union, coherently with its general approach to foreign policy, rather tries to foster development and stability via the support of various programs and financial aid. In the aftermath of the War of 2006, the reinforcements of the UN interposition force (UNIFIL) in the South, which was one of the main conditions set by Israel, were mostly provided by European countries: Italy, France and Spain (with a German naval force). This military contribution was relatively rapidly put in place (by EU standards), thanks to a coordination within the EU framework, and was seen an example of the development of an efficient EU Foreign and Security Policy. Within the European Union, France, the former colonial power, has particular relationships with Lebanon. It is mostly due to the still very strong cultural links between the two countries, with many Lebanese (especially Maronites) being educated in French, a significant number pursuing their higher education in France proper. However, as in many other foreign policy fields, France is not necessarily consistent between its two major goals which are one the one hand to develop a European foreign policy (where it expects to play a major role) and on the other hand, to convince itself and the rest of the world that it is still a major power. It therefore tries to position itself as an honest broker between the various powers in the region and as the “best friend” of Lebanon. However its images as the former colonial power and as an ally of the US and Israel, make that its influence is strongly rejected by a significant part of the population.

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The Changing Policy of the Great Powers From the external point of view, the Taif agreement can be seen as the United States and Saudi Arabia recognizing Syrian control of Lebanon as the solution for the Civil War which was lasting for fifteen years. At first Saudi Arabia wanted to counter-balance Syrian military power with pledges of massive financial aid for reconstruction. However the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990 and the subsequent Gulf War fundamentally changed the freedom which was left to Syria in the implementation. On the one hand, Saudi Arabia, for all its wealth had to finance the bulk of the Gulf War and withdrew its most generous pledges, thus losing direct influence on the process. On the other hand, Syria became allied with the United Stated and participated in the broad coalition which fought against the regime of Saddam Hussein. The United States then basically left a free hand to Syria to implement Taif as best suited it136 (see previous chapter for more details on the Syrian presence in Lebanon). As we have seen, the 1990's were dominated by the figure of Rafik Hariri who was prime minister between 1992 and 1998, and again between 2000 and 2004. Moreover, Hariri was the main shareholder of the Solidere company which was exclusively granted the market of the reconstruction of the centre of Beirut, which had been completely destroyed during the civil war. In addition to his strong links with the Saudi royal family (see above), he was also a personal friend of Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris, and French president between 1995 and 2007. In the early years of the new century, pressure started to mount on Syria to release its grip on Lebanon. In the wake of the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States government became increasingly concerned about what it saw as Syrian support of terrorism (through arming Hezbollah, which is officially considered as a terrorist group by the US). Moreover the school of thought often referred to as Neo-Conservative gained in influence. One of their central arguments was that the spread of freedom and democracy, especially in the Muslim world was key to the long-term US security. The United States were thus becoming less and less willing to support undemocratic regimes for pragmatic reasons, and the control of Syria on Lebanon was a typical example of such policies. A first step was the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act, passed by the US Congress on December 12th 2003. Some Lebanese politicians, notably the former General Michel Aoun137 in exile in France, had lobbied for years to get such an act. As it title implies, the act call for the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty. Even more interesting is the link which is made with terrorism and the American troops in Iraq138: 136[Kerr, 2005], page 169 and 168 137[Aoun, 2007], pages 79 to 74 138The Iraq invasion had happened a few months before in March 2003. Interestingly the act also lists

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Chapter 8 Lebanon and the World It is the policy of the United States that-(1) Syria should bear responsibility for attacks committed by Hizballah and other terrorist groups with offices, training camps, or other facilities in Syria, or bases in areas of Lebanon occupied by Syria; (2) the United States will work to deny Syria the ability to support acts of international terrorism and efforts to develop or acquire weapons of mass destruction; [...] (8) Syria will be held accountable for any harm to Coalition armed forces or to any United States citizen in Iraq if the government of Syria is found to be responsible due to its facilitation of terrorist activities and its shipments of military supplies to Iraq; [...]139

The next step was the passing of the UN Security Council resolution 1559 adopted on September 2nd 2004, which was co-authored by the United States and France 140 (and was their first major cooperation on the international stage since the bitter dispute around the Iraq war). Most significantly, the UN Security Council: 2. [...] Calls upon all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon; 3. Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias; [...] 5. Declares its support for a free and fair electoral process in Lebanon’s upcoming presidential election conducted according to Lebanese constitutional rules devised without foreign interference or influence; [...]141

The resolution was widely interpreted as the end of western support for the Syrian control of Lebanon and as preparing a showdown against Hezbollah, which had gained complete control of the South after the unilateral Israeli withdrawal in 2000. It is widely acknowledged that it was the decision by the Syrian regime to change the Lebanese constitution in order to extend the term of Emile Lahoud which antagonised him with the American and French governments, as well as with Rafik Hariri. Just as Saddam Hussein did not grasp in 1990 that, with the end of the Cold War, US tolerance criteria had changed, the Syrian president Bachar al-Assad did not understand that in the post-September 11th world and in a context where the US administration had only the spread of democracy to justify its military venture in Iraq, the Western powers could not tolerate such a blatant rigging of the constitutional rules of the only Arab country with a real tradition of democratic debate. Rafik Hariri was seen by Syria as having supported the resolution142, since it opposition to Syrian alleged attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction. 139[Syria Accountability Act, 2003] 140China voted for it because of its systematic support for the territorial integrity of sovereign states (in relation to the Taiwan issue).The Russian Federation abstained since its amendments which were linking the Lebanese issue with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had not been accepted. 141[UNSC Resolution 1559, 2004] 142Which is contested by Georges Corm in [Corm, 2005], page 299

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Chapter 8 Lebanon and the World the extension of Emile Lahoud's mandate was clear and because of his friendship with Jacques Chirac. He resigned by the end of October 2004 and started to prepare actively for the parliamentary elections scheduled in May 2005. On February 14 th 2004, he got assassinated by a massive car bomb of around one ton of TNT143. Massive demonstrations against the Syrian presence took place in Beirut (but also in support of it as on March 8th 2008, see previous chapter). At the beginning of March, Bachar al-Assad announced that the Syrian troops would leave Lebanon. This withdrawal was completed by the end of April 2005.

The events of the end of 2004 / beginning of 2005, that we have just described have opened a period of instability in Lebanon. Some, such as Georges Corm144 actually reproach the Western powers to have played with fire and to have broken a balance necessary for the security and development of the country. We actually take a different view: Western support, implicit or explicit was necessary for the continuation of Syrian rule on Lebanon. The evolution of the priorities and strategies of these powers in the region, especially the United States, caused that their support would anyhow not have continued in this form. It is not unlikely that such a shrewd operator of international politics as late Hafiz al-Assad, the father of the current Syrian president, would have somehow felt the wind turning and “restructure” its relationship with Lebanon and the Western powers in order to keep most benefits. But the actors involved at the time, Georges W. Bush, Jacques Chirac and Bachar al-Assad all rather tend to act bluntly on the international stage. Jacques Chirac was especially incensed by the death of his friend Rafik Hariri, and it was not until Nicolas Sarkozy took power that France returned to a dispassionate policy toward Syria. The new French president brokered a mutual diplomatic recognition between the two neighbours in July 2008, in exchange for the end of the isolation of the Syrian regime, but also in order to guarantee the success of the founding summit of his EuroMed145 pet project. Bigger powers have a major influence on Lebanon, but often as a side-effect of their wider policies. 14321 other people, accompanying him or bystanders, also died in this attack. 144[Corm, 2005], page 294. It should be noted that Georges Corm was Finance Minister (1998-200) during the only non-Hariri government between 1992 and 2004, and was definitely not a supporter of Rafik Hariri. 145Union for the Mediterranean, whose goal is to better integrate other Mediterranean countries with the EU.

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Picture 16: Peaceful evening in Beirut, after a war (August 2006)

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Conclusion

Conclusion

Throughout this thesis, we took Lebanon as our subject of analysis and considered which factors determined its stability (or more often than not, its instability). We first considered to which extent Lebanon in its current borders and societal mix made sense as a country, a state and even a nation. We reached the relatively positive conclusion, with regard to stability, that the traumatic experience of the civil war had created a widespread consciousness among the various groups that they had no choice but to live together. You can hardly expect a country on the brink of falling apart to be stable. Although such centrifugal dynamics could be reactivated, they are not anymore an immediate risk. Then we studied in details the Lebanese political system, using the tools and methodologies of the Public Choice approach. Our conclusions were more mixed. We underlined that many aspects of the implementation of the confessional system tended to reinforce instability by providing the elites with incentives to play on the inherent tensions between the various communities. However, our analysis of the pro and cons of powersharing showed that some elements of it may indeed be required to guarantee stability. We also suggested that the existing institutional framework should be adapted and modernized, by correcting the flaws of the Taif agreement, but do not need to be scrapped altogether. Finally, we reviewed the external influences on stability in Lebanon and reached a bleaker assessment of the situation. For all the opportunities opened by the events of the last few years, Lebanon is still at the mercy of changes in the priorities of the major powers and requires a settlement of the remaining conflicts of Israel with the Palestinians and Syria. Such a settlement remains elusive to say the least. A united Lebanon with a reformed political system would obviously be better armed to withstand such a dependency to external factors. However, there are such forces at play that is likely that these factors would rather prevent such positive internal evolutions, than the other way round. We have seen that the issues related to stability in Lebanon are plentiful, complex and intermingled. In order to close this study, we want to single out two of them, one is practical, the other is general and transverse to most other questions: these are Hezbollah and trust.

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Conclusion Hezbollah is a fascinating and disturbing subject. On the one hand, the party shows an impressive capacity to organize, motivate and lead. It has been so far the only structure which could provide the kind of military deterrence that any state needs in order to guarantee its national security. It has also given a strong and credible voice to the Shia community. On the other hand, Hezbollah is problematic at each of the three levels of our analysis. For all its assurances of the contrary, the suspicion lingers that its ultimate goal is to establish an Islamic state in Lebanon. This is a project to which none of the other communities would agree, especially not the westernised Maronites or the cosmopolitan Sunnis. Then, at the political level, its projects to suppress confessionalism or redistribute wealth to the impoverished Shia masses and its refusal to put its weapons under the control of the state are all rationally justifiable and debatable. But, combined with the readiness the party showed in May 2008 to use its overwhelming military power in internal political struggles, these policies are definitely distorting the current re-composition of the political landscape and hindering the necessary reform of the institutions. Finally, its dependency to Iranian support and its aggressive stance toward Israel reinforce the negative dynamics that we underscored. The evolution of this party on this various themes should therefore be observed with attention. Hezbollah currently holds the key to Lebanese future, for better or worse.

Almost all of the people or groups we talked about live in fear. The Christians fear to be marginalized or even suppressed by the Muslim majority surrounding them. The Sunnis fear to be overwhelmed by the Shias and to lose the liberal and trade-oriented economy which is the basis of their prosperity for centuries. The Shias fear to be bombed, again, by Israel. The Israelis fear to be bombed by Hezbollah. The Palestinians fear to keep having no future. Europeans and Americans fear terrorism. As we have seen in many of the formal models that we introduced, the perception of whether or not your counterpart will attack you if you don't attack him is of primary importance. As we have underlined, one of the main purpose of power-sharing system is to bring trust on matter of foremost importance (such as physical security or respect for cultural or religious particularism), so that the other subjects can be healthily debated. All actors interested in making Lebanon more stable, be they internal or external, should therefore focus on trust-building measures in the first place.

Lebanon is addictive, exciting and more often than not exhausting. Its inhabitants as well as its foreign friends love it precisely for these reasons. But it doesn't have to be unstable to stay so. 104

Conclusion

Bibliography

[Aoun, 2007] : Michel Aoun, "Une certaine vision du Liban, entretiens avec Frédéric Domont" (Paris: Fayard, 2007) [Assessment of the Electoral Framework, 2009] : Democracy Reporting International (DRI) and the Lebanese Association for Free Elections (LADE), "Assessment of the Electoral Framework , The Election Law of 2000 and the Draft Law by the Boutros Commission" (2008) [Atlas du Liban] : Eric Verdeil, Ghaleb Faour, Sébastien Velut, "Atlas du Liban / Atlas of Lebanon" (Beirut: Institut Français du Proche Orient / CNRS Liban, 2007) [Atlas Historique] : Anders Rohr, "Atlas Historique / Historical Atlas" (Paris: Magnard, 1991) [Avenir, 2007] : ed. Michel Hajji Georgiou, "L'Avenir en Points d'Interrogation /The Future in Question Marks" (Beirut: L'Orient Le Jour, 2007) [BBC, 1998] : Hugh Levinson, "South Lebanon: Israel's Vietnam?" (1998) [Brams/Kilgour, 2005] : Steven Brams (New York University) and Marc Kilgour (Wilfrid Laurier University), "The instability of Power Sharing" (2005) [CIA Factbook] : Central Intelligence Agency, "The World Factbook", https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/le.html, last accessed March 2009 [CloudMade] : CloudMade Ltd., "Freely available maps from the OpenStreetMap project", http://downloads.cloudmade.com/, last accessed May 2009 [Constitution, 1996] : Lebanese Parliament, "La Constitution Libanaise / The Lebanese Constitution" (Beirut: Constitutional Council, 1996) [Corm, 2005] : Georges Corm, "Le Liban Contemporain / Contemporary Lebanon" (Paris: La Découverte, 2005) [Covenant of the League of Nations, 1919] : League of Nations, "Covenant of the 105

Bibliography League of Nations", http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp#art22, last accessed June 2009 [Dibeh, 2005] : Ghassan Dibeh, "The Political Economy of PostwarReconstruction in Lebanon" (2005) [Domont/Charara, 2004] : Frédéric Domant and Walid Charara, "Le Hezbollah: Un mouvement islamo-nationaliste / Hezbollah an islamic-nationalist movement" (Paris: Fayard, 2004) [Firro, 2003] : Kais Firro, "Inventing Lebanon: nationalism and the state under the Mandate" (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003) [Israel in Maps] : Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "Israel in Maps", www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts+About+Israel/Israel+in+Maps, last accessed March 2009 [Kerr, 2005] : Michael Kerr, "Imposing Power-Sharing, Conflict and Coexistence in Northern Ireland and Lebanon" (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2005) [Khair, 2000] : Antoine Khair, "Les Communautés Religieuses au Liban, Personnes Morales de Droit Public / The religious Communities in Lebanon" (2000) [Langenscheidts, 1998] : ed. Dieter Götz, "Langenscheidts Großwörterbuch" (Munich: Langenscheidts, 1998) [Le Robert, 1992] : Alain Rey, "Le Robert" (Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1992) [Myers, 2007] : Roger Myers, "Force and Retsraint in Strategic Deterrence: a GameTheorist's Perspective" (2007) [NASA WMS Server] : Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "OnEarth Web Map Server", http://onearth.jpl.nasa.gov, last accessed May 2009 [Ramet, 2002] : Sabrina Ramet, "Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia From the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milosevic" (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002) [Salibi, 2003] : Kamal Salibi, "A House of Many Mansions" (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003) [Syria Accountability Act, 2003] : sponsored by Eliot Engel, "H.R.1828 - Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration" (2003) [Traboulsi, 2001] : Ibrahim Traboulsi, "Les Derniers Développements en Matière de Statut Personnel au Liban et en Egypte / The Last Developments on Matters of Personal Statute in Lebanon and in Egypt" (2001) [UN SG Report, 2004] : Kofi Annan, "Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to Security Council resolution 1559" (2004)

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Bibliography [UNRWA web site] : UNRWA, "Lebanon Refugee Camps Profiles", http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/lebanon.html, last accessed May 2009 [UNSC Resolution 1559, 2004] : UN Security Council, "Resolution 1559 (2004) adopted by the Security Council at its 5028th meeting, on 2 September 2004" (2004) [Wantchekon, 2000] : Leonard Wantchekon, "Credible Power-Sharing Agreements: Theory with Evidence from South Africa and Lebanon" (2000)

Maps Index

Levant region, geographical.................................................................................................16 Levant region, elevation.......................................................................................................17 Lebanon, elevation...............................................................................................................18 Phoenician and Greek trading posts between 750 and 550 BC..........................................19 Phoenicia and the Kingdom of Israel around 1000 BC........................................................20 Density of population............................................................................................................31 Maronites..............................................................................................................................33 Greek Orthodox....................................................................................................................33 Armenians............................................................................................................................34 Sunnis..................................................................................................................................34 Shias....................................................................................................................................35 Druzes..................................................................................................................................35 Poverty.................................................................................................................................36 Illiteracy................................................................................................................................36 Share of university graduates..............................................................................................37 Employment.........................................................................................................................37 Companies...........................................................................................................................38 Bigger companies................................................................................................................38 Ottoman administrative divisions in 1861............................................................................45 Lebanon fragmentation at the end of the 1980's.................................................................48 Electoral seats......................................................................................................................66 Foreign interventions during the 1990's...............................................................................83 Areas of Israel threatened by Hezbollah or Palestinian rockets..........................................87 Geographical origin and confessions of the Palestinian refugees of Lebanon...................89 Exchanges with Europe and Middle East............................................................................94 Exchanges with the world....................................................................................................95 Trade balances of the publishing industry in the Arab world...............................................95

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Pictures Index

Pictures Index

Flowers and barbed wire in Beirut (January 2007)................................................................6 Cedar in the Chouf region (September 2006)......................................................................14 Ummayad ruins in Anjar, Bekaa valley (October 2006).......................................................14 Young people chatting on the Corniche in Beirut (August 2006).........................................26 Buildings in Beirut (September 2006)..................................................................................26 Maronites attend a mass on a French navy ship evacuating them (July 2006)..................42 Anti-government demonstrations in Beirut (December 2006).............................................42 Hezbollah banner: “This is your democracy”” (Oct. 2006)...................................................52 Supporters of various opposition parties (December 2006)................................................60 Fashion advertisement in Beirut: “Elections... Do I look like I care?” (May 2009)...............60 General strike turning violent in the centre of Beirut (January 2007)..................................70 Supporters of Michel Aoun during a demonstration in Beirut (December 2006).................70 Portrait of then Syrian president Hafiz al-Assad in Beirut (August 1998)............................80 Bridge destroyed by Israeli bombs on the coastal highway (August 2006).........................80 Anti-American poster in the Bekaa valley (August 1998)....................................................92 Peaceful evening in Beirut, after a war (August 2006)......................................................102

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Abstract

Abstract

Between 2005 and 2009, Lebanon has again become a byword for instability, with a wave of assassinations and terror attacks, a war with Israel and a deep political crisis. The purpose of this master thesis is to analyse the root causes of this renewed instability and more generally to identify which factors would allow Lebanon to escape it. This analysis is developed in three stages. First, the notion of Lebanon as a nation and its perception as such are discussed in their geographical, historical and economic contexts. Then, the peculiar political system of Lebanon, based on power-sharing between numerous religious communities, is analysed using the formal tools and the methodology of the Public Choice approach. Finally, the conflicting influences of external powers on the stability of this small country of the Middle East are considered. The observations of the author when he was living in that country in 2006 and 2007 are combined here with the theories and methods he studied during his Master in International Relations at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, as well as with specialized literature about Lebanon and power-sharing in the context of violent conflicts. A mixed conclusion is being reached by this study. On the one hand, developments such as the acceptance of the necessity of a Lebanese state or the emergence of stable crosscommunitarian alliances are definitely positive with regard to stability. On the other hand, stability in Lebanon depends on the elusive settlement of the conflicts of Israel with Syria and the Palestinians, as well as on the volatile priorities of greater regional or global powers. Most of the factors determining stability which are being singled out in this thesis can be related in one way or another to the role of the militarily and politically powerful party Hezbollah. Along with the more general issue of trust between the various actors involved, the evolution of Hezbollah policies and of its place on the Lebanese political chessboard is one of the main development that should be followed in the coming years in order to assess the stabilization of Lebanon.

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