Sectarian Problems

This year is modern Lebanon’s 100th anniversary. What should be an auspicious occasion is instead marked by the most severe economic crisis in the country’s history. Poverty grows every day as the middle class disappears, and citizens have publicly vented their frustrations over what they see as an out of touch ruling class. Arab Gulf countries have yet to come to their aid as they have in the past, arguing that helping Lebanon helps Hezbollah, Iran’s most reliable regional proxy group. The government’s failure to deal with deteriorating social conditions has revived demands for disarming Hezbollah and reestablishing Lebanon’s neutrality. The Maronite Church is leading the drive to extricate Lebanon from the conflicts of the region, strengthen the machinery of the state, and empower the national army. Supported by the Vatican, the local representative of its Caritas humanitarian charity has warned the international community that Lebanon is rapidly disintegrating.

Solutions to these kinds of problems are often elusive for a country as complex as Lebanon. Its founding fathers understood the complexity of the country’s sectarian divisions, and how those divisions were made worse by centuries of isolation in mountain sanctuaries that separated most Christians, Shiites and Druze from the Sunnis on the coast. The Sunnis identified with the Ottoman Empire, the Maronites looked up to France, and the Druze sought protection from Great Britain. The Shiites had no recourse from their neglect or abuse but to await their messiah. So in 1943, the president and the prime minister – a Maronite and a Sunni – agreed on a national covenant to share power between their two sects, to the detriment of others, and to declare Lebanon’s neutrality in regional and international affairs. Yet Lebanon would later join the Arab League, thanks in no small part to pressure from the British, and participate in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, albeit reluctantly as a way to appease its pan-Arab Sunnis.

In the 1950s, Lebanon found itself immersed in the Arab Cold War. Backed by many Christians, President Camille Shamun sided with the Hashemites in Iraq and Jordan, who advanced the British-proposed Baghdad Pact to complete the containment of the Soviet Union. Muslims led by Sunnis stood by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who denounced the Hashemites and advocated Arab unity, especially after Egypt and Syria merged to establish the United Arab Republic (1958-1961). The Iraqi military coup in 1958 toppled the monarchy and ended the Baghdad Pact project. Within two months after the U.S. Army and Marines landed on the beaches of Lebanon, a U.S. presidential envoy reached an agreement with Nasser to replace Shamun with Fuad Shihab, the head of the Lebanese army. Under Shihab, Lebanon became neutral again, and Beirut reined in the country’s sectarian rivalries.

But sectarianism is difficult to suppress entirely. In January 1964, at a summit in Cairo (that Shihab did not attend), a decision was made to divert the Jordan River’s tributaries that included Lebanon’s Hasbani River and to establish the Palestine Liberation Organisation with a military wing. Shihab and his successor, Charles Helou, opposed the diversion plan. They also opposed the stationing of Syrian troops in Lebanon to protect the diversion site and the establishment of armed Palestinian bases in the country. Lebanese Muslims criticised the government for failing to cooperate on issues of ideological importance to them. The rise of the Fateh Movement in 1965 and its use of Lebanese territory to stage attacks on northern Israel invited Israeli retaliation and a Lebanese army crackdown. The Arab defeat in the Six-Day War emboldened and legitimised guerrilla attacks from Fateh, and created a lot of resentment, not to mention an opposition to entangling Lebanon in foreign affairs, among the nation’s Christians.

The sectarian standoff prevented the army from halting the spread of Palestinian guerrillas as new movements supported by rival Arab countries appeared on the scene. In November 1969, the Lebanese government gave in to Egyptian pressure and signed the Cairo Agreement with Yasser Arafat, the head of the PLO. The agreement that gave the Palestinians a free hand in south Lebanon aggravated sectarian tensions, precipitated the 1975 civil war and paved the way for the Israeli invasion in June 1982.

The Rise of Hezbollah

The 1982 Lebanon War drove the PLO out of the country but replaced it with Iran. Syrian President Hafez Assad worried that he would lose his influence in Lebanon to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but he didn’t want to alienate his allies in Tehran during their war with Iraq either, so he allowed a token and minimally armed IRGC force to enter Lebanon. Instead of heading to the battlefield in southern Lebanon, the Iranians established themselves among the poor and neglected Shiites in Baalbek in the northern Beqaa Valley.

Masquerading as the Islamic Jihad Movement, Iran used indoctrinated Lebanese Shiites to hijack Western nationals in Lebanon, attack the U.S. Marines and French military headquarters in Beirut on Oct. 23, 1983, and expel the Lebanese army from Shiite areas. In 1985, Hezbollah made its formal debut immediately after Israel Defense Forces withdrew from Greater Sidon in the south. Its new mission was to supplant secular Lebanese guerrilla operations against the Israelis and their surrogates in the South Lebanon Army. By 1987, Hezbollah monopolised the anti-Israel resistance and renamed it the Islamic resistance. Meanwhile, Iran presented itself as the sole defender of the Palestinian people after the Arab states abandoned them and used its new credentials to justify inserting itself into Lebanon (and elsewhere).

When the 1989 Taif Agreement ended the civil war, Syria used its influence to allow Hezbollah to remain armed. Hezbollah distanced itself from the Lebanese troika (Maronite, Sunni and Shiite) that ruled Lebanon from 1989 until the collapse of Saad Hariri’s Cabinet in October 2019. While successive governments busied themselves preying on public funds, ruining the economy, and creating an unprecedented financial crisis, Hezbollah had other concerns. With decisive Iranian support, it controlled the joints of the Lebanese political system and built a powerful military apparatus that dwarfed the national army. It spread the scope of its military, terrorist and unconventional economic activity far beyond Lebanon. Tehran benefited from the destruction of Iraq and Syria, the neutralisation of Egypt, the inability of Saudi Arabia to become a regional power, and official Arab insistence on keeping Turkey at bay. Despite gruelling sanctions, Iran rose to become a significant Middle Eastern player with veto powers, with its Hezbollah ally a predominant force in Lebanon.

Lebanon’s fractured society rules out its political system’s ability to make consequential decisions, let alone enforce them. France created Lebanon in 1920 against the national aspirations of Muslims who wanted to merge with Syria, and Britain pressured France to grant it independence in 1943. U.S. and Egyptian cooperation ended its civil war in 1958, and the Arab League played a crucial role in ending the 1975-1989 civil war and in reaching the Saudisponsored Taif Agreement. Iran and Syria imposed Hezbollah on Lebanon until it grew into something uncontainable.

The U.S. and Arab Gulf states know that the Lebanese government cannot rein in Hezbollah. The government can’t introduce measures to stem the tide of economic collapse. Its apathy has infuriated the French foreign minister, who castigated Beirut for doing nothing to tackle the financial problem that put more than 80 percent of the population below the poverty line while expecting the outside world to come to the rescue. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin demanded that the Lebanese government close down Hezbollah’s missile manufacturing plants and warned of severe repercussions if it failed to act. But his threat rings hollow.

The First Lebanese Republic (1943-1975) collapsed because of social injustice and armed Palestinian presence. The Second Republic (1989-2019) collapsed because of rampant corruption and Hezbollah’s political domination. The Third Republic is on hold pending the fate of Hezbollah and restructuring of the Lebanese political system. For the past century, the Lebanese demonstrated an inability to solve their problems. It does not look like they have become more capable today. Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt believes there is a major international struggle for the Middle East, and Lebanon lies beyond the ability of the Lebanese people to control. He advised his coreligionists to keep their heads low until the storm is over.

Hilal Khashan is a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut, author and analyst of Middle Eastern affairs. https://geopoliticalfutures.com