[LCM Articles] Fill that vacuum (From The Economist print edition, Mar 23rd 2005)

[Walid Georges Chamoun]

Lebanon

Fill that vacuum

Mar 23rd 2005 | BEIRUT
>From The Economist print edition


As nerves fray, could the Arab world's first female prime minister emerge?
            AFP 
     
     
      Might Bahia Hariri be called to the top?
     
YOUNG Beirutis bobbed on with the bamba at their fanciest nightclub, the Music Hall, as text messages relayed news on March 18th of the country's first car-bomb since the one that blew up their former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, last month. But behind the bravado lurks fear that the party may be turning sour. Five days later, another bombing in a Christian area north of Beirut killed two people, further raising sectarian tension. Mr Hariri's greatest legacy-the bustling complex of shopping colonnades that was once Beirut's war-battered centre-is again a nervous no man's land. 

The opposition, which wants Syria to let go of its hold over Lebanon, is still able to put on a good street party, papering over the country's differences. Christians who once castigated Mr Hariri for Islamising the country by building a massive mosque with minarets soaring above the churches downtown dutifully hang his photograph from their balconies. Young anti-Syrian activists in their tent city, put up to keep vigil by Mr Hariri's shrine in Martyrs' Square, have acquired friendships and even lovers across the sectarian divide. Where demonstrations elsewhere in the Arab world are guided by men with beards, in Beirut the front lines are still being manned by fashion queens with Pekinese dogs wrapped in Lebanon's flag, along with suave bankers accompanied by Sri Lankan maids. 


But Lebanon is now counting the costs of the stand-off with Syria, which has taken half of its occupying army back home and withdrawn the rest to the Bekaa valley in the east. The legion of Syrian construction workers, who rebuilt Beirut, have taken flight in fear of reprisals. Heineken has suspended plans to open a brewery; a flock of cranes stand stationary over the city. The city municipality is advertising for hundreds of rubbish collectors. Jobless Lebanese are keenly awaiting the day when an independent government will impose work visas on Syrian migrants they accuse of stealing their jobs. 

But Central Bank economists say the exodus of migrant workers will push up salaries (since Syrian labourers worked for $6 a day, whereas most Lebanese expect $18), spike inflation and cut profits. An injection of Kuwaiti and Saudi capital has so far matched the flight of Syrian capital, but bankers fear that angry rulers in Damascus may block Lebanon's trade routes to the Arab world. "If the gains are lost, the euphoria will be baseless," says one. 

In any event, the street protests have brought down a government but left a political vacuum. Lebanon remains a tinderbox of sectarian rivalries, making regime change a complex business. The opposition is an uneasy alliance of sects, led by warlords jostling for position. Christian leaders suspect that Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader, is working the Lebanese crowd and world opinion for his own political ends. When he spoke of winds of regional change blowing west from Iraq, he may genuinely have seen a democratic light. But many Lebanese think that Mr Jumblatt, a lifelong "anti-imperialist" who lambasted America's invasion of Iraq, was singing from Washington's hymn sheet just to win President Bush's backing. 

So Christian Maronite leaders, including their patriarch, have rallied to prevent the Druze leader anointing his own man as president, a post the constitution allots to one of their own, even though uneasy about the continuing rule of their co-religionist, President Emile Lahoud, who is seen as a stooge of his Syrian counterpart, Bashir Assad. "That guy [Mr Jumblatt] waged war for 15 years against the Maronites," says an aide of the patriarch. "We don't want to see a Maronite president thrown to the wolves like a piece of meat."

Sniffing a chance to divide the opposition, Mr Lahoud's remaining men are fanning sectarian flames. "If they keep on pushing internationally and domestically, it will blow up into a civil war," says a presidential official. Though Mr Lahoud can no longer count on the army, which has already disobeyed orders to crush the demonstrators, his security chiefs are continuing their reign. 

Lebanon is exhausted by war, but the ingredients for violence are still very much there. While the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Islamist movement, Hizbullah, is Lebanon's best-armed militia, all the old warlords still have their private ports, through which they can rush arms into Lebanon within hours. 

So far all the country's religious leaders have sought to restrain ambitious sectarian politicians, but the opposition sorely needs a unifying figure. Mr Hariri's sister Bahia, an MP, has impressed with her moderation, courage and non-sectarian embrace. While some of the best-known opposition figures, such as Mr Jumblatt and the Maronite leader, Amin Gemayel, have retreated to their strongholds in apparent fear for their lives, Ms Hariri calmed the crowds from the podium in Martyrs' Square. She hurried to comfort New Jdeideh, a Christian suburb in Beirut hit by last week's bomb. And she has reached out to the restless followers of Hizbullah.

If she were made prime minister, it would hardly reduce the blight of nepotism. But it would at least give all Lebanon's communities a respected prime minister to fill the vacuum and the modern Arab world its first female leader. That really would mark a break.
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