[LCM Articles] From The Economist

[Fadi P. Kanaan]

Lebanon 

Don't blink first

Jan 25th 2007 | CAIRO 
>From The Economist print edition



There have been frightening signs of a slide back to civil war





EPA


EPA


 

 

IN THE game of chicken popularised on American screens in the 1950s, the
first driver to swerve out of danger loses. For the past few months,
Lebanon's factions have faced off menacingly, revving their engines and
kicking up dust. With the elected government and its bitter opponents each
representing roughly half of Lebanon's complex polity, and with outside
powers, each with utterly different regional agendas, staunchly backing
opposite sides, neither has been willing to blink as the stakes keep rising
higher. 

 

The danger of a collision has risen steadily since the opposition pulled
ministers out of the coalition government in November, then sent protesters
to besiege the office of the prime minister, Fouad Siniora, in the centre of
Beirut, the capital. This week, frustrated by his dogged refusal to grant
them a veto-wielding share of cabinet seats, the opposition sped straight
for the government's headlights. A nationwide strike paralysed most of the
country; vigilantes blocked arterial roads and prevented most people from
going to work. In many places, pro-government mobs struck back. The violence
threatened to spread into all-out clashes of a kind not seen since the
bitter civil war of 1975-90. 

 

Adding to the anxiety, the showdown came just two days before some 30 donor
countries and agencies gathered in Paris to promise sorely needed debt
relief and more aid. Lebanon's sovereign debt tops $40 billion, a sum equal
to 180% of its GDP. Even before last summer's ruinous war with Israel added
new burdens, such as the need to rehouse some 200,000 people, just servicing
the debt ate up two-thirds of state revenues. 

 

In the event, it was the opposition, an odd coalition led by the militant
Shia group Hizbullah, that blinked. At the end of an ugly day that saw
Beirut shrouded in black smoke from burning tyres, it called off the strike.
Three people had been killed and more than 100 injured. Yet this was no
victory for Mr Siniora. He showed he cannot yet be physically ousted by mob
action, but his foes also sought to show he has lost the consent of half his
country. 

 

Lebanon is again so polarised that the day of rage seems only to have
reinforced passions. While a pro-government newspaper condemned the strike
as a "terrorist operation to take the Lebanese people hostage", opposition
leaders have grimly threatened further escalation. 

 

Both sides represent political factions and sectarian groups that are often
justified in the accusations they hurl at each other. In the opposition
view, for example, the sight of Hizbullah-hired dump trucks pouring rubble
from the war-ravaged, Shia-populated slums onto the streets of affluent,
Sunni-dominated West Beirut provided symbolic vengeance for the perceived
callousness and corruption of Mr Siniora's government. For his supporters,
however, it looked like vandalisation, both of Sunni territory and of the
shiny image of Lebanon as a haven of slick cosmopolitanism in a dour region.
Moreover, many supporters of the government blame Hizbullah for provoking
last summer's war.

 

Government ministers charge protesters with threatening to wreck Lebanon's
chances of securing debt relief. The opposition counters that it is these
same ministers who created the debt; they are answered, in turn, by the
argument that it is Hizbullah's relentless militancy that has crippled
once-hopeful efforts to leverage loans into investment. Similarly, the
government insists that its parliamentary majority gives it a right to rule,
but its opponents maintain that the 2005 vote which produced its majority
was flawed and that the resignation of Shia ministers puts the cabinet in
violation of a constitutional requirement to represent all sects. 

 

Such conundrums point up the peculiar make-up and intractability of the
opposing forces. Mr Siniora's coalition includes Druze and Christian
warlords, much of the business elite and the bulk of Sunni Muslims,
including extreme fundamentalist groups that see more menace in Shias than
in an alliance with America. Hizbullah, aligned with and armed by Syria and
Iran, and doctrinally loyal to the latter, has found allies in old-time
leftists, Arab nationalists, Syrian-backed feudal lords and the
Peronist-style Christian populists of Michel Aoun, a former general who led
a bloody and quixotic revolt against Syrian forces during the civil war. 

 

No compromise in sight

 

What is missing is a leader who might rise above the mudslinging and find
common ground. Mr Siniora has valiantly tried to stay calm under pressure
and has offered compromises just short of his opponents' maximal demands.
But he has failed to project a grand vision that would have to include, for
example, fresh elections under a fairer system. 

 

Some weary Lebanese now pin hopes on foreign mediation, with much interest
stirred by a flurry of talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the region's
main Shia and Sunni powers respectively. But a sense of disillusion is all
the more sharply felt because it is less than two years since a massive,
peaceful and joyous movement promised a better deal for all, following the
exit of Syrian troops from the country. As a bitter editorial in one Beirut
newspaper commented, regarding the current stalemate, "The contest might be
a comedy of errors were it not for the fact that it is being played out in a
glass house inhabited by real people who bleed real blood."

 

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