All quiet on the Lebanese front – for now

Naomi Conrad, Beirut.   4th February 2011

"Sorry, but Lebanon just off our radar right now", was the response of the German newspaper’s Middle East editor to a piece I sent in. "It's all Egypt now." Everyone is watching Egypt it seems, particularly here in Lebanon. A journalist, the political editor of An-Nahar newspaper, showed me the last few copies of the newspaper. “Look, all the cover stories are about Egypt, not even Lebanon is interested in Lebanon any more.” Pictures of Tahiri Square and protestors covered in blood made up the front pages, Lebanon’s own political turmoil pushed to page 2 or 3.  “I am afraid that Egypt will slide into chaos, a second Iraq is in the making: the country has no viable opposition with democratic experience that can take over.” He doubts this would affect Lebanon directly, given that Egypt is relatively far, both in geographical and political terms. “But this may have consequences for Syria and Iran.” And Syria and Iran, of course as well as the United States, are important players in Lebanon’s political game, which has currently reached a stalemate.

A stalemate that is, however, at the moment being played out within the democratic confines of alliance brokering and peaceful street protests. Things may, however, change: the opposition is planning mass demonstrations on Valentine’s Day, the day that former prime minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated. By whom, no one officially knows. But it is general knowledge that the international tribunal set up after his death is likely to implicate Hezbollah and maybe its close ally Syria too. His son, Saad Hariri’s government was toppled two weeks ago, when Hezbollah’s candidates resigned en masse. A deal brokered by Saudi Arabia and Syria would have prevented the indictment from being published, but Hariri pulled out last minute (speculation is rife why, many think it may have been US pressure) – and Hezbollah walked out, possibly with Iranian and Syrian backing. However, according to the journalist, Syria has now taken a back seat, giving the new Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who is trying to assemble a Cabinet, the flexibility to decide what to do vis-à-vis the Tribunal. That is, whether to keep it going as the Hariri’s block wants or cut all ties – favoured, no big surprise, by Hezbollah et al. 

But: “That is an almost unheard of development”, the journalist said. “It’s part of the Syrian reform package to appease possible discontent – it’s easier to start with Lebanon, than in Damascus.” Although it is unlikely that Lebanon will be left to figure out its domestic politics by its self: After all Lebanon is all about Israel, Iran needing a powerful ally in Hezbollah to counterbalance Israel’s hegemony and the US supporting, as usual, Israel, the journalist added.

In Tripoli, where two weeks ago demonstrations turned violent with protestors throwing stones, looting newly nominated Najib Mikati’s offices and torching a car belonging to Al Jazeera, things were quiet last Saturday. A small group of mostly women and children wandered along the main roads waving flags, some two, maybe three hundred people.  Even though the organiser of the protests put on a brave face, he had to admit that he had expected more people. “But just wait till the fourteenth. Hundred thousand protestors will join the march.” Coming from the organiser who had just claimed that the demonstration had been attended by “at least a thousand protestors”, one was inclined to take this with a pinch of salt.

A middle-aged woman wearing light blue and white headscarf, the colour of Hariri’s Future Movement, joined us. “We have to protest, otherwise they will turn this country into a second Iran.” They, meaning Hezbollah. Most other people in Tripoli seemed less concerned about which Sunni was Prime Minister – according to the Constitution the PM has to be Sunni, the speaker of Parliament Shia and the President Christian  - and more about the lack of tourists and economic growth.

One of Hariri’s Future Movement’s Christian allies, the Phalangist Party, has already pulled out of the dwindling daily protests in Beirut. One of the leaders was however outraged when I made a joke about them being turncoats: “No, we are just waiting to see what the new Cabinet decides. We will give them a change and then decide whether to protest.” Or join the government, he might have added. – Lebanon’s political alliances seem to be very short-lived, which makes getting a grasp of the political landscape extremely difficult.

Far from mass protests, it was a small, dejected group of protestors that gathered outside Rafik Hariri’s mosque on martyrs’ on Thursday evening, waving flags in the evening drizzle, which disappeared quite quickly, while several army lorries' worth of soldiers looked on, bemused and the evening rush-hour traffic rushed past. No one seemed particularly concerned. One thing you learn quite quickly in Lebanon is to judge the state of the country by its traffic. When Beirut's streets are full of decrepit service (shared taxis) beeping their horns at everyone wandering along the pavement, expensive four by fours swerving round corners narrowly missing old men selling lottery tickets and stylish women with shopping bags and small mini busses heading South to Southern Beirut, Dayhie, Hezbollah’s stronghold.

Which is where I headed on Monday. After weeks of diligently calling Hezbollah’s press officer every second day, only to be told that: “No, I am terribly sorry, but we’ve still got a blanket ban on giving interviews”, I had finally managed to get an off-the-record interview with a leader of Hezbollah’s youth movement. We met in the movement’s head quarters in the centre of Dahiye – a world apart from Central Beirut’s Westernised cafes full of students with their Macbooks, their chat flitting in and out of Arabic and American English. I was asked to take a seat on one of the pink flowery sofas and, as in every interview I have had so far, offered coffee (although sometimes it’s tea: coffee with Muslims, teas with Christians, I think is the rule).  In came Youssef, an eloquent and elegant maths teacher in his late 30s, wearing expensive jeans and a sweater and shirt (he himself pointed that one out: “we do enjoy luxury you know, I told an American once, my jeans cost about 500 dollars, yours probably 20, he was surprised”), who half-bowed rather than shake my hand.

We talked about his childhood under Israeli occupation, the constant fear of attacks, his parents having to rebuild their house three times: “You understand, when your house is being attacked, you defend it, no matter what”. And, he maintained, Israel was ready to strike, just waiting for an excuse. – This is a fear I have heard from both sides, the fear that Israel is waiting for an excuse to attack again and make up for its military defeat in 2006. He didn’t want to tell me about the training, military or otherwise, he had gone through. But Youssef, who is just finishing his Masters thesis on US humanitarian intervention – or rather as he put it “so called humanitarian intervention”  - would, if given the chance, study in the West, albeit not America. “You must understand, the West has some very good aspects too: its education system, its social mobilisation.”

He seemed to have genuine respect for some aspects of the West, and made a point of having to differentiate between peoples and their leaders. However, when it came to Israel he was intransigent and unable to make that differentiation. “No, Israel has to leave. Jews, the Arab Jews (i.e. the ones that were there before mass migration to Israel) can stay, the others have to leave.” Only then could Hezbollah, inchallah, disarm. And no, (I guess I was asking all the typical Western questions...) Hezbollah was not trying to turn Lebanon into a second Iran: “We respect democracy, this is a country with eighteen sects, of course we cannot ignore the other parties.” And then we got into a disagreement about the Holocaust. In the end we agreed to disagree. Or at least I did, he seemed amused. "Why do all the Westerners refuse to talk about the Holocaust?" I decided, to keep in Hezbollah’s good books, not to push my point and ask him about Hezbollah’s social programmes in the South instead.

Two hours later I left his office, wandering along a bustling street, past a shop selling falafel, another one selling Qurans and pictures of Mecca, women in headscarves, a couple without, a few cafes along the main road, Iranian Ayatolla Khomeini and Hezbollah’s leader Nasrallah united on banners and posters, as well as the occasional martyr. “What were you doing in Dahyie?”, the mini bus driver asked. “Erm, interviewing Hezbollah.” He was delighted: “Ah, Hezbollah is good.” We established after quite a while, my Arabic still being less than basic, that he was a member (or at least supporter, I don’t know, my sign language only goes that far) of Hezbollah too. All the mini busses, in fact, are operated by Hezbollah, it seems, another power sharing deal, where Rafik Hariri’s supporters got the modern buses driving round Central Beirut and Hezbollah got the mini vans, a Sunni friend told me. We had a cheerful conversation about the merits of Hezbollah, about the Western media’s biased perception about Hezbollah (at least I think that’s the point he was trying to get across) until – after a long detour from his normal route - he dropped me off in the City Centre and wouldn’t let me pay. We both agreed that, inchallah, things would stay calm in Lebanon and I got off the bus. Although you never know, just as the traffic re-emerges after the storm, this may just be the calm before the next storm. Or maybe Lebanese politicians are watching Egypt’s protests and making their own conclusions.

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Naomi Conrad
Free-lance journalist and researcher
MPhil Latin American Studies (Oxford)