Rallying
Around the Renegade
Heiko Wimmen
August 27,
2007
(Heiko Wimmen
is a program manager for the Middle East office of the Heinrich
Böll Foundation, a German organization supporting civil society
and social movements around the world.)
Back in the
fall of 2006, student elections at the American University of
Beirut produced an unexpected aesthetic: female campaigners for
the predominantly Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) of
the ex-general Michel Aoun sporting button-sized portraits of
bearded Hizballah leader Hasan Nasrallah on their stylish attire.
“Hizballah stands for the unity and independence of Lebanon,
just as we do,” went the party line, as reiterated by Laure,
an activist business student clad in the movement’s trademark
orange. “And imagine, the Shi‘a and us,” she mused, off-script
and with a glance at her co-campaigners, covered head to toe
in the black gowns of the staunchly Islamist party, but spiced
up with bright orange ribbons for the occasion. “How many we
will be.”
Just how many
became clear soon enough, when Aoun joined Hizballah’s attempt
to bring down the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora through
public pressure later that year. While actual numbers are notoriously
hard to come by,[1] the
two main rallies held on December 1 and 10 clearly rivaled the
demonstration that brought about the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon
18 months before. Followers of Aoun, who stand out in their blazing
orange gear, accounted for an apparent third of the masses. Once
again, predictions that Aoun’s alliance with the “Party of God”
would dispel his support in the Christian community were proven
wrong.
RETURN OF
THE RENEGADE
Throughout
his political career, Michel Aoun’s bold maneuvering, boisterous,
often ranting discourse and utter disregard for the complex rules
and false niceties of the Lebanese political scene have made
him one of the most divisive figures therein. To his admirers,
he is the strong leader who can rise above the fray of perennial
internecine conflict, clear out a divided and despised political
class bent on the pursuit of factional and personal interest,
and achieve longed-for, but ever elusive national unity. Likewise,
Aoun has earned himself the intense loathing (even by Lebanese
standards) of the members of exactly this political class (and
their followers). Rather than a champion of secularist nationalism,
they consider Aoun to be an irresponsible rabble rouser who threatens
to upset the delicate balance of sectarian power sharing, and
his calls for reform and a shakeup of public institutions to
be thinly veiled Bonapartism. Aoun’s loud populism is seen as
not only gauche but also a challenge to the country’s Byzantine
political game, whereby decisions and distributions of spoils
are supposed to be worked out behind impenetrable smokescreens
of lofty principles and diplomatic cant. For the Christian part
of this political class, he is also an upstart trespassing on
territory that is rightfully theirs. “To his supporters,” as
one journalist sums it up, “he is a Lebanese Charles de Gaulle
seeking to unite this fractious country and rebuild trust in
its institutions. To his critics he is a divisive megalomaniac
willing to stop at nothing to become president of Lebanon.”[2]
Another constant
feature of Aoun’s volatile career is the persistence with which
his popular support has bounced back every time his opponents
have declared it spent. In 2005, after 15 years in exile, most
observers and competitors considered the retired general, then
70, a figure of the past.[3] His
announced intention to descend upon Lebanese politics like a
“tsunami” was widely derided as being not only in bad taste (coming,
as it did, only a few months after the disastrous tsunami in
the Indian Ocean), but the delusion of an empire builder who
had missed his moment. Already in the 1980s, Aoun’s assertive
posture, in contrast to his physical stature, had led wags to
give him the nickname “NapolAoun.”
The returned
exile was taken lightly in the lead-up to the May-June 2005 parliamentary
elections that followed the collapse of the pro-Syrian government
and the departure of Syrian troops. In the absence of real political
parties -- most parties restrict their activities to organizing
support for their powerful, sect-based leader and the field of
candidates riding on his ticket -- Lebanese election campaigns
are typically dominated by complex bargaining over joined lists
and alliances between these confessional chieftains. Expediency
is often the only glue keeping such alliances stuck together,
though often not far beyond election day. Within the bargaining,
the number of “safe” slots offered to a potential ally on a joined
list usually reflects his expected electoral strength, or the
number of votes that he would be able to mobilize in support
of the joined list. During the traditional bazaar in 2005, Aoun
was offered a meager seven to eight seats at best in return for
joining the unified opposition list. He refused, causing the
first major rift in the broad “Syria out!” alliance.
Riding on
the wave of mass gatherings peaking with the demonstration of
March 14, 2005 -- the date which would provide the name for Lebanon’s
current governing coalition -- the alliance forged between Druze
leader Walid Jumblatt, the son of the slain former prime minister
Rafiq al-Hariri, Saad, and an array of anti-Syrian Christian
politicians was confident of winning a parliamentary majority,
or even the two thirds of parliamentary seats necessary to impeach
President Emile Lahoud,[4] the most stubborn pupil of Syrian tutelage in
the country. The March 14 forces even struck a deal with the
Shi‘i parties Hizballah and Amal, who had just expressed their
gratitude to Syria with a huge demonstration of their own, hoping
that Shi‘i votes would tip the balance in enough districts to
achieve the coveted two-thirds majority.
Reality intruded
during the elections in Mount Lebanon on June 12, when Aoun’s
slate of no-names trounced the united opposition list in the
Christian heartlands, winning 21 seats and leaving the opposition
with only a modest majority (72 out of 128) in the new parliament.
To the surprise of everyone, it emerged that a significant majority
of the Lebanon’s Christians, and a good percentage of those who
had taken to the streets to fight for independence and a Syrian
withdrawal only two months before, were actually supporters of
Michel Aoun.[5] “Countrywide,
Michel Aoun garnered around 42 percent of the Christian vote
in 2005,” says Lebanese pollster Abdo Saad. “In some parts of
the Christian mountains, that percentage would reach above 70.”
Counting political allies in the north and the Bekaa Valley,
some two thirds of Lebanon’s Christians were rallying under the
orange banners of the renegade general.
PULLING THE
LION’S TAIL
One major
reason for Aoun’s recurrent mass appeal doubtless lies in his
long-standing anti-Syrian credentials. The military resistance
he mounted in 1989-1990 to the Saudi-sponsored and US-approved
Pax Syriana intended to tamp down the Lebanese civil war turned
out to be a costly failure. Yet his warnings against welcoming
Syrian involvement in the country were soon enough proven correct.
Among Christians, in particular, resentment festered throughout
the 1990s over the arbitrary and parasitic reign of the Syrian
secret services and their Lebanese stooges. But after the disbanding
of the Lebanese Forces, the strongest Christian militia-cum-party
during the late 1980s, there were no political structures to
organize and feed on this resentment. Aoun did not leave behind
a party either when he fled the country, but he did inspire an
amorphous movement of mainly young followers. Galvanized by his
hyperbolic Lebanese nationalism and his bold confrontation with
the feared Syrian regime and the loathed militias, these supporters
(with many Muslims among them) eventually imagined the general
as a national redeemer, and flocked to the presidential palace
by the thousands in late 1989, in order to form a “human shield”
against an expected Syrian attack.
After Aoun’s
defeat, his backers returned to their universities, from whence
they continued political action against the Syrian presence in
impromptu networks. While sometimes quixotic or even chauvinist
in character -- as with their harassment of migrant Syrian workers
and greengrocers -- the Aounists won a reputation of standing
tall in the face of the relentless repression of Syrian-controlled
government forces and thugs. When the Pax Syriana started to
crumble after Hafiz al-Asad’s death in 2000, their university-based
networks already stretched into the fourth post-civil war cohort,
while many of the activists who had congregated around the presidential
palace in 1989 were now urban professionals, often working in
communications and the media. Thus, when the time came for action
in early 2005, the Aounists were able to field a uniquely effective
crowd: experienced in spontaneous, decentralized political action
under adverse conditions, media-savvy and endowed with a Westernized
veneer that would capture the sympathy of an international audience.
Says Khalil, an information technology engineer in his late twenties:
“I got involved through friends from the university, who were
on these electronic networks. Yes, we wanted to get rid of the
Syrians -- that was our goal, and back then, [the Internet] was
the only place where you could say that. So that’s where I felt
I belonged, and when word was spread that action was supposed
to take place here or there, I would go. But I’d never think
of becoming a member of a political party.”
While this
anti-political, or rather, anti-Establishment, posture found
among many Lebanese who grew up during the last years of the
civil war resonates with Aoun’s hostile relationship with many
Lebanese politicians, some 40,000 Lebanese -- nearly 70 percent
of them below the age of 30 -- have decided otherwise, and become
card-carrying FPM members through a registration process initiated
in late 2006, after the movement officially converted itself
into a political party. “All these young people who took to the
streets back in 2005 learned one very important thing,” says
Sami Ofeish, a political scientist at the University of Balamand
in the north of Lebanon. “Politics to them is no longer something
that happens on a different planet. They had the experience that
if they take action, they can actually make things happen. So
one would expect that this generation would develop an attitude
very different from that of the preceding years.”
“It was one
of the most moving days of my life,” recalls Alain Aoun, the
general’s nephew and one of the major party activists, over a
cup of coffee in the trendy Christian neighborhood of Gemayzeh.
“It showed that Lebanese can come together over an issue, and
forget about religion and sects for the sake of the country.
That was a very emotional experience.” Switching to the more
recent demonstrations mobilized in alliance with Hizballah, his
assessment turns significantly more sober: “These rallies prove
that if you have leaders who make a conscious effort to find
common ground, their followers will be able to meet, even if
they have never talked before. Yes, we are very different, culturally,
socially -- but those are also people who live in this country.
They are one third of the population, and we have to live with
them. As long as difference causes offense, this country won’t
get anywhere. So this also was a step ahead.”
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
Beyond such
heady arguments in favor of a more inclusive society, one central
motive for Aoun’s move toward Hizballah in early 2006 undoubtedly
lay in the consistent attempts of the March 14 coalition to freeze
the FPM out of the political process even after it emerged as
the strongest player in the Christian camp. Just why an alliance
that ostensibly saw Syrian influence as the paramount threat
to Lebanese sovereignty made no serious effort to coopt such
a staunchly anti-Syrian, Lebanese-nationalist partner, and instead
formed a government including Hizballah and Amal, who made no
secret of their continuing strategic partnership with Damascus,
remains something of a mystery. While some may have entertained
the optimistic (and, in hindsight, delusional) idea that involving
Hizballah in government offered a chance of containing or even
redirecting its resistance activity,[6] the difficulty of removing the remaining vestiges of Syrian
influence while coopting Syrian allies soon became clear enough.
No two-thirds majority materialized to impeach President Lahoud
(despite the fact that the parties now making up the government
controlled more than four fifths of Parliament), and when the
majority pushed for the establishment of an international tribunal
to try the assassins of Rafiq al-Hariri (presumably including
people high up in the Syrian regime) in late 2005, the Shi‘i
ministers responded with a six-week walkout prefiguring the current
government crisis.
So what stood
in the way of including Aoun instead, a move that would have
provided the new government with the support of 93 MPs with no
pro-Syrian leanings, well in excess of the desired two-thirds
majority? For one thing, it was clear that the FPM would only
support an impeachment motion against Lahoud if the name of the
one and only candidate to replace the sitting president would
be Michel Aoun -- meaning that, rather than filling the position
with a compliant nominee of their own, the majority would have
had to deal with an independent player with significant popular
support. “For all of their anti-Syrian rhetoric, Hariri and Jumblatt
preferred to leave Asad’s man in the presidency rather than bow
to the wishes of nearly three quarters of the Christian electorate
and accept Aoun’s ascension,” concludes Gary Gambill, a seasoned
Lebanon analyst with obvious sympathy for the general.[7]
But even without
ascension to the presidency, assuming a key government portfolio
would have finally allowed Aoun to rid himself of his greatest
handicap: the image of erratic brinkmanship he acquired during
the war and, in the minds of his opponents, retains (witness
his alliance with Hizballah and formerly pro-Syrian politicians).
Newly endowed with “stateman-ish” respectability and official
leverage and commanding the majority of the Christian popular
vote, Aoun would almost certainly have been able to erode the
position of his opponents in the Christian camp even further.
HOSTILE BROTHERS
IN FAITH
The long-standing
mutual antipathy between Michel Aoun and the traditional Christian
leadership may have been a key reason why the ruling coalition
shunned the FPM. Many observers attribute this animosity to unsettled
accounts, in particular between Aoun and the leader of the Lebanese
Forces, Samir Geagea, the two of whom fought a devastating war
in 1989. Both men and their followers, so the argument goes,
are still fighting the battles of the past. Considering that
in Lebanon not only political office but also political and party
allegiance are often hereditary (even in supposedly ideological
currents like the Communist Party), such hypotheses seem to make
sense at first glance. But they still fail to explain how Aoun’s
party was able to wrest such a significant amount of support
away from the traditional Christian leadership, represented first
and foremost by the Gemayel family, whose scions Bashir and Amin
were both presidents of Lebanon. In the 2005 elections, Pierre
Gemayel (assassinated in November 2006) scored only 29,412 votes
on his family’s home turf, compared to 48,872 for the least successful
Aounist candidate, and was only elected to Parliament because
the FPM list left one Maronite slot free.
One reason
may be the continuous decline of the traditional Christian leadership
in the second half of the 1980s, after the assassination of Bashir
Gemayel removed the one figure capable of maintaining the precarious
alliance between Lebanon’s powerful Christian bourgeoisie (of
all denominations) and the increasingly militant Christian lower
middle class (mainly Maronite) by means of personal charisma.
With his brother Amin increasingly sidelined by the ruthless
militia-based leadership of Samir Geagea, and the political project
of a Christian-dominated Lebanon under US and Israeli auspices
falling apart, more and more Christians despaired of their future
in the country. Large-scale displacement of Christians in the
mid-1980s (wrought to a great extent by Geagea’s ill-conceived
military adventures in the southern parts of Mount Lebanon) also
meant that parochial means of mobilizing support would reach
fewer and fewer people. The displaced, on the other hand, would
either be hell-bent on revenge and join or support the militia,
or would turn their resentment against a leadership that had
failed them, and become susceptible to the discourses of national
redemption that Aoun successfully projected.
“The FPM fared
best where there was no locally based Christian leadership,”
observes pollster Abdo Saad of the 2005 elections. “Political
families like the Gemayels in Matn or the Franjiyyas in the northern
province can still hold some ground since they traditionally
represent the area. But where people vote for a political program
rather than for a political tradition, the FPM swept the Christian
constituencies with next to no resistance.”
Preliminary
research into the social composition of the FPM and the Lebanese
Forces also suggests that class is a defining difference between
the groupings in the Christian camp, adding a dynamic to their
frequent clashes. The French geographer and anthropologist Beltram
Dumontier, who has conducted fieldwork in the Beirut suburb of
‘Ayn al-Rummana, describes the two groups this way: “Youths who
do not pursue a university education will often be either unemployed
or doing menial jobs. So their social networks, as well as their
financial situation, are conducive to making hanging out in the
streets of their quarters their main pastime and mode of socializing.
And so they get involved in a very male subculture of street
life, prone to violence, centered on the idea of ‘defending the
quarter,’ and this is how the foot soldiers of the Lebanese Forces
are recruited. On the contrary, those who do advance in the educational
system spend most of their time away from the neighborhood. Their
environment of political socialization is the university, where
they meet people from other areas or communities on an equal
footing, and where political action will tend to be around more
complex issues. I have encountered more than one family where
one brother was with the Aounists and the other with the Lebanese
Forces, and always the political preference corresponded to education.”
STRUGGLE FOR
THE STATE
The profile
of a comparatively well-educated and upwardly mobile following,
which hence shows a strong preference for meritocracy, sits well
with the perennial spiel of the FPM: attacking corruption, and
arguing for a strong and efficient state. In contrast to the
authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Syria, the corruption and
clientelism in Lebanon are actually results of a weak state.
Power traditionally resides with an alliance of ruling families
who divvy up the state and its prerogatives among one another
according to the relative balance of power, and obtain loyalty
by redistributing parts of the proceeds among their constituencies.
Conventionally, this arrangement is of course described as a
“national pact” between religious communities designed to enable
coexistence and protect minorities from marginalization. But
while Lebanese politicians are always concerned to be seen as
vigilant guardians of communal interests, they typically have
no problem joining ranks with representatives of other confessions
to marginalize their co-religionists. Even long-time foes will
suspend their differences as soon as any serious attempt is made
to shore up the independence of the state, and join ranks to
ward off any such challenge to the order of things. The system
is also open to newcomers empowered by political and/or macro-economic
change, for instance, Amal leader Nabih Berri, propelled into
prominence by Syrian backing in the 1980s or Rafiq al-Hariri,
elevated by petrodollars and Saudi patronage in the 1990s. Such
newcomers may push out some of the traditional players, but are
usually careful to preserve the rules of the game.
Politicians
speaking about the national interest, the constitutional process
or the integrity of institutions are rarely doing more than paying
lip service, and are typically using these concepts as weapons
in the eternal struggle for more influence and positions, which
can then be used to twist the rules of the game even more in
one’s favor, so as to dole out even more government favors to
one’s followers. A classic example is the paving of roads in
rural areas in election years, expected to translate into votes
for the candidate whose “influence” in the capital supposedly
enabled him to “secure” such services, and to discourage votes
for less well-connected challengers. Politicians of this type
are referred to as “asphalt MPs” in local vernacular, a play
on the double meaning of the Arabic word for asphalt (zift),
which also means “dirt” or “crap.”
“When my son
left high school, there was an opening for some 200 recruits
in General Security,” recalls a Sunni from Beirut. “We found
out that some 70 would go to Sunnis. And to get one of those,
you needed to go to Rafiq al-Hariri. It was as simple as that:
Sunni jobs are distributed by the strongest Sunni leader. So
we used a contact to a person very close to Hariri, and things
worked out. After that, we all became his followers. Because
if he doesn’t care for us, then nobody else will.” In Lebanon,
everybody knows at least ten stories of this category, and while
contempt for the politicians involved is universal, so is the
urge not to be left behind in the scramble for the spoils. Yet
Alain Aoun is determined that the rules of the games must be
changed: “Until now, the logic is: I take office, so now it is
my turn to steal and patronize my people. We need to break this
cycle. A few honest guys on the top level can make a hell of
a difference, and send a message down through the ranks.”
The most capable
and honest guy to initiate this process, one infers, will be
nobody but the general himself. Drawing on his personal history
as a career officer who rose up from poverty due to diligence
and integrity (Aoun famously had to skip a year of high school
due to lack of funds and made up for it by squeezing the curriculum
of two years into one), Michel Aoun is presented as an unlikely
Hercules uniquely qualified to clean out the Augean stable of
Lebanese politics.
That might
be easier said than done, agrees his nephew, after weathering
several cell phone calls from party affiliates trying to arrange
for jobs at Orange TV, a new Arabic-language TV station set up
by the FPM. “See, this guy who just called wants me to hire a
girl who has a degree in theater and no experience in TV. I have
no problem to arrange an interview for her, but that’s not what
he expects from me. He doesn’t want me to give her a fair chance.
He wants me to give her a job without any competition or check
of her qualifications. To eradicate such a mentality will take
a long time, but you have to start somewhere, and that somewhere
is at the top of the pyramid. If the rulers are corrupt, and
not even ashamed, then what do you expect from society?”
Often dismissed
as sheer populism, the FPM’s call for imposing transparency and
stamping out corruption and clientelism -- however realistic
an objective it may or may not be -- thus threatens to disrupt
the very system on which the power structure is built. With trademark
exaggeration, Michel Aoun vowed to “confront political feudalism”
upon his return from France in May 2005. While clearly a swipe
at the likes of Walid Jumblatt (who happens to be the heir of
a “real” feudal line), Saad al-Hariri and Amin Gemayel, such
pronouncements cannot have been pleasing to any of the politicians
who prefer the rules of the games as they are. As Gambill puts
it: “FPM control of a major ministry is a red line for the [March
14] coalition mainly because Aoun would have absolutely nothing
to lose by acting on his pledges to clean up government, even
if his motives are completely self-serving.”
While potentially
endangering vested interests, a program emphasizing transparency
and meritocracy is likely to appeal to the educated middle classes
forming the backbone of the FPM, whose life chances are hampered
by systemic clientelism and sectarian red tape that often extends
into the private sector. Barred from many attractive jobs for
lack of connections, unable to initiate meaningful economic activity
of their own for lack of capital and, again, lack of opportunities
in an environment where many market segments are controlled by
fat cats who easily squeeze out new competitors, they stand to
gain from any change. Accordingly, the economic outlook of the
FPM shows conservative or even neo-liberal leanings, with a high
premium on encouraging free competition, world market integration
and downsizing a state bureaucracy bloated by clientelism. “Aoun’s
followers are those who lose out in the Lebanese clientelist
system,” concludes Dumontier, “not those who are near the bottom
of the social ladder. The latter need protection to get their
very modest jobs and benefits, and wasta (connections)
for them is a matter of survival. And not those on the top level,
either -- they are the ones who hold the keys, and more transparency
would take away from their power. It is those who could do better
for themselves if the system were to become more open and meritocratic.”
SECTARIAN
SECULARISTS
Still, and
despite the secularist rhetoric wielded by Aoun and his lieutenants,
one of the most important cards for the FPM among its predominantly
Christian following appears to be the sense of being once again
excluded in the post-civil war political order -- only this time,
and worse, not by the Syrians, who were, after all, outsiders
and occupiers. This time the Aounists feel marginalized by other
Lebanese and, still worse, by nobody less than their age-old
nemesis, the Sunnis, manifest in the overbearing presence of
the Hariri family and its political machinery, the Future Movement.
Secularism as professed by the Aounists thus shows a tendency
to turn into a sectarian discourse[8] directed
mainly against a perceived Sunni takeover of state institutions,
and prone to resurrect the eternal Christian fear of being “drowned”
in a sea of more than 250 million Muslim Arabs surrounding Lebanon,
the only country in the region to guarantee them full legal equality.
The “mother
of all injustices” against Christians quoted by supporters of
the FPM is the election law, drawn up in the year 2000 by the
chief of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, the late Ghazi Kanaan,
and applied again in 2005. Designed with the clear intention
of minimizing the impact of the notoriously anti-Syrian Christian
electorate, the Kanaan law “diluted” the Christian vote in many
districts by combining Christian with significantly more populous
Muslim areas.[9] As
a result, only 18 out of 64 Christian MPs were elected in majority-Christian
districts, while the remaining Christian MPs were practically
elected by Muslims -- Sunnis and hence Hariri in the north and
Beirut, Shi‘a and hence Hizballah and Amal in the south, Druze
and Shi‘a in the southern part of Mount Lebanon. There is irony
in the fact that what was meant to further Syrian interest back
in 2000 -- largely by favoring Hariri, who was then still a loyal
supporter of the Pax Syriana -- vastly skewed the results in
favor of the anti-Syrian coalition in 2005.
Such irony,
however, was completely lost on the majority of Christians represented
by the FPM. From their perspective, the election of 2005 and
its aftermath only continued their post-war decline, a process
marked by Muslim-dominated governments with fig leaves of Christian
participation. This impression was reinforced by the less than
impressive performance of the Christian representatives in the
Siniora government. Saudi money (the younger Hariri holds Saudi
citizenship, and his business network is entwined with Saudi
interests), it was induced, had replaced the tutelage of the
Syrian secret services, with the blessing of the US, who would
sign Lebanon over to a regional power it needed for greater designs,
just as it did in 1990 when Syria was an indispensable part of
the coalition to free Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. So pervasive
became this impression that the Conference of Maronite Bishops
felt compelled to issue a stern warning against an impending
“Islamization” of Lebanon in late June, and Samir Geagea was
quoted (and promptly denied) saying, “I don’t even talk to the
Saudis. I talk to their masters, the Americans, and they talk
to them on our behalf.”
From the perspective
of Christians close to Aoun, however, talking to the Americans
was pointless, for the Sunni ascendancy was seen as not at all
accidental, but rather part of a strategic realignment that puts
Sunni Arab regimes, and in particular Saudi Arabia, at the center
of a pro-US alliance against purported radicals. “In the fall
of 2005, Washington was facing a stark choice of what to support
in Lebanon,” wrote Jean Aziz, who has since become the director
of Orange TV. “It could choose either a pluralist, consensual
system that may have set an example for the dialogue rather than
the clash of civilizations, or a Sunni Muslim system with American
leanings and pliant to American interests, a model for American
presence in the region.”[10]
But then why
turn to Hizballah, another party with a clearly Muslim character,
and with a political agenda liable to embroil Lebanon deeper
and further in regional struggles, something Lebanese Christians
have always been loath to do? For Aoun’s detractors, the answer
is simple and straightforward: Both Shi‘a and Christians are
tiny minorities in a region dominated by Sunnis. In a system
where sectarian considerations trump everything else, their alliance
against a powerful Sunni-dominated regime now backed by Lebanon’s
Sunni neighbors appears almost natural. With only 30-40 percent
of the population, and with non-Arab Iran as its main sponsor,
Lebanon’s Shi‘a have no hope of ever dominating the system, unlike
the Sunnis, who draw economic and demographic strength from neighboring
countries such as Egypt, Syria, Jordan or Saudi Arabia, all liable
to be controlled by Islamists in the not too distant future.
Additionally, Hizballah, with its disciplined fighting units,
appears less scary in comparison to Sunni extremists such as
Fatah al-Islam, who have been battling the Lebanese army for
three months in the refugee camp of Nahr al-Barid, after allegedly
being under the protection of the Hariri family -- developments
dwelt upon by media sympathetic to the FPM.
Alain Aoun
does not deny his misgivings about the Sunnis throwing their
weight around, but insists that the intentions behind the alliance
with Hizballah go beyond sectarian zero-sum games: “One, this
country needs to be governed in a very delicate way, and putting
only one group in the driver’s seat is a sure recipe for disaster.
Two, at the end of the day you need to sit down and talk out
all these issues: Under which conditions would Hizballah give
up these weapons? How are we supposed to deal with Syria and
Israel? We have tried to do exactly that, and the memorandum
of understanding that we signed with them contains some positive
commitments from their side. Does anybody have a better idea?
Does anybody seriously believe that by isolating and pressuring
Hizballah, or even threatening them with force, you can make
them give up their weapons and behave like a normal political
party? I surely hope not.”
EPILOGUE
The narrow
victory scored by Aoun’s candidate in the Matn by-election on
August 5, 2007 showed the Christian community to be deeply divided,
with both sides claiming moral victory. Judging by the numbers,
support for the FPM was dented (40,000 votes, about one third
less than the 2005 result), while support for the pro-government
Christian camp went up (also by one third). Yet the virtually
unknown FPM candidate entered the race in a clearly uphill battle:
For one thing, he confronted no less a personage than Amin Gemayel,
a former president and the head of one of the most influential
Christian families in Lebanon, and on his home turf, giving his
opponent ample opportunity to mobilize along parochial and tribal
lines. Second, he was running against the father of the MP whose
assassination made the by-election necessary in the first place,
lending his bid an air of callousness, as many voters felt that
the seat rightfully belonged to the family of the murdered man.
Finally, the assassination was widely ascribed to remnants of
the Syrian secret service network in Lebanon, and Aoun’s attempt
to, as it were, reap political gain from the killing provided
ample ammunition for portraying his movement as unwittingly or
opportunistically paving the way for renewed Syrian influence
in Lebanon.
“This is the
most damaging accusation,” says pollster Abdo Saad. “The polls
show that Aoun’s supporters have no problem with Hizballah as
such. What they mind is Hizballah’s attachment to Syria. They
have no problem with Aoun’s political decisions, but they take
issue with his alliances with formerly pro-Syrian forces. My
own wife, who is Christian, used to be all-out for Aoun, but
now, the media campaign portraying him as pro-Syrian has succeeded
to turn her against him.”
Yet the fact
that, at the end of a long election day, Amin Gemayel was unable
to capitalize upon these considerable advantages shows that the
core support for the FPM remains resilient, and makes it appear
unlikely that any force in the Christian camp will be able to
challenge Michel Aoun’s position in the near future. For Lebanon,
this appears to be a mixed blessing at best: On the one hand,
a (most likely sizable) majority of the Christian community seems
prepared to look for guarantees of their presence in a majority-Muslim
country and an overwhelmingly Muslim region in the institutions
of a secular state, rather than hanging on to the doubtful security
offered by a ghetto of sectarian privilege. This is a momentous
development, when one recalls the 1970s. Yet the party galvanizing
such sentiment feels compelled to appeal, once again, to sentiments
that all too obviously feed on longing for lost privilege and
resentment of the arch-competitor for power in the state. Likewise,
for the first time in their history, a (probably less sizable)
majority of Christians is prepared to make common political cause
with a mass movement following an explicitly Islamist political
outlook. And yet it appears that prejudice and racism against
Muslims, mixed with resentment deriving from class, have been
transposed onto Sunnis and only muted toward Shi‘a, for the time
being. Despite the remarkable politicization of young Lebanese
that fueled the success of the FPM, the new party also remains
a movement centered around a single leader, who is venerated
to the verge of personality cult, with a notable tendency to
establish a strong family presence in the top echelons, and again,
despite a significant number of female activists, to exclude
women nearly totally from the upper ranks.
Finally, the
inconclusive test of forces between Amin Gemayel and Michel Aoun
bodes ill for the already intractable conflict over the upcoming
election of a new president -- a post traditionally reserved
for Maronite Christians -- where both men are candidates. Without
a compromise, the presidency, which also wields the high command
of the armed forces, may be the next victim of the chain reaction
of stalemate, disputed legitimacy and mutual boycott that has
already paralyzed most of the political institutions in Lebanon.
A further disintegration of the state now looks like a real possibility.
[1] Ever
since mass demonstrations in Lebanon began, in the wake of ex-Prime
Minister Rafiq al-Hariri’s assassination in the spring of 2005,
all sides have engaged in inflation of numbers to absurd proportions,
without any serious regard to material facts, such as the actual
surface area of the spots where people congregated. Interview
with Lebanese pollster Abdo Saad, Beirut, June 2007. Saad is
the director of the Beirut Center for Research and Information
(http://www.beirutcenter.info,
mainly in Arabic), which conducts frequent opinion polls on political
issues.
[2] Hassan
Fattah, “Lebanon Divided on Presidential Hopeful Michel Aoun,” International
Herald Tribune, January 19, 2007.
[3] Such
disregard finds its reflection in the lack of any serious research
on the “Aoun phenomenon” thus far -- an omission that this article
can only hope to start addressing. This article is based on a
series of interviews with party officials and activists conducted
in June 2007, in addition to party literature, encounters with
activists since the spring of 2005, particularly during the mass
demonstrations in December 2006, and preliminary results of a
field study conducted in the spring of 2007 by the French geographer
Beltram Dumontier in ‘Ayn al-Rummana (a predominantly Maronite
Christian quarter of Beirut adjacent to the Hizballah strongholds
of Shiyah and Harat Hurayk), which Dumontier generously shared
with the author.
[4] It
is a point of contention whether the Lebanese constitution actually
allows Parliament to impeach a sitting president by any kind
of majority. Since a two-thirds majority was not available anyway,
attempts at exploring the legal dimension were soon abandoned.
[5] Again,
there are no reliable figures as to what extent the Aounist movement
contributed to this movement. If the huge turnout attending Aoun’s
return from exile on May 7, 2005 is anything to go by, however,
it appears safe to assume that the demonstrations in February
and March would have looked significantly less impressive without
their participation. March 14 is also the anniversary of Aoun’s
abortive “war of liberation” (from Syria) launched in 1989 and
annually celebrated by his followers.
[6] According
to Hizballah, there has been more than one US offer to broker
a deal that would trade Hizballah’s weapons for a significant
improvement of Shi‘i representation in the political system.
Interview with Hizballah expert Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, October 2006.
Such ideas resurfaced in the wake of the 2006 war in the columns
of government loyalists. See Michael Young, “Offer Reform for
Hizballah’s Weapons,” Daily Star, September 28, 2006.
[7] Gary
Gambill, “Lemons from Lemonade: Washington and Lebanon After
the Syrian Withdrawal,” Mideast Monitor (June-July 2007). http://www.mideastmonitor.org/issues/0705/0705_1.htm.
[8] Such
was also the case in the 1970s, when Lebanese Muslims argued
for secularism in order to do away with the constitutional privileges
accorded to Christians.
[9] The
law provides for a first-past-the-post majority system differentiated
by sect. For instance, one seat in the district Beirut-I was
reserved for a Greek Orthodox Christian, so the Orthodox candidate
with the most votes would win one seat, and all votes cast for
other Orthodox candidates would have no impact on the composition
of Parliament. As in most majority systems, gerrymandering has
the potential to distort the popular vote, and has been a temptation
for sitting presidents and governments ever since the foundation
of Lebanon. Accordingly, each and every parliamentary election
in Lebanon is preceded by heated debate about how electoral districts
will be demarcated, with the decision typically taken only shortly
before election day.
[10] Al-Akhbar,
July 28, 2007.
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