THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 234, October 25, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
LEBANON'S TENUOUS TRANSFORMATION
By Michael Rubin
LEBANON & SYRIA: THE OBSTACLES IN THE PATH OF LEBANON BECOMING A STABLE CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY &
COMPLETELY FREEING ITSELF FROM SYRIAN DOMINATION -- HOW AMERICA & EUROPE CAN HELP: ASSISTING LEBANESE
CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRATS IN THEIR EFFORTS TO ACHIEVE CONSTITUTIONAL & POLITICAL REFORM -- IDENTIFYING,
DIRECTING PRESSURE UPON, & UNDERCUTTING MECHANISMS OF CONTINUED SYRIAN CONTROL OF LEBANON
FULL STORY:
On June 28, 2005, Lebanon's Parliament selected Fuad Siniora to be Prime Minister. Siniora was a close associate of Rafiq al-Hariri, a
former Prime Minister and Sunni powerbroker who was assassinated on February 14, 2005, as his motorcade drove down a Beirut
street. Like Hariri in his later years, Siniora has taken an increasingly defiant stance in opposition to Syrian domination of Lebanon.
While Lebanon's Cedar Revolution has already reverberated throughout the Middle Eastern region, the transformation it sought to
unveil is tenuous. Syria's nearly three decades of occupation of Lebanon may have ended, but the country remains susceptible to
Syrian domination. During the years of occupation, Syrian proxies altered the Lebanese legal system to undercut the ability of
political society to transform through elections. Syrian intelligence operatives continue to permeate Lebanon, killing and intimidating
dissidents and independent-minded politicians. Syrian interests continue to dominate Lebanon's black market. Lebanon's political
position remains precarious. Hizbullah remains a Syrian proxy and, flouting UN Security Council Resolution 1559, has refused to
disarm. While many Lebanese officials privately say they would like the group to lay down its weapons, the Lebanese government
remains too weak to broach the subject publicly.
The triumph of democratic liberalism, or democratic constitutionalism, in Lebanon will depend not only upon continued European
and American assistance to Lebanese constitutional democrats, but also upon the ability of Western governments to identify and
direct pressure upon mechanisms of continued Syrian control. At stake is more than freedom for Lebanon, but rather the ability of
the Arab world to reform itself. The evaporation of the Cedar Revolution would embolden autocrats in countries like Egypt and
Yemen, convincing the dictators that they can outlast reformist demands.
BACKGROUND
Syrian troops entered Lebanon in 1976, a year after the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war. While the 1989 Ta‘if Accords called for
the withdrawal foreign forces from Lebanon, the Syrian occupation continued with the tacit approval of the George H.W. Bush
administration, which saw the Syrian presence as stabilizing. [1]
While the United States government and the European governments valued stability, the Syrian government sought to prolong its
involvement in Lebanon in order to fulfill a historical ambition. The French government created modern Lebanon in 1920 as Paris
and London divided up former Ottoman domains. While France was Mandatory power for both Syria and Lebanon, the latter's
separate identity helped protect and empower Mount Lebanon's large Christian population.
Syrian nationalists, though, never forfeited their claim to Lebanon nor, in some cases, their claims to Transjordan and Palestine,
also considered by some in Damascus to be part of Greater Syria. [2] In 1946, a Syrian diplomat declared Syria's borders with
Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan to be "artificial." In August, 1972, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad said, "Syria and Lebanon are a
single country."
Syrian ambition undercut diplomatic formalities. The Syrian regime does not maintain an embassy in Beirut. Exchange of
ambassadors would indicate recognition of Lebanese independence.
After dispatching the Syrian army into Lebanon in 1976, Assad treated Lebanon as a colony. The late Ghazi Kana‘an, chief of
Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon between 1982 and 2002, and his deputy and successor Rustum Ghazali, acted as if they
were colonial high commissioners. In many ways, they were. Officials in Damascus determined which Lebanese politicians could
run for office and who could hold ministerial portfolios. Judicial and legal officials picked for their loyalty to the Syrian regime
could silence independent-minded Lebanese parliamentarians and lawyers by threatening to have their professional immunity
lifted.
In 1994, for example, Lebanese parliamentarian Yahya Shamas had his immunity stripped and was imprisoned on trumped-up drug
charges, after a business deal gone bad with Kana‘an.. Likewise, after the Lebanese human rights lawyer Muhamad Mugraby
criticized the Supreme Judicial Council's lack of independence, the Beirut Bar Association lifted Mugraby's immunity. Lebanese
security forces subsequently arrested him.
In August, 2004, Syrian disdain for Lebanese sovereignty culminated when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ordered the
Lebanese Constitution to be amended in order to enable Syrian client Emile Lahoud to serve a third term as President. According
to the United Nations fact-finder dispatched in the wake of Hariri's assassination, when Hariri balked, Assad told him that
opposition to Lahoud "is tantamount to opposing Assad himself."
Syrian penetration of Lebanon permeated all aspects of state. On May 20, 1991, the Syrian government and its proxy in Lebanon
signed a Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation, and Coordination charging both countries "to achieve the highest level of
cooperation and coordination in all political, economic, security, cultural, scientific, and other fields... [and to] expand and
strengthen their common interests as an affirmation of the brotherly relations and guarantee of their common destiny." In effect,
the treaty made Syria suzerain.
The September 1, 1991, "Lebanon-Syria Defense and Security Agreement" formalized the domination of Syria's military and security
services in Lebanon. Two years later, an "Agreement for Economic and Social Cooperation and Coordination" outlined a program
of economic integration which, in practice, made Lebanon an outlet for Syrian goods and labor.
While Siniora's government or that of some future successor might abrogate the more parasitic treaties, it will be far more difficult to
overcome mechanisms of informal control which the Syrian government made to Lebanese society. In August, 1999, for example,
the Director-General of the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment and his Lebanese counterpart agreed to route Lebanon's fiber
optic network through Syria, enabling Syrian intelligence to more easily monitor telephone and internet traffic. Such routing allowed
Syrian officials and their Lebanese allies to bypass embarrassment over revelations that Lahoud had illegally tapped the phones of
Hariri and more than a dozen parliamentarians.
ELECTORAL DAMAGE
Undoing the damage caused by past Syrian manipulation of the Lebanese electoral system will be a far greater challenge for
renewed constitutional democracy in Lebanon. [3] The 1989 Ta'if Accords stipulated that the governorate should be the base unit
for national elections in Lebanon. In effect, this split the country into five electoral districts in which voters could select from slates
of parliamentary candidates. At the urging of Damascus, and in contravention to the Ta ‘if Accord, the Lebanese Parliament
divided the Mount Lebanon governorate into six separate electoral districts. The narrowing of pro-Syrian officials' constituencies
facilitated their re-election by undercutting the formation of opposition coalitions across wider swaths of territory.
In the 1998 municipal elections, 40 percent of the candidates backed by the pro-Syrian Lebanese government lost. In the aftermath,
Kana‘an and Bashar al-Assad, then his father's trusted aide, met with the Lebanese Prime Minister, Parliamentary Speaker, and
other pro-Syrian ministers to further gerrymander districts in order to divide the opposition's support base. The new law subdivided
Northern Lebanon into two electoral districts. The gerrymandering combined the largely Maronite Christian town of Bsharre with
Muslim towns to which it was not contiguous, making victory by an independent Christian candidate impossible.
Likewise, the government divided Beirut into three districts, calculated to reduce Hariri's power.
Increasing the number of seats in Parliament from 108 to 128 seats enabled Damascus to ensure a pro-Syrian majority.
Unable to break an impasse over a new electoral law, the Lebanese government held its June, 2005, parliamentary elections under the
2000 electoral law.
Gerrymandering has amplified the power of pro-Syrian politicians because, under the Lebanese confessional system, voters cast
ballots for multi-sectarian slates of candidates. While the political characteristics of the Parliament may be in doubt, its sectarian
components are not: Sixty-four seats are reserved for Christian representatives (34 Maronites, 14 Greek Orthodox, eight Greek
Catholic, five Armenian Orthodox, one seat each for Armenian Catholics, Evangelical groups, and other minorities), 56 seats are
reserved for Muslim representatives (27 Sunnis, 27 Shi‘ites, two Alawites), and eight seats are slated for Druze candidates.
By placing Maronite communities into more populous Muslim districts, Muslim voters could determine which slates -- and therefore
which Christian representatives -- entered Parliament. On May 12, 2005, the League of Maronite Bishops complained that, as the
districts were drawn, "the Christians can elect only 15 MPs out of 64 while the others, almost 50 MPs, are elected by Muslims."
The electoral system undercut independent Shi‘ites for a different reason. Lebanese law requires citizens to vote in their ancestral
districts, effectively disenfranchising thousands of elderly war refugees who fled southern Lebanon more than two decades
previously and subsequently settled in Beirut. Unable to cast their ballots, a slate dominated by Hizbullah won the southern district
elections, ensuring Damascus a strong voice in the Lebanese Parliament.
While, in the short-term, the electoral law might undercut independent Lebanese voices, it is in the longer-term in which the danger
of the Syrian-imposed system lies. By seeking to disenfranchise certain groups based on their ethnicity, the gerrymandered districts
amplify differences and favor either unrepresentative or more extreme voices. Lebanese surveyed during the June, 2005, campaign
said that sectarianism has never been so high and voiced fear that the relative calm following the Syrian withdrawal might
foreshadow renewed sectarian strife. The gerrymandered districts are geared to prevent coalition-building, and the inability of many
Beirut residents to vote in the districts in which they reside means gradual migration and mixing of populations cannot alone mitigate
problems.
HOW THE WEST CAN HELP LEBANON
Lebanon's transformation is far from complete. Western governments can help the Lebanese people solidify their gains in two ways:
First, they should target mechanisms of Syrian control and second, they should assist judicial and electoral reform. Weakening
Syrian power in Lebanon will facilitate ability to make the electoral changes necessary to enable the Lebanese people to translate
democratic will into more permanent political reformation.
Gary Gambill, editor of the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, identified several mechanisms of Syrian control in Lebanon
which have continued beyond the military withdrawal. [4] Damascus' economic grasp is significant, and may siphon from the
Lebanese economy more than ten billion U.S. dollars annually. While the Lebanese drug trade declined under international pressure
in the early 1990s, drug cultivation has rebounded since 1997 when, more for diplomatic than objective reasons, the U.S. State
Department removed both Lebanon and Syria from its list of drug producing and trafficking countries. Narco-traffic has provided an
independent revenue stream for Hizbullah and other Syrian-backed interests. This undercuts the Lebanese government's ability to
exert full control over its territory.
Corruption also cripples Lebanon. A 2001 United Nation commission report estimated that Lebanon loses nearly ten percent of its
gross domestic product to corruption. The Administration for Tenders vetted and approved less than three percent of the
Lebanese government's reconstruction and development expenditures. Eighty percent of Lebanese companies acknowledge paying
bribes. Many Lebanese politicians and Syrian security officials enter into silent partnerships with Lebanese companies. Security
services have arrested parliamentarians and other Lebanese officials who have questioned or exposed corruption.
While the Syrian military has withdrawn from Lebanon, Assad's reliance on Lebanese capital to keep the Syrian economy afloat
suggests that Damascus will continue to intervene to preserve its own interest, at the expense of the Lebanese electorate.
There are remedies. On June 30, 2005, the U.S. Treasury Department announced its decision to freeze the assets of Kena‘an and
Ghazali. Any action to undercut Syrian officials' business interests erodes their power. Such targeted sanctions should be applied
not only upon Syrian officials, but also on pro-Syrian Lebanese figures who accumulated wealth in an illegal manner.
Hizbullah will remain a major impediment to Lebanon's democratization. A unified American and European approach is needed. In
a March 15, 2005, interview with Beirut's Daily Star, a senior Hizbullah official described the group as both "a resistance
group and political party." Western officials should not accept such rhetoric. The United Nations certified Israel's complete
withdrawal from Lebanese territory, Hizbullah's claims notwithstanding. To accept the group's claim to legitimate resistance
undercuts the European Union claim to champion international law and undermines the moral legitimacy of the United Nations in
the region.
The U.S. State Department and European foreign ministries should, instead, insist that the Lebanese government adhere to Security
Council Resolution 1559's call for "the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias." While Hizbullah's
leadership claims that Resolution 1559 does not apply, because they define Hizbullah as a political party and not a militia, such
distinctions are disingenuous. Political parties do not maintain armed wings. Foreign and Defense policy should be the solitary
domain of the Lebanese central government. While Hizbullah might claim an electoral mandate, its legitimacy as a force for Lebanese
sovereignty ended when it sponsored a March 8, 2005, rally in Beirut endorsing the Syrian occupation. Its showing is as much an
artifact of Syrian gerrymandering as a sign of true popularity. If Lebanon is to become a stable, multi-confessional constitutional
democracy, neither Europe nor the United States should legitimize Hizbullah.
ASSISTING REFORM
In the wake of the Ta‘if Accord, U.S. and European policymakers made an implied bargain with Damascus: In exchange for stability
in Lebanon, the West would turn a blind eye toward Syrian ambitions in Lebanon. For fifteen years, the Syrian regime eviscerated
Lebanese institutions in order to better control Lebanese society and exploit its resources. If Western governments wish to solidify
Lebanon's transformation, then they need to help Lebanon restore the transparency of government.
Syrian authorities and their Lebanese proxies eviscerated the Lebanese judiciary. An October, 2004, incident symbolized the
subservience of the judiciary to Syrian intelligence when Lebanese television broadcast the visit of Ghazali to Marwan Hamade, an
opposition parliamentarian who had just survived an assassination attempt for which many Lebanese believed the Syrians
responsible. The Lebanese Justice Minister trailed behind Ghazali, symbolically affiliating himself as the Syrian official's subordinate.
The European Union has already offered to advise and finance judicial reform through its Neighborhood Program. Such aid should
become a priority so that Lebanon's judiciary can begin to tackle the country's corruption and abuse-of-power problems.
Both Washington and European foreign ministries should also push for comprehensive electoral reform. While Lebanon's
confessional system makes tinkering sensitive, Western diplomats should encourage the repeal of Syrian-sponsored
gerrymandering by, for example, reverting to the governorate-based system agreed to under the Ta‘if Accord. Western
governments might support Lebanese reformers who seek to allow residency-based rather than ancestry-based voting.
In April, 2005, the U.S. State Department called for the Syrian government to establish an embassy in Beirut. This demand should be
echoed by European foreign ministries. The refusal of the Syrian government to recognize the right of Lebanon to exist as a fully
independent state is a problem that should be directly addressed. Diplomatic obfuscation will fail.
There is precedent. After the Iraqi Prime Minister recognized Kuwait in 1963, the international community claimed diplomatic victory
and ignored the Iraqi government's subsequent refusal to ratify the treaty. Twenty-seven years later, Iraq revived its claims, declared
Kuwait an Iraqi province, and invaded.
Neither the United States nor the European Union should, for short-term convenience, accept anything less than unambiguous
Syrian recognition of Lebanon's independence.
In the wake of Hariri's assassination, the Lebanese people demonstrated their desire for reform. At great danger to themselves, they
demanded a Syrian withdrawal. While the impetus for constitutional democracy was internal, international community pressure was
vital to the Lebanese freedom movement's success.
The reverberations of the Cedar Revolution extend beyond Lebanon's borders. Lebanon is a trend-setter: Racy Lebanese videos and
television shows promote a vision of openness and worldliness which competes culturally with the resurgence of political Islam.
Ideas spread across social strata.
Lebanon's greatest export is its people. Among the greatest advocates for reform in Saudi Arabia, for example, are Lebanese
businessmen, long resident in Jeddah and Riyadh. Their agitation for constitutional democracy makes reform an Arab issue, less
easily dismissed as an import from the West.
While the potential of Lebanese transformation is large, the withdrawal of Syrian troops is not enough to guarantee success. The
Assad regime has ideological and economic motivations to deny Lebanon its freedom. If the United States and Europe wish the
Cedar Revolution to succeed, they must work together to undercut Syrian obstructionism and bolster Lebanese reformers.
NOTES:
[1] For greater background on the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, see: William Harris. Faces of Lebanon: Sects, Wars, and
Global Extensions (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1997), pp. 261-2; and William Harris. "Bashar al-Assad's Lebanon Gamble."
Middle East Quarterly. Summer 2005. pp.33-44.
[2] Daniel Pipes traces pan-Syrian ideology in Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition. (New York: Oxford University Press,
1990). He makes a summary of his argument in "Greater Syria: Another Lion Roars in the Middle East." The Washington Post.
October 21, 1990.
[3] Gary C. Gambill provides excellent analysis on this issue in various Middle East Intelligence Bulletin articles on the subject
from 1999 and 2000.
[4] Gary Gambill. "Hooked on Lebanon." Middle East Quarterly. Autumn 2005.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East -- Lebanon as a Geopolitical Problem
The Middle East & the Problem of Syria
The Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, is Editor of the Middle East
Quarterly.
The foregoing article by Michael Rubin is the original English version of an Italian article in "Pax Euroislamica," Aspenia
(Aspen Institute Italia Review), No. 30, October, 2005, and can be found on the Internet website maintained by the
Middle East Forum.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
October 25, 2005
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