On March 14, 2005, more than one third of Lebanon’s 4 million people took to the streets demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops and the disarmament of local Lebanese and Palestinian militias. The rally inaugurated what came to be known as the Independence Uprising, or the Cedar Revolution. However, the popular drive toward independence and democracy lost steam before it could celebrate its fifth anniversary. Reasons included change in Western governments and agendas as well as defeat of Lebanese pro-democracy forces facing domestic and regional bullying. Through the Lebanese experience, this paper will examine the viability of democracy in the Middle East at large.

 

The Middle East’s ‘First-Ever’ Events

“How can you tell when history turns a corner?”^[[1]] wrote Michael Duffy in Time Magazine in March 2005. “People power is changing the face of the Middle East, but the democracy deal isn’t sealed–yet,”^[[2][3]] he added.

Duffy cited a number of events that he perceived as indicators of change. These included Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s announcement that “Egypt would hold its first-ever secret ballot, multiparty presidential elections,” resignation of “Syrian-backed Prime Minister Omar Karami in Beirut,” Saudi Arabian then Crown Prince receiving Syrian

President Bashar Assad “and not only [telling] Assad to get Syria’s 14,000 troops out of Lebanon, but also [announcing] it to the world that he had done so.”^[[4]]

In fact, the Middle East in 2005 witnessed many “firstever” events. Iraq alone saw three major votes. In January, Iraqis elected an interim parliament, the National Assembly, which drafted a constitution. Later that year, the Iraqis took to the polls a second time to ratify their new constitution. By December, Iraqis had made their third trip to the ballot boxes to elect their first parliament, the Council of Deputies.

Also in January 2005, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza elected Mahmoud Abbas President of the Palestinian Authority, as they prepared to elect their Legislative Council, which they did a year later. In May and June, the Lebanese elected their parliament. In September, Egypt re-elected Hosni Mubarak in a questionable—yet allowing contenders in theory—process.

Between January 2005 and January 2006, the Middle East saw seven elections: Three in Iraq, two in the Palestinian Territories, one in Lebanon, and one in Egypt. These were coupled with the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, in April 2005, after 29 years of occupation, and a surge in US funding for the spread of democracy throughout the Middle East.

Middle Eastern democracy had already been on the minds of the engineers of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. By late 2004, Washington had abandoned its scheme of directly ruling Iraq that it had occupied and accordingly disbanded the Coalition Provisional Authority.

In November 2004, the New York Times columnist Thomas Freidman argued that democratic elections in Iraq were imperative, at least as a prerequisite for an exit strategy for the US out of the Iraqi quagmire.

“Without a secure environment in which its new leadership can be elected and comfortably operate, Iraq will never be able to breathe on its own, and U.S. troops will have to be here forever,”^[[5]] Friedman wrote.

Friedman was not prophesying, however. For the year 2005 to be a tipping point, events must have been preceded by a certain buildup. In a general context, the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, the ensuing war on terror, and an ambitious United States plan for democratization had started as early as 2002. Consequently by 2004, shifting alliances in the Middle East were visible.

Acting on rebound after 11 September, the United States launched major military expeditions and promised to change the preceding world order. The news of the American reaction caused a scare in Middle Eastern capitals. By the end of 2003, US failure in governing Iraq was becoming apparent and Iraq’s neighbors—the autocratic regimes that had feared democratization by force—turned up the heat and Iraq became a quagmire for Americans. Funds and fighters found their way from Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, while almost every regional and international intelligence network made its presence felt—in one way or another—in the midst of Iraq’s chaos.

But now that the US was bogged down in Iraq and unable to pursue its grand democracy scheme throughout the region, a few regional players reconsidered their earlier decision of seeing American democracy stall in Iraq. Sunni Saudi Arabia, in particular, was not interested in seeing Tehran’s influence expand exponentially especially since the US toppled the Sunni Taliban to Iran’s east, and another Sunni regime—that of Saddam Hussein—to Iran’s west. With the demise of its two bitter enemies, the Shiite Iranian regime was growing stronger. Iran’s Shiite allies in Iraq were getting the upper hand over their former Sunni rulers. Riyadh saw itself under pressure to try to reverse whatever situation was prevalent in Iraq that was giving its rivals in Tehran an advantage. By mid-2004, Saudi Arabia had joined the US in its effort to stabilize Iraq. Such a step put Riyadh, and its allies throughout the region, on a collision course with Iran, and its allies including Syria.

The confrontation between the two camps resulted in immediate realignment. In countries under powerful central rule, taking sides was easy. Egypt and Jordan joined Saudi

Arabia in what came to be informally known as the Moderate Arab Alliance. Syria and Qatar, for their part, joined Iran. However, in countries where ‘democracy’ was the order of the day, such as Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian Territories, parliaments, governments and political parties were divided and entered into bitter rivalries that often turned violent. Such was the case of Lebanon.

 

Lebanon’s Brewing Uprising

Lebanon has 18 ethno-religious groups. None of them can call itself a majority. Since its independence from the French in 1943, and while most other Arab states moved from colonially-created republics to military dictatorships, Lebanon’s fragmentation meant that the country had to live under a zero-sum game. None of the Lebanese groups could impose its will on others. While such an arrangement transformed Lebanon into an oasis of freedom in the middle of autocracies, it also meant that Beirut rarely saw powerful central governments that could decide national policies, whether domestic or foreign. So weak was Lebanon’s central power, and so overwhelming was regional meddling in Lebanon’s affairs that the government imploded in 1975, and the country suffered from 15 years of civil war thereafter.

In 1990, Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait and the US came to the rescue. While it constructed a Saudi-based international coalition that ejected Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, Washington also planned a new order for a more peaceful Middle East.

Syrian help was enlisted.

Intensified Syrian-American consultations culminated in the 13 September visit of Secretary of State James Baker to Damascus. Assad provided troops to site in Saudi Arabia and in late September, clearly at Baker’s request, made his personal visit “to Tehran to secure continuation of Iran’s adherence to [UN] sanctions [against Iraq]. In exchange for involvement in the Gulf, “Damascus expected, and got, approval to settle things in Beirut, by whatever means.”^[[6]]

After the American-Saudi-Iranian green light, the Syrians finished off the last Christian resistance pocket in 1990, and inaugurated their complete dominance over Lebanon. Saudi Arabia, the sponsor of Lebanon’s largest community, the Sunnis, gave its consent, and—jointly with Syria—appointed a Lebanese-Saudi business-tycoon and new face politician, Rafik Hariri, as the country’s prime minister. Iran, Syria’s ally and sponsor of Lebanon’s Shiite community, supervised an alliance between the rising Shiite power of Hezbollah and Damascus. Meanwhile, the Druze, an esoteric offshoot sect from Islam and the smallest of the five biggest communities, remained under their traditional leadership which had been in alliance with Syria since 1977. Only the Christians stood to lose from Syria’s domination with their leaders Michel Aoun sent into exile in France and Samir Geagea imprisoned on charges of a fabricated crime.

The shrewd Syrian President Hafez Assad made sure, however, to pull the strings while in the background.

“The Syrians played a balancing game. They co-opted the older leaders, promoted new ones entirely dependent on Damascus… and hit out against the incorrigibles.”^[[7]]

Under Syrian occupation, Lebanon turned into a satellite state. Syria’s top man in Lebanon Ghazi Kenaan was once quoted as saying: “You Lebanese create light industries. Engage in trade and commerce. Indulge in light media, which does not affect security. Shine all over the world by your inventiveness, and leave politics to us. Each has his domain in Lebanon: Yours is trade; ours politics and security.”^[[8]] But even in trade and business, Syrian officials made sure to take their cut from whatever Lebanese entrepreneurship.

The Syrian formula for Lebanon persisted until 2000, a year that witnessed two game-changing events: The death of Assad and the succession of his son Bashar, and the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation.

In 1998, an ailing Assad had appointed his son Bashar to manage the “Lebanese file.” The Assads also belong to an esoteric Islamic sect, the Alawites, and rule over a predominantly Sunni Syria. Hafez feared that the Sunnis, both in Syria and Lebanon, might cause trouble for his son’s succession. Meanwhile, Bashar started building his own governing team for both Syria and Lebanon. In

Syria, he sidelined the old guard, the likes of Sunni Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam and Chief of Staff Hikmat Shihabi.

In Lebanon, the Assads forced the election of their puppet Christian Army Commander Emile Lahoud, while at the same time replacing Hariri—now a popular Sunni leader with Saudi backing and international connections—with another one of their puppet politicians, Salim Hoss, as prime minister. Starting 1998, Lebanon was being made in Syria’s image: A police state governed by military and intelligence officers. Such change did not fall well with Lebanese popular heavyweights such as Hariri and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who had fallen out of favor with Syria’s new guard. In 2000, Hariri and Jumblatt engineered a political comeback by defeating Syria’s protégés in parliamentary elections. That year, Bashar Assad became president of Syria, while an Israeli withdrawal put the Shiite militia Hezbollah out of business, and most importantly, floated ideas that with Israel out of Lebanon—there was no need for the presence of Syrian troops in the country. Hariri won reappointment as prime minister, but could barely coexist with Syria’s protégés dominating the country, such as Lahoud.

By summer 2004, two alliances, one led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the US and the other by Iran, had emerged and found themselves locked in a confrontation in Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East. It was clear by that time that the 1990 Syrian-American-Saudi-Iranian arrangement for Lebanon had expired. In Beirut, the Syrian camp—led by intelligence officers and Shiite Hezbollah—had been already pushing Saudi allies, namely Sunni Hariri and Druze Jumblatt, into the corner. A confrontation was inevitable, and the year 2004 offered an ideal domestic excuse: The term of proSyrian President Emile Lahoud was to expire in September. Since 1990 and until that date, Syria had had the last say in who becomes president in Lebanon.

On 25 August 2004, Assad summoned Lebanese politicians to order them to extend Lahoud’s mandate for three years. A defiant Jumblatt turned down the invitation while Hariri made the trip to Damascus and met Assad the next day. Realizing that Assad might demand the extension of the term of his archenemy, Lahoud, Hariri had already instigated his international friends to pressure Syria to reverse its step.

Syrian Vice President Khaddam, who later defected and now lives in exile in Paris, told Al-Arabiya TV that Assad threatened Hariri during that meeting. “The meeting in Damascus referred to by Mr. Khaddam occurred on Aug. 26, 2004, when Mr. Assad bluntly ordered that the Lebanese Parliament amend the Constitution to extend the term of his ally, President Emile Lahoud. Mr. Hariri… objected.”^[[9][10]] The meeting lasted just 15 minutes. According to accounts by Hariri’s political allies, “Mr. Hariri returned shaken, saying Mr. Assad had threatened to ‘break Lebanon on your head’.”^[[11]]

But Hariri was not someone who could be bullied easily. On 29 August 2004, France’s Permanent Representative to the UN Jean-Marc De La Sabliere , a confident of Hariri’s friend French President Jacques Chirac, proposed a joint French-American draft for a resolution calling for disbanding of non-Lebanese and Lebanese militias, such as Hezbollah, and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. A race between Lebanon’s parliament—bent on extending Lahoud’s mandate—and the Security Council—determined to denounce it—ensued.

On 2 September 2004, Lebanese parliament amended the constitution to allow for Lahoud’s extension. Hours later in New York, Lebanon’s special envoy Mohamed Issa delivered a speech before the council in which he called for “the withdrawal of the draft resolution,” said there were “no militias in Lebanon,” and described the Syrian occupation of Lebanon as “legitimate” and “guarded by an agreement between two sovereign states.”^[[12]] The Security Council approved the French draft as UNSCR 1559.

 

Independence 05

It is not clear whether Hariri and Jumblatt had planned a full-scale confrontation with Syria by September 2004. Hariri said in a later interview that UN “resolution (1559) could 11

have been avoided until the last minute.”^[[13]] Be it as it may, UNSCR 1559 became a sword hanging above Syria’s head. In the past, whenever Syria wanted to confront the international community, it reverted to its puppet Lebanese government to reverse whatever world resolution, and guarantee Syrian continued occupation of Lebanon. But in late 2004, with the 1990 arrangement falling apart and an ongoing regional confrontation in Iraq, Lebanon stopped talking in one voice that Syria could count on. To add insult to injury, Lebanon was preparing for parliamentary elections due in June 2005, and Syria’s opponents, mainly the popular Hariri and Jumblatt, were now in a position to turn the table on the Syrians by winning majority in a parliament that had been dominated by Syria’s allies since 1992.

Syria and Iran still tried to convince Hariri to run for elections in alliance with their protégés, to distance himself from his Saudi patrons’ policies in support of the US in Iraq, and to oppose UNSCR 1559. In early 2005, Kanaan’s successor in Lebanon Rustom Ghazaleh met with Hariri in the presence of journalist Charles Ayyoub, who reported that Ghazaleh asked Hariri to form an electoral ticket with Syria’s favorites.^[[14]] Hariri refused. Also in early 2005, Hezbollah’s Anis Nakkash, and “an Iranian fluent in Arabic,”^[[15]] held a meeting with one a Hariri aid. During the meeting Nakkash mentioned how the Baghdad bureau of Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV was bombed due to the changing Saudi policy. Nakkash and his Iranian friend warned Hariri of the consequences of mirroring the Saudi policy in the region.

Despite the warnings, and with months to parliamentary elections, Hariri was preparing to sweep elections with Jumblatt and their Christian allies, long marginalized by Syrian policies in Lebanon since 1990. On 14 February 2005, Hariri’s motorcade was bombed. Pro-Syrian Lebanese security rushed to bulldoze the crime scene in what later UN investigation believed to be an attempt to tamper with evidence. The battle over Lebanon’s regional alignment had started.

The Hariri murder shook Lebanon. Masses joined his funeral and, for the first time in more than a decade, Sunnis and Druze were shouting anti-Syrian slogans. The anger from Hariri’s murder was spiraling and taking aim against Damascus and its Lebanese allies. The series of demonstrations were called the Independence Intifada (Uprising)^[[16]].

Among the uprising’s first successes was the resignation of the pro-Syrian government on February 28.

“The taboos were beginning to fall, but the Syrians and their sympathizers had not called it a day.”^[[17]] On 5 March 2004, Bashar Assad delivered a speech before his rubberstamp parliament in which he said that his forces would withdraw “toward the Syrian-Lebanese border.”^[[18]] Assad’s ambiguous withdrawal promise was coupled with Hezbollah’s show of force in opposition to Syrian withdrawal. On 8 March, Hezbollah flexed a muscle with the intent of overshadowing the anti-Syrian rallies. Close to half a million of Hezbollah’s supporters held a “Thank You Syria” rally in downtown Beirut, where Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah made a speech. “I announce before you that no one can force Syria out of Lebanon,”^[[19]] he said. And confident that his rally—the biggest in Lebanon’s history until then— represented the will of the Lebanese, he added: “We are opposed to UNSCR 1559, and we democratically call on you [French President Jacques Chirac]—with this peaceful and massive rally—to drop your support of a resolution that does not enjoy support in Lebanon and that the majority of Lebanese does not support.”^[[20]] Nasrallah argued: “If democracy means the majority, then the majority is opposed to UNSCR 1559.”^[[21]]

Nasrallah’s boasting of speaking on behalf of Lebanon’s majority provoked the rest of Lebanon’s communities, the Sunnis, the Christians and the Druze. On 14 March 2005, marking one month after Hariri’s assassination, an estimated one-third of Lebanon’s population of four million took to the streets. Since that date, Hezbollah and its allies, Syria’s protégés, came to be known as the 8 March Forces, after the date of their “Than You Syria” rally. For its part, the anti-Syria anti-Hezbollah alliance took the name of the March 14 Movement, after the date of its rally. Thereafter, Lebanon was aligned along the lines of two opposing camps: March 14 and March 8.

 

2005: The Berlin Wall Has Fallen

The March 14 massive rally proved to be a gamechanger. US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman told his impression in retrospect. “On March 13, 2005, I cabled Washington saying that given the political situation, demanding a Syrian redeployment into the Bekaa Valley seems to be the choice. Little did I know that more than one million Lebanese would take to the streets on March 14 demanding full Syrian withdrawal,”^[[22]] Feltman said. “The Lebanese were apparently a step ahead of politicians, who then followed,”^[[23]] he added. On 26 April, under popular Lebanese and international pressure, Damascus withdrew its troops from Lebanon.

Hariri’s murder was like “a pebble cast into a pond… [it] initiated ripples that were to spread well beyond Lebanese borders. It would hasten and further cement the emerging geo-strategic shifts and realignments in the Middle East, spawned by the Bush administration’s policies following 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.”^[[24]]

It was this spreading democracy spirit that caught the attention of Western media. “A new power rises across the Mideast, advocates for democracy begin to taste success after years of fruitless effort,” was the headline of the lead story of The Washington Post, which featured a photograph of Lebanon’s top anti-Syrian columnist Samir Kassir. “Suddenly [Lebanese] were at the cutting edge of the Arab world’s democratic spring.”^[[25]]

Friedman, of The New York Times, declared: “We’re seeing the equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall there.”^[[26][27]] Friedman’s sentiment was shared by Lebanon’s Jumblatt, now turned into a national independence hero. “I was cynical about Iraq,” said Jumblatt. “But when I saw the Iraqi people voting [in January 2005], eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.”^[[28]]

But not so easy; the Middle East was still a dangerous mess. “The despots [were] not becoming democrats overnight, and the Americans know it is risky to promote ideas that threaten the regimes of some of their closest yet far from democratic allies in the region.”^[[29][30]] Rulers of the Middle East were not planning to go down without a fight, as the gap widened between Iran, Syria and their allies on one side, and the United States on the other. “Islamic extremists from Syria and Iranian meddlers… terrorized Iraqis who cooperated with the United States of the new Iraqi democratic government.”^[[31]] Iran and Syria’s “terror” campaign applied in Lebanon too.

On 2 June 2005, Kassir, who had featured on the front page of The Washington Post as Lebanon’s democracy face, was assassinated. Before the end of June, another proindependence anti-Syrian March 14 figure, George Hawi, was also murdered. In December, the publisher of Lebanon’s leading daily, Annahar, anti-Syrian lawmaker Gebran Tueni was killed. Political murders came amidst a series of bombings in different areas of Lebanon. If Assad’s threat against Hariri to break Lebanon on his head was accurate, then Assad’s promise was coming true.

With Rafik Hariri dead, Jumblatt was single-handedly leading the March 14 offensive against Damascus and Hezbollah. On 14 February 2006, Newsweek described him as a “dead man walking,”^[[32]] waiting for the Syrians to finish him off. Meanwhile, the Druze leader was always looking for a deal with Syria. “We must cut a deal with Syria, those who went after Hariri won’t leave Lebanon so easily,” he told Young.^[[33]]

During the rundown to parliamentary elections in May 2005, Jumblatt tailored an alliance between March 14 and the Hezbollah-led March 8. The deal left little seats for the candidates of Michel Aoun, a Christian March 14 leader. Through backdoor channels with Damascus, Aoun quit March 14 and his ticket ran independently. He swept key 18

Christians district and pocketed a handsome bloc of 15–20 in the 128-seat parliament. Aoun’s turncoat eventually proved to be detrimental for March 14 and the pro-democracy movement at large.

During the 2005 parliamentary alliance, Jumblatt and March 14 believed that they had lured Hezbollah away from its Iranian patrons and Syrian allies. Hezbollah, for its part, thought the 2005 alliance was one form of restoring the old arrangement, wherein the party maintains its armed militia, and wherein March 14 drops its support toward the uncovering the perpetrators of the Hariri murder, under UN investigation at the time. Both parties were wrong.

After the 2005 elections, March 14 won a majority of 71 seats, leaving Hezbollah with 46 and Aoun with 21. March 14 and March 8 formed a cabinet, under March 14 Fouad Siniora, without Aoun, whose bloc still gave the new cabinet a vote of confidence. By December, the March 14–March 8 alliance had cracked. Upon the Tueni murder, the cabinet moved to vote for expanding the UN Hariri crime investigation to uncover murders committed after it. Hezbollah and its allies refused and walked out of cabinet. They came back, however, a few months later. Meanwhile, Syria had completely won over Aoun and instructed him to enter into an alliance with Hezbollah, which he did in February 2006.

The Hezbollah-Aoun alliance had still not won the upper hand in Lebanon. Perhaps to restore its credentials as the party that call the shots, on July 12, 2006, Hezbollah— certainly in coordination with Iran and Syria—kidnapped two Israeli soldiers on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon. Eight other Israeli troops were killed when they tried to rescue their comrades. Israel retaliated. The 2006 War had started. After leaving more than 1,300 Lebanese and around 120 Israelis dead and devastating much of Lebanon’s infrastructure, the war ended on August 14, two days after the Security Council had approved UNSCR 1701, which not only reiterated its call for the implementation of UNSCR 1559, but also mandated the expansion of a UN force in southern Lebanon, along with the deployment of Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in the south for the first time since 1978. UNSCR 1701 also stipulated that the UN verify that Hezbollah would not replenish its arsenal, which it usually does with arms shipments through Syria.

Hezbollah announced a “divine victory” over Israel, despite the near total devastation of the property of the Shiite community. Perhaps to keep the Shiites under its thumb, Hezbollah needed to offer the community a true victory. Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah thus turned his attention inward as he picked a new fight with the March 14 majority. “In late October 2006, Nasrallah declared that [March 8] was entitled to transform its victory into a greater share of seats in the cabinet. He demanded a national unity government in which the party and its allies held veto power.”^[[34]] The party was hoping to compensate the Shiite defeat against Israel through Lebanon’s communal politics. But Hezbollah hit partial success.

On the one hand, the Shiites rallied around Hezbollah for a greater share in power, even though the Hezbollahled opposition already counted President Lahoud and Shiite Speaker Nabih Berri among its ranks. On the other hand, however, Lebanon’s communal political game had its shortcomings. It had always been a zero sum game. Hezbollah still tried to overplay its hand, and when the March 14 majority refused to capitulate, the party announced an open-ended strike and erected a tent city in downtown Beirut, leading to a political stalemate and governmental paralysis throughout 2007 and most of 2008, during which assassinations of March 14 lawmakers and journalists persisted.

Despite the Hezbollah ongoing strike, the Siniora cabinet approved an agreement with the UN, on 26 November 2006, for the creation of a tribunal on the Hariri case. Hezbollah announced the vote null^[[35]] while Syria lobbied its international friends—such as Russia—to obstruct a UN approval. Months of negotiations failed to convince Hezbollah to endorse the tribunal. This meant the Hezbollah-shut-down parliament could not ratify Lebanon’s agreement with the UN.

In light of their failure to stop the tribunal, Hezbollah and Syrian anti-tribunal response came on January 23, 2007 when their supporters cut the streets of Lebanon by burning tires, and provoking March 14 into clashes. The situation became especially tense between the Shiite supporters of the opposition and Sunnis who rallied around the sitting prime minister, a Sunni by tradition, against the background of increasing Shiite-Sunni tension throughout the Middle East. Hezbollah, however, stopped short of igniting a full scale confrontation with the Sunnis and the Druze. It called off its cutting of streets action. On 30 May 2007, UN Security Council passed resolution 1757, which stipulated the creation of a “Special Tribunal for Lebanon”^[[36]] under the mandatory Chapter VII of its charter.

In September 2007, Lahoud’s extended term ended as Hezbollah kept parliament, which elects the president, closed to prevent March 14 from using their majority in electing a president to their liking. Lebanon now was without a president, with a closed parliament and a cabinet paralyzed by a Hezbollah-led sit-in in downtown Beirut and an ongoing stalemate.

By May 2008, Hezbollah and Syria started instigating labor unions to start anti-government marches. More tension was building between the March 14 majority and the cabinet, on one side, and Hezbollah and Syria on the other, especially with reports that Hezbollah had put the VIP runway at the Beirut International Airport under surveillance. On 5 May, the March 14 cabinet approved a resolution mandating the replacement of the army general in charge of airport security, and demanded a landline phone network—owned 22

exclusively by Hezbollah—to be dismantled. Nasrallah fired back by saying the decisions were an act of aggression against his militia, and ordered his fighters to sweep areas of March 14 supporters, the predominantly Sunni West Beirut and the Druze southern Mount Lebanon. Civil war was back.

But an unarmed March 14, fearing the formidable force of Hezbollah, surrendered, as the cabinet reversed its earlier decisions and accepted Arab League arbitration. The major Lebanese players flew to Doha, where they arrived at a deal under which parliament elected Army Commander Michel Suleiman as president, granted veto power in cabinet to Hezbollah and its allies, and agreed to hold elections under a law favorable to March 8 Forces and their ally Aoun.

In June 2009, after opinion polls had shown that Hezbollah and Aoun would win parliamentary elections, March 14 pulled a surprise and defeated Hezbollah, Aoun and Syria’s allies. March 14 won a convincing 71-seat majority, but failed to form a cabinet under Hezbollah’s threat of repeating the May punitive campaign against them, should they attempt to govern Lebanon as a majority. March 14 caved, much to the distress of their supporters who elected them for their Independence Uprising-inspired platform.

Reasons behind the March 14 surrender were mainly the movement’s fear that it had lost supporters in the West. In mid 2007, a Syria-friendly Nicolas Sarkozy had already replaced the champion of Lebanon’s independence Jacques Chirac as president of France. In Washington, the term of the democracy-spreading Bush administration had expired, as 23

new President Barak Obama preached—during his speech in Cairo—“support of democracy” rather than spreading it.^[[37][38]]

 

2009: The Berlin Wall Is Back

On 9 November 2009, Saad Hariri formed a cabinet in which he granted March 8, despite Hezbollah losing the elections^[[39]], veto power. He made a trip to Damascus, in 2010, and held a meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom he and March 14 had accused of killing Hariri and other pro-independence Lebanese lawmakers and journalists. Jumblatt followed suit.

Unlike in 2005 when the Middle East’s autocrats were cracking under the pressure of democracy the year 2009 saw a resurge in autocracy as rulers suppressed popular will. In Lebanon, March 14 defeated Hezbollah in polls, but was forced to succumb to Hezbollah’s bullying power. In Iran, a growing pro-democracy movement, the Green Revolution, was nipped in its bud as Iranian security forces brutalized demonstrators, often shooting them in the streets in broad daylight. In both cases, Washington and the West preferred stability of the autocrats than supporting defenders of democracy and a consequent turbulent situation.

The Beirut Spring that had started in February 2005 had come to an end by June 2009. In retrospect, a few lessons might explain the failure of democracy in the Middle East.

First, time was on the side of the Middle East’s autocrats. Western governments with different agendas succeed each other every few years, while dictators stay. This gives dictators the ability to “stay their course” while undermining Western perseverance in supporting democracy and keeping up the pressure on autocrats.

Second, anti-autocratic leaders in the Middle East have proven to be inadequate in leading their nations toward democracy. The anti-autocrats descend from the same political school as that of the autocrats, thus rendering the battle between dictatorship and democracy a mere competition between domestic rivals. Lebanon 2005 might have been an exception for a brief period of time when popular sentiments, angry against the murder of Hariri, Syrian occupation and Hezbollah’s non-state military power, led the way during the Independence Uprising. Anti-Syria and anti-Hezbollah politicians followed, but eventually, they tamed the uprising and used it for their political gains, thus further frustrating the popular tempo in favor of democracy. With minimal leadership supervision, the people of Lebanon revolted for democracy, but lacked the tools to capitalize on their gains after their revolt had succeeded.

Third, only a few countries slip from the grip of autocracy to the freedom of democracy without turbulence. Democracy has a price and might stall at times, just like the French Revolution in the 18^th century. People revolt in favor of democratic principles, but have to expect setbacks and a long fight. Instead, the majority of the revolting Lebanese expected immediate results.

Furthermore, the fight for democracy in the Middle East, telling form the Lebanese experience, was an asymmetric one between autocrats and their militias, such as Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, against powerless citizens. In Lebanon between 2005 and 2009, a series of brutal assassinations took out the main cadres of the Independence Uprising and succeeded in undermining it by terrorizing whoever planned to stand their grounds. The victims of the Syrian and Hezbollah’s terror were either forced to go low profile, or to leave the country and live in exile. Lessons from Lebanon on how autocrats defy the popular will were not lost on any democracy group in the region. These groups further conceded when the United States’ support for democracy waned and its funding drying up.

 

Lebanon Now

Like the rest of the region, the democracy movement in Lebanon seems to have been irreversibly deflated as antidemocracy forces seem to have regained power. But despite conceding to Syria and Hezbollah, Hariri has not been given authority to govern. Damascus and Hezbollah still want to see Hariri denounce the UN-created Special Tribunal for Lebanon as a Western “imperial scheme.”

Throughout its history of controlling Lebanon, Syria forced Lebanese “consensus” in its favor and against international resolutions. In May 1983, Amin Gemayel had just been elected Lebanon’s president when he signed a peace treaty with Israel. Fearing Lebanon in peace might undermine its regional leverage, Syria wanted the treaty scrapped, and eventually forced Gemayel himself to annul it as part of the “Lebanese consensus.”

Between 1990 and 2005, whenever the international community hinted at the need for a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, Syria forced all of Lebanon’s political players— under threat of assassination—to show “consensus” in demanding that Syria stays. In the rare instance when Syria could not force Lebanese consensus in its favor, it instructed its allies and protégés to speak on the behalf of Lebanon’s majority, like on March 8, 2005, and demand Syria stay in Lebanon.

In 2010, Syria wants a Lebanese consensus against UNSCR 1559 and 1701, guaranteeing an open front between Lebanon and Israel, which gives Syria a chance to play Lebanon’s interlocutor with the world. Syria also wants Lebanese consensus against the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Until it gets these two demands, Syria and Hezbollah are not likely to let Hariri practice any kind of governance over Lebanon, with or without a Hezbollah ‘veto power’ inside the cabinet.

Meanwhile, one last political player, Christian leader Samir Geagea, has remained defiant against Syria since 1990 and has repeatedly called for Hezbollah’s disarmament. Syria and Hezbollah will either make sure to force Lebanese consensus to send Geagea back to prison, or the insubordinate politician might face murder at the hands of perpetrators who have remained at large over the past half century.

Finally, even though Syria has regained part of its influence over Lebanon, the 2005–2009 experience seems to have showed that Damascus is not in the driver’s seat anymore, when it comes to running Lebanon’s affairs. In May 2008, it was Hezbollah’s militia which coerced its rivals and punished their insubordination. The June 2009 elections showed that only three of Syria’s protégés could make it to parliament in districts that were not completely dominated by Hezbollah. Therefore, even though Syria tries to show that it has won back Lebanon and tries to bargain with the world over its affairs, the Lebanese—first and foremost amongst them Hezbollah—now know that Syria is powerless in Lebanon without the Shiite party.

Hezbollah will be deciding Lebanon’s future for a while. Syria will tag along and try to behave as if it has the final say. Lebanon’s Independence Uprising of 2005 has certainly given Lebanon its independence from Syria, but has failed to give the country any semblance of democracy. Perhaps sometime in the future, another uprising might finally make Lebanon both independent and democratic.

 

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• Refining the Saudi “Will to Power”

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• The Friendship With Israel: India Squares The Circle

Dr P R Kumaraswamy

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• The United States and Political Islam: The Dialectic of Hegemony and Resistance

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• The GCC Economies and the Crash: Short-term Weaknesses, Long-term Strengths

Dr Steffen Hertog

April 2009

• Social Change in the United Arab Emirates: Challenges of Migration and “Emiratisation”

Dr Habibul Haque Khondker

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• The Dynamics of Middle Eastern Political Language

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• Islamisation Trends in Middle East and Beyond

HE Amb Hussein Haridy

February 2009

[1] Michael Duffy, “When History Turns a Corner,” TIME, 14 March, 2005, p.7

[2] Ibid

[3] /12/10   9:24:13 AM

[4] Ibid

[5] Thomas Friedman, ‘Iraq at the Tipping Point’, The New York Times, 18 November 2004, Retrieved 27 April 2010, available from Website < http:// www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/opinion/18friedman.html?scp=1&sq=Tho mas%20Friedman%20Tipping%20Point&st=cse>

[6] William Harris, The New Face of Lebanon, Princeton, New Jersey, Markus

Wiener Publishers, 2005, p.276

[7] Michael Young, The Ghosts of Martyrs Square, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2010, p. 68

[8] Ibid

[9] John Kifner, ‘Ex-Syrian Aid Says Assad Did Threaten Lebanese’, The New York Times, 31 December 2005, Retrieved 1 May 2010, available from Website <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9901E4DE

[10] F932A05751C1A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all>

[11] Ibid

[12] The United Nations, Security Council Declares Support for Free, Fair Presidential Election, 1 May, 2010, from <http://www.un.org/News/Press/ docs/2004/sc8181.doc.htm>

[13] Ghassan Sharbel, ‘Hariri: My Assassination Is not in the Cards’, Alhayat, 11 February, 2006, Retrieved <http://international.daralhayat.com/ archivearticle/100486>

[14] Syria News, Last Meeting between Hariri and Ghazaleh Videoed and Recorded, 17 September, 2005, from <http://www.syria-news.com/ readnews.php?sy_seq=11541>

[15] Al-Jazeera, The Political Future of Lebanon after Hariri’s Assassination, 1 May, 2010, from <http://www.aljazeera.net/channel/archive/archive?Arc hiveId=116318>

[16] According to Young, American official Paula Dobrionsky coined the term Cedar Revolution at a time when popular movements in Ukraine and Georgia had earned similar catchy brand names. Cedar Revolution caught up much later and is used more in Western circles, whereas the Lebanese stuck with Independence Uprising.

[17] Young, p. 50

[18] President Assad, Speech of Mr. President Bashar Assad before the People’s Assembly on 5 March 2005, Retrieved from <http://www.president assad.org/Bashar_Al_Assad/Bashar_Hafez_Al_Assad_Parliament_2005. htm>

[19] Dunia Alwatan, Full Text of the Text of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah Secretary General of Hezbollah in Beirut’s Massive Rally, Retrieved on 1 May, 2010 from <http://www.alwatanvoice.com/arabic/content-18350.html>

[20] Ibid

[21] Ibid

[22] Hussain Abdul-Hussain, ‘Ask not what the US can do for Lebanon’, NOW Lebanon, 12 December 2009, Retrieved on 1 May 2010 from <http://www.

nowlebanon.com/NewsArchiveDetails.aspx?ID=131996>

[23] Ibid

[24] Nicholas Blanford, Killing Mr. Lebanon, New York, I.B. Tauris, 2006, p. 147

[25] Scott Wilson and Daniel Williams, ‘A New Power Rises Across Mideast’,

The Washington Post, 17 April 2005, p. A1

[26] Karl Rove, Courage and Consequence, New York, Threshold Editions,

[27] , p. 472

[28] Ibid

[29] Editorial, ‘Democracy Stirs in the Middle East’, The Economist, 5 March

[30] , p. 9

[31] Rove, p. 472

[32] Christopher Dicky, Dean Man Waiting?, Newsweek, 14 Feb, 2006, Retrieved 1 May, 2010 from <http://www.newsweek.com/id/57164>

[33] Young, p. 42

[34] Young, p. 126

[35] Ibid, p. 128

[36] Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Special Tribunal for Lebanon, 1 May 2010 from <http://www.stl-tsl.org/action/home>

[37] The White House, Remarks by the President on a New Beginning, 1 May

[38] , from <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-

President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/>

[39] Seeing polls showing the victory of the Hezbollah-led-opposition, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah had said that should the opposition lose in the 2009 parliamentary elections, it would stay out of power and let the winners (March 14) form a cabinet and rule. However, after losing elections, Nasrallah reneged on his promise and insisted on the formation of a March 14–March 8 ‘national unity’ cabinet.