The Palestinians and Israelis get all the attention. But it is on the tiny
sliver of Mediterranean coast known as Lebanon that the political dysfunction of
the Middle East is truly epitomized.
Beirut was a major center in Ottoman times: Indeed, the territory that is now
Israel was once ruled from the city. It retained its prominence under the
French, and became a free-wheeling, sophisticated hub for wealthy Arabs looking
to escape the Bedouin parochialism of their native countries.
And then, in the 1970s, it all fell apart — and hasn’t really come together
since.
Lebanon’s civil war — which nominally ended in 1990 — was a ridiculously
complex affair, involving Syria, Israel and a variety of other regional actors.
But essentially, it came down to the fact that the Arab world’s Shiites, Sunnis,
Druze and Christians cannot co-inhabit the same nation without repressing (and
occasionally killing) one another. In most parts of the Middle East — Saudi
Arabia, for example — these groups are sufficiently dispersed to avoid blowing
one another up. In Lebanon, they live cheek by jowl.
As in any narrative of Arab dysfunction, the Palestinians have played a
supporting role. When the PLO wore out its welcome in Jordan in the early 1970s,
Yasser Arafat moved his military infrastructure to Lebanon, complicating the
country’s civil war further. Israel invaded in 1982, threw Arafat out, and then
stuck around to fight Iran’s Shiite proxy force, Hezbollah — which itself has
outlasted the Israeli presence, and made itself a major nuisance.
Skipping over the 2006 war with Israel (among other major events), this
brings us to last week, when Hezbollah’s confrontation with West Beirut-based
Sunni supporters of the country’s moderate, semi-functional government (whose
politicians — did we mention? — are still occasionally blown up by a Syrian
military apparatus that resents having been kicked out of the country in 2005)
threatened to bring the country into complete chaos.
Got all that?
Who won last week’s confrontation in Beirut? It’s hard to say. On one hand,
Hezbollah showed its street strength, and got the government to back down on a
plan to strip away its private communications and security network. On the other
hand, most Lebanese factions seem to blame Hezbollah for staging such a
dangerous provocation, and for humiliating the country’s Sunnis. No one knows
which side would win an all-out civil war. All we know is that the prospects of
such a war are now greater than they were a week ago.
Colonialism, oil, Israel and the Iraq war are all regularly cited as the
bogeymen responsible for the backwardness that pervades the Middle East.
Lebanon's failure to become a normal country after all these years suggests
there is something more basic at the root of the region's problems: a regressive
climate in which power is wielded not through consensus and diplomacy, but by
warring sects and clan leaders.
Until this aspect of Arab political culture changes, the violent spirit we
saw in Beirut last week will flourish no less in Baghdad, Nablus and Gaza.
jkay@nationalpost.com
