It is an irony that the only former wartime leader who actually served time in prison after the Lebanese civil war ended is the one routinely accused of having the heaviest past. Yes, we know that Samir Geagea is no altar boy, but it is sometimes tiresome to hear people suddenly raise the bass in their voice when mentioning him; to suddenly hear them go off on unrequested tangents describing his grim legacy. Either Geagea should benefit from the same blanket forgiveness that the Lebanese accorded to all their wartime leaders, or let’s just admit we’re all hypocrites.
These thoughts come to mind following the statement by Sleiman Franjieh earlier this week that inter-Christian reconciliation could only take place once Geagea would “admit to his crimes, apologize publicly, then quit politics.” That was quite a statement, because Geagea not only spent 11 years behind bars for crimes both real and imagined, which should represent some measure of atonement; he was also one of the few militia leaders to publicly apologize for his militia’s previous actions—an apology that was so poorly received in some quarters that the otherwise bold move soon looked like a tactical error.
We have no illusions about the potential for inter-Christian reconciliation. The Syrians have plainly told Franjieh that they don’t want it to happen, so he’s only implementing their decision by ratcheting up the absurd conditions for dealing with Geagea. Meanwhile, Michel Aoun has insisted that no reconciliation with the Lebanese Forces is needed and is throwing himself into the mud of regional rivalry — appealing to Iran and avoiding condemnation of Syria while also criticizing Saudi Arabia, even as Geagea has moved closer to the Saudis and built bridges to Egypt.
But our larger point is another one. Until when will wartime guilt be used by some figures as an unevenly applied battering ram in the political arena? We have no problem with remembering the war, and indeed regret that nothing was done during the postwar years to enhance remembrance. But if the only way of remembering the war now is to do so selectively, in order to score political points and abort political progress, then such memory serves no constructive purpose and will in no way reconcile the Lebanese. Quite the contrary; it will only divide them further.
That’s why Franjieh’s effort to paint Geagea as someone beyond the pale, as someone guiltier than the rest, is both destructive and very partial. Franjieh’s family may have been murdered by the Lebanese Forces, in a crime that was thoroughly heinous, but countless people were murdered at the hands of Franjieh’s postwar allies, particularly by his Syrian sponsors. When Franjieh accepted a prominent place in a postwar Syrian political order built on a foundation of amnesia, he accepted that such concepts as justice and retribution when applied to the war would be set aside. The same goes for Omar Karami, whose government passed an amnesty law in 1991 erasing most wartime crimes. That these two men should now be refusing to have anything to do with Geagea, on the grounds that he is a war criminal, is the height of duplicity.
We have few illusions about our wartime leaders. But justice was not served — nor was that ever the intention — when Geagea was sent to prison while all the other militia chiefs pursued their political interests without hindrance. All that the episode showed was that justice could be twisted to serve narrow political ends — at the time those of Damascus.
We may agree that Franjieh and Karami are free to reject any kind of reconciliation with Geagea. But their decision has to be a personal one. No one in the postwar political class (or for that matter Michel Aoun, who has more than a few victims to his name) is entitled to rebuke Geagea on the basis of high national principle. The postwar system was and is many things, but it certainly is not in even the remotest way principled.
