Lebanon

Last week two funerals/ceremonies were held: One, for assassinated terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, who is linked to the 1985 hi-jacking that killed a Navy Seal on board, as well as bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Most of the mourners at this funeral were supporters or members of the group Shi'i Militia group Hezbollah (Arabic for "Party of God"). Most people here were Shi'i Muslims but also a few Catholic/Eastern Orthodox who during the 90s supported anti-Syrian leader and new-found Hezbollah ally Michel Aoun, himself a Maronite Catholic (much like the author of this blog). They want Lebanon to be a free independent nation with the founding premise for a new constitution that Lebanon is an Arab country and an independent country that should be free from undue influence or aggression from Israel, Syria, the U.S., and France. They want new Parliamentary elections and the resignation of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

The other, as a commemoration of the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was killed on Valentine's Day 2005. I remember it cuz I walked into a McDonalds after school and saw on the TV a 2002 interview Wolf Blitzer did with the man, with the bottom banner stating, "Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri assassinated." At this funeral, the mourners were supporters of the political party Al-Naqbata (Arabic for "the Future"), and Shi'i were not more than a few. Most people there were Catholic, Sunni Muslim (the group Mr. Hariri came from), or Druze. And most people there want Lebanon to become a stable peaceful place and once again maybe, just maybe, become the "Paris of the East" as it was once known before 1975.

I have read three books on the Lebanese Civil War of the 70s and 80s, and I know people from Lebanon, and I have followed their press for at least five years, and what I find remarkable about this is how many positive changes have happened since the Taif Accords of 1990, and yet how much more hopeless it also seems since 1982.

Allow me to explain: On the one hand, the hatred and rivalry between Christians and the Druze is gone. In the late 1970s the two groups were at each others' throats in the south of Mount Lebanon (where my ancestors were from). The Israeli occupying forces couldn't keep them apart. The U.S. Marine corp couldn't keep them apart. They've been fighting since the 1820s. But now they are once again as unified as they were when the Druze first settled in Mount Lebanon after their flight from Egypt in the 11th century. At that time, the Catholics controlled northern Mt. Lebanon, and the Druze controlled southern Mt. Lebanon, and the two sides had a mutual defense pact between them to protect against Muslim militaries. The other remarkable thing is how unified Christians and Sunnis are. Those two groups fought horrendously in the 50s and the 70s and 80s. In the 1950s Christians abhorred the growing wave of secular Arab nationalism that Sunnis in the country were taking to, and feared Lebanon would be absorbed into the then-U.A.R. which comprised Egypt, Syria, and Yemen. Christians feared losing their "Christian Arab country," which was at that time and still is the only Arab country where Christians comprise more than 15% of the country. (Syria is about 10 to 12% Christian; Jordan 8%, and Egypt 8%).

But in the post-1990 environment, the one common thread Jim Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute has found, is that all Lebanese today, regardless of religious affiliation, identify themselves as Lebanese first and foremost. The days of Sunnis and secular Shi'i wanting to join the secular Nasserist movement of the U.A.R. are gone.

But today, there are two forces at opposite ends of the spectrum at work in Lebanon, and they are in large part the reason a census has not been taken in the country since1932. On the one hand you have the Shi'i who are the poorest group income-wise in the country, yet probably make up the largest of all four major groups. They feel that since they are numbers-wise the largest group that they should have a lot more power than they do in government, yet still today the highest position a Shi'ite Muslim can have is Speaker of Parliament. On the other extreme you have Christians who are generally speaking at the top of the income-wealth ladder in the country, not trying to expand their power from current levels, but rather, just trying to hold onto what they have, for fear of the demographic realities which would show them to be nowhere even close to the numbers they had even in the early 1980s. It gets messier when you consider intermittent Israeli bombings in the south and intermittent assassination attempts and bombings by Syria.

Hopefully Hezbollah will not attack Israel and face another July 2006 situation in the south. Hopefully Syria will stop their targeting of Parliamentarians. Hopefully, a president whom most people in the country can be elected within the next month or two.

But all anyone can ever say of Lebanon's fate is hopefully....