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Prolonged Crisis’ in Lebanon Reflects ‘Cold War’ in Region
Counsil on Foreign Relations
Interviewee: Michael Young, Opinion Page Editor,
Daily Star, Beirut
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor
Michael Young, a political analyst in Beirut,
says Hezbollah’s efforts to impose its will in Lebanon have led to “a prolonged crisis that is a reflection of the cold war in the region” between Iran and the United States and their respective allies. He worries that
Hezbollah’s latest efforts to show off its military power may spawn genuine hatred between Shiites and Sunnis in Lebanon. “Things could get a lot worse before they get better,” he says.
Things have apparently quieted
down in Lebanon today, but is the airport still closed? Are there still Hezbollah roadblocks?
The airport is still closed and will probably remain closed until Hezbollah is satisfied that it’s won. But I don’t think
Hezbollah is going to win so we may be in for a long closure. Although the Lebanese army is present in western Beirut, effective control over that part of the city is in the hands of militias of Hezbollah and its allies. In
eastern Beirut, which is predominantly Christian, we have a very different situation. It’s fairly normal and for political reasons, at least for the moment, Hezbollah does not seem to want to enter into Christian areas. It
seems to fear that that might backfire politically. So we are in a bit of a bizarre situation.
Most of the roads between eastern and western Beirut are closed by Hezbollah. They call this a “civil disobedience” campaign
but effectively they’ve managed to split off parts of the capital from each other.
You said that Hezbollah is not going to win but haven’t they already “won”?
No, what they have done is they’ve managed to take
over western Beirut fairly easily because there was no real military resistance to Hezbollah there. But ultimately a majority of Lebanese are opposed to Hezbollah. The party doesn’t have the military might to impose its will on
all of the country. It tried, for example, on Saturday and Sunday to extend its area of control a little bit into the mountains above its stronghold in the southern suburbs into the areas where the Druze community is present.
According to a number of sources and security forces, it took quite a beating. Entering into strongholds of the other communities in Lebanon will not be as easy as entering into western Beirut for Hezbollah. And doing so might
be a big mistake for them.
So how does the Humpty Dumpty of Lebanon put itself together again?
In many respects Humpty Dumpty was never able to put himself together again after the Syrian departure in 2005. The
Syrians left behind a very, very difficult situation. They had essentially sponsored, allowed, and overseen the creation of an independent, or a virtually independent, Hezbollah state within the state in Lebanon. The Shiite
community is concentrated in the southern suburbs of Beirut, in south Lebanon, in parts of the western Beqaa Valley, and in the northern Beqaa Valley. Many ways these areas are under quite strong Hezbollah control. Hezbollah
was able to build up a private army and it has a separate economy in many ways—including a separate telephone system we now know. In a sense it was a state within a state. As a result of this, we’ve created a situation which is
no longer tolerable. The sovereign Hezbollah state, in many respects, needs to control the sovereign Lebanese state so it can continue to be virtually independent. When the Syrians left, the effort by the government to reimpose
a semblance of sovereignty hit up against Hezbollah’s unwillingness to give up its own independence and its own relative sovereignty.
That’s why there’s been this deadlock over choosing a president and a government?
Precisely. The Syrians in particular have blocked the election of a new president because the Syrian desire is to return to Lebanon in collaboration, if it can, with Hezbollah. In turn, Hezbollah needs to bring the Syrians
back to Lebanon because only the Syrian presence can protect Hezbollah against the majority of Lebanese who want Hezbollah to surrender its weapons. So Syria has blocked the presidential election because it feared that through
that election, there would be a process of normalization that would kick in and the Lebanese state would begin, slowly but surely, pulling away from Syria, which it has been trying to do since 2005 with many obstacles. Syria
and Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s allies have prevented the election of a president to allow any kind of normalization effort.
I believe that what we’ve seen in the last week is taking the step a bit further. Hezbollah’s
objective now seems to want to change the balance of power in Lebanon to bring down the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, to bring in eventually a new president that it controls who may very well be the army
commander, Michel Suleiman, who quite ironically is also the candidate that the majority has been backing. But this time he would be controlled by Hezbollah, not by the majority. Hezbollah in a sense is trying to recreate a
state that it can control, with an army that it can control.
You said that you don’t think this is possible, but why?
It’s not possible for a number of reasons. In Lebanon, no community can impose its will on all
the others. Hezbollah today has its military power but even constitutionally to move from where we are now to the formation of a new government through the election of a president would require that the present prime minister,
Fouad Siniora, resign. While he is under considerable pressure from Hezbollah, he is also under considerable pressure from his allies not to resign. I don’t think he will resign. And if he does not, then Hezbollah really cannot
create a government of its own.
The irony of this is that Hezbollah has burned its non-Shiite allies in the past week. To create a government it would need to collaborate with the other religious communities, but even
its own allies from the other religious communities have no legitimacy for Hezbollah to establish a government with them in it. For Hezbollah to establish even a government it controls, it would need to bring in the
parliamentary majority, who today it is firing at and it is trying to intimidate. They will find it very difficult to impose any kind of new political order unless the prime minister resigns and unless the majority is
browbeaten into accepting, essentially, a surrender.
The Arab League has been talking about this. Are they able to do anything?
The Arabs are divided on this. Yesterday there was a meeting of the Arab League.
Qatar, in particular, played a key role, as did the Syrians, in trying to water down any kind of condemnation of Hezbollah. The Arab world is divided. While there will be an Arab League committee arriving in Beirut on Wednesday
to try to find a solution to the problem, I suspect that this will be very, very difficult, unless of course there is some desire on the part of Iran to find an exit. The Iranians certainly supported Hezbollah in this latest
round of fighting. The Iranians gave them a green light, and it was directed, I think, with the objective of, “We can be a United States in the region.”
But if Hezbollah is perceived as having reached some kind of deadlock, will the Iranians change?
That obviously is the question that will accompany the arrival of the Arab League committee delegation which will be
arriving in Beirut on Wednesday. The problem has been basically the same from the beginning. The opposition does not want to elect Suleiman unless it has prior agreement on the balance of power in the future government. What it
wants among other things is veto power in this government. Veto power in a Lebanese government is actually something quite significant because it means that the opposition will be able to set the agenda, would be able to block
any cabinet session at which it’s not present because there wouldn’t be a quorum. So unless it has that and unless it also has guarantees on which portfolios it will hold, it’s going to continue to block the election of
Suleiman as president.
This is a fundamental issue between the majority and the opposition: the issue of control over the government. The majority does not want to see this veto power be given to the opposition because
it would put the opposition in the driver’s seat on policy in the future. So, the deadlock will continue. I don’t think that Hezbollah’s actions up to now have shown that they could break this deadlock.
It’s not a very appetizing future then.
No, it’s not. We’re in a prolonged crisis that is a reflection of the cold war in the region between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas on the one side and the United States, Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Lebanese on the other. What is particularly worrisome, however, to me is that in Lebanon we have now let the Sunni-Shiite genie out of the bottle. This worries me down the road because today,
quite unfortunately, Hezbollah has provoked a great deal of hatred in the country against the Shiite community for its own reasons. Down the road, I very much worry that this is going to create more and more religious
polarization between the two Muslim communities. It may lead to a strengthening of Sunni Islamist militancy which is already strong in northern Lebanon. I very much worry that we won’t get out of this very soon. Things could
get a lot worse before they get better.
Why does General Michel Aoun, a leader of the Christian community, keep supporting the Shiites and Hezbollah?
The only reason Aoun does that is because he wants to be
president and feels he can ride the Hezbollah tank into the presidential palace. The only problem with Aoun is that he’s a dupe. He’s been taken for a ride by both Hezbollah and the Syrians. In a way they’ve used Aoun to block
the election of a president because he has a substantial bloc in parliament that allows him to do that. He essentially has prevented the election of Suleiman. But at the same time I have no doubt that if Hezbollah were able to
reach a government that it is satisfied with, it would elect Suleiman and not Aoun as president. What Aoun doesn’t realize is that Hezbollah is using him or if he does realize it, he is certainly not doing anything to prevent
them from doing so.
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