[wvns] Rallying Around the Renegade in Lebanon

Hizbollah 'did not use civilians as cover'
By Mark Lavie in Jerusalem
07 September 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2938967.ece

In its strongest condemnation of Israel since last summer's war,
Human Rights Watch said yesterday that most Lebanese civilian
casualties were caused by "indiscriminate Israeli air strikes".

The international human rights organisation said there was no basis
to the Israeli claim that civilian casualties resulted from Hizbollah
guerrillas using civilians for cover. Israel has said that it
attacked civilian areas because Hizbollah set up rocket launchers in
villages and towns. More than 1,000 Lebanese were killed in the 34-
day conflict, which began after Hizbollah staged a cross-border raid,
killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two others.

Israeli aircraft targeted Lebanese infrastructure, including bridges
and Beirut airport, and heavily damaged a district of Beirut known as
a Hizbollah stronghold, as well as attacking Hizbollah centres in
villages near the border. Hizbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets at
northern Israel, killing 119 soldiers. In the fighting, 40 Israeli
civilians were killed.

Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch executive director, said there were
only "rare" cases of Hizbollah operating in civilian villages.

"To the contrary, once the war started, most Hizbollah military
officials and even many political officials left the villages," he
said. "Most Hizbollah military activity was conducted from prepared
positions outside Lebanese villages in the hills and valleys around."

The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, rejected the
findings. "Hizbollah adopted a deliberate strategy of shielding
itself behind the civilian population and turning the civilians in
Lebanon into a human shield," he said.

===

Rallying Around the Renegade
Heiko Wimmen
Middle East Report Online
http://www.merip.org

Back in the fall of 2006, student elections at the American University
of Beirut produced an unexpected aesthetic: female campaigners for the
predominantly Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) of the
ex-general Michel Aoun sporting button-sized portraits of bearded
Hizballah leader Hasan Nasrallah on their stylish attire. "Hizballah
stands for the unity and independence of Lebanon, just as we do," went
the party line, as reiterated by Laure, an activist business student
clad in the movement's trademark orange. "And imagine, the Shi`a and
us," she mused, off-script and with a glance at her co-campaigners,
covered head to toe in the black gowns of the staunchly Islamist
party, but spiced up with bright orange ribbons for the occasion. "How
many we will be."

Just how many became clear soon enough, when Aoun joined Hizballah's
attempt to bring down the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora
through public pressure later that year. While actual numbers are
notoriously hard to come by,[1] the two main rallies held on December
1 and 10 clearly rivaled the demonstration that brought about the
Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon 18 months before. Followers of Aoun,
who stand out in their blazing orange gear, accounted for an apparent
third of the masses. Once again, predictions that Aoun's alliance with
the "Party of God" would dispel his support in the Christian community
were proven wrong.

RETURN OF THE RENEGADE
Throughout his political career, Michel Aoun's bold maneuvering,
boisterous, often ranting discourse and utter disregard for the
complex rules and false niceties of the Lebanese political scene have
made him one of the most divisive figures therein. To his admirers, he
is the strong leader who can rise above the fray of perennial
internecine conflict, clear out a divided and despised political class
bent on the pursuit of factional and personal interest, and achieve
longed-for, but ever elusive national unity. Likewise, Aoun has earned
himself the intense loathing (even by Lebanese standards) of the
members of exactly this political class (and their followers). Rather
than a champion of secularist nationalism, they consider Aoun to be an
irresponsible rabble rouser who threatens to upset the delicate
balance of sectarian power sharing, and his calls for reform and a
shakeup of public institutions to be thinly veiled Bonapartism. Aoun's
loud populism is seen as not only gauche but also a challenge to the
country's Byzantine political game, whereby decisions and
distributions of spoils are supposed to be worked out behind
impenetrable smokescreens of lofty principles and diplomatic cant. For
the Christian part of this political class, he is also an upstart
trespassing on territory that is rightfully theirs. "To his
supporters," as one journalist sums it up, "he is a Lebanese Charles
de Gaulle seeking to unite this fractious country and rebuild trust in
its institutions. To his critics he is a divisive megalomaniac willing
to stop at nothing to become president of Lebanon."[2]

Another constant feature of Aoun's volatile career is the persistence
with which his popular support has bounced back every time his
opponents have declared it spent. In 2005, after 15 years in exile,
most observers and competitors considered the retired general, then
70, a figure of the past.[3] His announced intention to descend upon
Lebanese politics like a "tsunami" was widely derided as being not
only in bad taste (coming, as it did, only a few months after the
disastrous tsunami in the Indian Ocean), but the delusion of an empire
builder who had missed his moment. Already in the 1980s, Aoun's
assertive posture, in contrast to his physical stature, had led wags
to give him the nickname "NapolAoun."

The returned exile was taken lightly in the lead-up to the May-June
2005 parliamentary elections that followed the collapse of the
pro-Syrian government and the departure of Syrian troops. In the
absence of real political parties -- most parties restrict their
activities to organizing support for their powerful, sect-based leader
and the field of candidates riding on his ticket -- Lebanese election
campaigns are typically dominated by complex bargaining over joined
lists and alliances between these confessional chieftains. Expediency
is often the only glue keeping such alliances stuck together, though
often not far beyond election day. Within the bargaining, the number
of "safe" slots offered to a potential ally on a joined list usually
reflects his expected electoral strength, or the number of votes that
he would be able to mobilize in support of the joined list. During the
traditional bazaar in 2005, Aoun was offered a meager seven to eight
seats at best in return for joining the unified opposition list. He
refused, causing the first major rift in the broad "Syria out!" alliance.

Riding on the wave of mass gatherings peaking with the demonstration
of March 14, 2005 -- the date which would provide the name for
Lebanon's current governing coalition -- the alliance forged between
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, the son of the slain former prime
minister Rafiq al-Hariri, Saad, and an array of anti-Syrian Christian
politicians was confident of winning a parliamentary majority, or even
the two thirds of parliamentary seats necessary to impeach President
Emile Lahoud,[4] the most stubborn pupil of Syrian tutelage in the
country. The March 14 forces even struck a deal with the Shi`i parties
Hizballah and Amal, who had just expressed their gratitude to Syria
with a huge demonstration of their own, hoping that Shi`i votes would
tip the balance in enough districts to achieve the coveted two-thirds
majority.

Reality intruded during the elections in Mount Lebanon on June 12,
when Aoun's slate of no-names trounced the united opposition list in
the Christian heartlands, winning 21 seats and leaving the opposition
with only a modest majority (72 out of 128) in the new parliament. To
the surprise of everyone, it emerged that a significant majority of
the Lebanon's Christians, and a good percentage of those who had taken
to the streets to fight for independence and a Syrian withdrawal only
two months before, were actually supporters of Michel Aoun.[5]
"Countrywide, Michel Aoun garnered around 42 percent of the Christian
vote in 2005," says Lebanese pollster Abdo Saad. "In some parts of the
Christian mountains, that percentage would reach above 70." Counting
political allies in the north and the Bekaa Valley, some two thirds of
Lebanon's Christians were rallying under the orange banners of the
renegade general.

PULLING THE LION'S TAIL
One major reason for Aoun's recurrent mass appeal doubtless lies in
his long-standing anti-Syrian credentials. The military resistance he
mounted in 1989-1990 to the Saudi-sponsored and US-approved Pax
Syriana intended to tamp down the Lebanese civil war turned out to be
a costly failure. Yet his warnings against welcoming Syrian
involvement in the country were soon enough proven correct. Among
Christians, in particular, resentment festered throughout the 1990s
over the arbitrary and parasitic reign of the Syrian secret services
and their Lebanese stooges. But after the disbanding of the Lebanese
Forces, the strongest Christian militia-cum-party during the late
1980s, there were no political structures to organize and feed on this
resentment. Aoun did not leave behind a party either when he fled the
country, but he did inspire an amorphous movement of mainly young
followers. Galvanized by his hyperbolic Lebanese nationalism and his
bold confrontation with the feared Syrian regime and the loathed
militias, these supporters (with many Muslims among them) eventually
imagined the general as a national redeemer, and flocked to the
presidential palace by the thousands in late 1989, in order to form a
"human shield" against an expected Syrian attack.

After Aoun's defeat, his backers returned to their universities, from
whence they continued political action against the Syrian presence in
impromptu networks. While sometimes quixotic or even chauvinist in
character -- as with their harassment of migrant Syrian workers and
greengrocers -- the Aounists won a reputation of standing tall in the
face of the relentless repression of Syrian-controlled government
forces and thugs. When the Pax Syriana started to crumble after Hafiz
al-Asad's death in 2000, their university-based networks already
stretched into the fourth post-civil war cohort, while many of the
activists who had congregated around the presidential palace in 1989
were now urban professionals, often working in communications and the
media. Thus, when the time came for action in early 2005, the Aounists
were able to field a uniquely effective crowd: experienced in
spontaneous, decentralized political action under adverse conditions,
media-savvy and endowed with a Westernized veneer that would capture
the sympathy of an international audience. Says Khalil, an information
technology engineer in his late twenties: "I got involved through
friends from the university, who were on these electronic networks.

Yes, we wanted to get rid of the Syrians -- that was our goal, and
back then, [the Internet] was the only place where you could say that.
So that's where I felt I belonged, and when word was spread that
action was supposed to take place here or there, I would go. But I'd
never think of becoming a member of a political party."
While this anti-political, or rather, anti-Establishment, posture
found among many Lebanese who grew up during the last years of the
civil war resonates with Aoun's hostile relationship with many
Lebanese politicians, some 40,000 Lebanese -- nearly 70 percent of
them below the age of 30 -- have decided otherwise, and become
card-carrying FPM members through a registration process initiated in
late 2006, after the movement officially converted itself into a
political party. "All these young people who took to the streets back
in 2005 learned one very important thing," says Sami Ofeish, a
political scientist at the University of Balamand in the north of
Lebanon. "Politics to them is no longer something that happens on a
different planet. They had the experience that if they take action,
they can actually make things happen. So one would expect that this
generation would develop an attitude very different from that of the
preceding years."

"It was one of the most moving days of my life," recalls Alain Aoun,
the general's nephew and one of the major party activists, over a cup
of coffee in the trendy Christian neighborhood of Gemayzeh. "It showed
that Lebanese can come together over an issue, and forget about
religion and sects for the sake of the country. That was a very
emotional experience." Switching to the more recent demonstrations
mobilized in alliance with Hizballah, his assessment turns
significantly more sober: "These rallies prove that if you have
leaders who make a conscious effort to find common ground, their
followers will be able to meet, even if they have never talked before.
Yes, we are very different, culturally, socially -- but those are also
people who live in this country. They are one third of the population,
and we have to live with them. As long as difference causes offense,
this country won't get anywhere. So this also was a step ahead."

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
Beyond such heady arguments in favor of a more inclusive society, one
central motive for Aoun's move toward Hizballah in early 2006
undoubtedly lay in the consistent attempts of the March 14 coalition
to freeze the FPM out of the political process even after it emerged
as the strongest player in the Christian camp. Just why an alliance
that ostensibly saw Syrian influence as the paramount threat to
Lebanese sovereignty made no serious effort to coopt such a staunchly
anti-Syrian, Lebanese-nationalist partner, and instead formed a
government including Hizballah and Amal, who made no secret of their
continuing strategic partnership with Damascus, remains something of a
mystery. While some may have entertained the optimistic (and, in
hindsight, delusional) idea that involving Hizballah in government
offered a chance of containing or even redirecting its resistance
activity,[6] the difficulty of removing the remaining vestiges of
Syrian influence while coopting Syrian allies soon became clear
enough. No two-thirds majority materialized to impeach President
Lahoud (despite the fact that the parties now making up the government
controlled more than four fifths of Parliament), and when the majority
pushed for the establishment of an international tribunal to try the
assassins of Rafiq al-Hariri (presumably including people high up in
the Syrian regime) in late 2005, the Shi`i ministers responded with a
six-week walkout prefiguring the current government crisis.

So what stood in the way of including Aoun instead, a move that would
have provided the new government with the support of 93 MPs with no
pro-Syrian leanings, well in excess of the desired two-thirds
majority? For one thing, it was clear that the FPM would only support
an impeachment motion against Lahoud if the name of the one and only
candidate to replace the sitting president would be Michel Aoun --
meaning that, rather than filling the position with a compliant
nominee of their own, the majority would have had to deal with an
independent player with significant popular support. "For all of their
anti-Syrian rhetoric, Hariri and Jumblatt preferred to leave Asad's
man in the presidency rather than bow to the wishes of nearly three
quarters of the Christian electorate and accept Aoun's ascension,"
concludes Gary Gambill, a seasoned Lebanon analyst with obvious
sympathy for the general.[7]

But even without ascension to the presidency, assuming a key
government portfolio would have finally allowed Aoun to rid himself of
his greatest handicap: the image of erratic brinkmanship he acquired
during the war and, in the minds of his opponents, retains (witness
his alliance with Hizballah and formerly pro-Syrian politicians).
Newly endowed with "stateman-ish" respectability and official leverage
and commanding the majority of the Christian popular vote, Aoun would
almost certainly have been able to erode the position of his opponents
in the Christian camp even further.

HOSTILE BROTHERS IN FAITH
The long-standing mutual antipathy between Michel Aoun and the
traditional Christian leadership may have been a key reason why the
ruling coalition shunned the FPM. Many observers attribute this
animosity to unsettled accounts, in particular between Aoun and the
leader of the Lebanese Forces, Samir Geagea, the two of whom fought a
devastating war in 1989. Both men and their followers, so the argument
goes, are still fighting the battles of the past. Considering that in
Lebanon not only political office but also political and party
allegiance are often hereditary (even in supposedly ideological
currents like the Communist Party), such hypotheses seem to make sense
at first glance. But they still fail to explain how Aoun's party was
able to wrest such a significant amount of support away from the
traditional Christian leadership, represented first and foremost by
the Gemayel family, whose scions Bashir and Amin were both presidents
of Lebanon. In the 2005 elections, Pierre Gemayel (assassinated in
November 2006) scored only 29,412 votes on his family's home turf,
compared to 48,872 for the least successful Aounist candidate, and was
only elected to Parliament because the FPM list left one Maronite slot
free.

One reason may be the continuous decline of the traditional Christian
leadership in the second half of the 1980s, after the assassination of
Bashir Gemayel removed the one figure capable of maintaining the
precarious alliance between Lebanon's powerful Christian bourgeoisie
(of all denominations) and the increasingly militant Christian lower
middle class (mainly Maronite) by means of personal charisma. With his
brother Amin increasingly sidelined by the ruthless militia-based
leadership of Samir Geagea, and the political project of a
Christian-dominated Lebanon under US and Israeli auspices falling
apart, more and more Christians despaired of their future in the
country. Large-scale displacement of Christians in the mid-1980s
(wrought to a great extent by Geagea's ill-conceived military
adventures in the southern parts of Mount Lebanon) also meant that
parochial means of mobilizing support would reach fewer and fewer
people. The displaced, on the other hand, would either be hell-bent on
revenge and join or support the militia, or would turn their
resentment against a leadership that had failed them, and become
susceptible to the discourses of national redemption that Aoun
successfully projected.

"The FPM fared best where there was no locally based Christian
leadership," observes pollster Abdo Saad of the 2005 elections.
"Political families like the Gemayels in Matn or the Franjiyyas in the
northern province can still hold some ground since they traditionally
represent the area. But where people vote for a political program
rather than for a political tradition, the FPM swept the Christian
constituencies with next to no resistance."

Preliminary research into the social composition of the FPM and the
Lebanese Forces also suggests that class is a defining difference
between the groupings in the Christian camp, adding a dynamic to their
frequent clashes. The French geographer and anthropologist Beltram
Dumontier, who has conducted fieldwork in the Beirut suburb of `Ayn
al-Rummana, describes the two groups this way: "Youths who do not
pursue a university education will often be either unemployed or doing
menial jobs. So their social networks, as well as their financial
situation, are conducive to making hanging out in the streets of their
quarters their main pastime and mode of socializing. And so they get
involved in a very male subculture of street life, prone to violence,
centered on the idea of `defending the quarter,' and this is how the
foot soldiers of the Lebanese Forces are recruited. On the contrary,
those who do advance in the educational system spend most of their
time away from the neighborhood. Their environment of political
socialization is the university, where they meet people from other
areas or communities on an equal footing, and where political action
will tend to be around more complex issues. I have encountered more
than one family where one brother was with the Aounists and the other
with the Lebanese Forces, and always the political preference
corresponded to education."

STRUGGLE FOR THE STATE
The profile of a comparatively well-educated and upwardly mobile
following, which hence shows a strong preference for meritocracy, sits
well with the perennial spiel of the FPM: attacking corruption, and
arguing for a strong and efficient state. In contrast to the
authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Syria, the corruption and
clientelism in Lebanon are actually results of a weak state. Power
traditionally resides with an alliance of ruling families who divvy up
the state and its prerogatives among one another according to the
relative balance of power, and obtain loyalty by redistributing parts
of the proceeds among their constituencies. Conventionally, this
arrangement is of course described as a "national pact" between
religious communities designed to enable coexistence and protect
minorities from marginalization. But while Lebanese politicians are
always concerned to be seen as vigilant guardians of communal
interests, they typically have no problem joining ranks with
representatives of other confessions to marginalize their
co-religionists. Even long-time foes will suspend their differences as
soon as any serious attempt is made to shore up the independence of
the state, and join ranks to ward off any such challenge to the order
of things. The system is also open to newcomers empowered by political
and/or macro-economic change, for instance, Amal leader Nabih Berri,
propelled into prominence by Syrian backing in the 1980s or Rafiq
al-Hariri, elevated by petrodollars and Saudi patronage in the 1990s.
Such newcomers may push out some of the traditional players, but are
usually careful to preserve the rules of the game.

Politicians speaking about the national interest, the constitutional
process or the integrity of institutions are rarely doing more than
paying lip service, and are typically using these concepts as weapons
in the eternal struggle for more influence and positions, which can
then be used to twist the rules of the game even more in one's favor,
so as to dole out even more government favors to one's followers. A
classic example is the paving of roads in rural areas in election
years, expected to translate into votes for the candidate whose
"influence" in the capital supposedly enabled him to "secure" such
services, and to discourage votes for less well-connected challengers.
Politicians of this type are referred to as "asphalt MPs" in local
vernacular, a play on the double meaning of the Arabic word for
asphalt (zift), which also means "dirt" or "crap."

"When my son left high school, there was an opening for some 200
recruits in General Security," recalls a Sunni from Beirut. "We found
out that some 70 would go to Sunnis. And to get one of those, you
needed to go to Rafiq al-Hariri. It was as simple as that: Sunni jobs
are distributed by the strongest Sunni leader. So we used a contact to
a person very close to Hariri, and things worked out. After that, we
all became his followers. Because if he doesn't care for us, then
nobody else will." In Lebanon, everybody knows at least ten stories of
this category, and while contempt for the politicians involved is
universal, so is the urge not to be left behind in the scramble for
the spoils. Yet Alain Aoun is determined that the rules of the games
must be changed: "Until now, the logic is: I take office, so now it is
my turn to steal and patronize my people. We need to break this cycle.
A few honest guys on the top level can make a hell of a difference,
and send a message down through the ranks."

The most capable and honest guy to initiate this process, one infers,
will be nobody but the general himself. Drawing on his personal
history as a career officer who rose up from poverty due to diligence
and integrity (Aoun famously had to skip a year of high school due to
lack of funds and made up for it by squeezing the curriculum of two
years into one), Michel Aoun is presented as an unlikely Hercules
uniquely qualified to clean out the Augean stable of Lebanese politics.

That might be easier said than done, agrees his nephew, after
weathering several cell phone calls from party affiliates trying to
arrange for jobs at Orange TV, a new Arabic-language TV station set up
by the FPM. "See, this guy who just called wants me to hire a girl who
has a degree in theater and no experience in TV. I have no problem to
arrange an interview for her, but that's not what he expects from me.
He doesn't want me to give her a fair chance. He wants me to give her
a job without any competition or check of her qualifications. To
eradicate such a mentality will take a long time, but you have to
start somewhere, and that somewhere is at the top of the pyramid. If
the rulers are corrupt, and not even ashamed, then what do you expect
from society?"

Often dismissed as sheer populism, the FPM's call for imposing
transparency and stamping out corruption and clientelism -- however
realistic an objective it may or may not be -- thus threatens to
disrupt the very system on which the power structure is built. With
trademark exaggeration, Michel Aoun vowed to "confront political
feudalism" upon his return from France in May 2005. While clearly a
swipe at the likes of Walid Jumblatt (who happens to be the heir of a
"real" feudal line), Saad al-Hariri and Amin Gemayel, such
pronouncements cannot have been pleasing to any of the politicians who
prefer the rules of the games as they are. As Gambill puts it: "FPM
control of a major ministry is a red line for the [March 14] coalition
mainly because Aoun would have absolutely nothing to lose by acting on
his pledges to clean up government, even if his motives are completely
self-serving."

While potentially endangering vested interests, a program emphasizing
transparency and meritocracy is likely to appeal to the educated
middle classes forming the backbone of the FPM, whose life chances are
hampered by systemic clientelism and sectarian red tape that often
extends into the private sector. Barred from many attractive jobs for
lack of connections, unable to initiate meaningful economic activity
of their own for lack of capital and, again, lack of opportunities in
an environment where many market segments are controlled by fat cats
who easily squeeze out new competitors, they stand to gain from any
change. Accordingly, the economic outlook of the FPM shows
conservative or even neo-liberal leanings, with a high premium on
encouraging free competition, world market integration and downsizing
a state bureaucracy bloated by clientelism. "Aoun's followers are
those who lose out in the Lebanese clientelist system," concludes
Dumontier, "not those who are near the bottom of the social ladder.
The latter need protection to get their very modest jobs and benefits,
and wasta (connections) for them is a matter of survival. And not
those on the top level, either -- they are the ones who hold the keys,
and more transparency would take away from their power. It is those
who could do better for themselves if the system were to become more
open and meritocratic."

SECTARIAN SECULARISTS
Still, and despite the secularist rhetoric wielded by Aoun and his
lieutenants, one of the most important cards for the FPM among its
predominantly Christian following appears to be the sense of being
once again excluded in the post-civil war political order -- only this
time, and worse, not by the Syrians, who were, after all, outsiders
and occupiers. This time the Aounists feel marginalized by other
Lebanese and, still worse, by nobody less than their age-old nemesis,
the Sunnis, manifest in the overbearing presence of the Hariri family
and its political machinery, the Future Movement. Secularism as
professed by the Aounists thus shows a tendency to turn into a
sectarian discourse[8] directed mainly against a perceived Sunni
takeover of state institutions, and prone to resurrect the eternal
Christian fear of being "drowned" in a sea of more than 250 million
Muslim Arabs surrounding Lebanon, the only country in the region to
guarantee them full legal equality.

The "mother of all injustices" against Christians quoted by supporters
of the FPM is the election law, drawn up in the year 2000 by the chief
of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, the late Ghazi Kanaan, and applied
again in 2005. Designed with the clear intention of minimizing the
impact of the notoriously anti-Syrian Christian electorate, the Kanaan
law "diluted" the Christian vote in many districts by combining
Christian with significantly more populous Muslim areas.[9] As a
result, only 18 out of 64 Christian MPs were elected in
majority-Christian districts, while the remaining Christian MPs were
practically elected by Muslims -- Sunnis and hence Hariri in the north
and Beirut, Shi`a and hence Hizballah and Amal in the south, Druze and
Shi`a in the southern part of Mount Lebanon. There is irony in the
fact that what was meant to further Syrian interest back in 2000 --
largely by favoring Hariri, who was then still a loyal supporter of
the Pax Syriana -- vastly skewed the results in favor of the
anti-Syrian coalition in 2005.

Such irony, however, was completely lost on the majority of Christians
represented by the FPM. From their perspective, the election of 2005
and its aftermath only continued their post-war decline, a process
marked by Muslim-dominated governments with fig leaves of Christian
participation. This impression was reinforced by the less than
impressive performance of the Christian representatives in the Siniora
government. Saudi money (the younger Hariri holds Saudi citizenship,
and his business network is entwined with Saudi interests), it was
induced, had replaced the tutelage of the Syrian secret services, with
the blessing of the US, who would sign Lebanon over to a regional
power it needed for greater designs, just as it did in 1990 when Syria
was an indispensable part of the coalition to free Kuwait from Iraqi
occupation. So pervasive became this impression that the Conference of
Maronite Bishops felt compelled to issue a stern warning against an
impending "Islamization" of Lebanon in late June, and Samir Geagea was
quoted (and promptly denied) saying, "I don't even talk to the Saudis.
I talk to their masters, the Americans, and they talk to them on our
behalf."

From the perspective of Christians close to Aoun, however, talking to
the Americans was pointless, for the Sunni ascendancy was seen as not
at all accidental, but rather part of a strategic realignment that
puts Sunni Arab regimes, and in particular Saudi Arabia, at the center
of a pro-US alliance against purported radicals. "In the fall of 2005,
Washington was facing a stark choice of what to support in Lebanon,"
wrote Jean Aziz, who has since become the director of Orange TV. "It
could choose either a pluralist, consensual system that may have set
an example for the dialogue rather than the clash of civilizations, or
a Sunni Muslim system with American leanings and pliant to American
interests, a model for American presence in the region."[10]

But then why turn to Hizballah, another party with a clearly Muslim
character, and with a political agenda liable to embroil Lebanon
deeper and further in regional struggles, something Lebanese
Christians have always been loath to do? For Aoun's detractors, the
answer is simple and straightforward: Both Shi`a and Christians are
tiny minorities in a region dominated by Sunnis. In a system where
sectarian considerations trump everything else, their alliance against
a powerful Sunni-dominated regime now backed by Lebanon's Sunni
neighbors appears almost natural. With only 30-40 percent of the
population, and with non-Arab Iran as its main sponsor, Lebanon's
Shi`a have no hope of ever dominating the system, unlike the Sunnis,
who draw economic and demographic strength from neighboring countries
such as Egypt, Syria, Jordan or Saudi Arabia, all liable to be
controlled by Islamists in the not too distant future. Additionally,
Hizballah, with its disciplined fighting units, appears less scary in
comparison to Sunni extremists such as Fatah al-Islam, who have been
battling the Lebanese army for three months in the refugee camp of
Nahr al-Barid, after allegedly being under the protection of the
Hariri family -- developments dwelt upon by media sympathetic to the FPM.

Alain Aoun does not deny his misgivings about the Sunnis throwing
their weight around, but insists that the intentions behind the
alliance with Hizballah go beyond sectarian zero-sum games: "One, this
country needs to be governed in a very delicate way, and putting only
one group in the driver's seat is a sure recipe for disaster. Two, at
the end of the day you need to sit down and talk out all these issues:
Under which conditions would Hizballah give up these weapons? How are
we supposed to deal with Syria and Israel? We have tried to do exactly
that, and the memorandum of understanding that we signed with them
contains some positive commitments from their side. Does anybody have
a better idea? Does anybody seriously believe that by isolating and
pressuring Hizballah, or even threatening them with force, you can
make them give up their weapons and behave like a normal political
party? I surely hope not."

EPILOGUE
The narrow victory scored by Aoun's candidate in the Matn by-election
on August 5, 2007 showed the Christian community to be deeply divided,
with both sides claiming moral victory. Judging by the numbers,
support for the FPM was dented (40,000 votes, about one third less
than the 2005 result), while support for the pro-government Christian
camp went up (also by one third). Yet the virtually unknown FPM
candidate entered the race in a clearly uphill battle: For one thing,
he confronted no less a personage than Amin Gemayel, a former
president and the head of one of the most influential Christian
families in Lebanon, and on his home turf, giving his opponent ample
opportunity to mobilize along parochial and tribal lines. Second, he
was running against the father of the MP whose assassination made the
by-election necessary in the first place, lending his bid an air of
callousness, as many voters felt that the seat rightfully belonged to
the family of the murdered man. Finally, the assassination was widely
ascribed to remnants of the Syrian secret service network in Lebanon,
and Aoun's attempt to, as it were, reap political gain from the
killing provided ample ammunition for portraying his movement as
unwittingly or opportunistically paving the way for renewed Syrian
influence in Lebanon.

"This is the most damaging accusation," says pollster Abdo Saad. "The
polls show that Aoun's supporters have no problem with Hizballah as
such. What they mind is Hizballah's attachment to Syria. They have no
problem with Aoun's political decisions, but they take issue with his
alliances with formerly pro-Syrian forces. My own wife, who is
Christian, used to be all-out for Aoun, but now, the media campaign
portraying him as pro-Syrian has succeeded to turn her against him."

Yet the fact that, at the end of a long election day, Amin Gemayel was
unable to capitalize upon these considerable advantages shows that the
core support for the FPM remains resilient, and makes it appear
unlikely that any force in the Christian camp will be able to
challenge Michel Aoun's position in the near future. For Lebanon, this
appears to be a mixed blessing at best: On the one hand, a (most
likely sizable) majority of the Christian community seems prepared to
look for guarantees of their presence in a majority-Muslim country and
an overwhelmingly Muslim region in the institutions of a secular
state, rather than hanging on to the doubtful security offered by a
ghetto of sectarian privilege. This is a momentous development, when
one recalls the 1970s. Yet the party galvanizing such sentiment feels
compelled to appeal, once again, to sentiments that all too obviously
feed on longing for lost privilege and resentment of the
arch-competitor for power in the state. Likewise, for the first time
in their history, a (probably less sizable) majority of Christians is
prepared to make common political cause with a mass movement following
an explicitly Islamist political outlook. And yet it appears that
prejudice and racism against Muslims, mixed with resentment deriving
from class, have been transposed onto Sunnis and only muted toward
Shi`a, for the time being. Despite the remarkable politicization of
young Lebanese that fueled the success of the FPM, the new party also
remains a movement centered around a single leader, who is venerated
to the verge of personality cult, with a notable tendency to establish
a strong family presence in the top echelons, and again, despite a
significant number of female activists, to exclude women nearly
totally from the upper ranks.

Finally, the inconclusive test of forces between Amin Gemayel and
Michel Aoun bodes ill for the already intractable conflict over the
upcoming election of a new president -- a post traditionally reserved
for Maronite Christians -- where both men are candidates. Without a
compromise, the presidency, which also wields the high command of the
armed forces, may be the next victim of the chain reaction of
stalemate, disputed legitimacy and mutual boycott that has already
paralyzed most of the political institutions in Lebanon. A further
disintegration of the state now looks like a real possibility.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Ever since mass demonstrations in Lebanon began, in the wake of
ex-Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri's assassination in the spring of
2005, all sides have engaged in inflation of numbers to absurd
proportions, without any serious regard to material facts, such as the
actual surface area of the spots where people congregated. Interview
with Lebanese pollster Abdo Saad, Beirut, June 2007. Saad is the
director of the Beirut Center for Research and Information
(http://www.beirutcenter.info, mainly in Arabic), which conducts
frequent opinion polls on political issues.

[2] Hassan Fattah, "Lebanon Divided on Presidential Hopeful Michel
Aoun," International Herald Tribune, January 19, 2007.

[3] Such disregard finds its reflection in the lack of any serious
research on the "Aoun phenomenon" thus far -- an omission that this
article can only hope to start addressing. This article is based on a
series of interviews with party officials and activists conducted in
June 2007, in addition to party literature, encounters with activists
since the spring of 2005, particularly during the mass demonstrations
in December 2006, and preliminary results of a field study conducted
in the spring of 2007 by the French geographer Beltram Dumontier in
`Ayn al-Rummana (a predominantly Maronite Christian quarter of Beirut
adjacent to the Hizballah strongholds of Shiyah and Harat Hurayk),
which Dumontier generously shared with the author.

[4] It is a point of contention whether the Lebanese constitution
actually allows Parliament to impeach a sitting president by any kind
of majority. Since a two-thirds majority was not available anyway,
attempts at exploring the legal dimension were soon abandoned.

[5] Again, there are no reliable figures as to what extent the Aounist
movement contributed to this movement. If the huge turnout attending
Aoun's return from exile on May 7, 2005 is anything to go by, however,
it appears safe to assume that the demonstrations in February and
March would have looked significantly less impressive without their
participation. March 14 is also the anniversary of Aoun's abortive
"war of liberation" (from Syria) launched in 1989 and annually
celebrated by his followers.

[6] According to Hizballah, there has been more than one US offer to
broker a deal that would trade Hizballah's weapons for a significant
improvement of Shi`i representation in the political system. Interview
with Hizballah expert Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, October 2006. Such ideas
resurfaced in the wake of the 2006 war in the columns of government
loyalists. See Michael Young, "Offer Reform for Hizballah's Weapons,"
Daily Star, September 28, 2006.

[7] Gary Gambill, "Lemons from Lemonade: Washington and Lebanon After
the Syrian Withdrawal," Mideast Monitor (June-July 2007).

http://www.mideastmonitor.org/issues/0705/0705_1.htm.

[8] Such was also the case in the 1970s, when Lebanese Muslims argued
for secularism in order to do away with the constitutional privileges
accorded to Christians.

[9] The law provides for a first-past-the-post majority system
differentiated by sect. For instance, one seat in the district
Beirut-I was reserved for a Greek Orthodox Christian, so the Orthodox
candidate with the most votes would win one seat, and all votes cast
for other Orthodox candidates would have no impact on the composition
of Parliament. As in most majority systems, gerrymandering has the
potential to distort the popular vote, and has been a temptation for
sitting presidents and governments ever since the foundation of
Lebanon. Accordingly, each and every parliamentary election in Lebanon
is preceded by heated debate about how electoral districts will be
demarcated, with the decision typically taken only shortly before
election day.

[10] Al-Akhbar, July 28, 2007.

(Heiko Wimmen is a program manager for the Middle East office of the
Heinrich Böll Foundation, a German organization supporting civil
society and social movements around the world.)

===

HOW HEZBOLLAH DEFEATED ISRAEL
The political war
By Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry
Asia Times Online

In the wake of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, a public poll in Egypt
asked a cross- section of that country's citizenry to name the two
political leaders they most admired, an overwhelming number named
Hassan Nasrallah, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad finished second.

The poll was a clear repudiation not only of Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak, who had made his views against Hezbollah known at the outset
of the conflict, but of those Sunni leaders, including Saudi King
Abdullah and Jordan's Abdullah II, who criticized the Shiite group in
an avowed attempt to turn the Sunni world away from support of Iran.

By the end of the war these guys were scrambling for the exits," one
US diplomat from the region said in late August. "You haven't heard
much from them lately, have you?" Mubarak and the two Abdullahs are
not the only ones scrambling for the exits - the United States'
foreign policy in the region, even in light of its increasingly dire
deployment in Iraq, is in shambles. "What that means is that all the
doors are closed to us, in Cairo, in Amman, in Saudi Arabia," another
diplomat averred. "Our access has been curtailed, no one will see us.
When we call no one picks up the phone."

A talisman of this collapse can be seen in the itinerary of US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose inability to persuade
President George Bush to halt the fighting and her remark about the
conflict as marking "the birth pangs" of a new Middle East in effect
destroyed her credibility, the US has made it clear that it will
attempt to retrieve its position by backing a yet-to-be-announced
Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, but America's continued strangulation
of the democratically constituted government of the Palestinian
Authority has transformed that pledge into a stillborn political program.

The reason for this is now eminently clear. In the midst of the war,
a European official in Cairo had this to say about the emotions
roiling the Egyptian political environment: "The Egyptian leadership
is walking down one side of the street," he said, "and the Egyptian
people are walking down the other." The catastrophic failure of
Israeli arms has buoyed Iran's claim to leadership of the Muslim world
in several critical areas.

First, the Hezbollah victory has shown that Israel and any modern and
technologically sophisticated Western military force can be defeated
in open battle, if the proper military tactics are employed and if
they are sustained over a prolonged period.

Hezbollah has provided the model for the defeat of a modern army. The
tactics are simple: ride out the first wave of a Western air campaign,
then deploy rocket forces targeting key military and economic assets
of the enemy, then ride out a second and more critical air campaign,
and then prolong the conflict for an extended period. At some point,
as in the case of Israel's attack on Hezbollah, the enemy will be
forced to commit ground troops to accomplish what its air forces could
not. It is in this last, and critical, phase that a dedicated,
well-trained and well-led force can exact enormous pain on a modern
military establishment and defeat it.

Second, the Hezbollah victory has shown the people of the Muslim world
that the strategy employed by Western-allied Arab and Muslim
governments policy of appeasing US interests in the hopes of gaining
substantive political rewards (a recognition of Palestinian rights,
fair pricing for Middle Eastern resources, non-interference in the
region's political structures, and free, fair and open elections)
cannot and will not work. The Hezbollah victory provides another and
different model, of shattering US hegemony and destroying its stature
in the region. Of the two most recent events in the Middle East, the
invasion of Iraq and the Hezbollah victory over Israel, the latter is
by far the most important.

Even otherwise anti-Hezbollah groups, including those associated with
revolutionary Sunni resistance movements who look on Shiites as
apostates, have been humbled.

Third, the Hezbollah victory has had a shattering impact on America's
allies in the region. Israeli intelligence officials calculated that
Hezbollah could carry on its war for upwards of three months after its
end in the middle of August. Hezbollah's calculations reflected
Israel's findings, with the caveat that neither the Hezbollah nor
Iranian leadership could predict what course to follow after a
Hezbollah victory. While Jordan's intelligence services locked down
any pro-Hezbollah demonstrations, Egypt's intelligence services were
struggling to monitor the growing public dismay over the Israeli
bombardment of Lebanon.

Open support for Hezbollah across the Arab world (including,
strangely, portraits of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah carried in
the midst of Christian celebrations) has put those Arab rulers closest
to the United States on notice: a further erosion in their status
could loosen their hold on their own nations. It seems likely that as
a result, Mubarak and the two Abdullahs are very unlikely to support
any US program calling for economic, political or military pressures
on Iran.

A future war - perhaps a US military campaign against Iran's nuclear
sites might not unseat the government in Tehran, but it could well
unseat the governments of Egypt, Jordan and perhaps Saudi Arabia.

At a key point in the Israel-Hezbollah contest, toward the end of the
war, Islamist party leaders in a number of countries wondered whether
they would be able to continue their control over their movements or
whether, as they feared, political action would be ceded to street
captains and revolutionaries. The singular notion, now common in
intelligence circles in the United States, is that it was Israel (and
not Hezbollah) that, as of August 10, was looking for a way out of the
conflict.

Fourth, the Hezbollah victory has dangerously weakened the Israeli
government. In the wake of Israel's last lost war, in 1973, Prime
Minister Menachem Begin decided to accept a peace proposal from
Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. The breakthrough was, in fact, rather
modest as both parties were allies of the United States. No such
breakthrough will take place in the wake of the Israel-Hezbollah war.

Israel believes that it has lost its deterrent capabilities and that
they must be retrieved. Some Israeli officials in Washington now
confirm that it is not a matter of "if" but of "when" Israel goes to
war again. Yet it is difficult to determine how Israel can do that. To
fight and win against Hezbollah, Israel will need to retrain and refit
its army. Like the United States after the Vietnam debacle, Israel
will have to restructure its military leadership and rebuild its
intelligence assets. That will take years, not months.

It may be that Israel will opt, in future operations, for the
deployment of ever bigger Weapons against ever larger targets.
Considering its performance in Lebanon, such uses of ever larger
weapons could spell an even more robust response. This is not out of
the question. A US attack on Iranian nuclear installations would
likely be answered by an Iranian missile attack on Israel's nuclear
installations, and on Israeli population centres. No one can predict
how Israel would react to such an attack, but it is clear that (given
Bush's stance in the recent conflict) the United States would do
nothing to stop it. The "glass house" of the Persian Gulf region,
targeted by Iranian missiles, would then assuredly come crashing down.

Fifth, the Hezbollah victory spells the end of any hope of a
resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at least in the short
and medium terms even normally "progressive" Israeli political figures
undermined their political position with strident calls for more
force, more troops and more bombs. In private meetings with his
political allies, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas castigated those
who cheered on Hezbollah's victory, calling them "Hamas supporters"
and "enemies of Israel". Abbas is in a far more tenuous position than
Mubarak or the two Abdullahs, his people's support for Hamas
continues, as does his slavish agreement with George W Bush, who told
him on the sidelines of the United Nations Security Council meeting
that he was to end all attempts to form a unity government with his
fellow citizens.

Sixth, the Hezbollah victory has had the very unfortunate consequence
of blinding Israel's political leadership to the realities of their
geostrategic position. In the midst of the war with Lebanon, Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert adopted Bush's language on the "war on
terrorism", reminding his citizenry that Hezbollah was a part of "the
axis of evil". His remarks have been reinforced by Bush, whose
comments during his address before the UN General Assembly mentioned
al-Qaeda once and Hezbollah and Hamas five times each.

The United States and Israel have now lumped Islamist groups willing
to participate in the political processes in their own nations with
those takfiris and Salafists who are bent on setting the region on fire.

Nor can Israel now count on its strongest US supporters that network
of neo-conservatives for whom Israel is an island of stability and
democracy in the region. These neo-conservatives' disapproval of
Israel's performance is almost palpable. With friends like these, who
needs enemies? That is to say, the Israeli conflict in Lebanon
reflects accurately those experts who see the Israel-Hezbollah
conflict as a proxy war. Our colleague Jeff Aronson noted that "if it
were up to the US, Israel would still be fighting" and he added: "The
United States will fight the war on terrorism to the last drop of
Israeli blood."

The continued weakness of the Israeli political leadership and the
fact that it is in denial about the depth of its defeat should be a
deep concern for the United States and for every Arab nation. Israel
has proved that in times of crisis, it can shape a creative diplomatic
strategy and manoeuvre deftly to retrieve its position. It has also
proved that in the wake of a military defeat, it is capable of honest
and transparent self-examination. Israel's strength has always been
its capacity for public debate, even if such debate questions the most
sacrosanct institution, the Israel Defence Forces.

At key moments in Israel's history, defeat has led to reflection and
not, as now seems likely, an increasingly escalating military
offensive against Hamas, the red-headed stepchild of the Middle East
to show just how tough it is.

"The fact that the Middle East has been radicalized by the Hezbollah
victory presents a good case for killing more of them," one Israeli
official recently said. That path will lead to disaster. In light of
America's inability to pull the levers of change in the Middle East,
there is hope among some in Washington that Olmert will show the
political courage to begin the long process of finding peace. That
process will be painful, it will involve long and difficult
discussions, and it may mean a break with the US program for the
region. But the US does not live in the region, and Israel does. While
conducting a political dialogue with its neighbours might be painful,
it will prove far less painful than losing a war in Lebanon.

Seventh, Hezbollah's position in Lebanon has been immeasurably
strengthened, as has the position of its most important ally, at the
height of the conflict, Lebanese Christians took Hezbollah refugees
into their homes. The Christian leader Michel Aoun openly supported
Hezbollah's fight, one Hezbollah leader said: "We will never forget
what that man did for us, not for an entire generation." Aoun's
position is celebrated among the Shiites, and his own political
position has been enhanced.

The Sunni leadership, on the other hand, fatally undermined itself
with its uncertain stance and its absentee landlord approach to its
own community. In the first week of the war, Hezbollah's actions were
greeted with widespread scepticism, at the end of the war its support
was solid and stretched across Lebanon's political and sectarian
divides. The Sunni leadership now has a choice: it can form a unity
government with new leaders that will create a more representative
government or they can stand for elections. It doesn't take a
political genius to understand which choice Saad Hariri, the majority
leader in the Lebanese parliament, will make.

Eighth, Iran's position in Iraq has been significantly enhanced; in
the midst of the Lebanon conflict, US Secretary of Defence Donald
Rumsfeld privately worried that the Israeli offensive would have dire
consequences for the US military in Iraq, who faced increasing
hostility from Shiite political leaders and the Shiite population.
Rice's statement that the pro-Hezbollah demonstrations in Baghdad were
planned by Tehran revealed her ignorance of the most fundamental
political facts of the region.

The US secretaries of state and of defence were simply and
unaccountably unaware that the Sadrs of Baghdad bore any relationship
to the Sadrs of Lebanon. That Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
would not castigate Hezbollah and side with Israel during the conflict
, and in the midst of an official visit to Washington was viewed as
shocking by Washington's political establishment, even though
"Hezbollah in Iraq" is one of the parties in the current Iraqi
coalition government.

We have been told that neither the Pentagon nor the State Department
understood how the war in Lebanon might effect America's position in
Iraq because neither the Pentagon nor the State Department asked for a
briefing on the issue from the US intelligence services ,the United
States spends billions of dollars each year on its intelligence
collection and analysis activities. It is money wasted.

Ninth, Syria's position has been strengthened and the US-French
program for Lebanon has failed. There is no prospect that Lebanon will
form a government that is avowedly pro-American or anti-Syrian, that
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could, in the wake of the war,
suggest a political arrangement with Israel shows his strength, not
his weakness. That he might draw the correct conclusions from the
conflict and believe that he too might successfully oppose Israel is
also possible.

But aside from these possibilities, recent history shows that those
thousands of students and Lebanese patriots who protested Syria's
involvement in Lebanon after the death of Rafiq Hariri found it ironic
that they took refuge from the Israeli bombing in tent cities
established by the Syrian government. Rice is correct on one thing:
Syria's willingness to provide refuge for Lebanese refugees was a pure
act of political cynicism and one that the United States seems
incapable of replicating. Syria now is confident of its political
position. In a previous era, such confidence allowed Israel to shape a
political opening with its most intransigent political enemies.

Tenth, and perhaps most important, it now is clear that a US attack on
Iranian nuclear installations would be met with little support in the
Muslim world. It would also be met by a military response that would
collapse the last vestiges of America's political power in the region.
What was thought to be a "given" just a few short weeks ago has been
shown to be unlikely. Iran will not be cowed. If the United States
launches a military campaign against the Tehran government, it is
likely that America's friends will fall by the wayside, the Gulf Arab
states will tremble in fear, the 138,000 US soldiers in Iraq will be
held hostage by an angered Shiite population, and Iran will respond by
an attack on Israel. We would now dare say the obvious if and when
such an attack comes; the United States will be defeated.

Conclusion
The victory of Hezbollah in its recent conflict with Israel is far
more significant than many analysts in the United States and Europe
realize. The Hezbollah victory reverses the tide of 1967 a shattering
defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan that shifted the region's political
plates, putting in place regimes that were bent on recasting their own
foreign policy to reflect Israeli and US power. That power now has
been sullied and reversed, and a new leadership is emerging in the region.

The singular lesson of the conflict may well be lost on the upper
echelons of Washington's and London's pro-Israel, pro-values,
we-are-fighting-for-civilization political elites, but it is not lost
in the streets of Cairo, Amman, Ramallah, Baghdad, Damascus or Tehran.
It should not be lost among the Israeli political leadership in
Jerusalem. The Arab armies of 1967 fought for six days and were
defeated. The Hezbollah militia in Lebanon fought for 34 days and won.
We saw this with our own eyes when we looked into the cafes of Cairo
and Amman, where simple shopkeepers, farmers and workers gazed at
television reports, sipped their tea, and silently mouthed the numbers
to themselves: "seven", "eight", "nine" ...

Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry are the co-directors of Conflicts
Forum, a London-based group dedicated to providing an opening to
political Islam. Crooke is the former Middle East adviser to European
Union High Representative Javier Solana and served as a staff member
of the Mitchell Commission investigating the causes of the second
Intifada. Perry is a Washington, DC-based political consultant, author
of six books on US history, and a former personal adviser to Yasser
Arafat.

*********************************************************************

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