BEIRUT, 3 March 2005 — They slept in tents. They slept on the pavements last night. Lebanon is cold in winter. Not as cold as Ukraine, but the frost that has lain over Lebanon these past 29 years is without temperature. Never has the red, white and green Lebanese flag been used as so poignant a symbol of unity. Only a few hundred meters away from the encampment, Rafik Hariri was killed. And so, the Lebanese are supposed to believe, the murder of the former prime minister has unleashed the “Cedars Revolution”. The cedar tree stands at the center of the Lebanese flag.
With the resignation of the pro-Syrian Lebanese government, the equally pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud was looking last night for a “caretaker” government — without much success. Hariri’s sister Bahiya, an MP in Sidon, was not interested in being Lebanon’s first woman prime minister, and the elderly Rashid El-Solh didn’t want the job, despite his Lebanese aristocratic origins. There was talk of a Lebanese judge called Rifai but the dearth of contenders showed just how tragic the Lebanese body politic has become.
It is still not clear whether the rubric Cedars Revolution started in Beirut or in the mouth of the US State Department spokesman but its implications are still clear enough: The Syrian Army must go and — more important — the Syrian Army’s intelligence service must leave Lebanon. Hence everyone is waiting to see if a “caretaker” government will care for Lebanon or for Syria, whose protégé Gen. Lahoud is now the lonely man in the capital Baabda presidential palace in the hills above Beirut.
Today, the “opposition” — Christian Maronites, Sunni Muslims and Druze though not, to be frank, many Shiite Muslims — will gather at the 18th century palace of the Jumblatt family in the Chouf mountains at Mukhtara where Walid Jumblatt, the new would-be tiger of Lebanese freedom, has ensconced himself for his own protection. No recent member of the Jumblatt family has died in his bed. Indeed, it was Walid’s claim that the Syrian Baathists had murdered his father Kamal in 1977 that set off this unprecedented revolution in the Arab world. The Lebanese people, according to Walid Jumblatt, have struck down the Syrian-sponsored Lebanese government. The Lebanese people want the truth: Who killed Rafik Hariri? “One voice... one flag...’’ Jumblatt said yesterday. He wanted “the removal of foreign elements (sic) from Lebanon’’ and the end of “foreign interference’’ in Lebanese affairs.
But neither Walid Jumblatt nor the Lebanese are naive. They know that America’s support for Lebanese “democracy” is fueled by Washington’s anger at Syria’s alleged support for the insurgency against American troops in Iraq. Jumblatt himself showed his own feelings about the US involvement in Iraq when he said last year that he wished a mortar fired at the hotel in which US Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying in Baghdad had hit Wolfowitz himself. His remark cost Jumblatt a US visa. So President Bush’s support for the “heroes” of Lebanese freedom is very conditional.
Bush wants the Hezbollah guerrilla movement to disarm. So do the Israelis. Indeed, the Israelis want the Syrian Army and intelligence service to leave Lebanon. So the Lebanese opposition are demanding the very same goals as the Israelis. But Jumblatt wants to protect the Hezbollah — which finally drove the Israeli Army out of Lebanon in 2000: “We’ve got to engage with Hezbollah,” he said yesterday. “They are Lebanese.’’ And he also sent this message to Damascus: “We should speak frankly to the Syrians. We want them to leave Lebanon. But we want good relations with the Syrians.’’ But here lies the problem. Syria will always be Lebanon’s larger Arab neighbor; indeed, until 1920 — when the French tore “Greater Lebanon” out of the Ottoman province of Syria — the present-day state of Lebanon was part of Syria. Its Muslims and Christians live together today on the scales of a dark negative. The Christians will not demand control of a country if the Muslims do not claim to be part of an “Arab nation”. But if a “liberated” Lebanon — a la Washington — declared itself for “the West”, then the country could fall apart.
It is tempting for the Lebanese camping out on Martyrs Square — or “Liberation Square” as they now call it, though the original name commemorates the hanging of Lebanese Muslims and Christians demanding independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and 1916 — to believe that they are part of a great movement for democracy in the Middle East. Elections in Iraq and the small bit of “Palestine” left to the Palestinians, and the gift of contended presidential elections bestowed upon his Egyptian people by Hosni Mubarak can be molded into an ideology by the Bush administration. But Lebanon has always been betrayed by its foreign cheerleaders — which is why no one won the Lebanese civil war, except, perhaps the Syrians.
Even Selim El-Hoss, many times a former prime minister and one of the few truly honest politicians in Lebanon also made it known that he did not want to lead a caretaker government. Again, it was an expression of the depth to which Lebanese statesmanship has sunk. If Hoss will not lead a government, who will? So here’s a question that no one asks too directly in Lebanon: What is the future of Rustum Ghazali?
“Amu Rustum” is the head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon — he lives in the largely Armenian town of Aanjar in the Bekaa Valley and has remained silent these past three weeks, even though President Bashar Assad of Syria has condemned Rafik Hariri’s murder. It would be good to hear from Amu Rustum. Hariri, in the months before his death, received an abusive phone call from Gen. Ghazali. What was said?
