The UN Security Council vote to set up an international court to try suspects in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is a momentous one for Lebanon and the region. It could affect the stability of both.
Lebanon is already on a political knife-edge. The divide between the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and its opponents, so starkly illustrated at the Arab League summit in Riyadh two months ago when two delegations, one led by the prime minister, the other by the president, turned up, is poisonous. If one more minister leaves or dies, the prime minister and his Cabinet will, constitutionally, be forced to resign. Car bombs have already returned to the streets (although nowhere near the civil-war scale) while the fighting at the Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp near Tripoli between the Lebanese Army and Palestinian militants is clearly an attempt to take advantage of the country’s weakness and further destabilize it.
Obviously, Lebanon’s approval of the UN court, which has to be given by June 10, ought to be forthcoming: Prime Minister Siniora has welcomed the vote. But those behind Hariri’s assassination will now try all the harder to bring down the government. If it were to collapse before issuing approval, the matter would return to the Security Council for a vote to impose a tribunal, as it happened in the cases of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. But that cannot be taken for granted. Russia’s view, despite abstaining on Wednesday, coincides with that of Syria that the court is an attack on Lebanon’s sovereignty. It is a highly questionable assertion. The UN can indeed authorize the invasion of a country (as in Afghanistan), can appoint officials to govern countries in its name (as in Kosovo and Bosnia), can set up courts to try war and human rights criminals and can send in peacekeeping forces with or without the approval of the government concerned.
In any event, the most obvious current attack against Lebanon’s sovereignty is not from the UN but from the gunmen at the Nahr Al-Bared camp and those who have armed and manipulated them, and from those who were behind the Hariri murder.
Assuming that the issue does not go back to the Security Council, those involved in Hariri’s murder are not going to give up. They will reckon that a new government opposed to the UN court would make it unworkable. They could be right.
Further attempts to destroy the Lebanese government could tip Lebanon back into civil war. If it does, only a fool would imagine that it would be contained within the country. It will inevitably draw in the Israelis, the Syrians, the Palestinians, as well as the Americans, the Iranians and Al-Qaeda — and probably the Russians and the Europeans as well. The Middle East cannot afford fresh conflict in Lebanon. What is needed is a stable Lebanon. The key to that is prosperity and growth — which is why Saudi Arabia has taken a lead in providing aid for reconstruction. Lebanon’s stability remains a Saudi priority.
