Aftermath

Syrian intervention met with American, Israeli, and Saudi approval: first the Syrians marketed themselves as opponents of the coalition between the Palestinian resistance groups and leftists, and the second time they took advantage of American fear of Hizballah, going so far as to attack the Shiite militia.

The Syrian era ended in February 2005, when Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri was assassinated, and since then a major divide has emerged between Sunnis and Shiites in Lebanon, with the Christians who had once dominated the country increasingly losing their political significance and becoming marginalized. Lebanon gained independence from France in 1943. Christians and Muslims divided powers and apportioned positions based on sectarian identity, with Maronite Christians benefiting from a six-to-five ratio and Sunni Muslims dominating their Shiite coreligionists. In a sense Lebanon has never had a government but rather a power-sharing arrangement. At first the system of distributing political posts according to sect was merely based on custom. The 1991 Taif Accords, which ended the civil war, enshrined this system while granting a larger proportion to Muslims, allocating seats in Parliament on a one-to-one ratio. The president remained a Maronite Christian, with powers reduced in relation to the Sunni prime minister and the Shiite speaker of the Parliament. The Taif Accords were meant to establish a transitional period that would end with the abolition of political sectarianism, but this never happened. Instead the system became more entrenched, and the Lebanese became more connected to their sectarian institutions. Saudi money and the Syrian military presence in Lebanon helped guarantee that the accords held. While other militias were disbanded, Hizballah was allowed to maintain its armed struggle against the Israeli occupation.

Taif also helped bring to premiership Hariri, a Lebanese Sunni who made his billions working with the Saudi royal family and who used force and bribery to bring the rival factions together in the Saudi resort city after which the accords were named. He had a history of spreading his wealth, granting scholarships to thousands of students, and corrupting the Syrian overlords in Lebanon, who often seemed like they worked for him. Before the rise of Hariri many of Lebanon’s Sunni political and religious leaders had been murdered. Hariri was an ally of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, and was installed as prime minister in 1992 by Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad.

Though he is widely credited with reconstructing much of Lebanon, it was the Lebanese who shouldered much of the burden, and under his reign the national debt increased from one and a half billion dollars to eighteen billion dollars. Beginning in 2000, Hariri also contributed to the increase in sectarianism, campaigning more openly on a platform of Sunni power.

Hariri was killed by a massive car bomb. His supporters as well as opponents of Syria established a loose coalition in the wake of his assassination that blamed the Syrians for the murder, demanded the formation of an international tribunal to investigate it, and called for the withdrawal of Syrian forces and influence in Lebanon. The coalition was named for the March 14 demonstration in which Hariri’s supporters called for the Syrian withdrawal. The March 14 coalition also became the main vehicle for the Bush administration’s agenda in Lebanon and was closely associated with Saudi Arabia through the Future Movement, led by Hariri’s son and heir, Saad, who even has a Saudi passport. Most of the March 14 coalition was composed of politicians who had been former supporters and allies of the Syrian regime. One of the most famous chants of March 14 demonstrators was “We want revenge!” That revenge was often taken on poor Syrians who worked as laborers or sold bread on the street. Many of them were beaten or stabbed, and the tents they lived in were burned down in the name of March 14.

Saad al-Hariri was not prepared and had not wanted to inherit his father’s mantle. Without his father’s achievements to build a popular base he relied on Sunni communal solidarity. Lebanon’s Sunnis allied with their historic enemies, the Christians, against the country they had historically identified with more than their own, Syria.

FADIL SHALLAQ was a close associate of Rafiq al-Hariri from 1978 until 2002, heading construction and charitable projects for him, advising him, and finally serving as editor in chief of Hariri’s Future newspaper. Following the 2006 war with Israel, Shallaq, a Sunni, publicly broke with his former allies, objecting to the sectarian and pro-American turn the movement was taking. He did not view the former Syrian presence in Lebanon as an occupation. “When the Syrians were here, I don’t know who controlled who, the Lebanese or the Syrians,” he said. “Hariri thought the Syrian presence helped Lebanon,” he told me. “I worked with him for twenty-five years.” Shallaq rejected the Future Movement’s claims that Hariri had been anti- Syrian and argued that the Israelis were more likely to have killed Hariri than the Syrians. Shallaq also rejected the reincarnation of Hariri as a Sunni symbol. “Hariri was a Sunni believer,” he admits. “He hated my atheism, but he was originally an Arab nationalist, he believed in building the state. He was a Lebanese nationalist, but he was never sectarian. Sunni sectarianism started after Hariri’s death. Sectarianism is not given, it’s manufactured. Sunnis were reshaped, reconstituted, reprogrammed after 2005, and became a despicable entity. You needed a corpse. Without the corpse you could not have reprogrammed their identity. Then you had a campaign of propaganda. It was well financed.” Shallaq blamed a coalition of neocons and Lebanese allies such as Walid Fares, a former Lebanese Christian militiaman associated with the American right. He says they funded the creation of the Future Movement and the sectarian and anti-Syrian direction it took.

“How could a whole community change like this?” he asked. “Before the Sunni community was traditional, Islamic, Arab nationalist, a little bit to the left, with very definite anti-Israeli attitudes about the Palestinian cause. They had strong feelings about the Syrians, but this wave of hate of Hizballah was created. It’s new.”

Shallaq was worried about new Sunni militias being created by the Future Movement. “There is a not-so- secret militia and security organization. People are being trained in Jordan; others are trained here by former military men.” Still others were trained by Christian militiamen belonging to the Lebanese forces, he said. “They are being prepared for civil war. We are in the middle of a civil war now, or civil conflict. You have to distinguish what happened in 1975 and what is happening now. We won’t have the paradigm of 1975 repeated. We have a civil war without generalized violence. Sectarian feelings are at a maximum point. Militias, arms, preparations, violence—all the elements of civil war. But will it erupt? And have a green line? I think we will have fighting house to house, building to building.”

One of the people Shallaq blamed for the sectarian tension was his former colleague Ridwan al-Sayyid, a professor of Islamic Studies at the Lebanese University and speechwriter and adviser to Hariri and his successor for prime minister, Fouad Siniora. On May 3 I visited Sayyid in his apartment. Interestingly, he agreed with Shallaq on the basic narrative. “There was a repositioning in the Sunni community since 2005,” he said. “They were shocked by the killing of Hariri.” The Syrians had persecuted Sunnis because Sunnis were traditionally pro-Palestinian, pro- Egyptian, and anti-Baathist. “Hariri helped Sunnis come out of their material, educational, and political crisis, and he made peace with the Syrians so they would not persecute us. He was a symbol of flourishing Sunnism.” After Hariri’s killing, the new Sunni feelings were at first only anti-Syrian, but after the July 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon it became anti-Shiite as well. He blamed Hizballah and specifically Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah for calling Siniora an agent of the Americans and the Zionists. “Because of Hizballah, Sunnis feel in danger,” he said. Sunni tension increased after the mostly Shiite demonstrators descended upon the government and tried to force Siniora to step down. “Sunnis felt it was against Sunnis and not a political act that Shiites are trying to take the position of Sunnis, the position of the prime minister, which belongs to the Sunni confession, and that Hizballah was trying to destroy the Lebanese state and the Sunni role in the state,” Sayyid told me. “Sunnis felt they need to protect the state because the Christians vanished. There is no Christian entity anymore that can mediate between both or make a third party.”

Sayyid believed that Hizballah did not act independently but as a tool for Iran to pressure the West. He blamed the July 2006 war on Syria and Iran. “They want to defeat America in Lebanon,” he said. “It is a struggle with the U.S., and they waged war against Israel and found that the Lebanese state and Sunnis were on the other side. Sunnis felt that on their side there is Egypt and Saudi [Arabia], and on the other side the Shiites, Syria and Iran.” Unlike other Sunni partisans in his alliance, Sayyid did not believe that Hizballah actually wanted a civil war or even that its leaders wanted to impose a Shiite religious state on Lebanon. “But they want to continue the confrontation with Israel without considering the views of the other three million Lebanese,” he said. “Hizballah is here with weapons, and accumulating weapons, and they made war with Israel. The country feels threatened, and they don’t recognize state institutions—they have their own telephone lines, their own army, their own social networks.” Sayyid said he would support Hizballah in the event of another war with Israel. “If Israel wins a war with Hizballah, then Lebanon is destroyed and the Arabs are weakened. How can I, as an Arab, Lebanese, and Muslim, be against Hizballah? I can only say that your program is not good for the country and cannot bring success.” Sayyid was not optimistic for the immediate future. “From both sides, Israel and Iran, Hizballah, there is a situation where