A quiet revolution in Lebanon’s political scene

A quiet revolution in Lebanon’s political scene

The odd couple: Hizbullah and the general

In Lebanon’s legislative elections on 7 June, two members of the national unity government will be pitted against 
each other. Saad Hariri and his 14 March group face the Maronite general, Michel Aoun, who has formed 
a strong and surprising alliance with Hizbullah
by Nicolas Dot-Pouillard

On 24 August 2008, the Maronite leader, General Michel Aoun, made his first visit to south Lebanon in 33 years. As head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), he wanted to demonstrate the strength of his alliance with Hizbullah.

South Lebanon had been under Israeli occupation until May 2000, and in the war of July and August 2006 its border villages were the scene of bloody battles. Aoun met the regional Hizbullah leader Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, and Wafik Safa, one of its military leaders. He went walkabout in Bint Jbeil beneath huge portraits of Imad Mughniyeh, Hizbullah’s military chief assassinated in Damascus in February 2008. He visited the Museum of the Resistance at Nabatiyeh and paid homage to the victims of the 1996 and 2006 Israeli bombings of Qanaa.

General Aoun’s visit had symbolic importance for both the FPM and Hizbullah. It was meant to show that the alliance between the two parties (who signed a memorandum of understanding on 6 February 2006) is popular and durable, and not merely a marriage 
of convenience.

It might seem strange that one of Lebanon’s Christian leaders should become the close ally of Hizbullah, an Islamist-nationalist party allied to Syria and Iran. But this bizarre reconciliation is part of the huge political reorganisation that has been taking place in Lebanon since Syria pulled out its troops in 2005. Aoun was a Lebanese army commander during the civil war, known for his fierce opposition to interference from Syria, whose forces he had fought in March 1989. He even went before the United States Senate in 2003 to argue in favour of economic sanctions against Damascus.

But now, through Hizbullah, Aoun’s reconciliation with Syria is sealed: in December he made a triumphant visit to Damascus and met President Bashar al-Assad several times.

When Aoun returned to Lebanon from exile in France in May 2005, he and his party refused to join the pro-western “14 March” alliance, formed after the assassination of the Sunni prime minister Rafik Hariri. The anti-Syrian 14 March grouping relies on support from Sunni and Druze Muslims as well as some Christians, and is backed by France, the US and Saudi Arabia. It includes Maronite groups who are particularly hostile to Aoun: Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces (a Christian militia that Aoun’s forces fought against in 1989); the Phalangists of former president Amine Gemayel (1); and the Qornet Shehwan Gathering, a group of Christian intellectuals close to the Maronite patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir. Relations between Aoun’s party and the patriarchate are strained, since the FPM’s charter aims to “separate politics from religion to facilitate the establishment of a secular state” (2) – a prospect the religious authorities are not too keen on.

The gulf between the FPM and the 14 March alliance is all the deeper because the two have a different analysis of the regional situation following Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005. Aoun and his supporters believe that defending national integrity no longer depends merely on opposing Syrian interference, but all foreign interference, including from the West and Saudi Arabia. Reflecting the aspirations of marginalised, middle-class Maronite Christians, the FPM opposes sectarianism and wants the country to move towards secularism, whereas it believes the 14 March alliance wants to perpetuate the traditional sectarian order.

more
http://mondediplo.com/2009/06/04lebanon

Woah there -- got to wrap my head around THAT one.

Although the alliance of parties at opposite extremes is generally not a good omen for either one. It might be a good sign for Lebanon that these groups need friends so desperately.