Dr. Dave Wurmser
There is a spurt of great optimism on both sides of the political spectrum in the United States, and even Israel, that the Lebanese government, now that it has installed Joseph Aoun as its president, will finally leverage Israel’s devastating victory over Hizballah to assert Lebanon’s sovereignty. In order to uphold the November ceasefire between Hizballah and Israel, it will execute not only UNSC Resolution 1701 – under which Hizballah was to be removed from south of the Litani River – but also UNSC Resolution 1559 – under which all armed factions are to be disarmed and the monopoly of power be returned to the Lebanese government. Moreover, for the first time in five decades, powerful regional forces seem held at bay; the PLO is gone and Iran and Hizballah are laid to waste. Lebanon is back in Lebanese hands. And indeed, the speech Aoun gave upon assuming office contained language that lends substance to this promise: “The era of Hizballah is over; We will disarm all of them.”
Perhaps with age, one’s more jaded and curmudgeonly essence comes forward, but Lebanon likely is far from out of the woods, far from adequately executing its obligations under the ceasefire, and certainly far from emerging as a calm state at peace with Israel. The problem is because Lebanon’s instability arises not from the external array of forces, but from the very foundations of the Lebanese state that then are leveraged by external forces.
The quote that never was
Let’s start first with the most obvious. President Aoun was reported to have said the above quote. The problem is he did not say it. He actually said:
“My mandate begins today, and I pledge to serve all Lebanese, wherever they are, as the first servant of the country, upholding the national pact and practicing the full powers of the presidency as an impartial mediator between institutions … Interference in the judiciary is forbidden, and there will be no immunity for criminals or corrupt individuals. There is no place for mafias, drug trafficking, or money laundering in Lebanon,”
To note, he raised this in the context of the judiciary, not the military. Regarding the disbanding of the Hizballah militia as a military force, he was careful in his words and suggested it would be subsumed into the state rather than outright eliminated – exactly the greatest fear of Israel (Hizbazllah’s integration into the LAF):
“The Lebanese state – I repeat the Lebanese state – will get rid of the Israeli occupation … My era will include the discussion of our defensive strategy to enable the Lebanese state to get rid of the Israeli occupation and to retaliate against its aggression.”
The structure that cannot reform
Words in the Middle East mean only so much. One can dismiss this episode of the quote that never as essentially inconsequential. The problem is that it reflects something far deeper: the structure of the Lebanese state – the National Pact to which he refers — cannot develop into what we hope it will, because the structure of the Lebanese state is not aligned with the only form of Lebanon that potentially gives reason to its very existence as an independent state, let alone one at peace with its southern neighbor.
The existence of Lebanon is not a result of a colonial gift to a Christian community by the French at the end of World War I. Lebanon actually has an older and more defined reason to exist than almost any other state in the region but Israel, Iran, Turkey and Egypt. The colonial definition of Lebanon established at the end of World War I unwittingly and out of the best intentions to the Lebanese Christians actually undermined that essence.
Lebanon embodies the result of a major event: the Battle of Ayn Dera in 1711, where the powerful Chehab clan both converted from Sunni Islam to Christianity, aligned with the powerful Khazen Maronite clan, and unified the remaining non-Greek Orthodox Christians into a powerful force, all aligned with half of the Druze under the Jumblatt, Talhuq, Imad and Abd al-Malik clans. This Maronite-Druze coalition won against their premier enemy – the Ottoman empire and its governors of Sidon and Damascus — and expelled the Ottoman proxies, the Arslan, Alam al-Din, and Sawaf Druze clans from Mount Lebanon to the east in what today is the area of Jebel Druze/Suweida in Syria. This was the key enemy around which the Lebanese state was formed, thus, in 1711 was the Ottoman threat from Damascus and the area of Sidon and ousting the Turkish nemesis than a Sunni Arab issue, which played a marginal role as proxies, if they played any at all at that time. The Shiites were not even a factor, although they too held as a their nemesis the Ottoman specter, of which the Sunni Arabs was a mere instrument.
The problem with the Lebanese structure is that the military and its government are fundamentally anchored to the National Pact: a concept of a multi-confessional equilibrium among four communities, and not around the core idea of Lebanon as established as a result of the battle of Ayn Dara in 1711 around a Maronite-Druze core. This multi-confessional essence divorced Lebanon from its only reason for existence: to be a homeland for a Christian state aligned with the Druze ally. Lebanon, as constructed embodies the multi-confessionalism, and not the alliance of the 1711 Battle of Ayn Dera and its results.
At first, this was a moot point: the Maronites and the Druze were a strong majority, and thus dominated the State. But the Greek Orthodox were never fully on board with the idea, and over the 20th century, the Sunni populations grew, largely through immigration, as did the Shiite, to the point at which the Christians were no longer the majority. The multi-confessional equilibrium thus shifted from being a cover for Maronite dominance to being a genuine rickety, artificial coalition of forces that could not manage to overpower each other. Any attempt by any faction to overpower the other at this point inherently then resulted in a breakdown of the equilibrium, a collapse of civic order and violent conflict.
There is really no way to square the structure of the Lebanese government and its premier materialization, the armed forces, which is a manifestation of this equilibrium of forces, to move the nation from the essence of where Lebanon needs to go – a rejection of the National Pact and return to its original and only raison d’être and therein be the only regional Christian nation that at this critical time gathers the various regional Christian communities into a homeland as their last hope for regional survival.
At the end of the day, neither Syria nor Lebanon exist, because they are institutions and institutions don’t really exist in the Middle East the way we understand them in the West. While we believe institutions have a real existence that transcends those that constitute it – even the head of an institution in the West is considered a steward rather than an embodiment of the structure, institutions in the region are merely the embodiment of the people and groups that constitute it at that moment. Indeed, institutions are structures to regulate intercommunal interactions and conflicts, and they do not have an essence, sovereignty, existence of their own. And since the institution of the Lebanese military and state are fundamentally anchored to an equilibrium, they cannot survive any attempt to suppress one element of that equilibrium to the advantage of others without triggering conflict.
Strategic forces at work
That said, neither are the outside forces fully held at bay. Indeed, the looming threats from the outside push the fragile artificial institution of the Lebanese state and army to hedge yet further rather than move decisively to extirpate the remains of Hizballah. And its inherent instability and misalignment with its original purpose invite those external interventions.
Indeed, there is logic in that for the Lebanese government, because it has a neighbor next door – Syria — which essentially has never recognized Lebanon’s existence as a valid state. Syria was also established as an Arab state with large minorities – a multi-ethnic, confessional quilt, and as such is not easily distinguished from a multi-confessional Lebanon. The mix is different; a much larger Sunni Arab community, with large Alawite minorities. And the Christians in Syria were largely Greek Orthodox – who had made their peace with Arab nationalism since it allowed them to transform the irreconcilable and potentially mortal Turkish nemesis into a digestible Arab one. As such, if Lebanon were to remain a multi-confessional state rather than narrowly a Maronite state with a Druze entity, then its digestion by Syria is conceivable.
And again, what is most concerning is that what is emerging in Damascus is not a multi-confessional nation with enough of its own problems to leave Lebanon alone, but a Sunni-Arab state under Turkish influence, if not possible suzerainty. And Turks are flooding the new Syria, as well. As such, the Ottoman nemesis that was defeated in Ayn Dara in 1711 is on the move to reverse that verdict – this time without their Druze allies but with the natural affinity of the sizeable Sunni Arab populations of northern Lebanon.
As such, the Lebanese government right now is more worried about what will threaten them from Damascus, and about the rise of the Sunni Lebanese alliance with the HTS entity emerging in Damascus and led by Ahmad ash-Shara (Abu Muhammad al-Julani) to subvert Lebanese independence on behalf of the neo-Ottoman project led by Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, than they are with Hizballah — which Israel essentially has reduced to such diminished parameters that they pose a distant, and not acute problem that needs immediate and urgent attention for the central Lebanese government and its multi-confessional military. Indeed, the Lebanese government may even entertain husbanding the remaining forces of Hizballah as an asset to mobilize in a rainy day against the Sunni threat emerging from Ankara and Damascus.
And to deal with such a complex regional context at the same time as injecting a cataclysmic earthquake – namely the erasing of the now-diminished and vulnerable structure of Shiite protection and power — into the domestic tapestry anchored to an equilibrium that no faction can mast and dominate, is likely seen by any current Lebanese government as a prescription for civil war and invasion by the new Syrians and their Turkish overlords. This would be tantamount to willfully inviting the apocalypse.
As such it is unlikely that the Lebanese government will risk its very existence as an artificial institution anchored to a false equilibrium, by trying to rearrange the power structures. It is far more worried about maintaining a sense of stability to not give Syria the immediate ability to interfere and enter through the Sunni question, effectively ending Lebanon as a country.
In the end, Lebanon’s only path to long term survival lies not with this equilibrium, but through returning to the essence of what Lebanon was meant to be, the Spirit of Ayn Dara and 1711, and establish a protective strategic umbrella with other regional forces, such as Israel (whose alliance with Lebanon is the only way for Israel to ever secure its northern border), and the Western world that is still interested in preserving the oldest churches of Christianity in the cradle of Christianity.
But this involves an upheaval which at this moment, the Lebanese people appear unwilling to entertain – and understandably so. Lebanon’s people, being very averse to conflict after decades of civil war, would rather kick the can down the road and maintain even a bad equilibrium, rather than upset the apple cart and descend into intercommunal strife. It is in this context that President Aoun’s call for integration of all militias – essentially a re-manifestation of the national pact and integration of Hizballah into it– needs to be understood rather than the clean call to disarm and erase Hizballah which the EU, US and Israel expect.
And given that insurmountable reality, peace with Israel and a strategic reorganization of the coastal Levant will have to wait – until the Syrian cauldron again comes to visit, as Lebanon’s Sunnis align with it, and as the neo-Ottoman empire threatens – of which will shortly happen. Only in the framework of that will there be a realignment of Lebanon and likely strategic cooperation and even peace with Israel.