Lebanese Seek To Map a Future Mired in Past
Sectarian Differences Begin to Surface Again

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 29, 2005

BEIRUT, May 28 -- It was a little after 9 a.m. Saturday when Walid Jumblatt awoke to the gaggle already gathered at his idyllic mountain redoubt of Mokhtara. There were supplicants and well-wishers, admirers and job seekers. As he passed, in his trademark jeans, they hushed. As he took his seat in a stone-walled salon, they lined up for an audience.

In Lebanon, Jumblatt, a lanky man with an ironic streak, is many things. He is a statesman renowned for his ever-mercurial politics, a militia chief during Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war, unquestioned leader of the tiny Druze Muslim community, the scion of its most storied family. To those in Mokhtara, he is Walid Bek, a feudal title inherited from the Ottoman Empire and a symbol of his stature.

"Write him a note!" the 66-year-old Jumblatt shouted to his harried aide, Yasser Heidar, after hearing the first appeal. And so Heidar did, penning a request on a card embossed with Jumblatt's name, asking the United Nations to hire the supplicant as a security guard. A few minutes later, another card: asking the manager of Beirut's airport to provide a job for a mechanical engineer. And on it went.

"It's an old tradition," Jumblatt said afterward, as more people gathered in a courtyard ringed with roses and gardenias and bisected by a spring-fed canal. "It has been that way for centuries, and it's not going to change now."

It's politics as usual in Lebanon, more than two months after hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Lebanese poured into downtown Beirut this spring, furious over the assassination Feb. 14 of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, which they blamed on Syria. In what they proclaimed the Cedar Revolution, they demanded the end of a generation of Syrian dominance over their tiny, mountainous country. The Syrians have since left, but Lebanon is perhaps most remarkable for how little else has changed.

In past weeks, Jumblatt and other sheiks, power brokers, tycoons and their sons have struck backroom deals in the best Levantine tradition, ensuring victory in all but a handful of seats in parliamentary elections that begin Sunday. The fragile coalition that helped drive out Syria has split along ingrained religious fault lines, dominated by many of the same figures who fought in the civil war.

In language redolent of a decade ago, Hezbollah, in a rally of tens of thousands of its Shiite Muslim followers this past week, vowed never to disarm and never to end its struggle against Israel. The haggling along sectarian lines has unleashed disenchantment, especially among the hopeful youth who drove the protests in Beirut's Martyrs' Square.

Forcing Syria to leave was one thing; making Lebanon's democracy a model for the Middle East is another. In a region often defined by the black and white of dictatorship and democracy, Lebanon is an example -- writ large -- of the challenges in navigating the gray area in between. Shadowed by its civil war, centuries-old tradition like that at Mokhtara and the politics of an always unsettled region, this country of 18 religious sects is trying to chart a future that remains entrenched in the past.

In the end, the election that begins Sunday may be less the crowning of a new era and rather a first, tentative step toward answering the question: What exactly is Lebanon?

"We gave an impression to the world that we were united again," said Sarkis Naoum, a respected columnist for An Nahar, a leading newspaper. "But this unity is still on the surface, this unity is still superficial, it's not deep. If the political classes and the politicians and the leaders of the religious communities don't deepen this national unity, it will melt like the snow.

"Everybody talks about change, but what kind of change?" he asked. "In the end, you have 18 tongues speaking a different language."

Hariri's Legacy

The visage of Hariri, a tycoon who made his fortune in Saudi Arabia and served twice as Lebanon's prime minister, stares out at the cosmopolitan capital, traversing its neighborhoods of Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Armenians, Greek Orthodox and Maronite Catholics. His portrait, showing his distinctive heavy eyebrows and thick hair, peers from billboards along the gleaming downtown and walls still scarred by fighting 20 years ago, from banners across congested streets and from slogans that call him "the martyr."

"The truth for the sake of Lebanon," some read -- a call to bring his killers to justice.

More bluntly, others simply say, "The truth."

In the outpouring of grief and fury that followed his assassination, his second-eldest son, 35-year-old Saadeddine Hariri -- a political novice, but a wealthy businessman like his father -- was anointed his successor. To many Lebanese, he is now "Sheik Saad," a title of respect and the axis around which most of Lebanon's factions joined together to enter the elections for a 128-member parliament. It will be the first chosen since 1972 without the presence of Syrian troops, which intervened during Lebanon's civil war.

Under the agreement that ended that war, the parliament is evenly divided between Christians and Muslims (Maronite Christians are reserved 34 seats, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims each have 27, with the rest divided among other sects.) As a minority, Christians are overrepresented, although no one knows the exact population breakdown between the communities. The last official census in Lebanon was in 1932; a new one would probably prove too politically explosive.

Sunday marks the first of four rounds, with balloting for the 19 seats in Beirut. But like most districts, the results are largely a foregone conclusion. Across the country, groups like Hariri's, Jumblatt's, Hezbollah, another Shiite party known as Amal, and Christian factions have already come together to agree on nominees. Candidates loyal to Hariri have claimed nine uncontested seats in the capital. Of the others, only one or two have any real competition. "Democracy, Lebanese style," Jumblatt called it.

'As It Is'

For centuries, the tradition of the zaim, or feudal-like lord, has run deep in Lebanese politics. With a historically weak state, it was often the zaim who met the demands of the community, Christian and Muslim. As a group, they were acknowledged as the authority, bargained on the community's behalf and, like Jumblatt, provided their constituency with services, jobs, health care and sometimes defense. This spring, it was their equivalent who sealed the bargain over the lists of candidates.

The wild card is Michel Aoun, a former general and prime minister who fought Syrian troops and fellow Christians in the civil war's waning days. Syria exiled him to France. On his return this month after 15 years, he declared he was the real opposition to Syria -- not Hariri, Jumblatt and others. He tried to enter their coalition, but negotiations broke down, almost assuredly depriving him of seats and splitting the opposition. Since then, he has called his adversaries collaborators and run on a reform platform. (The commotion around his return was so great that Jumblatt in parliament called him a "tsunami." "A good tsunami," he later clarified.)

The bargaining and unlikely alliances have generated disillusionment after the euphoria of the Syrian withdrawal. The pullout led to an expectation that Lebanon was entering a new era, where politics would be defined by programs rather than loyalty to the zaim, and where the political elite would make way for a younger alternative. Many in Beirut often say the election is a mahdala , a steamroller. Others employ a civil-war phrase to describe the shifting, backroom deal-making: "Moving the rifle from one shoulder to the other."

"You can't all of a sudden destroy everything," said Amin Gemayel, a former president whose group joined Hariri's coalition. "It will take time. I understand the frustration of the young generation. They thought on March 14, they got everything."

In past Lebanese elections, Hariri often used the phrase, "As it is." He meant the candidate list he had endorsed, and he expected his followers to abide by his choice. He would motion with two hands, as if dropping in a ballot. This week, his son addressed a crowd in Beirut, bathed in the soft light of the sun setting over the Mediterranean. His followers chanted: "God be with you, Saad." Pictures on the stage and along the street portrayed father and son together, past and future. He waved, blew kisses and put his hand across his chest in a gesture of thanks.

"When you cast your votes, you're raising your voices against the criminals who killed Rafiq Hariri," he said.

The crowd cheered. Some women cried. Then he asked: How will you cast your ballots?

"As it is," they shouted back.

"How?" he asked.

"As it is," they answered.

"As it is?" he asked.

"As it is!" they yelled.

The Power of Hezbollah

This week, another rally, far larger, assembled in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil. It was organized by Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim movement, to commemorate five years since Hezbollah forced Israel to withdraw from the south.

In a fiery, hour-long speech from behind bulletproof glass, the movement's charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, recounted a conversation he said he had with Hariri a week before his death.

Would Hariri ask Hezbollah to disarm, as the United States and U.N. Resolution 1559 have demanded? Nasrallah said he asked. "I believe in the resistance," he quoted Hariri as saying, employing the term Hezbollah uses for its military wing. Only with a comprehensive peace in the region would Hariri bring up the subject, Nasrallah claimed. Only then would he and Hezbollah ponder the next step.

The question of Hezbollah's arms will prove one of the most pressing for the next parliament. In his speech, Nasrallah declared that as in the past, weapons were necessary to free a disputed sliver of land known as the Shabaa Farms, near the border between Lebanon and Israel, and to create a balance of power with Israel. Shabaa Farms is currently claimed by Israel, though the United Nations says it's part of Syria, and Hezbollah claims it as part of Lebanon.

"Any thinking on disarming our weapons is madness!" he shouted, his hands punctuating his words. Nasrallah worked the crowd, offering jokes, and speaking in a familiar slang. His tone rose and fell with the mood of his followers. "If anyone should think -- now listen to me -- if anyone should think of disarming our weapons, we will fight him like the people of Karbala fought," the turbaned cleric said, a reference to a 7th century battle pivotal in Shiite history. "Any step of the kind is an Israeli act, in Israel's interest, an Israeli decision. Any hand that is an Israeli hand, we will cut it off."

Part social welfare movement, part political party, part militia, Hezbollah, deemed a terrorist group by the United States, is a formidable force in Lebanese politics. In some ways, it can be seen as the modernization of the notion of the zaim. To its traditionally underprivileged community, in part through Iranian funding, it provides schools, hospitals, pharmacies, dental clinics, jobs and scholarships, filling the void left by the state (and some say forming a state within a state). It claims to speak on behalf of the Shiite community, Lebanon's largest. It claims to defend their interests.

In symbolism, words and message, it draws on its history to claim its future. "There is no place for retreat, no place for weakness, no place for humiliation," Nasrallah said.

As part of the electoral deal-making, Hezbollah entered a coalition with another Shiite party for the Shiite vote. "Complete adherence," Nasrallah told his followers in the speech. They would vote, he said, as the party ordered.

The Hopeful Youth

The graffiti remains on a wall in Beirut's Martyrs' Square, where the protests generated images broadcast across a captivated Arab world. "What is your sect?" asks one passage. "Lebanon," it answers. And another declares, "Lebanon is ours. Lebanese youth shall bring back its independence. We are the change."

Rasha Abu Hamad, an 18-year-old student, was there during the protests. For once, she felt, the city transcended its geography of sect and class.

"The feeling you had down there was beautiful. You had the sense of everybody coming together for once. That's what gives you hope," she said. "I was reminded what this country means to me. It means home. It means my future."

It's the past she wants to move beyond. Lebanon's political system is a tenuous arrangement. It protects the Christian minority by giving it equal representation in parliament. The biggest sects each receive powerful posts. In an authoritarian region, with a miserable record toward minorities, it ensures representation, albeit for communities over individuals.

Rarely, though, will someone in Lebanon defend the system, even if few agree on an alternative. A Lebanese University poll published in Al Safir newspaper Saturday suggested its unpopularity. According to the results, more than three-fourths of people questioned said they supported a democratic secular system, and more than half desired political representation based on secular parties over religious sect.

"Deep down inside, what does everybody want? They want peace and unity," Abu Hamad said, sitting with two friends. "For sure, the older generation has their idea -- 'unity, but our way.' "

Her words set off a discussion among them on the future. Was there an alternative?

"Not until the old leaders vanish and other people take their place," said Mohammed Heidar, goateed and wearing shorts.

Abu Hamad jumped in. "The politicians, they're the people who need to make way for us," she said. "Step aside."

"See how it's done," added the 20-year-old Heidar. "Our way," Abu Hamad said.