'For All This, People Have Died?'
Lebanese Question Why It Took 18 Months and Violence to Resolve Political Crisis

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 23, 2008

BEIRUT, May 22 -- Under the gaze of the statue of Riyadh al-Solh, one of the founders of modern Lebanon, there were scenes of reconciliation in Beirut on Thursday. Roads were reopened, cars returned to parking lots overgrown with weeds, and Hezbollah's workers finished dismantling the downtown site of their 18-month-long protest, planting flowers, directing traffic and piling glistening barbed wire in coils 10 feet high.

But the relief that met the announcement Wednesday of a deal to end Lebanon's worst crisis in a generation had given way, a day later, to anger that the confrontation had lasted so long. There was resentment toward communal leaders, some endowed with near-feudal powers, who often seemed to stage-manage the crisis until it descended into a paroxysm of violence nearly two weeks ago. Shaded by the statue, others asked why -- in civil wars in 1958 and 1975 and in the conflict now -- the country had to resort to violence to resolve changes in the fragile sectarian balance of 18 religious communities that Solh helped craft in 1943.

"In five days, everything is finished? You must ask why in five days, all this was resolved directly. Why did we have to go through all this?" asked Nicholas Dagher, the 42-year-old owner of a downtown bookstore, Libraire du Liban. "For all this, people have died? For what? For nothing. We have lost so much time for nothing."

The agreement was reached in five days of negotiations in Qatar between the Hezbollah-led opposition and the government and its allies. In the end, the deal met the very demands that the Shiite movement had made at the start of the crisis -- veto power in the cabinet and what it called a government of national unity. The important question of Hezbollah's formidable arsenal was left to future talks.

With the accord, Lebanon began trying to reconstitute what had looked more and more like a failed state. Parliament was to convene Sunday to elect Gen. Michel Suleiman, the army commander, as president, filling a post vacant since November. A little hesitantly, life returned to downtown Beirut.

Workers deployed by Hezbollah, wearing yellow caps, the color identified with the movement, planted roses, shrubs and trees in the once-manicured gardens the group's protesters had dwelled in since 2006, a cosmetic touch to a scarred city. Others repaired lights under Solh's statue, stacked bags of fertilizer and trimmed olive trees.

"We're going to bring this place back exactly the way it was," said Abu Mohammed Fahs, as he directed the dozen or so workers. "Perhaps even better."

As he talked, another Hezbollah official arrived with a bag full of yellow shirts.

"Come on, guys!" Fahs said. "Let's put on the yellow!"

In the street beside them, Hezbollah's men directed traffic alongside policemen in gray camouflage they had derided as a state-organized militia weeks ago.

Near the government headquarters known as the Serail, the workers removed barbed wire from purple bougainvillea. Others hauled away concrete barricades, one bearing the slogan "Death to Israel."

Under Solh's statue, one traffic light still worked. Fittingly, it blinked yellow.

Anger remained in streets that last week were the scene of armed clashes pitting Hezbollah fighters and their allies against armed men loyal to the government.

At a pharmacy, Jamil Mizhir, a customer, called the deal a defeat for the United States, Israel and "their agents" in Lebanon. Fatima Dakkash, the pharmacist, scolded him.

"Now we have to speak in a civil tone, with manners and politeness," she said.

Down the street from Solh's statue, Manal Smaha, a 25-year-old government supporter entering downtown for the first time in months, was in an unforgiving mood.

"We put our youth in universities and teach them. They give their youth weapons and train them," she said, with a look of contempt. "We fight with pens, not weapons."

But heard often was disgust at a crisis that many believe could have been resolved earlier. Some directed their anger at the country's leaders, others at themselves. Many wondered whether the country would finally turn its attention to an economic crisis and the rising prices of food, gasoline and even taxi rides.

"All of these leaders have palaces, millions of dollars, and they educate their children abroad, while we live in poverty and misery," said Philip al-Hazraq, a 43-year-old bank employee downtown. "How do you understand this? Are they better than me?"

The negotiations took a telling turn in Doha, the Qatari capital. In the end, much of the debate focused on a law to organize next year's parliamentary elections. Each side won some of its demands -- a division of Beirut that will help government allies, smaller electoral districts that may help the opposition. But, significantly, a proposal made by an independent commission appointed by the government to introduce proportional representation was ignored. Those eager to reform politics monopolized by sectarian leaders saw the proposal as the best hope to bring independent, secular voices into a political system many deem sclerotic.

"We'll always have the same leaders. Whatever the difference, whatever the disputes, they'll come back as they were," said Maurice Elias, a friend of Hazraq's.

Hazraq, a father of six, shook his head in disgust.

"What's worse? A donkey or the people here? A donkey walks into a hole once and it learns its lesson. It doesn't do it again. Then there's the Lebanese people. They keep searching for a hole to fall into. It's worse. We keep falling into the same hole.

"Shame on Lebanon for what happened," he said.