Lebanon’s Political Sectarianism: A System in Crisis and the Path Toward Secular Reform

Summary by Geopolist | Istanbul Center for Geopolitics

The article examines the inherent breakdown of Lebanon’s political sectarianism, which has resulted in the nation’s profound political and economic turmoil. Lebanon’s consociational system, implemented following its independence in 1943, aimed to guarantee equitable distribution of power among different religious factions. Nevertheless, this system has firmly established privileged and powerful groups and encouraged dishonesty, ineffectiveness, and outside meddling, especially from Syria and Hezbollah.

Efforts to bring about change, such the Taif Agreement in 1989, were intended to tackle sectarian differences but ended up strengthening those very divisions, resulting in repeated political stalemates. The economic downturn, worsened by the protests that took place in Lebanon in 2019, revealed the impossibility of the sectarian system to continue functioning, as citizens called for transparency, fairness, and improvements in the economy. Nevertheless, due to Hezbollah’s prevailing influence in both political and military spheres, it has been able to withstand any alterations that may potentially disturb the equilibrium of power between sectarian factions.

The paper contends that Lebanon must transition towards a secular political framework in order to establish a functional state and put an end to the prevailing influence of the elite, which thrives on sectarian politics. Lebanon may promote national unity, combat corruption, and improve its economy and administration by shifting away from sectarianism and adopting a fairer and more inclusive approach. The article highlights that despite notable obstacles, there is a noticeable increase in public backing for a civil political system, as seen by protests and surveys advocating for secular administration.

Read the full article below.

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The Failure of Political Sectarianism in Lebanon

Introduction

As Lebanon finds itself on the precipice of a war with Israel following some five months of skirmishes between Hezbollah and the Israeli Army as an extension of the Israeli war on Gaza, its political system suffers from complete stalemate and its economy exhibits clear signs of structural failure and collapse. Indeed, the World Bank has characterized the country’s economic and financial situation to be among the worst three crises in the world since the middle part of the nineteenth century.¹ Without a president since October 31, 2022, and with an ineffective caretaker government and a polarized parliament and political elite, necessary economic and fiscal reforms have been delayed and the path forward has become more uncertain than ever before.

Many reasons can be blamed for the current crises besetting the country—elite self-interest, distrust between political factions, and regional interference, among other things—but a major causal precipitant is the failure of the consociational governing formula Lebanon has adopted since its independence in 1943. The consensus that said formula was supposed to ensure—expressed in an old Lebanese slogan of “no victor, no vanquished”—has increasingly eroded as sectarian groups failed to make necessary compromises and as Shiite Hezbollah has become too powerful to be corralled within state authority. To be sure, as a collection of institutions and protector and executor of laws and regulations, the Lebanese state appears incapable of playing the arbiter role between the different sects because one of them is using military supremacy and constitutional rules and provisions to advance its own interests and preferences at the expense of other components of the same sectarian society. This state of affairs was at least partly the result of Syria’s dominant role in Lebanese affairs during the period from 1976 to 2005 when Damascus manipulated Lebanon’s confessional politics in service of its foreign policy and interests.

This article will discuss Lebanon’s current consociational system that produced its political sectarianism as it was envisioned and agreed at the time of Lebanon’s independence in 1943, starting with a brief description of the concept and historical background for its development. It will then look at the failed attempts at reconciliation between the warring factions in the 1980s and address the Taif Agreement of 1989 that finally succeeded in reviving the general principles of Lebanese consociationalism, and under whose provisions Lebanon conducts its politics today. Another section will provide an explanation of the post-civil war period and Hezbollah’s practices that proved the inadequacies of Lebanon’s consociational guarantees. Finally, a short conclusion proposes a secular polity in Lebanon can move the country forward after decades of political stalemate and elite failures.

Lebanon’s Political Sectarianism

Lebanon’s political system rests on practical variations of the theory of consociationalism popularized by political scientists, peace practitioners, politicians, and others as a design for diverse and pluralistic societies. In its basic conception, consociationalism is a political arrangement that guarantees the participation of all religious, ethnic, tribal, and other communities in governance, in many cases based on their percentage of a given country’s population. To be sure, it is a design that is focused on the idea of agreement between different segments and components of a society for the benefit of the whole.

Arendt Lijphart, the preeminent theorist of consociationalism, sees it as the arrangement that is most suitable to a pluralistic and segmented society. It constitutes a power-sharing formula between potentially centrifugal forces that may pull away from a unified community because of divergent interests, ambitious leaders, pressure from outside actors, or geopolitical circumstances. To Lijphart, consociationalism has four basic components:²

1. The constitution of a “grand coalition” between the significant segments of society. This coalition serves as a place for negotiating segmental interests and preserving them.
2. A mutual veto power that ensures that no one segment of the population is made to accept decisions detrimental to its interests, (naturally, as its political leaders see them).
3. Proportional representation for all segments of the population in the state, government institutions, and the public sector, commensurate with their numbers in society.
4. Autonomy in internal affairs for each segment of the population.

In a pluralistic society like Lebanon’s, the accurate and effective adoption and application of consociationalism has always been conditional on the agreement of its different religious communities to participate in a unifying state project for all the Lebanese. Lebanon is home to some 18 different sects,³ each with its own religious realm, interests, and ultimate political aims that obviously center around preserving and perpetuating a decent and meaningful degree of participation in the wider political and national community. The three largest such sects are the Maronite Christians and the Sunni and Shia Muslims, while the others make up much smaller pluralities, but have the opportunity to influence political outcomes because of the consociational nature of the political system and their ability to leverage whatever political power they possess.

Lebanon’s original consociational political formula originated in political arrangements devised to help bring sectarian peace in the 1840s to Mount Lebanon, a stretch of mountainous territory east of present-day Beirut. After inter-religious fighting between Christian Maronites and Druze, the area was divided by the Ottoman suzerains, with help from European countries, into two governorates, or qaim-maqamiyyatain, one Maronite in the north and another Druze in the south, separated by the Beirut-Damascus transit route. Each had a governor, qaim-maqam, who would be assisted by a council representing the existing religious communities in both areas (Maronites, Druze, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Sunnis, and Shia).⁴

Representing religious communities that had secured outside support from Great Britain, France, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire,⁵ this system survived for a little less than two decades when renewed and widespread sectarian violence erupted. After securing the help of European powers, the Ottoman Empire unified the two governorates into one mutasarrifiyya to be governed by a mutasarrif, who would be a non-Lebanese Christian Ottoman subject. Aiding the governor was a council of representatives of the different sects. In essence, this system consecrated and enforced the confessional system that was established in 1843.

The mutasarrifiyya system had a considerably peaceful life until 1915 when the Ottoman Empire—enmeshed in the First World War and fighting an Arab insurrection in the Arabian Peninsula and the Eastern Mediterranean—abolished it in favor of direct military rule. A military governor, Jamal Pasha, administered the territory in the name of the Young Turks. But after the defeat of the empire in WWI and the establishment of the League of Nations, the Eastern Mediterranean came under a mandate system overseen by Great Britain and France. Present-day Iraq and Palestine came under British control while Lebanon and Syria fell under French rule.

Mandatory France established modern-day Lebanon on September 1, 1920, when French High Commissioner General Henri Gouraud declared the creation of Greater Lebanon, adding to the original Mount Lebanon territory the region known as Jabal `Amel in the south, the coastal cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut, the Beqaa Valley in the east, the coastal city of Tripoli in the north, and the plain of `Akkar on the present-day Lebanese-Syrian border. Gouraud was responding to pressures from Maronite clergy and elites to expand the original territory. The added areas had been part of the Ottoman Empire’s Syrian territories and had a majority Muslim population, thus offsetting the numbers of Maronites and other Christians living in the original Mount Lebanon.

In 1926, mandatory France inaugurated the Republic of Lebanon, with a constitution that guaranteed the distribution of political power ‘equitably’ among the different sects in Greater Lebanon.⁶ On November 22, 1943, Lebanon gained its independence from France and the 1926 constitution was amended to incorporate the new state of affairs. The sectarian elites representing the largest two confessions in the country—Maronite Christian Bishara al-Khouri and Sunni Muslim Riad al-Solh—negotiated the National Pact (al-mithaq al-watani) according to which the presidency of the republic would be reserved for the Maronites, the premiership would be the domain of the Sunni Muslims, and the speakership of parliament would go to the Shia Muslims. The pact was just a gentlemen’s agreement that was thought to guarantee equal access and influence in the political system for all the country’s sects.⁷ Accompanying this agreement was another for distributing government positions according to a population census that was conducted in 1932 under French auspices and that showed that the Maronites constituted the largest plurality in the country, followed by the Sunnis and the Shia, respectively. Government positions were divided according to a 6:5 ratio in favor of the Christians: for every six Christians in government there would be five Muslims, and each confession would have its own distribution among the sects.

For a period, the National Pact was seen as the best workable compromise that would serve the interests of Christian and Sunni elites in a peaceful polity. It signified a modern political structure in Lebanese affairs that practically did away with the Maronite-Druze duality of the nineteenth century. To be sure, and as Helena Cobban has argued, “[T]he pact…signified an important sociological change in the conduct of the principal inter-sect coalition in Lebanon. The coalition was now primarily one between mercantile city interests, rather than an entente between clan leaders in the inaccessible Mountain.”⁸

On the other hand, the National Pact left Lebanon’s regional identity and commitment unspecified; instead choosing neutrality in Arab affairs. Lebanon was declared to be an independent nation with an “Arab face” that reserved the right to look westward. Such a formulation had pertinent and pragmatic premises. To further the Muslims’ allegiance to the new entity, it signified a Lebanese Arab identity; and to allay any Christian fears about being overwhelmed by the Muslim Arab world, it allowed association with Europe. To be sure, the Maronites could not forget their historical relationship with the Vatican or, more specifically, with France which had anointed itself their protector centuries earlier. As Clovis Maksoud has argued, “The architects of the Mithaq assumed, broadly speaking and for historical reasons, that the Muslim community was more interested in a total identification with the Arab nation and the Christian population was determined to seek foreign protection in order to prevent such an Arab identification from being attained.”⁹

While providing the basis for sectarian peace within the country, the National Pact or those espousing it could not prevent Lebanon from the vagaries of a conflictual regional environment. First, the establishment of the state of Israel in historical Palestine in 1948 and the influx of some 110,000 Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes imposed their own pressures on the country, such as the refugees’ Muslim Sunni identification, their security and wellbeing, and their pan-Arab extensions.¹⁰ Second, the Arab nationalist and national liberation discourse accompanying the loss of Palestine found a fertile ground in Lebanon, especially among the Muslim communities, a fact that impacted an essential premise of the National Pact, that of neutrality in regional affairs. Third, the later rise (in the 1960s) of an independent Palestinian resistance movement presented the Lebanese state with security challenges that ultimately led to serious conflict between Lebanon’s security sector and the Palestine Liberation Organization and eventually helped to ignite the civil war of 1975-1990.

Civil War, Reconciliation Efforts, and the Taif Agreement

On April 13, 1975, the contradictions inherent in the confessional system, economic disparities resulting from the Lebanese laissez faire economy, and the challenges presented by a practically independent armed Palestinian movement exploded in a civil war that lasted until 1990. Although there were noted exceptions, the war pitted a general collection of Christian factions defending the status quo against another coalition of Muslim and leftist groups allied with Palestinian organizations demanding radical changes in the country’s political and economic system and more commitment to pan-Arab causes, especially the question of Palestine. While concentrated in Beirut, civil war battles reached practically all areas of the country and affected all communities. By its end in 1990, the civil war killed some 150,000 people, injured tens of thousands, and displaced hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims living in wrong-denomination areas.¹¹

The civil war period had a number of political milestones aimed at arriving at an end to the violence. And from the first days of the conflict, Lebanese, Arab, and international intermediaries attempted to mediate between the warring factions to no avail, until an Arab League intervention succeeded in convening a conference at Taif in Saudi Arabia in 1989 that arrived at a formula that was finally accepted by all.

In 1975, then Prime Minister Rashid Karami convened a National Dialogue Committee among political and religious elites, but the meetings failed to reach a compromise solution to the violence that began in April of that year.¹² In February 1976, following internal consultations and pressures from Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, then-President Suleiman Franjieh announced the Constitutional Document that proposed to increase the power of the Sunni prime minister and divide legislative seats equitably between the sects. But the initiative failed to satisfy the leftist opposition.¹³

In June 1976, and following more than a year of direct Syrian political involvement in trying to broker a workable deal in Beirut, the Syrian Army invaded Lebanon to halt the fighting that by that time had threatened the heart of Maronite areas in the country. Leftist forces and their Palestinian allies had broken the defenses of Christian militias around the Christian canton extending roughly from the Beirut-Damascus highway in the south to towns about 25 miles north. Syria at the time was worried that a leftist-Palestinian victory would attract Israeli intervention on the side of the Lebanese Maronites. The Syrian invasion eventually led to the consecration of Syria’s military presence in Lebanon under the so-called Arab Deterrence Forces that were approved by Arab states at a meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.¹⁴

Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 that ended the Palestinian armed presence in the country and led to the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization to Tunisia, the government of then-President Amin Gemayel signed the May 17, 1983, security agreement with Israel.¹⁵ Lebanese opposition groups, supported by Syria, objected to the agreement, considering it a prelude to Lebanon’s recognition of Israel, and set out to force Gemayel to abrogate it by attacking Christian forces in Beirut. Eventually, Gemayel annulled the agreement in February 1984, but after organizing national reconciliation talks to include all political parties in the country.¹⁶ Indeed, two sets of negotiations took place, the first in Geneva in the Fall of 1983 and the second in Lausanne, Switzerland, in March of 1984. But both rounds failed to bridge the differences between defenders of the status quo and the forces of opposition that were mainly calling for a system that is more equitable in dividing political power between Christians and Muslims.¹⁷ By that time, a multinational force of US, French, and Italian troops deployed following the Israeli invasion in 1982 had withdrawn from Lebanon following a devastating attack on the US embassy in Beirut in April of 1983 and suicide bombings of US and French military headquarters in the Lebanese capital that killed hundreds of soldiers.¹⁸

The period between 1984 and 1988 witnessed street battles between military rivals in Beirut and a state of complete chaos under militia rule. The end of Amin Gemayel’s term as president in 1988 created further political chaos that undermined any talk of domestic peace and accommodation and opened the door to even more military strife. A combination of internal conditions and rivalries, some of which among the Maronite Christians themselves, as well as regional complications arising from direct interference by Syria and others, prevented an agreement on a successor to Gemayel. On September 22, 1988, practically minutes before vacating the Presidential Palace, Gemayel appointed the Commander of the Army General Michel Aoun, a Maronite, head of a temporary military cabinet composed of six members, three Christians and three Muslims. The Muslim appointees rejected joining the new cabinet. The sitting Sunni Prime Minister Salim al-Hoss refused to vacate his position, claiming the rival appointment anathema to the sectarian division of the offices of the state. Thus, there began a period of divided government in the absence of a chief executive as president.¹⁹

Following his appointment, Aoun commenced to act as the chief executive of the country and in early 1989 began to assert his authority over Christian areas under his control and declared a “war of liberation” against Syrian forces.²⁰ In September, 1989, a committee chosen by the Arab League and composed of Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Algeria called the remaining members of the Lebanese Parliament, 73 of 99 elected in 1972 to a conference in Taif, Saudi Arabia, to discuss a regional plan for ending the state of chaos in Lebanon.²¹ Only 63 attended, but they nonetheless constituted what remained of popular legitimacy after 14 years of civil war. In Taif, they agreed on what came to be known as the National Reconciliation Accords, or the Taif Accords of 1989²² that practically inaugurated the Lebanese second republic. Back in Beirut, the Lebanese Parliament approved the agreement on November 4, 1989. Both Hoss and Aoun accepted the agreement, but the latter insisted that reforms it stipulated would only be implemented after the departure of Syrian troops from the country.²³

The Taif Agreement: In its basic structure and composition, the Taif Agreement was at least partly a throwback to former President Franjieh’s Constitutional Document of 1976 in its emphasis on equity in parliamentary representation. It also repeated the necessary references to Lebanon’s Arab identity—a constant demand of the leftist and Muslim opposition parties—and adherence to Arab causes. But perhaps the most important characteristic of the document was its consecrating the confessional basis of Lebanese politics and reviving the concept of sectarian consensus between the country’s political elite. Additionally, the laxness in implementing essential provisions of the agreement robbed it of whatever intention it had of putting Lebanon on the road to long-tern civic peace and social and economic development. As Lebanon suffers from collapse today, some 35 years after the signing of Taif, that implementation still waits to be commenced.

At least two overarching sectarian domestic considerations governed the agreement: recasting confessional influence in executive decision-making and equitable sectarian parliamentary representation between the different sects. These two considerations have for the most part governed Lebanon’s internal affairs since the guns of the civil war fell silent in mid-1990 when General Aoun’s challenge of Syria’s presence in the country and of the remaining Maronite militias in the Christian canton ended.²⁴ On the other hand, its implementation was put in the hands of Syria, which after Taif became the most powerful manager of Lebanese politics and the manipulator of Lebanon’s sectarian political elite.

Recasting executive decision-making: Taif addressed the non-Christian communities’ old lament about a monopoly of executive decisions by the Christian (Maronite) president by stripping him of some of his powers and vesting them in the Sunni prime minister and his cabinet, although in an ambiguous fashion. Joe Bahout writes that “[Taif] also put in place an entirely new paradigm for a sectarian balance of power by ending the political and symbolic hegemony exercised by the Maronite establishment. However, the destination of the transferred presidential powers remained unclear.”²⁵ Indeed, with other provisions contained in the document that impacted other arrangements and issues, the process of making executive decisions and the responsibility for them were diffuse and undeterminable.

In addition, the document’s emphasis on giving the Shiite Speaker of Parliament—another constitutional officer forming the third leg of the tripartite confessional arrangement inherited from the 1943 National Pact—an important say in the state’s non-legislative affairs, guaranteed the said diffusion. It also added the Shia as an interested and impactful sect and community, through the speaker, in executive decisions. In fact, Taif gave the speaker a role in designating, with the president, who would be prime minister after parliamentary consultations, and thus made even the Sunni prime minister less independent and more constrained. In the end, Taif’s attempt to assure more confessional equity in executive power has reinforced the original tenet of consociationalism: that of mutual veto power by the different participants in the consociational formula. In this case, Maronites, Sunnis, and Shia have practically equal power and influence over the state’s domestic decisions as well as those concerning foreign policy. Hassan Krayem writes that “[The] agreement produced a three-man show or “troika” consisting of the three Presidents: the President of the Republic, that of the Council of Ministers, and that of the Parliament.” In essence, he adds, the agreement gave power to individuals occupying the institutions of decision-making, instead of to their institutions, which was a contradiction of Taif being an agreement that was supposed to strengthen institutional life in the country.²⁶

Parliamentary representation: Taif also addressed the subject of political representation in Parliament and established a Christian-Muslim parity instead of the old 1943 formula of 6:5 in favor of the Christians. The number of seats in the legislative body was increased to 108 (54 Christians and 54 Muslims, and proportionally within the sects). While the Christian sects, including the Maronites, maintained their numbers in the Chamber of Deputies, all Muslim sects gained extra seats. Concomitantly, the Speaker of Parliament gained an enhanced political role and a four-year term, like that of the representatives. The election law of July 1992 increased the number of representatives in parliament to 128, 64 Christians and 64 Muslims.²⁷

Unable to totally ignore demands for abolishing sectarianism upon which the political system had rested since independence, Taif also stipulated that Lebanon would work to gradually abolish political sectarianism, purportedly according to a plan that would be implemented over time. Such work of abolition was to commence following the first post-Taif parliamentary elections on the basis of equal sectarian distribution (which took place in 1992). That elected chamber was to appoint a national council composed of the president of the republic, the prime minister, the speaker of parliament, and a number of experts and notables. Once that objective was achieved and a parliament was elected on a secular proportional representation basis, with the whole country as one electoral district, a Senate was to be chosen to represent “spiritual families,” i.e., the country’s confessions, to deal with what was dubbed as “crucial issues.”

In other words, while the parliament was to become a non-sectarian representative body, an upper house was to be formed to protect the same sectarian interests that had plagued the political system for decades. Sami Ofeish writes, “[The] Ta`if elite…injected into the constitution for the first time both the intention to abolish sectarianism and steps that solidified its existence.”²⁸ So far, neither has political sectarianism been abolished, nor has a non-sectarian parliament been elected, nor has a senate been chosen. In essence, Taif has been frozen in time as Lebanon’s confessional politics continues to stalemate more than three decades after the signing of the agreement.

The Collapse of “No Victor, No Vanquished”

Consecrating confessional politics following a 15-year devastating civil war, Taif marked the beginning of a new Lebanese republic in which Muslims could no longer blame the institutional setup of the political system as an obstacle to their full participation in the country’s affairs. But there arose other conditions and circumstances that made such a positive outcome problematic. With its provisions becoming an essential part of the Lebanese constitution, whatever imperfections they engendered legitimized contradictory constitutional considerations: they introduced new rules of conducting consensual politics—an integral concept of consociationalism—but simultaneously allowed new tools for obstructing consensus. The “troika” system created by Taif gave the Sunnis and the Shia equal institutional footing with that of the Maronites, but at the same time allowed for more instances and circumstances to exercise the mutual veto power ingrained in consociationalism.

This serious complication was helped by the inescapable impact of the regional environment on domestic politics in Lebanon, which added its own dynamics because of both the penetrated sectarian identities making up the Lebanese social scene and Lebanon’s commitment to be part of the Arab world’s anti-Israel stance and commitment to Palestinian rights. Then there was the arguably largest elephant in the room: the presence of the Syrian Army that was sanctioned by the Arab world and western powers, especially the United States, to remain in Lebanon following Taif and exercised large influence over domestic politics and foreign policy until 2005 when it withdrew following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.²⁹ Krayem details the regional and international environment and reasons for allowing Syria to play a large role in Lebanon, saying that that was mainly done to minimize the chances of escalating regional conflict and chaos.³⁰ Still, there was a specifically Syrian concern about Lebanon metastasizing into becoming a serious threat to Syria’s national interest and stability following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Damascus’s traditional and reliable partner and ally of the Syrian regime. Michael Hudson writes that after Taif, Damascus was in a position to shape the relationship between Lebanon and Syria. He adds that Syria [had] the power to influence all three “presidencies” (of the republic, of the government, and of parliament), at least in the first few years after the end of the civil war.³¹ Syria’s influence had already been consolidated with the signing of a Lebanese-Syrian Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation and Coordination on foreign relations and security policy that was widely opposed by Lebanon’s Christians because it violated the country’s declared neutrality in Arab affairs.³² Siding with Syria meant being committed to its foreign policy of constant war with Israel and a strategic alliance and relationship with Iran at the expense of more moderate Arab countries like those of the Gulf. In 1993, Lebanon and Syria also signed a number of economic cooperation agreements as part of the 1991 treaty that practically linked their two economies and created a “common market” east of the Mediterranean.³³

Needless to say, the Syrian presence in Lebanon and influence over its political factions exacerbated conditions of discord between the different sectarian groups. In fact, Syria’s practical management of Lebanese affairs—of course with the acquiescence, forced approval, or indifference of the constitutional officers of the republic: the president, the prime minister, and the speaker of parliament—began to break down the ‘no victor, no vanquished’ old Lebanese political slogan and practice originating in Lebanon’s sectarian consociational formula. Specifically, while dominating its relationship with all three constitutional officers, Syria began to favor its Shiite allies, the AMAL Movement of Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri and Hezbollah, first because of Damascus’s cemented relationship with their regional ally Iran and, second, because of their potential role as key partners in facing Israel in southern Lebanon.³⁴ Israel had established a security zone inside Lebanon along the border and set up a militia, the South Lebanon Army, to police the area and prevent Palestinian and, later, Hezbollah infiltration.

In 1991, the Lebanese Parliament passed a law to dissolve all militias and disarm them, except for Hezbollah.³⁵ Palestinian factions operating in the south were also disarmed by the Lebanese army.³⁶ By that time, leftist groups that had originally led the resistance to Israeli occupation forces had been dismantled in favor of Hezbollah’s monopolization of the struggle in the south. Eventually, Hezbollah’s operations against Israeli troops there and those of the South Lebanon Army helped end the 18-year occupation and the disappearance of the security zone in May 2000.

On the other hand, and because of its role in managing domestic Lebanese affairs, there is no mistaking Syria’s responsibility after the signing of Taif for increasing sectarian tensions in Lebanon in order to impact different actors at different times: internal challengers to its hegemony in Lebanon, Arab regimes in the Gulf and Egypt, Israel, and the United States. Damascus’s arguably most impactful, but negative effect, regarding the required confessional balance inside Lebanon was its allowing Hezbollah to gradually dominate domestic political affairs and Lebanon’s regional foreign policy, especially toward Israel, at the expense of other sectarian groups and without consulting them. In that sense, the provisions of Taif were ready and easy tools of manipulation, especially since anti-Hezbollah factions in Lebanon could not challenge the well-armed party that could intimidate others without worrying about the response of the Syrian regime.

This state of affairs persisted following the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005, after the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In fact, following the withdrawal, Hezbollah took up the mantle of the Syrian agenda in Lebanon, and worked to form the March 8 Coalition, a political gathering that included all pro-Syria political forces and personalities that had benefited from the Syrian presence in Lebanon since the Taif signing.³⁷ Since then, the party has become the premier political force in Lebanon, impacting domestic politics and developments and practically deciding how the country conducts its foreign policy.

Two major developments helped Hezbollah assume its preeminent role, and both took place in 2006. First, former General Michel Aoun, a Maronite, who returned from exile in Paris in 2005 and formed his own party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), bolted from the March 14 alliance and formed on February 6 a new one with Shiite Hezbollah. Both needed each other. Aoun had since his departure from the Presidential Palace in 1990 dreamed of returning as the legitimate constitutional head of state. Shunned by the March 14 Alliance because of his past, he saw his best chances with an entente with Hezbollah which could secure for him all 27 Shia deputies in Parliament. On the other hand, cognizant of its fully sectarian nature, Hezbollah saw the alliance as a good step to secure for itself a constituency among the country’s Christians.³⁸

Second, the 2006 war³⁹ between Hezbollah and Israel that lasted for more than a month, and the party’s good performance against Israel’s advanced military gave it popular and national legitimacy that enhanced its political role in the country. By normal standards, the war produced a stalemate since Israel was unable to dislodge the party from the border region, but the party considered it a ‘divine victory’ and proceeded to behave more as an independent actor and a state-within-the-state. Hezbollah’s power and influence increased even more vis-à-vis that of the legitimate Lebanese government and other March 14 components after serious incidents in May 2008 when it and its allies attacked political rivals in Beirut and other areas of the country.⁴⁰

Lebanon then was without a chief executive after the end of President Emile Lahoud’s term in November 2007. Hezbollah had insisted on its ally Michel Aoun for the position while its rivals in the March 14 Alliance refused to back the former general. When the caretaker government of Fouad Siniora—which was supported by the March 14 Alliance—announced that it was going to relieve the Beirut Airport security chief, a Shiite, of his duties for dereliction and to close down Hezbollah’s private communications network, the party accused the government of conspiring against it and compromising its military readiness, and ordered its partisans to the streets. The ensuing political and constitutional crisis was resolved when Qatar spearheaded a compromise—the Doha Agreement of 2008—that allowed for the election of army commander Michel Suleiman as president. It also stipulated the formation of a national unity government in which Hezbollah and its allies had one-third the number of ministers, allowing them to use a constitutional provision to veto government decisions not to their liking.⁴¹

The post-2008 period in Lebanon’s history witnessed a series of instances when Hezbollah as a Shiite political and military organization appeared omnipresent and uninterested in accommodating other forces, despite the political system’s traditional search for consensus. Between 2010 and 2014, then-President Michel Suleiman led a series of national dialogue rounds⁴² to decide on a common defense strategy for the country that failed to arrive at a formula that would limit Hezbollah’s independent military role. To be sure, the party has since 2008 forced the political system to accept a trilateral slogan of “Army, People, Resistance” to, first, separate itself from the state’s premier defense institution and, second, have the freedom to use its military power in pursuit of its own foreign policy objectives as part of the so-called “Axis of Resistance” led by Iran.⁴³ Another issue was what came to be known as ‘dissociation’ from regional alignments after Hezbollah began to participate in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Bashar al-Assad regime.⁴⁴ Most Lebanese sympathized with the Syrian opposition to the regime and thus objected to Hezbollah’s role there. But the party persisted in sending its fighters to Syria and today continues to play a role in supporting the regime there.

Hezbollah has indeed been able to use its dominance within the Shiite community and vis-à-vis other communities to impact both domestic Lebanese developments and Lebanon’s regional politics. Hezbollah has held up the election of a Lebanese president on three different occasions to force parliamentarians to elect its own candidates:

1. Between November 2007 and May 2008, when it tried to secure the presidency for its ally Michel Aoun but failed, accepting under pressure the election of army commander Michel Suleiman;
2. Between May 2014 and October 2016, when it help up the election until it succeeded in forcing parliament to finally elect Aoun;
3. Since October 31, 2022, because of its insistence on the candidacy of former member of parliament and minister Suleiman Franjieh (grandchild of the 1970s president) who cannot secure a majority in the chamber.

To be sure, the last two decades have seen Hezbollah change from being one of Syria’s best allies in Lebanon to being the dominant political and military force there as well as the protector of the sectarian status quo. It is not hard to see how sectarian politics and practice, along with regional interference, have given the party the opportunity to dictate its will and preferences on the Lebanese body politic and, in reality, become the protector of the corrupt political elite. Hezbollah and its allies were instrumental in aborting the October 2019 popular movement of hundreds of thousands of protestors who came out on the streets of Lebanon’s cities to demand political and economic change, express an overwhelming desire to end the control of sectarian elites governing Lebanon’s internal affairs, and push for addressing rampant corruption and malfeasance.⁴⁵ Interestingly, and tellingly, while confronting demonstrators and burning their tents in downtown Beirut, Hezbollah’s partisans were not shy about declaring their sectarian identity by loudly chanting “Shia, Shia, Shia.”⁴⁶

Today, Hezbollah is again ignoring the country’s government and other political factions in deciding on a potential war with Israel as the Zionist state continues its murderous war on the Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Like in 2006—when the party’s fighters attacked an Israeli military convoy across the border, precipitating a war that lasted for more than a month and resulted in widespread destruction in Lebanon—it again monopolizes war and peace decisions without consulting the country’s government and securing the people’s support. To be sure, as a product of political sectarianism and consociational politics, Hezbollah has indeed become an example of consociationalism’s failure to be a formula for grand bargains and consensus on national security issues requiring the agreement of all participants in the confessional coalition.

Conclusion

While consociational arrangements are credited with securing long-term domestic peace and cooperation between segmented interests and identities in pluralistic societies, that in Lebanon has only worked for short periods of time. The reality is that Lebanon’s adherence to political sectarianism has on many occasions fostered division instead of cooperation and weakened state authority that is essential for maintaining equity, stability, and sustained development. Indeed, sectarian identities and competition within the confines of Lebanon’s political system have helped produce internal conflict and invite outside interference, as occurred in the disturbances of 1958 that brought in American Marines to the shores of Beirut,⁴⁷ the 1975-1990 civil war, and the domination of Syria and then sectarian Hezbollah in the post-civil war period.

To be sure, the concepts of consensus and mutual veto powers among communities that are essential for consociational politics as well as the Lebanese “no victor, no vanquished” political slogan have collapsed. One of the beneficiaries of this collapse has been Shiite Hezbollah that has gradually gained more prominence and power vis-à-vis other beneficiaries. It was able to do this by dominating its Shiite community, exploiting constitutional provisions, and counting on, first, the assistance of the Syrian Army until 2005 and, second, overpowering its sectarian rivals since. In essence, Lebanon’s political sectarianism has helped to create the very conditions for its own collapse by allowing one component of the “grand coalition” necessary for consociational politics to dominate all others.

Moving forward, Lebanon must find a way out of its political stalemate as it faces a war with Israel, continuing economic and social collapse, and discord between its different sectarian communities. Only by recharting the Lebanese constitutional infrastructure on a fully secular basis and regulating how Lebanon deals with its regional environment can the country start the journey of true nation-building where citizenship and rights are paramount and where allegiance to a unified polity is accompanied by a healthy respect for truly representative institutions. The popular basis for secular politics in the country is already there, with some 56 percent of Lebanese desiring a “civil political system.”⁴⁸ Indeed, with crises recurring in Lebanon’s politics at different times since its independence, perhaps it is time that its political elite recognize that the country can benefit from changing its foundational confessional formula to a more peaceful and sustainable political arrangement based on secular principles of citizenship, equality, and justice.

BY: IMAD K. HARB

The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors. This paper was published in the Journal of South Asian and Middle East Studies, Vol. 47.4, Summer 2024.  

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Source: Arab Center Washington DC (ACW)