Lebanese Elections: Tinkering with the Truth, Caught in the Cross-Fire By Father Paul Stenhouse Lebanon: Why should we Care?
LEBANON was given independence from French mandate rule in 1943. But it wasn’t until December 31. 1945, when French troops withdrew, that Lebanon really stood alone, as a free, independent, sovereign state.
The transition to Democracy from a League of Nations mandated territory and former feudal, tribal-based dependency of the Ottoman Turks [to cover only a tiny fraction of the political history of this most ancient of lands] had only two years to run – an impossible task – when Israel gained independence in 1948, and Lebanon found itself plunged deep in the whirlpool of intrigue and treachery that has characterised Middle Eastern politics before and since.
The West cannot continue to be complacent about the fate of Lebanon’s Christians – Maronites, Melkites, Armenian and Orthodox. Like Egypt’s Copts and Iraq’s Assyrian and Chaldaean Christians, they have had to co-exist with Islam almost from the time of Muhammad’s death.
Our survival as free people is contingent on their’s.
Lebanese Elections
Tinkering with the Truth
Caught in the Cross-Fire
By Father Paul Stenhouse, M.S.C., Ph.D.
Editor of Annals Australia, a Catholic Mazagine published since 1886.
MY first impression of Lebanon in the early 70s, was positive: a tiny, extremely fertile country, whose peoples, despite their racial, religious and linguistic mix, had arrived at a modus vivendi that worked. Though the vestiges of recent colonial masters – Ottoman Turks and French – were everywhere in evidence, Lebanon was prosperous, and to the superficial observer, stable. With only a token army, and no territorial designs on any of its neighbours, it was coping - inexpertly and grimly but coping - with the settlement of the more than two hundred thousand Palestinian refugees from the wars of 1948 and 1967; and trying to remain free of terrorists despite the PLO fighters whom Jordan expelled into Lebanon in 1971.
In an article published in Annals in March 1976 [‘The Struggle for Lebanon’] I noted in the context of the so-called ‘civil-war’ in Lebanon that began in April 1975, how the Australian press flung around words like ‘Right Wing’ when referring to the Christian Lebanese, and ‘Left Wing’ when referring to the Muslim forces opposing them.
They are still at it.
Lebanese people in Australia whose ancestors laboured well and hard to make it the ‘lucky country’ for us all, have good reason to feel that their former homeland has been hard done by as the world’s media put their collective electronic thumbs into the Lebanese pie.
The Spin
In reporting the lead-up to the recent elections, the ABC, and the Australian media generally, following the lead of international media, have resorted wittingly or unwittingly, to scaremongering and peddling half-truths. A BBC hand-out that was laden with unconscious irony said that ‘some believe unfair tactics are being applied ahead of the elections’.
The scenario presented to viewers, listeners or readers ahead of the recent elections was of a ‘Pro-Western coalition’ or ‘American aligned coalition’ fighting for its democratic life against a bloc variously described as the ‘Syria-Iranian aligned opposition, which includes Hizbollah,’ or as ‘dominated by the Iranian–backed militant group Hizbollah ,’ or as ‘the Hizbollah-Amal Coalition,’ as if it were entirely Shiite led and controlled by Iranian and Syrian interests.
There was rarely, if ever, mention of the Free Patriotic Movement [FPM] of General Aoun, the former Commander in Chief of the Lebanese Army, and former Prime Minister and Acting President, described by the BBC as ‘a maverick Christian leader’.
Kamal Dib, a Canadian economist writing just before the election, commented: ‘The two camps in Lebanon are presented in much of the Western media as pro-West and pro-democratic on the one side, and as undemocratic and anti-West on the other’.
Voters, and especially Maronite Catholics, and other Christians vacillated over whom they could put their faith in: General Michel Aoun who after fifteen years of exile in France returned to his homeland in 2005 when the Syrians pulled out, or the former leader of the Forces Libanaises, Samir Geagea, imprisoned by the Syrians on what are generally considered to have been trumped up charges in 1994, and released in 2005.
Voters were offered a choice between what they were led to believe was a ‘pro-Western’ democratic government [supported by Geagea], and a ‘pro-Syrian, pro-Iranian government’ [supported by Aoun], that would ‘bring the influence of Shiite Iran’ to the country the minute Hizbollah took control.
The ‘pro-Western coalition’ declared that a victory for Hizbollah would ‘drive Lebanon into the arms of Iran which could use it as a front in the Islamic republic's confrontation with Israel’ .
This played on the fears that many Lebanese – Christian and Sunni – shared about Iranian influence in the country. It also conveniently begged the question of the Saudis real plans for Lebanon, and their real attitude towards Israel.
After all the smoke and mirrors, claims and counter-claims, and fearmongering by special-interest groups, was anyone really surprised to learn that the ‘Hizbollah-led opposition’ was defeated by the ‘pro-Western coalition’?
That, overall, only one opposition seat was lost is a wonder, granted the heat generated by the anti-Aoun spin put on news emananting from Western media. What has gone largely unreported in Western media is that General Aoun increased his personal tally by seven, to 27 seats. He got more than 50% of the Christian vote, and has the largest bloc of the Maronite Catholic vote.
The opposition was not, needless to say, ‘headed by Hizbollah’. The Free Patriotic Movement led by Michel Aoun headed this coalition, which included Hizbollah, Amal, and some other Christian parties. Hizbollah was contesting only 11 seats in a 128 seat parliament. It got them, and never looked like not getting them.
Fuad Siniora, Prime Minister of Lebanon is allegedly an employee of the Hariri family, and managing director of four Hariri banks. Under the Prime Ministership of Rafik Hariri, assassinated in 2005, Lebanon saw its debt rise to $55 billion by 2008.
Don’t the Western Powers and the IMF think it appropriate to demand an enquiry into the massive misappropriation of funds that has plagued the Lebanese government since 1975? The much applauded victory of the ‘Pro-Western coalition’ has put any enquiry on hold for yet another term.
On the BBC’s website at the time of the election there were profiles of Prime Minister Siniora, President Suleiman and Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, but we could find no profile of the Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun.
With the Tehran Times, we may take some consolation from the fact that ‘this is a rare election in the Arab world, where usually one party ends up winning 99 percent of the vote’.
That will give cold comfort to Michel Aoun whose character has been besmirched by accusations that he is ‘on the Iranian payroll, a side-kick of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah [leader of Hizbollah], a buddy of Syria etc.’
Curiously none of his enemies has been game enough to submit these slanders to an independent judicial body, and as Kamal Dib notes, none of the slurs has led to ‘a diminution in Aoun’s popularity’.
What Lay Behind the Spin
Now that long-suffering Lebanon has, yet again, been denied its opportunity for reform, for bridging the sectarian divide, and for freeing itself from the shackles of outside interference in its affairs, it may help to reflect on what lay behind the spin that won the day for the victors.
The ‘pro-Western coalition’ whose victory was lauded by Prime Minister Fuad Siniora as ‘an exceptional day for democracy in Lebanon,’ is a Sunni-dominated and Saudi and Egyptian-backed movement called Mustaqbal, ‘Future’] led by Saad Hariri the son of the assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The Jerusalem Post, pulling a long bow, described the Saudis as one of the ‘moderate Arab allies’ of the U.S. That is a dangerous fiction.
The U.S. and the Israelis with their focus on Iran and its dysfunctional President Ahmadinejad, still seem unaware that fall-out from the war in Iraq has produced a ripple effect among Sunni Muslims in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait - and Lebanon.
The U.S. and U.K. invasion of Iraq, despite what President Bush’s advisers may have thought, was not simply a war to topple a vicious dictatorship on behalf of an oppressed minority. It was a war between two long-standing Muslim foes: Sunni and Shia.
A number of fatwas by Saudi Grand Mufti, Abd-al-Aziz ibn Abd-Allah ibn Baaz (died May 13, 1999) declared Shias to be apostates, and one by Abdul Rahman al-Jibrin, a member of the Saudi Higher Council of Ulama sanctioned the killing of Shias ‘a call that was reiterated in Wahhabi religious literature as late as 2002’.
Whether the U.S. and Great Britain understood it or, they were siding with the Shia majority, and not necessarily with democracy. Their intervention brought a new balance of power to the region.
The effect of a Shia dominated Iraq on the U.S.’s ‘moderate ally’ Saudi Arabia, was predictable. Damage control became a priority. When Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi Foreign Minister, visited the U.S. in 2005 he warned that the conflict in Iraq could bring ‘other countries in the region into the conflict’.
He was right. In this election Lebanon has been made to feel the full brunt of Saudi money-muscle. More than US$715 million – more than the cost of Obama’s campaign in the U.S. - was allegedly spent on the election by the Saudis to bring expat voters sympathetic to the ‘pro-Western’ Hariri camp back to Lebanon - ‘an electoral e-Bay for vote buyers’.
Neighbouring Syria [whose Sunni majority is controlled by the Alawites who claim to be Shia] and Jordan [whose Hashemite rulers are moderate Sunni], have been put on notice. They would have got the message: the Sunni/Wahhabi/Hanbali domination of the Middle East is not negotiable.
General Aoun dared to offer peace and normalised relations as between sovereign states with Syria [not submission to Syria, or a whitewash of Syrian atrocities in Lebanon]; he called for accountability in government and an end to corruption; he wanted to improve the lot of the Shia in the south – now, significantly, the majority Muslim presence in Lebanon – and involve them in the political life of the country; his Memorandum of Understanding with Hizbollah would have led to the disarming of the militia and the incorporation of its estimated 500-600 full-time members into the Lebanese army; he wanted to normalise relations with Israel, and to resolve the problem of the displaced Palestinians who have been guests in Lebanon since 1948.
This latter question touches on one of the many undeclared and complex issues that lie smouldering beneath the political platform of the ‘pro-Western’ coalition.
There are now more Shia Muslims in Lebanon than Sunni. Offseting this demographic downturn among the Sunni population is of concern to the Saudis. It would serve Wahhabi interests if the money and political clout they expended on the election resulted in the half-million refugees in Lebanon [majority Sunni, approximately 80% Muslim, 20% Christian] who are waiting to return to Palestine, being granted Lebanese citizenship.
The move would significantly increase the number of Sunni in the country, re-establish Sunni dominance among Lebanese Muslims, and counter the growing Shia influence in the region. How the ‘pro-Western’ faction will deal with this thorny issue remains to be seen.
Granting Lebanese citizenship might solve the vexed issue arising from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - refugee re-settlement - for Palestinians in Lebanon but, as some commentators have noted, it would deny them their Right of Return, and massively exacerbate social and sectarian problems in Lebanon.
It is ironical that the U.S. supports Saudi efforts to put down the Shia in Lebanon, when anti-Americanism among extremists in Iraq [and elsewhere] has been fomented by Wahhabi fanatics from Saudi Arabia.
The Aoun-led coalition [which included Hizbollah and Amal] was not defeated by the Hariri-led coalition. It was defeated by the media –who colluded, knowingly or unknowingly, with the Saudis and their spin-doctors. Their fictions frightened, among others, voters in Asrafieh in Beirut, and in Zahle, close to the Syrian border and the Bekaa Valley, into supporting the allegedly democratic and ‘pro-Western coalition’. The loss of their votes cost General Aoun the victory.
Nicholas Noe, editor-in-chief of Mideastwire.com should have the last word:
‘The problem now is that even after [the pro-Western coalition’s] win this weekend, Aoun remains the single most popular Christian leader, with his bloc actually increasing its share of seats, from 21 in 2005 to 27 – a number exceeded only by Hariri's bloc itself. … the Obama administration would do well to encourage Hariri – undoubtedly against the wishes of some of his allies – to engage Aoun in a serious manner ahead of cabinet negotiations.
‘U.S. officials should also end the practice of threatening and condemning Aoun's supporters (as several did again on the eve of the elections) and repeal the 2007 executive order that uses the U.S. treasury department to target the FPM in America.
‘More than this though, the Obama administration should rapidly launch a sustained effort to engage Aoun and his supporters directly in a movement to peacefully integrate Hezbollah into the fabric of the state and army – something the FPM has said it very much wants, but which was simply not on offer during the Bush years. Stop Press
I am not unaware of the doubts that many hold concerning the intentions of Hizbollah in Lebanon, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the light of the euphoric lead-up to the election just held in Iran, and its hotly contested result that promises more of the same polemic from President Ahmadinejad, one would hope that readers who held a monolithic view of Shia Iran will be re-thinking their position. Later this year Annals will look at Hizbollah in the context of the emergence of the Shia as a force extending in a crescent from Beirut through Damascus and Baghdad to Tehran.
1.See: BBC News, ‘Q&A: Lebanese elections explained, June 8, 2009.
2.E.g. AP June 7, 2009 ‘Lebanon’s pro-Western majority declares victory,’ Sam Ghattas; BBC News, June 8 2009: Lebanese Views: Poll Reaction.
3.Michael Slackman, ‘Analysts Cite Obama Effect in Lebanese Election,’ New York Times, June 8, 2009. Hizbollah = Hizb-Allah: Party of God.
4.Ibid.
5.AP June 7, 2009 ‘Lebanon’s pro-Western majority declares victory,’ Sam Ghattas.‘Pro-Western bloc beats Hezbollah in Lebanon vote,’ By Hadeel al-Shalchi - Associated Press Writer.
6.BBC News, ‘Q&A: Lebanese elections explained, June 8, 2009; see also Jim Muir, ‘’How far will US support for Lebanon go?’ BBC News May 22, 2009.
7.BBC News: Lebanese Vote in Key Parliamentary Election.
8.The Daily Star [Beirut], June 1, 2009, ‘Lebanese elections: when faking democracy works’
9.Jerusalem Post, June 7, 2009.
10.BBC News: Profile: General Michel Suleiman, May 21, 2008.
11.BBC News: Profile: Fouad Siniora, May 28, 2008.
12.‘The up-side of the Lebanese election,’ June 10, 2009.
13.The Daily Star [Beirut] Kamal Dib, art.cit.
14.AP June 7, 2009 ‘Lebanon’s pro-Western majority declares victory,’ Sam Ghattas.
15.June 7, 2009: ‘Lebanon votes in crucial parliament election.’
16.Toby Jones, ‘The Iraq effect in Saudi Arabia,’ Middle East Report, No. 237 [Winter] 2005, p.24, quoted Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival, W.W.Norton & Company, New York, 2006 p.236.
17.Joel Brinkley, ‘Saudi Minister Warns US Iraq may face Disintegration,’ New York Times, September 23, 2005.
18.See Newsweek, June 9, 2009, ‘War, Peace and A Political Touch,’ Christopher Dickey.
tayyar.org - Lebanon News -Lebanese Elections: Tinkering with the Truth, Caught in the Cross-Fire By 
28th July 2009
28th July 2009
