Will There be a Lebanon Tomorrow...? Should There Be?

My editor wants results. He works for an international news service, and he doesn’t care for all the trivial minutia of Lebanese politics that seem so important to us over here! So, no real movement on presidential elections and reforms, no stories. No stories, no money. Them are the breaks! So why did I start my blog post on a whinny note? You may well ask. I did that because it cuts to the heart of the matter: nothing productive ever came nor will ever come from a political system engineered to prop up the failed status quo of a country who’s continued existence is and should always have been in question.

 

Now, granted, I just gave you a lot to digest. And I certainly appreciate the angry hornets’ nest of Lebanese nationalists I just stirred up, but the facts speak for themselves. Despite many well-meaning Lebanese attempting to prop up our spirits on the eve of Christmas and New Year with individual initiatives in commerce and culture and tourism, and while I do appreciate all they do; the fact remains that the basis of Lebanese nationhood was never solid and was based on a fantastic lie we all told one another and shared for a century, that we are one people.

 

 

It all started with the French, as all disasters often do! The French Mandate over Syria to be specific. Yes, it was a mandate over a territory recognized as greater Syria, a major inconvenient geographical mass at the crossroads between east and west. The French, however, had a plan to dispose of this inconvenience. “Let’s give minorities in Syria the right to self-determination and their own countries”. It’s not that the French cared about minorities in Syria or anywhere else, but it was a good excuse to cut up this inconvenient landmass. The victorious allies in world war one tried the same tactic with Turkey, but that failed because of one man, Ataturk, who singlehandedly awakened Turkish nationalism and fought off all attempts at dividing Anatolia, a far more inconvenient land mass for the Europeans.

 

In Syria, on the other hand, an Arab speaking land with centuries of traditional grass roots opposition to any form central control under the Ottomans, dividing and conquering was all that much easier. There were many minorities who for whatever reason suffered and endured Sunni Muslim majority rule under the Ottomans, despite the Milat system the Ottomans introduced that allowed each religious community the right to manage its own affairs. 

 

Frenchified flag of greater Lebanon

 

The French plan was to create an Alawite homeland along the Syrian coast, a Druze homeland in Jebel el Druze, and a Christian homeland in Mount Lebanon, creating a greater Lebanon around which coastal territory would be added as well as the fertile Bekaa Plain.

 

The putative Alawite and Druze homelands failed to emerge, but Greater Lebanon did. We celebrated its centenary not too long ago. From that French-created body, the souls of every Arab nationalist that ever stood for democracy and independence and Arab nationhood, had to be squeezed into this bad fitting political entity built on weak sectarian claims.

 

Mount Lebanon may have been a Christian majority territory and the seat of the Maronite Patriarchate, but nothing too far east, north, west, or south of its snowcapped peaks resembled what Greater Lebanon was meant to be. Some people in it still thought of themselves as spiritual if not political subjects of the Sublime Porte, others were too weak to oppose French imposed authority and Christian majority administration, still others dreamed of joining a unified Arab State.

 

 

All what happened to us at the end of the most disastrous war in human history was beyond the control of a majority of our people who now found themselves attached to Greater Lebanon instead of the Ottoman Empire. How could poor peasants oppose an occupier with total control on the ground?

 

Enough history!

 

Today, the election of a president is stymied by the two main Christian parties who’s leaders and followers hate each other’s guts. It is that simple. This is not about ideology, east or west, Iran or America, it’s about what the Lebanon that will emerge after the election of a president and the passing of IMF required reforms will look like, and which parties if any of those standing today will have any real power in the new country. It is about jostling for control, but it’s also about avoiding taking responsibility, especially criminal responsibility for committing the world’s largest bank heist! In all, $120 billion dollars were stolen by the political elite from the banked population of Lebanon reducing us all to penury. This money was spent without any accountability or oversight, it was wasted on supporting a corrupt system and blatant clientelism. And the maddening thing is, nothing has changed.

 

Back when money in the bank actually meant something

 

To build a new country on solid foundations, the Lebanese need to agree to a single Lebanese identity and overall national priorities and national taboos, and we can’t do that. We remain divided, as we were in 1958 when one group wanted to support the West and another wanted to support Abdel Nasser and by extension the Soviet Union. Back then the lines were clearer and there were only two sides on the international arena. Today, politics is far more nuanced and complex and more clearly based on the individual national interests of the each country concerned. It’s not about ideology any more, but in Lebanon, it was never about ideology, though many right wing nationalists, pro West or pro Iran, will insist it is about ideology! It’s about who we are and who we don’t want to become. Its about emotional issues, symbols of identity as opposed to the substance.

 

So, in conclusion, does Lebanon have a future? Should Lebanon continue down this well-worn path, attempting to patch up a disintegrating system? Or should we prepare ourselves for the ultimate collapse of the state as we know it, of all central authority, of what remains of political and economic stability, and prepare ourselves for darker days ahead?

 

I think we should be ready for the worst still to come.