Here’s a photo taken a couple of hours ago in Ain El Mreisse in what has once again become known as ‘West Beirut’. The massive poster that has been ripped off an apartment building (center) was that of former prime minister Rafik Hariri and his son Saad Hariri.
For over a decade, the Hariris have been the biggest political force in the capital. Now many Lebanese are wondering what the new Beirut and the new Lebanon will mean for them.
On the other hand, opposition politicians seem to be basking in the airtime with speeches by lesser known figures such as former minister Talal Arslan (pictured below) carried live on every local channel as well as on major pan-Arab networks Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera.
In the past, Arslan had made occasional appearances on the evening news, but since the coup, his lengthy speeches have been carried live across the world on a regular basis.
Today, he has taken this newfound prominence a step further by calling on rival militias to hand their weapons over to him for safe keeping. Arslan also offered his version of the country’s future: ‘Beirut has and will be always belong to the resistance and the resistors,’ he said.
Just before the speech a relative told me that checkpoints had been erected near the South, with armed men asking a veiled woman, “Shiite or Sunni” before allowing her to pass. I have also heard a radio report today which claimed the port of Jounieh–which, among other hastily erected ports during the 1980s was notorious for weapons shipments– would soon reopen soon for “tourist” travel.
Will the new Beirut bring prosperity–as the opposition has promised–or will it be a flashback of the old and not really so ‘new’ at all?
2 comments
It seems to me that “sectarianism” is overemphasized as the explanation for Lebanese instability, and that there are at least two alternative hypotheses worth considering.
Briefly, the first is to view Lebanese political instability as a struggle between those who have effective representation in the national government (i.e., receive social services) and those who do not.
The second is to view the instability as a competition between feudalism and modernity, where the “feudal” forces are the Sunni, Christian, & Druze oligarchs. The modernizers are not so much Western-style democrats (though they surely exist) as opposition forces trying to create a new type of Islamic modernization. I argue this in more detail on my blog (shadowedforest.blogspot.com).
In your post, you tell the story of gunmen checking on people’s sectarian status before letting them walk down the street. That would seem to invalidate both of the hypotheses I propose. What do you think?
Hi William. You bring up some interesting points. Lebanon’s instability is actually multi-layered and contains a volatile mix of idealogical differences–which have been magnified by the influence and the interests of Iran, the USA and others–as well as lingering sectarian hatred from the last civil war, and the tribalism and feudalism which have become internalized in Lebanese politics, which is also inherently sectarian.
Essentially Lebanon is an utterly weak state with a chronic identity problem–although it can be a spectacularly beautiful country in many other ways. I’ll check out your essay for more comments.