Specter of Civil War in Lebanon
2007Gerry Foley 2007-02The page as the paper published it (Wayback Machine) →
From the paper's own web edition, recovered from the Internet Archive: the text as the paper put it online, not machine-read. The printed issue of February 2007 is not held.
by Gerry Foley / February 2007 issue of Socialist Action Newspaper
The U.S. government’s interest in consolidating an anti-Syrian government in Lebanon has been evident since the so-called Cedar Revolution in early 2005. At the time, Hezbullah, a radical Islamic group based on the Shiite population in Lebanon, raised an alarm about the installation of a pro-imperialist government in Beirut.
The Shiites, historically the bottom of Lebanese society, are the single largest component of the population, representing about 40 percent. The Islamic group has been supported and materially aided both by Iran and Syria, although the latter country has lately been denying its links to Hezbullah.
In the wake of its moral victory in the recent war with Israel, Hezbullah has been holding protests demanding the resignation of the government headed by Fuad Siniora, and that it be given a decisive voice in a national-unity government.
The protests against the Siniora government are not simply confessional. They have been supported by the trade unions also as a means of opposing Siniora’s neoliberal economic program. Moreover, Hezbullah is not simply a religious grouping. It has a strong populist side, in which it appeals to the disadvantaged without regard to their religious affiliation.
Moreover, Hezbullah has achieved a bloc with the forces led by General Aoun, a historic Christian leader. The anti-Siniora bloc is opposed by forces based mainly on Christians and Sunni Muslims. Notably, many Sunni counter-demonstrators have raised photos of Saddam Hussein.
An article posted on the website of Al Jazeera on Jan. 30 noted the conflict between Hezbullah and the Sunni Islamist groups over political issues in Iraq. Hezbullah’s celebration of the execution of Saddam Hussein in particular outraged the Sunni Islamists.
Hezbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah has declared that he is determined to avoid a confessional war in Lebanon. The Jan. 30 Al Jazeera article said: “On Monday [Jan. 29], Nasrallah addressed a crowed gathered to commemorate a Shia religious day and said his party would not engage in sectarianism and that his party would not take up arms against Lebanese.
“‘There are figures within the ruling powers who are working to provoke a conflict between Shias and Sunnis in Lebanon,’ he said in a televised address. ‘We reject sectarian conflict, civil war, and we will not aim our weapons at anyone, we will not work in the service of Israel.’”
However, on Thursday, Jan. 25, a fight between a few individuals at the University of Beirut sparked a confessional confrontation that aroused fears of a new Lebanese civil war. The specter of the long disastrous civil war that began in the mid-1970s and lasted more than a decade hangs very heavily over all the Lebanese political forces and inhibits their action. The essential problem of the groups that want to oppose the pro-imperialist government is to find a way out of the confessional straitjacket.
An article in the Christian Science Monitor of Jan. 30 pointed out that in Lebanon there was a paradoxical collaboration of Iran and Saudi Arabia to stabilize the situation. That appeared to mean that the Iranian government was trying to restrain Hezbullah. An article in the Jan. 29 issue of L’Orient Le Jour, a Beirut French-language newspaper, speculated that there was a struggle between Iran and Syria for influence over Hezbullah.