Lebanon Caught between Dreams, Delusion and Despair

The Lebanese flag waving (Photo: Azer News)

Even by the standards of its turbulent history, including a decade and a half of continuous civil wars, the Lebanese state is in danger of total obliteration.

Little Lebanon has endured its fair share of wars and trauma in its recent history. First, came the Palestinians, mostly in the 1960s and 1970s, displaced by Israel followed by a militarized cohort, the PLO, that was ejected from Jordan after attempting to topple the government there. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain trapped to this day in designated and self-governing refugee camps. 

Next came the Syrians, some 1 million, escaping the barrel bombs and chemical missiles as well as the wrath of the brutal pro-regime forces. And now, the cycle turns inwards: Lebanon must cope with what is expected to reach 1 million internally displaced Shi’a, from the country’s south, the Bekaa and Beirut’s southern suburbs. 

Lebanon has had internally displaced people before from all its multi-religious mosaic, but never at this scale and never like this. Indeed, many parts of the southern suburbs of Beirut under attack that are now Shi’a were Christian and Druze until they were driven out by more powerful militias. Some Lebanese still call these areas ‘occupied territories’. 

The Hezbollah mouthpiece, al-Akhbar, a daily newspaper known for its thuggish attacks on rivals of the Iranian party and a staunch defender of the obsolete Assad regime, added fuel to the fire by publishing an article on 12 March that was understood by all Lebanese observers as a direct threat to the army, a symbol of national unity, reporting that Shi’a officers announced their willingness to break away into a ‘liberation faction.’ A direct accusation that the state was in collusion with the ‘evil’ West and that civil war was coming.

As someone who lived and worked in Lebanon for a decade and a half at an American University, I was able to see first-hand the best of the country. What it lacks in infrastructure and industry it more than compensates in its vivacious, bright, ambitious and innovative factory of young people. For years I served as Dean of Student Affairs, observing student activism first hand, and also taught in the areas of politics and international relations, witnessing university students who would excel, and many do, at Ivy League universities in the US and top universities in the UK.

Despite the recurrent propagandist cliché in the Western media of Israel as the only democracy in the region, Lebanon’s democracy easily matches that of its southern neighbour. It is thanks to this diversity in communities that there are competing TV stations, newspapers, and other media as well as competitive elections. People do and have spoken up, whether against the government, or against occupation, whether it was Syrian or Israeli. And many died in the name of freedom and democracy, not least the martyrs of the Cedar Revolution in 2005 that forced out the Syrian Ba’ath military occupation from Lebanon.

Is the system perfect? Certainly not, being compromised by  the ferocious conflict between the Iran axis on the one side and the US and Israel on the other. This has divided the country, with the Shi’a predominantly loyal to Iran and its proxy Hezbollah. The Lebanese from all its main communities, Christian, Sunni, Druze have long aspired and dreamed of an effective state that can maintain stability and somehow manage Hezbollah.

The dream turned to delusion, pretending Hezbollah wasn’t there at all, or that somehow they like the rest of the world can co-exist with them. The delusion became more unhinged by Lebanese not accepting the demographics staring them in the face. The Shi’a community had grown from among the country’s smallest when it was under French mandate in the 1940s to its largest today, and makes up about half the population. 

Hezbollah’s former leader Hassan Nasrallah, assassinated by the Israelis in the last bout of fighting, ordered the Shi’a in a televised address to ‘conceive!’ without disguising the political objective of tilting the country’s demographics and character. Nasrallah’s demand was founded on unshakeable and grounded confidence that he and Iran were assured the reverence and allegiance of the vast majority of Shi’a in the country. 

For those who dared oppose from among the Shi’a, the likes of Lokman Slim, murdered while driving home to his village in the south in cold blood served as a reminder. Hezbollah’s grip on the country was such that no one was ever charged, arrested or served punishment for the long list of those murdered for opposing them since 2005. 

Since Hezbollah’s military ambush and takeover of the country on 7^th May 2007 the party has been able to successfully embed its followers in senior state roles, including the judiciary, law enforcement and ministries. Hezbollah became not only the state within the state but the state that ran the state.

This is proving the second and most deadly delusion of the Lebanese. Whilst there I entertained debates and discussions, with much frustration about the role of Hezbollah with colleagues, university professors and professionals from all walks, who basically gaslighted me about my pointing to the dangers of what was happening, and that the world at some point will lose patience with a rogue state as a hub to a transnational criminal network exporting drugs and importing stolen goods from the West and Gulf.  “We can live together side by side”, “Western and Arab money will come sooner or later”, “once the Americans and Iranians make up it will all be OK” were just some of the retorts to silence me.

And now the country is in despair and while at last, the government has publicly and for the first time denounced Hezbollah, a large dose of delusion persists. Pro-Hezbollah media is active and the Shi’a, despite being displaced, sleeping rough in camps and on the beaches of what once were fun resorts, continue to embrace Hezbollah with an ideological zeal that is now matched only by more determination and hatred for the Lebanese they consider have chosen the same trench as their enemies: The West, Israel, and the Arab countries of the Gulf. 

It is certainly foolish to claim the Shi’a are alone to blame for this situation. There are Lebanese from all communities, who for their own political ambitions and material gain found it expedient to divide the ranks of Lebanese nationalists and jump on the Hezbollah bandwagon, most notoriously exemplified by the Christian politician Gibran Bassil, who recently became tangled up in a public spat with the Israel military spokesman.

Lebanon is a bird on a wire: to confront Hezbollah as the West is now urging it to do risks being overrun by its supporters, and the Lebanese are experienced enough to know not to rely on the West to come to their rescue. But not confronting Hezbollah means also being consumed by the group and its loyal population, while at the same time the country gets periodically flattened by Israeli jets. 

The reality that the Lebanese must face is that salvation lies only with the Shi’a. Should they choose Lebanon, a big ask after years of indoctrination, history and ideology, the future looks bright. However, should this tenacious and resilient population stay loyal to Iran, then the painful truth is that the country once described as the Switzerland of the Middle East, with the potential of a true paradise on Earth, will turn, like its dreams, to dust. And with that many decades more of regional warfare and violence will ensue that both sides, Israeli and Shi’a zealouts, cheer as they do now.

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This article is written by Talal Nizameddin, Director of Academic Affairs at the CAPA London Center. He is the author of the book Putin’s New Order in the Middle East and previously served as Dean of Student Affairs at the American University of Beirut.