The Godfathers

In “Tribes”, I gave you my understanding of Lebanon as a “tourist with an opinion”- in Tom Friedman’s stunningly arrogant words- would understand it.

And I did this on purpose.

If you tune into the Western press- CNN, BBC, Agence France Press, Reuters- you’ll recognize the present electoral stalemate as a battle between the good guys and the forces of evil.

In one corner: the Western-backed March 14th Movement- Christians, Sunnis, and Druse, led by Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated Rafiq Hariri, rebuilder of Beirut and martyr of the Sunnis. Their goal: to curb the power of Hezbollah, to turn Lebanon towards the West, and to uproot Syria’s decades-long influence.

In the other: the Sh’ite hordes of the south, represented by Hezbollah- branded a terrorist organization by the US, at war with Israel, funded by Iran and backed by Syria, and led by the greybeard firebrand Sheikh Nasrallah. Their candidate: Michel Aoun, the ex-rebel commander now allied with militias supported by the same Syrians he once warred against.

A gold star for anyone who can tell me who’s good and who’s evil. You have one guess.

Now, I’ll tell you how the locals see it. But first, understand the following sentence, for in Lebanon, it is the supreme truth from which all other truths are derived.

Ready?

Lebanon. Is. A. Mafia. State.

Here’s the story. It ain’t pretty… but it’s the truth.

History lesson. Lebanon was once part of the Ottoman Empire, incorporated into a geographic region that now contains Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories. Most of present-day Lebanon was filled with Arab Muslims of various sects, except for one notable exception- the Christians of Mount Lebanon, of whom the most powerful was a Catholic sect with ancient roots called the Maronites.

The Maronites survived for hundreds of years in a sea of Muslims by living with the crucifix in one hand and the sword in the other. They have desperately clung to any identity that would differentiate them from the monolithic towel-headed hordes on Mount Lebanon’s doorstep- a spurious claim to being descended from the ancient Phoenicians, a centuries-old alliance with the Catholic Church, their European-rooted Christian rituals. So it’s no surprise that when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after WWI and the French were given a mandate to govern the Levant, the Maronites went Francophone.

The Maronites embraced Europeanization and French culture, fusing them into their Christian tribal identity. And as the French and British carved up the Middle East into new states, the Maronites demanded a state of their own. The problem was that Christian dominated areas were, and still are, too small to make a viable country. So French cartographers sat down with Maronite leaders and stretched the borders- assimilating whole regions of Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Druse who couldn’t give two hoots about the strange new entity called “Lebanon”- the name of the biblical kingdom that gave cedars to King Solomon to build the Temple of the Israelites.

This is where Ottoman history meets French colonial interference.

Ottoman feudalism was based on a landowning class called the beys, who ruled over vast networks of merchants and peasantry, bound by religion, blood-ties and strings of feudal patronage. The system encompassed all the religious groups under Istanbul’s rule- Sunni, Shi’ite, Druse, and Christian. These clans were bound to regions, and then to smaller villages. To this day, if you ask a Lebanese what village they or their ancestors hailed from, you can correctly pinpoint their ethnicity, religion, and which bey they owe allegiance to.

I say this in the present tense, because the beys didn’t leave with the Ottomans. This is the root of the Lebanese mafia state. The French let the old networks remain within the religious cantons of Lebanon, with their powerful clan chieftains. The patron-client sociopolitical system continued on into independence, through the civil war, and on into today. Although a few are upstart nouveau riche businessmen, most political leaders in Lebanon today are the scions of the old feudal dynasties- grown wealthy, ruthless, and utterly corrupt. And around them are gathered their clans, who owe their sustenance and security to the ties of religion, blood, and patronage that bind them to their bey.

Lebanon is a mafia state because there is no rule of law. It is headed by a tiny clique of dons who are out to enlarge their personal empires, through business, war, and foreign backing. A Lebanese is always a member of a clan before a religion, and a religion before the nation. And the beys of those clans can be seen on electoral posters across Beirut. Today, we call them “Members of Parliament”.

Enter Michel Aoun and Hezbollah.

Michel Aoun is not a bey. He returned from exile in France to curb the power of the mafia dons. And he has the support of around half of Lebanon’s Christians- anyone whose livelihood isn’t dependent on loyalty to the Maronite beys: Chamoun, Gemayal, Franjieh, Geagea. And since Aoun is out to crush the beys in general, it isn’t just the Maronite leaders who don’t want him to be president- the Jumblatts and Arslans of the Druse, and the Hariris of the Sunnis feel the same way.

Guess who’s in the Western-backed March 14th Movement? Chamoun. Gemayal. Geagea. Jumblatt. And Saad Hariri, son of Rafiq the martyr. By the way, do you know why Rafiq Hariri was killed by Syria? He paid $10 million to Damascus in return for help in gerrymandering districts ahead of a parliamentary election- and then promptly refused to put any of Damascus’ recommendations on his party list. Syria was pissed, and put a bomb in his car.

But why is Aoun allied with Hezbollah, the terrorists backed by Syria and Iran?

History lesson number two. When the French created Lebanon, it incorporated the input of the Maronites of Mount Lebanon, the Sunnis of the coast and the lowlands, and the Druse of the Chouf mountains. But it thoroughly marginalized the Shi’ites of the south and western valleys- both economically and politically. This status quo, in which the long-suffering Shi’ites, abandoned by the beys in Beirut, grew into the largest religious group in Lebanon, continued for half a century. Along the way, the Palestinians, routed from Israel in 1967, flooded into the Shi’ite lands of the south. In 1982, the Israelis invaded to fight the Palestinian militants of the refugee camps, and Shi’ite lands were turned into broken battlefields.

Beirut turned a blind eye, its gaze fixed on its own tribal wars. The situation could not hold.

In came Hezbollah.

They arose as a religious and social organization in the 1980s, based on one simple precept. Hezbollah was to provide for the Shi’ites everything that the Lebanese state did not- and never had- provided: education, social services, economic growth, and self-defense against the other tribes, Israel, and the PLO. Slowly, they built a functioning governing and social establishment within the Shi’ite tribe- a state within a state. As Shi’ites, they were backed by Iran, and Syria, eager to maintain its political influence in Lebanon by any tribe necessary, quickly offered its support.

And since Aoun has no love from the beys of the March 14th Movement, he’s likely had no choice but to form an electoral alliance with Hezbollah.

So this, my Western friends, is the real Lebanese election.

It is a war of the beys against Aoun, their potential backbreaker, and Hezbollah, representatives of the Shi’ites forgotten by decades of Sunni and Maronite dominance.

It is a war between the beys who have turned to the America and France, promising a turn to the West in exchange for Western support in maintaining the political dominance of their clans - against Hezbollah, who have been tainted as terrorists by the US government for their aggressive defense of Shi’ite interests against all comers: American, Israeli, Palestinian, Maronite, Sunni- as well as to promote the American lackeys of the March 14th Movement to Western audiences.

It is a war between the Western powers and Syria and Iran, each trying to influence Lebanon’s future through their proxy militias. The US wants desperately to have a pro-Western government in Beirut to compensate for its failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel, and the US by association, wants a strong central government in Beirut to disarm Hezbollah, as the war between the two entities has now become self-perpetuating. Syria, on the other hand, cannot afford to allow its next-door neighbor to become a Western satellite, and Iran is trying to become the next great power in the Middle East.

This election is not about Syria interference, for Damascus is guilty only of the same motivations as Washington, Paris, and Jerusalem.

It is not about democracy, because if there was real political reform to replace the current system of beys in Lebanon, Hezbollah would win every election. Why do you think that the old system- in which the parliament, and not the people, must elect a Maronite to be president- still exists? Why do you think that Lebanon is still divided into heavily gerrymandered electoral districts that are meant to produce more Sunni, Druse and Christian MPs than their populations should allow?

This is about real, ugly, unromantic politics on the global chessboard: Western-backed tribal godfathers against a Syrian-backed coalition between an Islamist organization representing Lebanon’s forsaken and a Maronite general representing Lebanon’s fed-up.

I didn’t say it was pretty. But it is true.