[Mb-civic] FW: LEBANON: BULLETS OR BALLOTS?

[Golsorkhi]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 10:21:15 -0500
Subject: LEBANON: BULLETS OR BALLOTS?

   "The next big issue in Lebanon could be the choice between bullets
and ballots. Hezbollah leaders, and beyond them the leadership in
Tehran, have much hard thinking to do."
---

   LEBANON: BULLETS OR BALLOTS?
   By AMIR TAHERI



March 18, 2005 --  FOR more than a month, Beirut has been trans formed
into a giant-size arena in which the political future not only of
Lebanon but of perhaps the entire Middle East is in play. As always at
moments of revolutionary tension, the debate is between advocates and
opponents of change.

  On one side we have all those who, for various reasons, believe that
the status quo is no longer sustainable. To them the key to change is
an end to Syria's military and political domination of Lebanon.

  On the opposite side we have all those who, again for varied reasons,
wish to save as much of the status quo as possible. Having realized
that it is no longer possible for Syria to keep an army in Lebanon,
they are trying to preserve as much other Syrian influence as possible.

  This is why President Emile Lahoud appears determined to cling to his
recently extended mandate, and why Omar Karami is back as prime
minister-designate.

  The message of the anti-change camp is clear: The Syrian army may be
leaving, but the structures and policies that it sustained should
remain.

  Not surprisingly, the pro-change coalition rejects that.

  Where do we go from here?


  The truth is that no one knows.

  For five weeks, both sides have been engaged in demonstrating their
respective forces, and sizing up one another. With the institutes of
the state discredited or paralyzed, we are left with the politics of
the street ‹ which means putting the crowd at the center of things.

  At first glance, the two sides seem to be evenly matched as far as
crowd power is concerned.

  Since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, the
pro-change coalition has managed to bring in tens of thousands of
people into the streets almost every day. Last Monday it managed to
field almost a million demonstrators.

  Yet the anti-change party, led by the Lebanese branch of the
Hezbollah, has also fielded huge crowds of its own.

  But as an instrument of politics, a crowd is at its most efficient if
it is given a clear goal.

  In that context the pro-change coalition in Lebanon has an advantage.
It wants the Syrians out, a simple goal that everyone could easily
understand.

  The anti-change coalition, however, has so far failed to match that
with an equally straightforward demand. It couldn't come up with a
slogan demanding that Syria keep its army in Lebanon, especially when
the Syrians had already begun to withdraw.

  Also, there is no evidence that the Hezbollah, the main component of
the anti-change coalition, really wants Syria to remain the arbiter of
Lebanese politics.

  If anything, there is evidence that the alliance between the Hezbollah
and Syria's Ba'athist elite has been one of convenience rather than
conviction:

  * The Hezbollah, which puts religion at the center of politics, cannot
be a true ally of the Ba'ath, a militantly secularist party.

  * The Hezbollah also knows that Nabih Berri's Amal, its main rival
within the Shiite community, could not have survived without Syrian
support.

  * Then there is the Syrian-dictated electoral-reform bill, which would
take three parliamentary seats away from the Hezbollah, giving them to
the Christians in the south.

  The Hezbollah has one more, perhaps the most important, reason not to
appear as an instrument of Syrian domination. This is the party that
made its reputation by posing as the most ardent defender of Lebanese
territory against foreign occupiers.

  There is, to be sure, a big difference between the Syrian presence in
Lebanon and the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, if only because
the former came in the context of the Taef accords endorsed by most
Lebanese political parties at the time.

  Nevertheless, it is not easy for the Hezbollah, as a party of
resistance against one foreign occupier, to transform itself into a
fifth column for another.

  The Hezbollah has been careful not to call for the Syrians to stay.
The party did not send its "volunteers for martyrdom" to lie down on
the roads to Syria to prevent the Syrian tanks and troop carriers to
leave Lebanon. All it has done is to thank the Syrians for what they
did in the past, implicitly endorsing the demand that it is time for
them to leave.

  Even then, the Hezbollah has taken enormous risks by spearheading the
anti-change movement. Until a month ago, the party enjoyed almost
universal admiration among the Lebanese. Even those who did not agree
with its ideology and questioned its ties to Tehran praised it for the
"patriotic role" it had played in pressuring Israel into withdrawing
from southern Lebanon.

  Now, however, the Hezbollah has descended from its pedestal to become
just another party.

  This is clear from the composition of the crowds that Hezbollah has
brought into the streets in recent weeks. More than 95 percent of these
crowds are Shiites, almost all from the south and some neighborhoods of
Beirut. The pro-change coalition, by contrast, has drawn crowds from
all over Lebanon ‹ including the Shiite heartland in the south.

  Even the most cursory glance at the crowds shows that the pro-change
coalition represents all Lebanese communities, while the anti-change
side consists almost exclusively of the Hezbollah.

  The Hezbollah succeeded in becoming a major force in Lebanese politics
for two reasons: It could mobilize larger crowds, and it had more guns
than anyone else.

  The first advantage is now gone ‹ but the Hezbollah still has lots of
guns. Yet U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 demands not only the
withdrawal of Syria, but also an end to private armies in Lebanon.

  The next big issue in Lebanon could be the choice between bullets and
ballots. Hezbollah leaders, and beyond them the leadership in Tehran,
have much hard thinking to do.
---
  Iranian author and journalist Amir Taheri is a member of Benador
Associates.
---
  Copyright 2005 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

  URL:  http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/41193.htm

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