What
Is Happening In Lebanon?
By Laurie King-Irani
24 May, 2007
Electronic
Lebanon
A survey of US television and
radio news over the last 24 hours has told me the following:
- Bombings and gunfights
in Lebanon. Again.
- Breathless analyses on
US news programs about Al-Qaida's spread to the shores of the eastern
Mediterranean.
- Analysts using the "cookie
cutter" approach to this new development by citing the events of
1975-1976 and the tensions between Lebanese and Palestinian refugees.
- CNN's putative Lebanon analyst, Brent Sadler, characterized Palestinian
refugee camps in Lebanon as "breeding grounds for terrorism,"
but now, according to Mr. Sadler, it's Islamic-flavored terrorism.
This is all very ominous,
anxiety-provoking and compelling "infotainment" -- and completely
in line with the distorted views of US foreign policy makers.
Such simplistic and knee-jerk
reactions to Lebanon's current travails are too easy, and not up to
the standards of good and responsible journalism.
I've spent much of the past
48 hours trying to get a better grasp on what is really going on in
Tripoli. It's not easy to do, and it occured to me this morning that
this may, in fact, be the story: the difficulty of interpreting these
events stems from the lack of a comprehensive understanding of the ways
that dramatic changes throughout the region, and indeed, the world,
are echoing through Lebanon's war-damaged sociopolitical landscape.
Yesterday, Robert Fisk, the
veteran war correspondent and author of the best book on Lebanon's decades
of agony, Pity the Nation, observed in The Independent that:
"Not since the war --
yes, the Lebanese civil war that we are all still trying to forget --
have I heard this many bullets cracking across the streets of a Lebanese
city. ... The bloody events in Lebanon yesterday passed so swiftly --
and so dangerously for those of us on the streets -- that I am still
unsure what happened."
Well, if Robert Fisk is confused,
how can Brent Sadler be so sure he knows what is going on in Lebanon?
It's easy to point fingers at Syria, to invoke the shadowy and amorphous
threat of Al-Qaida, to blame the Palestinians, or (in fine Lebanese
fashion) to see a complex and nefarious plot underlying the bloodletting
in Tripoli.
Any eruption of large-scale
violence in Lebanon is cause for concern, since so many related regional
crises are "hot-wired" through Lebanon, and the war that raged
there during the last decades of the 20th century was in fact three
wars: A local, regional, and international confrontation that intersected
and metastasized in horrific ways. For those of us who have lived in,
and love, Lebanon, the fear of the 1975-1991 war's return always lurks
in the back of the mind.
The events of the last week,
however, cannot be explained in relation to that earlier war, nor entirely
in relation to the murky mysteries surrounding the assassination of
former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, or even last summer's brutal Israeli
assault on Lebanon. Nor are the disturbing developments in Tripoli rooted
in Palestinian-Lebanese tensions. Of course, US commentators have been
quick to peg the Syrians and Palestinians as the culprits. But that
is too simplistic.
What's now happening in Lebanon
requires a much more subtle and fine-grained interpretation, one that
takes on board the reverberations of political developments from Baghdad
to Washington, while attending to emerging social and economic conditions
in the Middle East. The situation is much more complicated, fluid, unbounded,
and therefore ominous than CNN's "experts" seem to grasp.
There are new aspects to the current violence, perhaps most noteworthy
is the emergence of a militia in Lebanon that has no clearly delineated
connection to any particular family or traditional ethno-confessional
leadership in the Lebanese context. There is some new political logic
or system at work here, but it is irresponsible to present simple or
pat explanations.
Over the next few days, Electronic
Lebanon will be providing more insights into, and analyses of, the latest
outbreak of conflict in Lebanon. For now, however, I'd like to outline
some issues and realities that any comprehensive and valid explanation
of this week's events must include:
1. A huge demographic swell
of youth is now coming into their majority, and they have no real leadership
or clear focus for political action, nor do they see much hope or options
in the current political and economic system.
2. Shifting global configurations
are key to any explanation of what is happening in Lebanon. Although
the US remains the world's leading military power, that is no longer
relevant or important to the regional politial system. US influence
is on the wane, its status and reputation completely sullied during
the last six years of the Bush Administration's disastrous and delusional
"War on Global Terror." In fact, the US has now become more
of a pariah or liability for the region's elite, particularly in Lebanon,
where the government is characterized as "Pro-American, pro-democracy,"
while the Opposition (led by Hizbullah) is deemed a dangerous terrorist
force. Iraq, as well as the horrors in Occupied Palestine, are now "exhibits
A and B" in how and why not to trust the US. The US has given not
only itself, but the very concept of democracy, a bad name in the region.
3. Although al-Qaida makes
the news a lot, I don't think it (whatever "it" is) commands
the attention, respect and support in Lebanon or Palestine as does Hizbullah,
the only group in the region to successfully challenge and defeat the
Israeli Army.
4. Shifting regional oppositions
are also key to understanding this week's events in Lebanon. The Palestinian
movement as an institution, i.e., the movement-turned-establishment
of the 1960s-mid-1990s, is no more, although people are still very moved
and mobilized by the Palestinian tragedy. Hamas is no longer a unified
organization. Leftist groups are weak. Rapidly growing gaps between
rich and poor mean that there's not much chance of middle class, broad-based
movements for change or reform. But then, those sorts of social movements
are usually rooted in national identity and nation-state projects, and
the nation state is no longer a big draw, or at least not as big a draw
as religion, family, ethnicity -- or movements for justice, usually
theologically defined (but not always; Egyptian secular and leftist
activism is now back on the streets of Cairo).
5. The largely manufactured
tensions between Shi'is and Sunnis in Iraq (or, to be more precise,
the "Lebanonization" of Iraq encouraged by the United States)
will ultimately reverberate elsewhere, probably to the detriment of
US allies like Jordan, Saudia Arabia and Egypt. And for non-allies,
or quasi-allies, like Lebanon and Syria, this poses real dangers.
6. The ability of groups
like Al-Qaida (and again, I don't think that this group exists in the
way that the US government or media present it as existing) to do seriously
dramatic actions does not hinge upon grass-roots support. They are not
a broad-based movement, but could do (or people claiming to be them
could do) major attacks that could influence various players' moves
in the region and beyond.
7. It's no longer an "either/or"
situation, and maybe it never was. It is not as if people have a choice:
pro-US or anti-US. The situation now seems fluid enough that some new
groupings and ideologies could emerge, that don't look to either the
West or various permutations of political Islam to design a new project.
A major political firestorm
may overtake the Middle East this summer. It's hard to predict just
how it might start, and harder to predict what it will devour. The time
for preventing disasters, such as the one now emerging in Lebanon, is
long past, though. The irresponsibility of the United States had a lot
to do with this. Although it is hard to define the new forms of leadership
and political projects emerging in the Middle East, one thing is certain:
they won't be directed from, or funded by, Washington, DC. Nor will
they be comprehensible to mainstream US news reporters and analysts
who remain blinded by past events or official explanations that tie
everything to "terrorism."
Laurie King-Irani
is a cofounder of Electronic Lebanon. She teaches social anthropology
in Washington, DC. Her blog is Zinjabeelah.
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