Qifa Nabki | A Lebanese Political Blog

I love how seriously the QN readership is taking my challenge to come up with the most important developments of 2009 in Lebanon (favorite so far: “my cousin’s wedding in Chekka”).

In the meantime, here’s a piece I wrote for The National this week about the Middle East in 2009. (If you’re going out to party tonight, please don’t drink and drive.)

Twelve months

The year 2009 began with the Middle East ablaze. On January 1, for the fifth day running, Israeli jets continued to pummel Gaza in advance of a ground invasion that produced over 1,000 Palestinian deaths and hundreds of thousands of refugees. The war’s effects rippled across the region in an all too familiar way: suicide bombers in Iraq targeted groups of civilians protesting the Gaza invasion, while America’s allies in the region criticised Hamas for provoking the onslaught. Meanwhile, Iran castigated Egypt for collaborating with the enemy and Syria called off its peace negotiations with Israel. The region had slipped back into the trenches of its Cold War, in which a single Katyusha could trigger a massive military response and an international diplomatic crisis.

A year later, the atmosphere in the region is markedly different. Bitter rivals have visited each other’s capitals to mend fences and the media is full of reports about a new age of reconciliation and diplomatic engagement. Following the turmoil of the previous five years, which witnessed a series of proxy wars between the Western-supported Sunni Arab regimes and the axis consisting of Iran, Syria, and their non-state allies (Hamas and Hizbollah), the relative calm that prevailed in 2009 was just one of many signs that a realignment of interests had begun to take shape.

The reasons for this realignment stem from two basic uncertainties. On the one hand, there is a question mark about the effects of a new – and still seemingly undefined – American policy for the region. Indeed, as disruptive as the neoconservative experiment was to Arab power dynamics, the presence of a new administration in Washington with a different outlook and a different set of priorities has forced the region to reorganise itself once again. On the other hand, Iran’s growing influence and the concomitant challenges to its regime’s authority have further muddied the waters, as its allies and adversaries try to gauge the health and durability of the Islamic Republic on its 30th anniversary. When these two unknown variables are combined, in attempts to assess shifting American policy toward the volatile regional heavyweight, the tea leaves become all the more difficult to read.

(Keep reading)

I haven’t read it yet, but judging from the reviews, it sounds like Lee Smith’s book is a bit of a dud. Max Rodenbeck skewers it for The National:

“Smith believes he has much to teach us about this corner of the world, a patch he covered, from Cairo and Beirut, for the Weekly Standard, the small-circulation flag-bearer for American neoconservativism, before landing his current perch at the right-wing Hudson Institute in Washington. His book, a mix of citations from primers on Arab history, bald assertions, and anecdotage populated by a parade of mournful natives that Smith seems to have attracted in his travels, purports to be an expose of the true nature of the Arabs. It is meant as a corrective to the misty eyed romanticism of other journalists, scholars of the region, and such pitiable types as “Americans too young, confused or rich to love or respect their own country”.

Yet despite the jarring apparition of occasional perspicacity, his 200-page effort at myth-busting is potholed with mistakes, misjudgements and lapses in logic. Right up front, for instance, Smith asserts that Sunni Arabs have crushed minority challengers and ruled “by violence, repression and coercion” for 1,400 years. Yet one might have assumed that Sunni rule would be natural here, considering that nine-tenths of Arabs happen to be Sunni Muslims. (And not the 70 per cent that Smith strangely proposes, a figure quite unattainable even if one throws in not just religious minorities, but ethnic ones such as Kurds in Iraq or Berbers in North Africa.)”

Still not satisfied? An anonymous reviewer puts the Qnion to shame with a savagely brutal take-down.

In other news, Tha’ir Ghandour thinks the Lebanese Forces come out on top in the battle of words between Hezbollah and the Kata’eb, and Michael Young has a New Year’s prediction about Aoun’s relations with Saudi Arabia:

“Within the coming few months, perhaps even sooner, we shall see Michel Aoun visiting the Gulf; and don’t be surprised to hear his followers suddenly less eager to denounce the “Wahhabization” of Lebanese life.

A divorce between Syria on the one side and Iran and Hezbollah on the other is unlikely. Hassan Nasrallah cannot afford to enter into a confrontation with the Assad regime. But his allies are recalculating. When you’re unsure about political decision-making, follow the money. “

Over at Syria Comment, Josh Landis is crowdsourcing a “Year in Review“, and I’ve contributed a few paragraphs about the Syrian-Lebanese relationship:

I think that the Syrian government had a good year, as far as its relations with Lebanon were concerned. The parliamentary elections ended with a pretty ideal result: a win for March 14, followed by the self-destruction of March 14.  This meant that Syria did not have figure out how to run pass coverage for what would have surely been portrayed in the Western media as a “Hizbullah government”. At the same time, though, the defection of Jumblatt and the general fractiousness of the remaining coalition partners meant that M14 no longer posed a credible threat to Syrian interests.

The formation of a national unity government — enfranchising the Doha Accord as the new powersharing mechanism in Lebanon, at least for the time being — formalized the stop-gap solution that Syria has sought, with regard to the weapons of Hizbullah.

The rapprochement with Saudi Arabia seems to have inaugurated a new agreement over Lebanon. It’s not quite a condominium like the one that existed from 1990-2004, but the two countries seem to have agreed to stop making life difficult for each other in Beirut, in exchange for cooperating on matters like Iraq.

It’s not clear what Syria’s long-term aim is for the Lebanese file. Some believe that it wants nothing less than to re-establish control over Lebanon, albeit without having the expense of keeping its army posted there. Others say that its interests in Lebanon are purely instrumental: using Hizbullah as a card in its effort to regain the Golan, and in its bid for greater regional clout.

What’s clear to me is that Syria is trying to diversify its relationships in the region, distributing its eggs from the “axis of resistance” basket (Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas) to other baskets. This does not amount to a potential “flip”, as the State Department is unrealistically hoping for. Those allies remain too valuable to Damascus. But as Tehran looks increasingly vulnerable and the credibility of the regime there is challenged, Syria’s cache as an interlocutor diminishes. This is where its relations with Turkey make much more sense, as does its rapprochement with Saudi Arabia.

Steve Walt has an excellent piece over at Foreign Policy about the Gaza Freedom March. I also recommend you check out PULSE, which is covering developments, and Twitter is a goldmine of articles and press reports.  Also check out the Italian GFM members singing Bella Ciao outside the Egyptian Journalists’ Syndicate in Cairo.

Finally, a good friend of mine, Maggie Schmitt, has produced a compelling video about fishing in Gaza, which you can watch at Vimeo.

Howdy folks. I’m back in the saddle after a snowy Christmas in Chicago and several days spent trying to characterize (in 1200 words) the Middle East in 2009, for a piece in The National. It’ll be out this Friday.

In the meantime, I seem to have caught an acute case of yearinreviewitis, so I thought it might be profitable to discuss the year that was. What do you regard as the most important developments in Lebanon in 2009? Obviously, winning the Guiness record for the biggest plate of hummus was the most significant one, but were there other, less visible, features that you think made a significant difference in one way or another?

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my za’im gave to me: Twelve drums of mazout, eleven snipers sniping, ten warlords sleeping, nine trips to Maameltein, eight maids a-slaving, seven skiers swimming, six geezers lying, five car theft rings….. four calling cards, three French fry sandwiches, two healths my love… And a car freshener shaped like a cedar tree!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!

View over the Litani dam towards the Anti-Lebanon Mountains.

It had to happen sooner or later. I can imagine that when Majd al-Assad died last week, Saad Hariri’s advisors all reached for their cell phones at the same time and called Qoreitem. “This is our chance. Let’s get it over with.”

On the occasion of Hariri’s visit to Damascus, I found myself reflecting on the developments of the past five years, trying to assess what had changed in Lebanon since the Syrian withdrawal. Have we returned to where we started? Is Lebanon today in more or less the same position that it was in on the morning of February 14, 2005?

On the one hand, many of the same internal power dynamics are in place. A Hariri leads the most powerful Sunni political party; AMAL and Hezbollah monopolize the support of Lebanon’s Shiites; Jumblatt remains the strongman in the Chouf and a mercurial kingmaker; Hezbollah remains armed and unchallenged; the Christian anti-Syrian opposition (Kata’eb and LF) is politically weak; and Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are the dominant foreign players on the Lebanese stage.

On the other hand, there is little doubt that the landscape has been altered in fundamental ways. Syria, for all of its influence among certain political groupings in Beirut, no longer has the Lebanese parliament on a leash, as it did from 1990 to early 2005. Many who once supported Syria (Sunnis in particular) today regard their eastern neighbor with a great deal of suspicion — brotherliness and Arabism be damned. Michel Aoun is back, and his movement had become a political force to be reckoned with. There are Lebanese and Syrian embassies in Damascus and Beirut. A new electoral law was implemented last year that was not drawn up by Rustom Ghazali in a smoke-filled office somewhere in Anjar, and Lebanon’s civil society is pushing for many more reforms for 2013. Hezbollah, despite maintaining its weapons, has been constrained in its activities both by UNSCR 1701 and by its own political calculations. In short, this is not the same Lebanon that Syria controlled so effortlessly less than five years ago.

Many March 14ers I know have been feeling sorry for themselves since the cabinet was formed. With every piece of news that suggests improved relations between Syria and the West or warmer relations between the parliamentary majority and minority blocs, my M14 friends grow slightly more bitter.

I feel that such an outlook is entirely counter-productive. It’s time for people to stop grumbling, stop pining for revenge, stop waiting for Bellemare to ride in on a white horse and have Bashar drawn, quartered, and replaced with Farid Ghadry. This doesn’t mean that we should welcome a Syrian strong hand in our politics again. But I think that it no longer serves anyone’s interests to keep banging the drum.

**

Lebanon Drama Adds Act With Leader’s Trip to Syria

By ROBERT F. WORTH | The New York Times

BEIRUT, Lebanon — In any other part of the world, a new prime minister’s visit to a neighboring country would be a fairly routine event. But Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s trip to Syria over the weekend has been treated here as a kind of Lebanese national drama, the subject of almost endless commentary in newspapers and television shows.

It is not that anything really happened. Mr. Hariri and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria exchanged some thoroughly forgettable diplomatic banter and posed for photographs.

Instead, the trip epitomized a national story with anguished, almost operatic dimensions: a young leader forced to shake hands with the man who he believes killed his father. And it served as a reminder of this region’s deep attachment to political symbolism.

For many Lebanese, the visit was a measure of Syria’s renewed influence over Lebanon after years of bitterness and struggle since the Syrian military’s withdrawal in 2005. That withdrawal came after Mr. Hariri’s father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was killed in a car bombing that many here believe to have been ordered by Syria.

The withdrawal was a blow to Syrian prestige, and afterward Saad Hariri seemed to have the entire Western world at his back as he built a movement for greater Lebanese independence and pushed for an international tribunal to try his father’s killers.

But since then, the United States and the West have chosen to engage with Syria, not isolate it. And Saudi Arabia, which has long backed Mr. Hariri and competed with Syria for influence here, reconciled with the Syrians earlier this year, leaving them a freer hand to guide politics in Lebanon as they once did.

All this has been known for months, but it was still tremendously important for Mr. Hariri to actually cross the mountains — in his first visit since before his father’s killing — and pay his respects in Damascus.

“The image of Syrian soldiers retreating was a huge blow to them,” said Elias Muhanna, a political analyst and the author of the Lebanese blog Qifa Nabki. “So the image of Hariri coming over the mountains means they’ve come full circle. It demonstrates to all the power centers in Damascus that Bashar has restored Syria’s position of strength vis-à-vis Lebanon.”

The visit also has vivid historical echoes for many Lebanese. In 1977, the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt visited Damascus just weeks after his own father was killed in a car bomb that is believed to have been set by Syria. Like Mr. Hariri, he had little choice: he had to reconcile with Syria if he wanted to continue playing a political role.

“The stability of Lebanon always depends on its environment, and basically this environment is Syria,” Mr. Jumblatt said in an interview on Sunday. “For the sake of Lebanese stability, we have got to put aside personal animosity.”

It is difficult to say exactly what Mr. Hariri’s visit portends in terms of Lebanese-Syrian relations. By one measure, he has already achieved his most important goals: the Syrian Army is gone, and no one expects it to return. The two countries restored diplomatic relations this year. The international tribunal that was formed in 2005 under United Nations auspices to try the elder Hariri’s killers continues its work here and in the Netherlands, where it is based. It could still indict high-ranking Syrians, although most analysts say that seems less likely than it did four years ago.

But most agree that Syria will once again have a powerful, undisputed voice here on issues ranging from cabinet positions to the militant Shiite movement Hezbollah, which Syria supports. The influence is not likely to be as crude as it was during the 1990s, when Syrian officers strutted through Beirut and were accused of raking profits from Lebanese industries. To some here, that is improvement enough. To others, Mr. Hariri’s trip across the mountains was a tragic concession.

“Whether Saad Hariri admits it or not, it was a severe setback to everything that happened starting in 2005,” said Michael Young, a Lebanese columnist who has long been critical of Syria’s role here. “I think he did it reluctantly, but he never had a choice.”

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri visits Damascus to pay his condolences to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad upon the death of the latter’s brother, after nearly five years since the assassination of the former’s father, widely blamed on the latter, to whose own father he has now, suddenly, developed an uncanny physical resemblance.

Get it?

• My buddy Sean questions Spencer Ackerman’s credentials. But not in a snarky way.
• Middle East Policy Group Survey quotes a State Dept. analyst wondering whether Lebanon should be sacrificed (to Syria) in the service of American interests (via FLC).
• Brian Whitaker reflects on the latest ICG report about Syria.
• Greg Gause has a great piece about non-state actors, over at The Review.
• Marc Lynch produces a hysterical highlight reel of Middle Eastern political players for 2009.
• Washington mulls direct flights to Beirut (I’ve heard this about 1559 times before, but hope springs eternal).

I’ll be out of town for the next ten days or so. Posting may be light. It may be heavy. You never know. I’m tricky that way. You’ll have to check back and see for yourself.

Anybody have good restaurant recommendations for Chicago?

There’s been a lot of chatter about when, if, and how Saad Hariri will make his first visit to Damascus. Some even believe it could happen as soon as this weekend. I’m not as interested in the “when” as in the symbolic potential of this event.

Therefore, I thought we’d have a poll and a discussion on the topic. Given that we’ve got all kinds of readers here at QN.com — communists, dyed-in-the-wool Cedar Revolutionaries, wannabe Hezbollah commandos — I figure that people probably have some strong  opinions.

Go forth and vote…

Other notable links

• Joshua Landis’s commentary on the sudden outbreak of diplomatic tourism in the Middle East.
• A computer tries to predict Hezbollah’s actions.
• Nasrallah tells you what he thinks of computers predicting Hezbollah’s actions.

President Michel Suleiman met with President Obama yesterday afternoon in the Oval Office. Judging from the two leaders’ remarks at the post-meeting press conference, it seems like it went roughly according to script.

Sleiman: Thank you for receiving us Mr. President.

Obama: Thank you for coming, Mr. President. It’s an honor to have you.

Sleiman: We would like to discuss the issue of US military aid to Lebanon.

Obama: Of course. As you know, we have reservations about US weapons reaching Hezbollah blah blah blah…

Sleiman: I’m glad you brought that up because we want to express our strongest opposition to the Israeli threats that are blah blah blah…

Obama: Well you see, that’s where we disagree blah blah blah…

Sleiman: Well I think you’ll find that blah blah blah…

Obama: Well, I think that we can both agree that blah blah blah…

Sleiman: Well, no, actually blah blah blah…

Obama: Oh my, look at the time! I’m afraid I have to run off and get back to the business of creating several million jobs, turning around the world’s largest economy, and passing a historic health care bill that could be the single greatest legacy of my presidency. But here, don’t forget your White House souvenir pen!

Sleiman: Thank you Mr. President.

**

To the right, you will find President Obama’s schedule for Monday, December 14, 2009. Besides his all-important meeting with the Lebanese president, Obama had a few other minor things on his plate, like the effort to salvage the Senate bill that Joe Lieberman’s defection had threatened to scuttle.

This was followed by a meeting with a bunch of financial titans, and a statement on the economy. Nothing really that important. Just the everyday run-of-the-mill things that a President has to keep an eye on.

This is why I’m sure that the Lebanese delegation’s negotiation strategy for its half hour slot with the most powerful man in the world was pitch-perfect. They went in there, complained about Israel, demanded military aid with no preconditions, and pretended not to know anything about any weapons being smuggled to anyone. Brilliant! And so unexpected!

I’m sure they gave that Obama something to think about while he was snoozing through all of his other (far less important) meetings.