Be careful with Lebanon

It was only one generation ago when large groups in Lebanon conducted a civil war big and dangerous enough to threaten the world. Let's not get carried away with these latest huge protest marches

by Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>

A protest march against Syrian control of Lebanon estimated at over 800,000 people in Beirut this week dwarfed an earlier protest last week of over 500,000 people expressing a strong wish to see Syria maintain control. That protest itself was in response to several marches a few weeks earlier of several hundreds of thousands pushing Syria to leave. Those protests came in response to the assassination of the leading anti-Syrian political figure in Lebanon. And that assassination, probably by Syrian government figures, came closely on the heals of renewed Israeli and American pressure against Syrian military deployments stationed in Lebanon.

Confused? That's nothing compared to what was going on in Lebanon before the Syrians stepped in and settled everything down. It may not be such a good idea to be encouraging loud and huge expressions by evolving political factions in Lebanon just yet, following so closely one of the world's most horrific, dangerous, and intractable civil wars in its history.

Western media in the mid-80s could at best estimate that the Lebanese civil war was eight-sided, but reports by people who were actually there say that was a gross underestimation. Lebanon had forever been the center of openness and toleration and Beirut flowered as an important intellectual and artistic centre of cultural expression for Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike. In a larger region long troubled by armed factionalism, Lebanon stood out as a model society.

It was therefore especially tragic and particularly confusing to see Beirut, formerly known as the Jewel of the Mediterranean, become the poster-city for out-and-out total devastation from within no less than from without. Beirut had been a free city for everyone, and consequently all of Lebanon's neighbouring countries had sizable expat populations living there when the shooting broke out. As a result, all neighbouring countries, including regional powers like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq an Iran, took an active interest in seeing which side would remain standing when the shooting stopped. Because of this wider regional implication, major powers like the US, the Soviet Union, Britain and France got sucked into the civil war. At one point, the Lebanese civil war was so big, so destructive, so vicious, and so unsolvable that it became widely regarded as the most likely trigger for a planet-engulfing nuclear Third World War.

The Americans took the situation so seriously that President Ronald Reagan deployed two thousand Marines to Lebanon in 1982. On October 23 1983, a single truck bomb drove up to the 8-story American barracks at Beirut International Airport and blew the building up, killing 241 US marines. The next day, Reagan indicated that nothing could be done to save Beirut, and began pulling all US troops out, a move still regarded today as one of the most significant retreats of American power on record. After that, nobody throughout all the opinion columns in the Western media nor anyone in political power throughout Western countries had any other ideas.

That's about when Syria mobilized a huge army, marched down from the Golan heights straight into downtown Beirut, shooting, bombing, and strafing all the way with such force and authority that everyone else stopped. It was Syria that finally put an end to the Lebanese civil war that nobody else in the world could.

It is now only one generation later. Things have been quiet in Beirut and it has largely rebuilt out of its moonscape of ruins, and is once again shining as a beacon of light among the highest order of cities in the world. All the factions that had erupted in the 80s are still all there, present and accounted for, but because Syria kept its big guns tucked away nearby in the hills, they've all got along by talking instead of shooting.

Given the huge numbers of people turning out in ever larger protesting mobs in the streets of Beirut the last few weeks, it is clear political passions still run in feverish pitches throughout that activist society. And lord knows there are so very many scores that remain unsettled from not so long ago. How long is it before two huge protest marches are organized on the same day for the same public square?

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin had it right when he responded to US pressure against Syrian occupation in Lebanon by pointing out that Syria is the only reason there is a Lebanon today. He later backed off the statement as though he spoke in error. It was the Israeli lobby in the Conservative Party that raised the spectre of indignation, but it was in fact Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who, in 1982, as defense minister, sent Israeli troops into Lebanon and occupied Beirut, thereby helping to ignite the conflagration of the Lebanese civil war in the first place.

It would today be a good idea for everyone to downplay the significance of any protest marches in Beirut in the near future. It is not necessarily good news. It would also be a good idea for Canadian ambassadors to European and Middle Eastern capitals to quietly let it be known it's not in Canada's interest to see a repeat of the 1980s. The status quo today, involving Syrians quietly manning outposts away from the city, may not be wonderful. But Lebanon has shown in the past what kind of alternatives exist.

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