The carnage
THE WAR in Lebanon entered its fifteenth year on
April 13. This grim anniversary would have passed unnoticed, had attention not been drawn back to the country by a spectacular renewal of clashes between the two main camps, the mainly Muslim area controlled by Syria and the reactionary
The "war of national liberation" declared by
General Michel Aoun, commander-in-chief of the
Christian army, to "put an end to the Syrian occupation" enjoyed unwonted international reverberations and publicity. The western media, the French in particular, have raised an outcry, presenting the Christian rightist camp as the last defenders of a civilization "threatened with extermination by the Muslims."
In the following interview, Salah Jaber describes what is involved in the latest outbreak of fighting.
W HY THIS sudden flare-
up, when things had seemed quiet in Lebanon for some time?
There has been less talk about the war in Lebanon in recent years. But it still continued in manifold forms. In particular, there have been battles within both the Christian and Muslim communities. However, this is the first time in a while that the fighting has fallen back into the classical framework of the Lebanese civil war that began in 1975 - that is, a confrontation between the reactionary Christian camp on one side and the opposing camp, mainly Muslim and allied to Syria, on the other. The status quo of recent years has been broken by the clashes underway.
To understand what is happening, you have to go back a bit. For the first time in its history since independence, the country was left without a president, when Amin Gemayel's term ran out in September. Two rival governments were each claiming legitimacy — a government in the Muslimmajority area, which existed before Gemayel's departure (and includes a Christian minister), and a government in the Christian redoubt. The chief of the latter, appointed by Gemayel just before his departure, is none other but General Aoun, commander in chief of the Christian army (a faction of the "legal" army.)
goes on
Christian sector.
After his appointment, General Aoun formed a military cabinet. This new situation reflected the impasse in relations between the various factions in Lebanon, as well as among the international and regional powers, including Syria of course.
The search for a compromise candidate for the presidency continued after Gemayel's departure. Meanwhile the status quo was maintained, even though in a new form, with the partition of the country being carried further. Wheeling and dealing went on between Syria, the dominant power in the Muslim-majority sector, and the United States, which operated as the patron of the reactionary camp. The compromise achieved was torpedoed by the Lebanese Forces, the Christian extremeright militia linked to Israel.
General Aoun also took part in sabotaging the compromise, even though he did not oppose it in an altogether direct way. Obviously, he also harbored the ambition of becoming president. So, he tried to pave the way for assuming this coveted position, with the support of Iraq. • What are Iraq's objectives, and what role are the other Arab states playing?
For Bagdad, this is a purely anti-Syrian
LEBANON operation, intended to rock its rival's boat in Lebanon. The reactionary Arab states have also tried to intervene into the Lebanese crisis with the aim of finding a way out. For all of them, Syria is a black sheep from several points of view — its support for Iran in the Gulf War, its support for the PLO dissidents, and more generally its attitude regarding an overall settlement of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Damascus cannot help but oppose any solution that would ignore its own territory of the Golan Heights, which was occupied and annexed by Israel.
It is clear, moreover, that recently the Syrian position has become generally weakened. On the one hand, the Gulf War ended on rather favorable terms for Iraq. On the other, the PLO leadership has enjoyed renewed prestige. The Syrian regime thus found itself rather isolated, which also limited its possibilities for action in Lebanon.
In this context, the problem for the reactionary Arab states was to defuse the Lebanere es possibilies for usine liman on to 3 Syria's possibilities for using Lebanon to May 1, 1989 • #162 International Viewpoint
LEBANON exert an influence in the regional conflicts. But there was no question of their provoking Syria as Iraq did. A reconciliation committee was set up to try to find a way out of the impasse. • What about General Aoun's role?
With Baghdad's encouragement, General Aoun wanted to offer proof to the Arab states of his ability to really control the country in order to establish himself as the best candidate for the presidency. Initially, he tried to clean up his own camp, the reactionary Christian camp (it needs to be pointed out that there are also pro-Syrian Christian areas). He attacked the forces linked to Israel in the Christian redoubt (which is not the case of his "legal" army, linked to the United States). This provoked clashes between his troops and the Lebanese Forces, which concluded favorably for Aoun, but without producing a decisive result.
In a second stage, he tried to show his capacity to maintain order throughout the country. Claiming loudly that he was going to put an end to all the different kinds of trafficking, he seized control first of the Christian ports and then declared a blockade of the ports south of Beirut, under control of the Muslim militias. This set off renewed fighting.
At that point, hoist by his own petard, General Aoun declared the beginning of the "war to liberate Lebanon." His objective was no longer to reestablish order and control the ports but to "liberate" the country from the Syrian army. But he totally lacks the means for that. • Aren't the imperialist and regional powers (Israel, the Arab states and so on) supporting General Aoun?
One might have thought initially that if he made such bold moves it was because he had received international guarantees. But that is not at all the case. The Israelis have declared that as long as the Syrians don't go south of a certain line and don't introduce certain types of armaments (airplanes, certain missiles and so on) into Lebanon, they won't intervene. As regards the Arab states, there is no question of military intervention. And the US has so far maintained a very cautious and reserved attitude.
The Americans have not forgotten that it was the reactionary Christian camp who upset the compromise that they had worked out with the Syrians, and thought was an entirely reasonable one. Above all, they know that at the moment Syria is playing a totally irreplaceable role in Lebanon. There would be no question of their forcing the Syrian army out of the country, without replacing it with another force able to maintain order. But there is no other such force in Lebanon.
Outside Lebanon, Israel has already done what it could, and the multinational interposition forces deployed between 1982 and 4 retreat would increase the anarchy and 1984 failed lamentably. A Syrian army International Viewpoint #162 • May 1, 1989 could enable certain forces - such as the pro-Iranian fundamentalists, who are "worse" from the American point of view
The US position today is that the status quo has to be preserved, while trying to shift the relationship of forces as much as possible in favor of the reactionary Christian camp. That is the reason for their negowith the Syrians and agreement on a president acceptable to both parties, a big landowner, an honorable and very moderate bourgeois.
Aoun has found himself with no real support except from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which has provided him with massive quantities of weapons, including tanks. But this is not going to be enough to drive out the Syrian army. So, Aoun didn't have any guarantee. He could have limited himself to the war of the ports and stopped the escalation. But the way he plunged into upping the ante, declaring a "war of liberation," makes it almost impossible for him now to be a party to a compromise with the Syrians, which had been negotiable before.
General Aoun has behaved in an irrational and megalomaniac way. His "national liberation" war has proved to be a criminal adventure, with the population paying the costs. On the other side, the Syrians are not considering invading the Christian sector, among other things, because of the line drawn by the Israelis. The result is bombardment back and forth, with its toll of victims and material damage. Of course, the Syrians have more firepower, but this is a most absurd bombardment from both sides, which is resulting in hundreds of civilian victims in both camps, adding to the carnage and destruction that Lebanon has suffered for 14 years. • But isn't the aim of "liberation" a
What is there to liberate? In the Christian redoubt, there is no Syrian army. So, it must be the rest of the country that is to be liberated. But the population in those regions does not see the Syrian presence as a foreign occupation. If this had been the case, it would have been reflected on the ground in one way or another. The Israeli army went through hell in Lebanon, and it was unable to stay there. If that has not been so for the Syrians, it is certainly not because their army is more powerful or more effective than Israel's! Acceptance of the Syrian presence, moreover, is not limited to the Muslims. One of the Christian areas in the north of the country is allied to
So, this would be a "liberation" of a population that feels no need for that and is a thousand times more hostile to its purported "liberator" than to those from whom he promises to liberate them. Furthermore, the forces that could gain the upper hand in the Muslim regions in the event of a Syrian withdrawal are certainly no better disposed to the reactionary Christian camp than the
It has to be remembered, moreover, that originally the Syrians intervened in 1976 to save the Christian camp, which was threatened by defeat at the hands of the allied forces of the Lebanese left and the Palestinian resistance. It was in response to the appeal of the Christian forces that the Syrian army intervened in Lebanon! Since then, even if Syria reversed its alliances after 1977, its presence has maintained the status quo and enabled the reactionary Christian camp to run its own territory, secure from
In fact, by controlling the other camp, Syria prevented a resumption of the civil war between the two communities. So, even from the standpoint of the enlightened interest of the reactionary Christian camp, this celebrated "liberation" is not really desirable. Aoun's big talk initially made a certain impression on the population of the Christian redoubt, but they quickly sobered • How do you explain the attitude of the French imperialists and the press campaign in France in tavor of "mortally endangered Christian Lebanon"?
The French intervention has obviously fizzled. At the outset, the French government made a big diplomatic faux pas in trying to take sides in the fighting with the Christians, whose "existence" was supposed to be "threatened," as Mitterrand said. This was a falsification, in any case. As it happens, it was General Aoun who unleashed the conflict, and he was the one who set an objective - driving out the Syrians. They, on the other hand, adopted no objective, not even eliminating Aoun. Moreover, the shells are not just coming from one direction. Civilians are being hit in both camps.
To portray this business as if a religious community as such were threatened with destruction is a total distortion of the truth. The French attitude could only be seen as a partisan one, dictated by religious sympathies with the Christians and hostility to the Muslims.
As for what's behind the French attitude, I don't think that it represents a position dictated by the real and lucid interests of French imperialism. It seems that the French government, and Mitterrand in person, have let themselves be trapped by a certain pressure from the right in France, which has raised a big hue and cry since the outbreak of the fighting for solidarity with the Lebanese Christians. All this has come at a high point of anti-Muslim racism in Europe in the wake of the Rushdie affair (see /V 160.) Now the French government is trying to smooth things over. The American attitude, from the standpoint of the interests of imperialism, was much more rational. • What are Syria's objectives in Lebanon? Is there a basis for talking about a real desire to annex the
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This charge is an ideological smoke-screen. It is not, of course, that the Syrian regime is above
BEIRUT such designs, but because this does not at all correspond to its real
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In these conditions, the role of the Syrians is no longer the same. Today, the Syrian army is playing the role of a buffer between the communalist forces in the Muslim camp. Without it, they would continue to kill each other and massacre the population. • Is there still a way out in Lebanon?
In fact, there is no longer any real way out in Lebanon in view of the decay of the situation, in the strongest sense of the term. To say nothing of a progressive or proletarian way out, there is not even a bourgeois solution to the crisis anymore WILLIAME FORE within the frontiers of the Lebanese state. The country is too fragmented, and communalism is too developed for there to be a possibility for suddenly pushing it back. The solu•tions imposed from outside have
Lebanon.
But there is more to it than that. I SKIRTS OF B In fact, annexing the country is not S ISRAEL WAR even desirable for the Syrian . OR THE CITY regime, even if this were within its ICC power. The Syrian economy runs rather deeply in the red. It depends in large part on aid from the East European countries and subsidies that it gets from the Arab states because of its conflict with Israel. Syria maintains an over-large army, partly because of this conflict and partly because of the nature of the regime. Annexing Lebanon would be too much of an additional burden to bear.
On the other hand, Lebanon as it is, in the present limits of the Syrian intervention, is a source of profits for Damascus. Normally, the Syrian army is not involved in the fighting in Lebanon, and this considerably limits the costs of its presence. Moreover, it exacts a real gangster-type tribute from the Lebanese economy. The anarchy existing in Lebanon, for which the Syrian regime cannot officially be held responsible, permits the flourishing of all sorts of traffic. In particular, it has permitted a considerable growth in the production and export of hashish, from which the Syrian military bureaucracy takes a cut.
The black market in Syria itself has also been supplied from Lebanon, the paradise of free trade. And the military have been getting a rake-off in the transport or goods or a direct cut. Finally, the Lebanese banking system, the world's freest and most discreet, enables the Syrian bureaucrats to invest their "profits" in Lebanon or even abroad. So, the Syrian regime has no interest in absorbing Lebanon into its own state-run society.
Its real interest is to maintain its domination — no more, no less. First of all, this is so that it can continue to profit from Lebanon, but also because the country could become a political danger for the Syrian regime if it got out of its control. That is, more precisely, if radical forces — the left in the past and the fundamentalists in recent years — gained the upper hand in the Muslim-majority regions. This is the real framework of Syrian policy in Lebanon. It is for this reason, moreover, that the United States, like all of the imperialist powers, and even Israel, tacitly or in under- tones, approves of the Syrian military presence in Lebanon. In their eyes, it is a lesser
Up until 1982, the Syrian army was a force that maintained bourgeois order to the detriment of the Lebanese left and the Palestinian resistance. It throttled them and prevented a dynamic of radicalization from developing in the mass movement. Syria's role continued to be to hold back the left from 1976 to 1982, even if its alliances changed after 1977. This restraining role, moreover, became more effective after Syria imposed its tutelage.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 profoundly altered the relationship of forces in the Muslim regions. The Palestinian resistance forces were uprooted and partially expelled, while the Lebanese left was disarmed. But the Muslim bourgeois forces were not touched. The political scene was fundamentally changed. This was not, of course, simply the result of this interven-
The Israelis only put the final touch to an evolution that began in 1976, with a steady ebb of the left and of progressive forms of consciousness in the Muslim regions to the advantage of communalism and the bourgeois forces. The latter have held the high ground since the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation army. On top of this, the fundamentalists have been the only political force that is really growing.
also failed, within the limits of what external forces are prepared to invest in Lebanon. Consequently, the only solution possible is in fact to go beyond the framework of the Lebanese state, toward a fusion of Lebanon with Syria — as the Revolutionary Communist Group, the Lebanese section of the Fourth International points out. You have to remember that Lebanon in its present borders was conceived under the French colonial mandate in 1920 in a totally arbitrary way. The French had seized Syria (which at the time included Lebanon) in the aftermath of the first world war, and tried to cut it up into several states (one of which was the existing Lebanese state). They combined the various communities in a way to create an unstable balance justifying the French colonial presence.
This unstable balance, for which French colonialism was responsible in Lebanon, exploded in 1975 and has continued to burn since. Therefore, outright fusion with Syria becomes the only way out possible, inasmuch as this region belongs to a single national entity, and there are no national boundaries in the full sense of the term between these states.
Such a fusion fits into the framework of a widespread ideology in the region, that of Arab national unity. This applies also to the Lebanese Christians, who are as Arab as the others and share the same culture. It should be remembered that there are Christian areas in northern Lebanon that are allied to Syria.
This alone could make it possible to overcome the present situation of fragmentation and permanent conflict. But it does not correspond to the interests of the Syrian bureaucracy. The overthrow of the regime in Syria and its replacement by a revolutionary or radical regime is therefore necessary to achieve such a fusion. The future of Sebanon is intimately linked to that of 5 Syria. * May 1, 1989 • #162 International Viewpoint