Ladies & Gentlemen, Distinguished Guests:

Democracy has its enemies, both domestically and internationally. Numerous obstacles hinder its progress in Lebanon. 

Traditionally, Lebanese life is predicated on pluralism, but one that profoundly differs from that found in the West. A Western country is premised on a more or less unifying – world view that can be roughly designated as Judeo- Christian. Within this context, a wide variety of outlooks can flourish.  

In contrast, Lebanon features a plurality of antagonistic -- and often clashing -- outlooks, with no single umbrella to bind and hold them. Lebanon, after all, is the sum of eighteen or so religious communities. The usual analogies between Lebanon and Switzerland therefore, don’t hold.

The two major religious communities of Lebanon have very different sets of fears. Muslims are concerned with socio-political grievances and complaints, often legitimate ones, about political under-representation and economic under-privilege. Christian fears, by contrast, reach much deeper, touching on questions of survival, freedom, and dignity.  

This set of fears is rooted in demography, historical experience, and ideological orientation. Islam has been the dominant religion, demographically and politically, in the Middle East for most of the past fourteen centuries. Non-Muslims of the region have experienced a relentless shrinkage in their numbers and influence over the centuries, a process very much still underway today, not just in Lebanon but throughout the region. 

Whatever the impact of Lebanon’s recent wave of Islamization may have had on current political outcomes, it clearly cannot account for Lebanon’s democracy deficit. Democratization has progressed significantly in a number of non-Arab Islamic states (e.g. Turkey, Indonesia and even Iran). Indeed, two prominent experts on democracy contend that, "contrary to widely held belief, most of the world's Muslims already live under democratically elected governments." While this reckoning may take into account that a small minority live in Western democracies, it underscores that the broad uniformity in state-society relations that exists today in the Arab world at large cannot be attributed solely, or even primarily, to Islamic culture.

I guess the "democratic deficit" really started in Lebanon with Syria’s occupation of its western neighbour since 1976. Because of Syria’s heavy handed grip on Lebanon for at least the last two decades, it seems that Lebanon is not yet ready to witness any “democratization process” any time soon unless the U.S takes a very pro-active role in subduing Syria, reforming its principal patron, Saudi Arabia and dismantling its mercenary force, Hezbollah.  

The fact today is that whatever their differences in the past, most Lebanese seem to agree on one thing: The urgent need to get rid of the Syrian occupation force.  

Recent polls conducted by the U.S Committee for a Free Lebanon www.freelebanon.org on-line over a period of 16 months (June 2001-November 2002) with over 46,000 voters both in Lebanon and the Diaspora show:  

• 86% of the people interviewed want the Syrians out of Lebanon immediately;
•  8% opted to have the Syrians leave after a peace treaty is signed between Lebanon and Israel;
•  4% voted to keep the Syrians permanently in Lebanon;
•  2% abstained

Although the majority of Lebanese would like to see the Syrians depart, Christians tend to be more vocal about their feelings than Muslims, though not always. When pressured to leave, the Syrians attempt to foment factional and communal unrest in Lebanon to justify the continued need for their military presence.  But such efforts are now quickly recognized by most Lebanese for what they are.  

Syrians entered Lebanon militarily in 1976 and have not left since. Their approximately 20,000 regular soldiers, along with a larger, unspecified number of intelligence operatives allow little argument on the question of Lebanon's status: it is, today, not just an occupied country but the only satellite state in the entire world.

The Syrian occupation goes beyond mere military occupation and includes far-reaching efforts to reshape Lebanese life. Damascus has imposed many bilateral treaties on Beirut since the early 1990s, covering every facet of political, social, and economic life. It has maintained a tight control on the Beirut government and remodeled Lebanese political life to mirror Syrian norms. It has intimidated Lebanon's traditionally free media and engaged in the widespread violations of human rights. Members of Syria's (and Lebanon's) ruling elites have exploited Lebanon's ailing free enterprise economy to reap windfall profits at the expense of the welfare of ordinary Lebanese citizens.  

In addition to occupying Lebanon, paying $1.1B a year in oil revenues directly to Baghdad in violation of the UN Oil-for-Food Plan, using its rail and trucking system to provide Iraq with Eastern European conventional arms and materials for weapons of mass destruction, Syria is playing a dangerous game with Hezbollah too.

In fact, Syria is preventing the Lebanese Army from deploying its forces in Southern Lebanon as a counterforce to Hezbollah. In contradiction to the policies of the previous regime, Bashar Assad is also enabling Iran to provide extensive military assistance to Hezbollah through Lebanese territory, providing facilities for its headquarters in Damascus (as well as 9 other terrorist organizations), and enabling the organization to establish an intensive training infrastructure in Syria.

This is not an imaginary scenario. As recently as a few weeks ago, American and Israeli UN representatives met privately with their Syrian counterpart to warn him of the danger posed to Syria and the entire region by Hezbollah.

The singular conclusion is that someone has to inject sufficient fear into the Syrians to bring Hizballah down. And if the Europeans and Americans can't, I am pretty certain that sooner or later the Israelis will and Lebanon will pay dearly.

Bottom Line: It is clear by now that for Lebanese pluralism to flourish, the onus of continuously reassuring the Christians lies on the shoulders of those with fewer existential worries; the Muslims. This is not happening in the shadow of Syria's ongoing occupation of Lebanon and this is one of the major stumbling blocks for Lebanon’s path to democracy.

Our Policy Recommendations

• It is time for Washington to call on Damascus to end the occupation of Lebanon. This should be dealt with in an unambiguous way. Indeed, a six-word statement would suffice: All Syrian forces must leave Lebanon. Such a declaration would hardly break new ground but would only catch up with numerous congressional resolutions calling unequivocally for the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon. It would also underscore the spirit of the letter of U.N. Resolution 520 that calls for "the strict respect for Lebanon's sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity and political independence under the sole and exclusive authority of the Lebanese Government through the Lebanese Army throughout Lebanon."

• All appropriations for Lebanon should be directed away from the Syrian-controlled government and in favor of credible private organizations and institutions - universities, schools, hospitals, and groups working in the areas of human rights, environmental issues, and so forth. The Lebanese army presents a special case: an autonomous Lebanese army motivated primarily by genuine concern for Lebanon's national interests would be the country's greatest potential source of stability. But it is now virtually an appendage of the Syrian military. Unfortunately, Washington has chosen to treat it as independent of Syrian control, which is emphatically not the case, and to provide it with aid. This is a mistake so long as the Syrian occupation goes on.
• Although Syrian-Israeli negotiations are complex and difficult enough without freighting them down with more issues, the fact remains that these represent the single best source of leverage on Damascus to pull back from Lebanon. The Israeli authorities should not need to be reminded of the dangers Lebanon presents to them, in terms of Katyusha rockets raining down on their northern towns and more, unless the Syrians fully disengage their forces from Lebanon and Hezbollah disarms.

Conclusion 

For many in American policy planning circles, the Lebanon story effectively came to an end in 1990 with the end of fighting. As long as the place is stable and quiet, they hardly care who controls it. Such pragmatists counsel that Lebanese today ought not to reverse the clock, but rather to "keep the patient alive until the regional peace momentum picks up again and a vigorously resumed peace process bears fruit.” Only then, it is argued, will Lebanese have a realistic chance to reconstitute their country and wiggle out from under the stifling weight of Syrian occupation. The argument has shown it has no merit; Hezbollah’s growing power and threat in the region is today attesting to that. Its close links to both Al Qaeda and other similar sister organizations makes it even more terrifying.

In turn, Lebanon has some utility to the United States. It is a strategic piece of real estate; it contains the Middle East's largest natural fresh water reservoir. It also has political importance, so that the complete retreat of the West from there could well lead to the entrenching of anti-Western forces of hatred and terrorism such as Syria and Hezbollah. Leading American institutions once thrived in Lebanon and could do so again. The country has served as a leader of the Arabic-speaking world in the cultural-intellectual domain and the political one in the past and has the potential to do so again.  

At a time when dictatorships are on the retreat, however, we can hope for more than program reflecting short-term American interests. It must also count that the irreversible departure of freedom from Lebanon would constitute an indictment of America's moral standing in the world. Freedom is the ultimate issue at stake in Lebanon. Doing everything possible to bolster Lebanon's struggling civil society can be a low-cost, incremental strategy for the United States if handled by able, committed, and imaginative diplomacy.

© Copyright 1997-2004 United States Committee For A Free Lebanon. All rights reserved.

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