This is what one of my friends said to me the other day in the course of a heated conversation about - what else? - politics. Well, it wasn't really a conversation in the usual sense, since there weren't really two parties involved. My role consisted almost entirely in asking a question to start things off. As far as I was concerned, the rest was all about trying to keep up with the flow of ideas flying past at breakneck speed.
Of course, the process began, as it must here, with a disclaimer: 'Forget politics! I don't want to talk politics, man! Politics is shit!'
I've quickly come to realize this is not a prelude to disappointment; it's a warning to fasten my seat belt.
In this case my friend proceeded to take me on a whirlwind 'tour d'horizon' of the political forces at play, in every case liberally sprinkling epithets upon their leaders, their policies and their followers. My friend is an 'old leftie'. For him the tragedy of modern Lebanon is two-fold: the theft of Palestine is being forgotten in the rising din of sectarian and other disputes, and, "in the old days we argued about how society should function, how it should be organized, who should benefit - all those things. We disagreed and we fought, but at least we argued! How can you argue with a guy who holds up a book and says 'this is the way God wants it to be, nothing else'? You can't. You either submit or fight!"
Beyond that, he heaps abuse and opprobrium freely on all parties, who have betrayed their own people (and the Palestinians) and collaborated with the Saudis, Qataris, Salafis, Israelis or the US. Or, in many cases, all the above.
The West's darling, Hariri? He and his Mustaqbal (Future) party did the bidding of Saudi Arabia, and, in the background, opened the door for the Salafis, whose approach to reasoned discussion... and here comes the ubiquitous gesture of a sword cutting a neck. All the while buying up properties destroyed by decades of warfare at pennies on the dollar and then using government funds to rebuild and pocket a fortune.
The former left, headed by Druze leader Walid Joumblatt? After his father was murdered by Hafez el Assad (father of Bachar) he instantly made obesience to his father's killer. And when the Israelis were in the Shouf (where I used to live) he welcomed them and served them coffee. (I should note parenthetically that Israeli Druze serve in the IDF, even at very high levels. When Israel sends forces into southern Lebanon, they are generally heavily Druze. This muddies the ethnic waters considerably. Whatever group it was that Joumblatt served coffee to, it's likely that there were fellow Druze among them.)
With one exception - an exception I've come to expect: Hezbullah. Back in Europe and the States, the general level of respect for the Shia' organization whose 'military wing' (This evokes a cackle of laughter, 'Military wing? What military wing? They're all the people, man! It's everybody!) was just declared terrorist by the Europeans seems incomprehensible. Yet, it spans a wide range of political opinions. And, I have to admit that I found it surprising, myself. I'd come here expecting to find anger at Hezbullah's decision to openly - and massively - support the Syrian regime against the rebels. This happened just before I got here, and it seemed to me that Hassan Nasrallah had just taken Lebanon on a walk off a cliff. Syria is fast becoming a sectarian bloodbath, and Lebanon's sectarian divisions exactly mirror Syria's.
For months, there have been clashes between Sunni and Alawites in the northern city of Tripoli, and last month a mini-war of sorts erupted in Saida (Sidon) in the south, between the Lebanese Army and followers of the 'mad sheikh' (in the words of many people I've talked to) Ahmad al Assir. Without army intervention this could have easily involved Hezbullah and rapidly escalated into a country-wide bloodletting.
Parenthetically, when friends and acquaintances call Assir 'mad', I've noticed there's a dismissive quality to the comment. Rather how one might refer to Jim Jones or David Koresh back in the US. To my way of thinking, this is misplaced. Koresh and his ilk were not only fringe characters, their appeal was also strictly limited to a tragically mistaken group of close followers. Assir may be 'mad' and therefore in some sense on the fringe, but in the current overheated atmosphere his appeal is dangerously wide. The general level of sectarian discourse is increasingly shrill and defiant. Each group considers itself wronged and victimized, and wants justice...or else. It's in the 'or else' that people like Assir gain their footing.
Returning for a moment to the interesting question of why people support - or at least respect - Hezbullah: it seems at least in part the residue of an issue that has otherwise nearly fallen off the radar: Palestine.
As several people have pointed out to me, it's quite incredible how no one talks about Palestine anymore. When I first came to Lebanon, Palestine was foremost in everyone's consciousness. Dinner table conversation was about Palestine, the PLO 'owned' the south of the country. Even if you hated the Palestinians (and many did) their history and cause were front-and-center every day.
Now it's largely left to Hezbullah to raise the banner of Palestine. The Palestinians themselves are next to invisible, their cause in danger of being swallowed up by events in Syria, or by the rise of sectarian conflict everywhere in the region. Their forces are long gone from the south. Their leaders are dead or co-opted into peace talks that go nowhere. Their great intellectuals, poets and writers have fallen silent. The camps are a living hell that no one but a few activists notices any more. Amidst all that, Hezbullah stands firm in the south, a bulwark against Israeli attacks, the only Arab force that has ever fought Israel to a standstill.
The other reason that people respect Hezbullah is the sense that there is relative order in the areas under their control, and that their rule is, on the whole, 'cleaner' than the anarchy and corruption that are on offer elsewhere. Which proves once again how the politics of necessity create strange bedfellows: If it wasn't for Hezbullah and its 15,000 troops in Syria Bashar el Assad - the biggest mafioso in the neighborhood - might well have fallen two months ago. His ass was saved in Qusayr, on the northern border with Lebanon, by at least 10,000 Hezbullah fighters, who routed the rebels and paved the way for the government resurgence that is going on as I write this.
To return to my friend's comment about Lebanon not being a state, he accompanied it with an illustrative gesture. In the old days, he said, Lebanon was like this...and here he raised both hands and brought them together in front of him, crossing his index fingers. 'Back then, the different groups had to meet and discuss to achieve their aims. This place where they had to deal with each other was what we call Lebanon. Now? Now, they never meet. Their roads never cross. Each one goes his way and fuck the others! And here he raised his hands again, pointed his fingers and moved them back and forth, never meeting, in parallel trajectories.
No comments:
Post a Comment