{"id":20868,"date":"2012-08-13T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2012-08-13T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=20868"},"modified":"2012-08-13T09:50:24","modified_gmt":"2012-08-13T08:50:24","slug":"reconciliation-reform-and-resilience-positive-peace-for-lebanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/08\/reconciliation-reform-and-resilience-positive-peace-for-lebanon\/","title":{"rendered":"Reconciliation, Reform and Resilience: Positive Peace for Lebanon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elizabth Picard and Alexander Ramsbotham (Eds).
\nReconciliation, reform and resilience: Positive peace for Lebanon
\n(London: Conciliation Resources, 2012, 107pp.)
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the growing intensity of the conflicts in Syria, with the flows of refugees and increased foreign participation, the dangers of serious, negative impact on neighbouring countries is real. \u00a0This impact is already being felt in Lebanon which has its own multi-level divisions and scars from its own long civil war (1975-1990). \u00a0Thus this issue N\u00b024 in the Accord series published by Conciliation Resources is a most useful analysis of the complex situation in Lebanon and its historic links with Syria. \u00a0Each chapter is written by a different author, and no attempt is made to create an artificial consensus. \u00a0Different views are expressed \u2014 a reflection of a moving reality influenced by domestic and regional conflicts involving a wealth of actors.<\/p>\n

Syria and Lebanon have been historically entangled \u2014 economically, politically and socially, both having been parts of the Ottoman Empire. \u00a0At the end of the First World War, the Ottoman Middle East was divided between France and England and placed under the mandate system of the League of Nations. \u00a0France held both Syria and Lebanon. \u00a0France linked the two with a common currency until 1948 when both Lebanon and Syria became independent states. (1) \u00a0During the mandate period, people moved freely between the two states, especially for business reasons. \u00a0Thus one finds family members in both countries as well as broader clanic\/tribal ties. \u00a0During the Lebanese civil war, Syrian political leaders played a role, often behind the scenes. \u00a0The 1989 Taif Peace Agreement which led to the end of the Lebanese civil war was largely guaranteed by Syria and was followed by more formal treaties between the two states on such issues as commerce and education. The post-1989 relationship was seen as asymmetrical, favouring Syria \u2014 a widely held view in Lebanon. \u00a0Attitudes toward Syria have become a line of division within Lebanese politics, symbolized by the names of the political alliances: 14 March Alliance (named for the date of anti-Syrian street protests in 2005 that prompted Syria\u2019s military withdrawal) and the 8 March Alliance (named after pro-Syrian demonstrations, also in March 2005).<\/p>\n

Lebanon has been commonly called \u201cthe Switzerland of the Middle East\u201d \u2014 not only because of its international banking system but especially for the way regional and religious interests are carefully balanced in the government and parliament. \u00a0This system of government has been called \u201cconsociationalism\u201d by the leading scholar of the term, Arend Lijphant who has analysed the Netherlands, Switzerland and Lebanon.(2) \u00a0Consociationism is basically a system of government that allocates power between religious or ethnic communities with power-sharing between community leaders often in a \u201cgrand coalition\u201d, with regional autonomy and a spirit of compromise so that no group is felt overly \u201cshut out\u201d from decision making. \u00a0However the basic difference between Switzerland and Lebanon is that political factions in Switzerland do not shoot at each other.<\/p>\n

The constitutional divisions of Lebanon are complex and frozen so that they end up being based in part of myths \u2014 such as the division of the population in two equal halves: Christian and Muslim. There is also an over-representation of rural districts as many people left the rural areas for the Beirut area or for work in the Arab Gulf states. \u00a0To make things more complicated, there are 18 recognized confessional groups: 4 Muslim; 13 Christian and a small but recognized Jewish community. Plus there are people who consider themselves as \u201cnone of the above\u201d but you have to choose to be only in recognized communities.<\/p>\n

The first group to upset this delicate balance was the Palestinian refugees who arrived after the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israel wars and Palestinian leadership which was expelled from Jordan in 1970 \u2014 today some 450,000 people. \u00a0The Palestinians do not have Lebanese citizenship and are barred from owning property or from entering certain employment such as medicine, law and engineering. \u00a0The Palestinians are divided among themselves \u2014 PLO groups, pro-Syrian factions, and Islamist militant groups. \u00a0They are kept out of formal Lebanese politics but are nevertheless there.<\/p>\n

New flows of refugees from the fighting in Syria may aggravate the Lebanese balance. \u00a0There are Palestinians who have been living in Syria and no longer feel safe as well as Syrians with ties to communities also found in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Ideally, Lebanon\u2019s people need to find ways to empower themselves to move forward so that reforms deemed necessary are implemented, so that building national consensus and reconciliation are pursued as priorities, and so that policies are adopted that allow their state to survive and manage in its perilous environment.<\/p>\n

Is there a Lebanese civil society and can it play a role in the reconciliation and reform efforts? \u00a0 Marie-Noelle AbiYaghi in her chapter on Civil mobilisation and peace in Lebanon writes \u201c Lebanon\u2019s civil society is often seen as a collection of communal groups each with its own associations and structures of mobilisation. \u00a0However, since the final years of the civil war, Lebanese society has also mobilised through trans-sectarian associations devoted to peacebuilding, social reconstruction and welfare, and to ecology and human and political rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

There would be three sources for trans-confessional civil society efforts: youth, women, and business \u2014 the three sectors largely left out of the political structure. \u00a0However, the sectarian ruling elites have been able to divide, co-opt and manipulate civil associations in order to preserve and advance the interests of the elites. \u00a0The elites \u2014 often the same families from one generation to the next \u2014 have hijacked NGOs and trade unions, infiltrating them and weakening them from the inside. \u00a0As AbiYoghi concludes \u201cNeither the Lebanese state nor civil society provides an area in which citizens can claim their rights or hold sectarian leaders to account. \u00a0At a time when sectarian ties define citizens\u2019 participation in politics, civil society activists have learned that sectarian leaders will only support or represent agendas that do not challenge their hegemony or that contribute to consolidating their patronage networks. \u00a0In this highly fragmented context, most civil associations do not act as means for civil interaction, but rather are used as tools to reinforce the clientist and sectarian status quo.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is likely that refugees from Syria will only increase the sectarian leadership though there may be changes in some power relations. Hezbollah has strong links to Syria and Iran and its relative strength could change were the government in Syria to change radically.<\/p>\n

The Accord study ends with a useful bibliography and a list of key websites for those who want to continue being active on this important situation.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

NOTES:
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

1) For a lively account of the break up of the Ottoman Empire and the start of the mandate system, see Robert Fisk The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East \u00a0(London: Harper Perennial, 2006, 1368pp.)<\/p>\n

2) See Arend Lijphart. Democracies in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven, CT: Yale \u00a0University Press, 1977) as well as other works by the same author.<\/p>\n

______________________<\/em><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 Wadlow, a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and of its Task Force on the Middle East, is president and U.N. representative (Geneva) of the Association of\u00a0World\u00a0Citizens. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the growing intensity of the conflicts in Syria, with the flows of refugees and increased foreign participation, the dangers of serious, negative impact on neighbouring countries is real. This impact is already being felt in Lebanon which has its own multi-level divisions and scars from its own long civil war (1975-1990).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}