"To create a country is one thing; to create a nationality is another." Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions
They came in flashing uniforms, rifles neatly slung on shoulder. Fresh from France and backed by an international agreement of the Great Powers, sent to maintain, and then impose, a peace on warring factions of Maronite Christians, with ties to France and the West, and Druze irregulars backed by a foreign power. After 40 years of sectarian conflict, the peace of the world is threatened, and an a comission sits that will determine how to parition the embattled area. This happens even as Islamic capitals seethed, and the ruler of Syria plotted to use the Biqa valley as leverage in the game to control a swath of land that conquers from the south had used to march north, powers from the Mediterranean had used to reach into the Fertile Crescent and factions of Arab tribes as a spring board to drive for the prize of Damascaus, or to reach out from that ancient capital to power in the Levant.
More after the jump
cross reference post here. [1]
A situation from the present? Or perhaps from 1982 when French and American forces went to quell rising violence in Beirut? Or perhaps 1958 when the first Lebanese civil war reached the point of bring Western intervention upon them? None of the above; the year is 1860, and the powers meeting are not the United Nations, the Security Council, or even the League of Nations, but the first international organization: the "Congress of Europe", a core of the great powers which had been established in the wake of Europe's two global conflicts of the late18th and early 19th century: the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic Wars.
The problems facing Lebanon have their roots in the transition from the world of aristocratic and feudal warfare, to the trading system of the 19th century. The same geographic and economic pressuress prevail: the partions of 19th century Lebanon, then divided between three districts: Mt. Lebanon, Acre and Biqa - almost exactly mirror the truce lines at the end of the Second Lebanese Civil War. Even though the alliances have changed, the story remains familiar.
As I write this the UN is demanding a new investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, asserting that the pro-Syrian government of Lebanon and Syria have bungled, at best, and manipulated, at worst, the results of the inquiry. The nature of national security is that embarassment is often worse than outright compromise: thus it is entirely possible that what is being hidden is not complicity, but imcompetence.
The assassination on February 14th 2005 rocked more than the buildings of Beirut, and killed more than a man: it threatens to push the nation back into intracine conflict, and destroy the fragile progress made since the Second Lebanese Civil War - or one might as easily say the Fourth Lebanese Sectarian War - and wrench the country into pieces.
The UN's involvement, beginning particularly with Resolution 425 which created a peacekeeping force for Lebanon stands, then, at the end of almost two centuries of conflict over the political dispositionover the area. The Resolution, passed on March 19th 1978, demanded strict respect for the territorial integrity of Lebanon, demanded that Israel "cease its military action against Lebanese territorial integrity" and created a United Nations Interim Force for Southern Lebanon, recognizing that the government was incapable of defending or policing the territory. By many accounts, the Second Lebanese Civil War had alredy begun.
In the present, the question of how to procede in Lebanon gathers into three bodies of opinion. One very active segment argues that the invasion of Iraq by the US lead coalition creates a unique moment of Democracy in Lebanon, and that evicting the Syrians will come as the result of a "Cedar Revolution" based on anti-Syrian sentiment. A second is more quiet, but more prevalant, thinking that the problems in Lebanon are not worth attention or political intervention, and constitute meddling in the internal affairs of a state. The third position is that Lebanon totters on the brink of renewed violence, and that swift action is required to prevent the fragile bonds of nationality from unravelling.
The unilateralists point to the long train of UN resolutions, beginning with 425, and argue that clearly the international organization cannot be the fulcrum for lasting peace in the region. They also point to the close ties between the current government of Lebanon, which argues that Syrian forces are "friendly" and that they should not be asked to leave. They also point to a massive anti-Syrian demonstration in Beirut, and argue that the "fall o fthe Beirut Wall" is in progress, aided by the policies of a Republican President unafraid to aggressively interpret UN mandate. They argue that Assad of Syria must comply, and that he has been dragging his feet in implementing UN Resolution 1559 -passed 9-0-6 on September 2nd, 2004 - which expressly called for Syrian withdrawl.
However, widely held, these positions over look both deep history of the area, and more recent events, as well as resting on a misreading of events in the Second Lebanese Civil War. To understand the conflict, it is necessary to go back to the 19th century, and work forward through successive conflicts. Only then does it becoem appearant that the driving problem in Lebanon's history is not the sectarian rivalries, but the nature of the geography and economic basis of the area. Lebanon has been a road for conqueres repeatedly in the past, and each would be conquerer realizes the same basic realities: that the coastal area of Lebanon provides several harbors for approach from the Sea, that there is a land route of invasion from the south, and that the Biqa valley and the plateau beyond are a land route in and out of the Fertile Cresecent - but that at the other end of that road sits Damascus, an ancient capital and trading city, which has been a force in Arab and Islamic politics for centuries because of its unique position.
For those seeking an account of the UN's involvement, I must ask for a certain degree of patience: the sectarianization of the geographic conflicts in Lebanon is a story which holds important lessons for the present. Most importantly it shows how the desire to reach into Lebanon has been a recurring feature of geopolitics in the area for centuries, and that the strategy of divide and conquer - or partition and hold - has been tried before, with little success.
The Road From Damascus:
The Rise of the Druze in Lebanon (1160-1711)
The linkage between what is now Lebanon and Damascus can be firmly traced to as far back as 1120, when the Maan family, later to be Emirs of Mt. Lebanon, came to the area on the orders of the governor of Damascus to fight the invading Crusaders. They remained in Lebanon, adopted the Druze religion, and rose to become the Emirs and governors under the Ottoman empire.
The idea that the Ottoman empire was, in the 19th century the "sick man of Europe" has obscured a basic fact of Ottoman organization, the Ottoman turks controlled their homeland tightly, but allowed the external provinces to be more or less autonomous zones with sometimes quite nominal allegience to the Sultan. This allowed the Ottomans to keep their army open for offensive operations rather than occupation: the Turkish Empire was, in many respects, looser than the British Empire that was to follow it. This organization meant, however, that Turkish governors were constantly warring with each other, and plotting against the imperial center. The Ottomans, managed to keep factions balanced at a knife edge, at the cost of having to intervene and depose their own governors.
The story of the idea of an independent Lebanon might be said to become with the most famous member of the Maan clan: Fahkr ad Din II, who in the early 1600's allied with Tuscany against his nominal overlard, the Ottoman sultan, and was driven into exile. His return was aided when a more favorable governor of Damascus came to power. Later he would fight two wars against successive governors of Damascus, defeating the first, but losing to the second. This resulted in his being captured and executed in 1635 by Sultan Murad IV. The Maan family would hold power for another 60 years before being removed by the Sultan. In their place the local families selected a Druze family, the Shihabs, originally from Syria, but long settled in Souther Lebanon.
They became drawn into the long intracine conflict between the Bedouin Qaysi party, the northern Arabian tribes who plied the desert, and the Yamani faction, which represented the Arabs who had settled in and around Damascus in pre-Islamic times. The conflict was much like the Thirty Years War in Europe, with local political considerations over-riding nominal religious and national allegiances. The Yamanis would eventually ally with the Ottomans, in an attempt to maintain control of the area. The found allies among the Druze, Sunni and Christians in the Mount Lebanon district, but were opposed by the Shihab dynasty. The Battle of Ein Darah in 1711 ended the Yamani presence in Mt. Lebanon, and many Yamani Druze would settle in what became known as the Jabal al-Druze, now in Syria.
Fahkr ad Din II and his attempt at creating a polis around Beruit is of a piece with his time period, as is his fall. At the time trade flows along the Mediterranean sea had grown, and created the ability of a single city to become a center of manufacture, trade and fiance. The successful model was a single dominant city, which would be the magnet for talent, with a hinterland large enough to support that city agriculturally, and provide a well disciplined citizen army to defend the polis. It was this model which Florence had used, which Venice had used, and which was duplicated across the trading city states of Germany and Italy. The introduction of religion was used to buttress the identity of the polis.
However, byt 1600 the rise of a new kind of state - an aristocratic and absolutist monarchy was crushing the polis model under it. The Absolutist state's ability to raise large armies, acquire gold from large scale trade, and focus the resources of a large region ona single point made it capable of overwhelming the city state model. The Venetian victory at Taranto is the last stand of the city state against the absolutist one, over the course of the 1500's and 1600's city states would be overrun and turned into vassal states of the larger absolutist states. In falling in 1632, Fahkr was being swept under by the tide of the times. Nationalism would be submerged by a desire for large, powerful, and above all stable, states which could dominate and maintain colonial empirs.
Eris Alights in Lebanon
Bashir II and the Sectarian Wars of the 19th Century
In 1799 Napolean would march north out of Egypt, avoiding the British fleet, in an effort to secure the entire Levant for France, and thus break the link between India and England, which he thought vital to any victory for his nation against England: ultimately war would be won by blockade of commerce as much as battles on the field. Napolean however did not have the manpower or the backing to prevail, and after suffering terrible casualties, withdrew, ending the Nile campaign. He was destined for other things.
But his intervention upset the delicate political calculus of a man whose name is virtually unknown, but who oversaw, and perhaps one might even say engineered, the creation of sectarian war as an instrument of control of Lebanon. That man is Bashir II of the Shihab clan, which had, by that point, held the emirate of Lebanon for almost a century - princes under the Ottoman Sultan. Bashir himself was born into poverty, and engineered his election to the emirate upon the abdication of the previous emir in 1788. That he was able to do so at the ageof 21 is a testament to his immense political skill, and to his ability to work feudal relationships. Once in power, however, he began to erode those relationships, and attempted to institue reforms. Napolean's invasion came just as he was consoldiating his power, and put him on the horns of a dilemma: Napoleon besieged Acre, to his south, and both the Wali of Acre, and Napolean appealed for aid. Bashir remained carefully neutral, but he realized that his future lay in the Mediterranean, and not Arabic, world.
The Shihabs had originally been Druze, a religion that branched off from Islam centuries before, and whose adherents were found along the main trade route between Beirut and Damascus, particularly in the Biqa valley and a region known as Jubal al-Druze.
At the time Lebanon was part of the Ottoman empire, and Bashir was both an emire, and a wali a governor. The area which is now Lebanon was composed of Acre, the southern area of Lebanon, Mt. Lebanon, the central highlands and Beirut, and the Biqa, which was the valley and plateau. Bashir, though he had risen thtorough fuedal politics and local arrangements, including his families ties to the Druze families, he, himself was a Maronite Christian, and he began shifting his power base from the Druze villages to the Maronite Christian towns that were adopting industry and trade.
This would, over the course of the next two decades, provoke rivalries, including, most importantly, Bashir Jumblatt, who would unify the Druze clans and rise in rebellion against Bashir II. In 1821 Bashir Jumblatt launched his rebellion and forced Bashir II to seek help from the Pasha of Egypt. At first the battle went against Bashir II, but he organized the Maronite Christians into an army, secured the Mount Lebanon district, and in 1825 defeated his rival at the the battle of al Simqaniya. Bashir Jumblatt was executed not long there afterward, and this would begin the ascent of the Maronites.
In 1832, the Pasha of Egypt asked for, and received, aid in his venture to break from the Ottoman Empire. Damascus fell to the combined forces, and at this point Bashir II rules under the suzerainty of Egypt, and not the Ottoman Empire. Bashir disarmed the Druze, and economically isolated them, pouring his attention into developing export of silk and trade between Damascus and the Mediterranean world.
The discontent grew to open rebellion, fed by both Ottoman and British money and support: Bashir II fled, the Ottoman empire reasserted control and Mehmed Hüsrev Pasha, whose sole term as Grand Vizier ran from 1839 to 1841, appointed another Maronite Shihab, who styled himself Bashir III. Bashir III, coming on the heels of a man who had by guile, force and diplomacy had dominated Mt. Lebanon and the Biqa for 52 years, did not last long. In 1841 conflicts between the impoverished Druze and the Maronite Christians exploded: there was a massacre of Christians by the Druze at Deir al Qamar, and the fleeing survivors were slaughtered by Ottoman regulars.
Nations without a Flag:
The Romantic Orient and Oriental Romantic.
The upheavals in Lebanon were part of a larger change in the global situation, at the same time that the Ottoman Empire is plagued by cetrifugal forces in its Arab possessions, the British are putting down the massive Sepoy rebellion in India, and Spain was to have its empire in the New World rebell out from under it. The spirit of nationalism, which had been submerged by the internationalist and aristocratic order for over 200 years, returned to the front, as populations sought to establish their identiy and place in geogrpahy and culture. They did so by emphasizing their writing, language, religious identity, traditional manufactures and art forms.
The Ottomans attempted to create peace by placing the area under the governance of the wali of Damascus, and dividing Mt. Lebanon into a Christian district and a Druze district, but this would merely create geographic powerbases for the warring parties, and it would plunge the region back into civil conflict, which included not only the sectarian warfare, but a Maronite revolt against the Feudal class which ended in 1858 with the overthrow of the old feudal system of taxes and levies. The situation was unstable, the Maronites lived in the large towns, but these were often surrounded by Druze villages living as perioikoi.
In 1860, this would boil back into full scale sectarian war, when the Maronites began openly opposing the power of the Ottoman Empire. The Druze took advantage of this, and began burning Maronite villages. The long siege of Deir al Qamar found a Maronite garrison holding out against Druze forces backed by Turkish soldiers, the area in every direction was despoiled by the besiegers. In July of 1860, with European intervention threatening, the Turkish government tried to quiet the strife, but Napoleon III of France sent 7000 troops to Beirut, and helped impose a partition: the Druze control of the territory was recognized as the fact on the ground, and the Maronites were forced into an enclave, arrangements ratified by the concert of Europe in 1861. They were confined to a mountainous district, cut off from both the Biqa and Beirut, and faced with the prospect of ever growing poverty. Resentments and fears would brood, ones which would resurface in the coming decades.
Lebanon, in hardening economic relationships along sectarian lines was not very much different from the rising tide of religious identity as part of national folk identity. The attempts to partition it into administrative districts resemble similar attempts in other nations, and produced similar results: no line was clean enough to divide people, and the creation of geographic zones hardened conflicts, rather than reduced them.
This may seem like a very long series of digressions, but, in fact, the historical background is essential, and contains essential lessons for the present.
The most powerful of these is the nature of the problem of the region. Lebanon is caught from three sides, and as a cross roads point, is constantly the target of interference from outside. The three poles of intervention reassert themselves along similar patterns over centuries.
The Mediterranean power, whether the Ottoman Empire, France or later the United States, seeks to secure Beirut, because it is a port, but it is sheltered from landward attack by the moutainous region to the East, the holder of Beirut and the mountain region has a central position to control the Biqa valley, and the north south land route fron the south. With this position, it is capable of reaching into the Fertile Crescent.
The opposite is true of the power inland, particularly the one which controls Damascus: it can easily over run the Biqa, which runs north-south parallel to the coast, and can take the northern ports, but its flank is exposed to the central moutain region. To reach and hold the sea, it must ultimately hold Beirut and isolate the "high ground" of the Mount Lebanon district. It wants to drive west and then turn the corner south into the Biqa and farther west the corner that leads along the coast.
The southern land power goes the otherway along this road - it has to drive north, take the southern ports and take Beirut, but it cannot remain there, unless it can turn the corner east and reach Damascus. Whether this power is Egypt, the British in World War II or, in recent times, Israel.
Lebanon sits then in a position which is unstable: the defensible Mount Lebanon district in the center is the military key, but to produce an economically viable state it must also control the surrounding area.
The modern history, in the broader sense is a series of attempts to establish a city-state Lebanon by reaching out from Mount Lebanon into the northern and eastern reaches of the country, and attempts by people's whose home base is in the Biqa valley and plateau to gain backing from Damascus in the attempt to reach Beirut and enclose the mountain heart. This attempt must also ultimately reach for Beirut, because only in this way is the Mountain region completely isolated economically.
The groups holding each of these areas have changed over time, and they have buttressed their geographic and position by either pursuing a policy of tolerance, as Fahkr ad Din II did, by repression as Bashir II did, or by partition, as the Ottomans did after they drove Bashir II out.
The late Ottoman Empire's own diagnosis of its problems was that it was disconnected, loosely administered and technologically backward. The last of these was addressed by building railways and engaging in alliances desgined to create an influx of industry, and by doing so address the first problem. However it is the self-diagnosis of loose governance which would have the most important long term effect: the Ottoman Empire engaged in increasingly repressive means of maintaining power, including massacres of Armenians, arrests without charge, and high taxation. Beirut became a place of stability, and having its fortunes at a low ebb, attracted people fleeing repression and instability in other parts of the empire.
But this stability was bought at a price, namely that of repression and subordination to the Wali of Damascus, as well as increasing intervention from the French. These factors would come together in the process of how the administrative districts would be turned into a country, but not a nation.
Next: The transition from province to nation.