Dissecting the problem

[Originally posted at NOW]

Regional crises revive ideas of communal segregation in Lebanon.

Graffiti in Beirut reading "Yes to federalism" is altered to read "Yes to secularism" (NOW/Alex Rowell)

As the mangled remains of the 22nd car to have exploded in Lebanon since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis lay smoldering in a mixed Sunni-Shiite Beirut neighborhood last Tuesday, one young male bystander told a television reporter he only had one thing to say. “It’s either them or us. We can’t live together.”

It was a statement of an exasperation felt by many Lebanese – an exasperation that is increasingly leading some to conclude that the country’s decades-old brand of sectarian coexistence has failed, and should be replaced with something that formalizes or to some extent reinforces segregation along communal lines. Adding momentum to these currents is the spectacle of raging Sunni-Shiite warfare elsewhere in the region, particularly in Syria and Iraq, where Islamist extremists have literally demolished the post-WWI border and declared the formation of a theocratic state. At the same time, Kurdish separatists have seized the city long coveted as the capital of their future state and insisted they won’t give it back. Surveying these “great changes and historical turns,” Lebanese Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt wrote last Monday of the need to “preserve General Gouraud’s Lebanon before it is too late.” (Gouraud was the French High Commissioner who in 1920 decreed the creation of Lebanon within its current borders.)

While few Lebanese seriously advocate the abolition of “General Gouraud’s Lebanon,” there is rising interest in ideas ranging from decentralization to regionalism to federalism. Significantly, enthusiasm no longer comes exclusively from the Christian community – a segment of which has advocated such measures since the 1975-90 civil war – but from a minority of Muslims as well.

At the extreme end are the militant Sunni factions calling openly for an Islamist statelet in the north. On Sunday, June 22, 2014, supporters of Salafist cleric Sheikh Salem al-Rafei in Tripoli held a demonstration during which they chanted, “We want an Islamic state.” Asked by NOW about the slogan, Rafei initially denied that it was intended to be taken literally, but later said he “believed in the Muslim khilafa [caliphate] regime […] this is the ideology I follow.” While he said the concept was “not applicable” in Lebanon, due to its religious diversity, he predicted “the struggle between Sunnis and Shiites will lead to the segmentation of Lebanon, just like Iraq and Syria will be divided into provinces […] The first [part of Lebanon] would be for those who want wilayat al-faqih (Iranian state ideology nominally advocated by Hezbollah) and the second for those who want a just state that assures equality for all its citizens – Sunnis, Druze, Christians, and independent Shiites.”

Rafei’s is a view firmly rejected by mainstream Sunni political factions, who officially oppose any such “segmentation” even in its mildest forms. “Federalism is an illusion,” said MP Ahmat Fatfat of the Future Movement. “Lebanon is a small country. The only solution is the state,” he told NOW.

Yet a minority within the Sunni community disagrees. “I am definitely a supporter of federalism,” said Nabil al-Halabi, a Sunni human rights lawyer, who told NOW the same fear of domination that previously drove Christians toward the idea was now duplicating itself among Sunnis, whose vulnerability “became more apparent” after the violent takeover by Hezbollah-affiliated militiamen of predominantly Sunni neighborhoods of Beirut in 2008. “Federalism will forbid any community from governing other communities.”

Nor is Halabi alone, according to Jean-Pierre Katrib, former spokesman of the now-defunct federalism advocacy group Loubnanouna (“Our Lebanon”).

“This is no longer a function of the Christian community alone,” Katrib told NOW. “You come across people from the Shiite community who are not hostile to the notion of federalism as they once were. You come across very senior Sunni figures – for reasons of confidentiality I cannot disclose their names, but I can tell you these are high-ranking, well-known Sunni figures, enjoying wide popularity – who welcome the idea. I’m saying this because I have met with these people at their request.” [Disclosure: Katrib is an employee of Quantum Communications, a sister company of NOW’s.]

Does it work?

To be sure, federalists remain a minority nationwide, and certainly have many detractors. Among the criticisms of federalism is that it simply does not solve the system’s core problems, and may even aggravate them.

“I don’t think it could work in Lebanon,” said Nadim Shehadi, associate fellow at Chatham House and former director of the Centre for Lebanese Studies at Oxford University. Shehadi points to the final years of the civil war, when the Christians in fact did control their own de facto canton in Mount Lebanon, yet partook in some of the worst violence of the entire 15 years – among themselves. “Controlling your own canton doesn’t necessarily mean homogeneity,” Shehadi told NOW. “So it doesn’t solve much.”

To this, advocates counter that federalism is less about cantonization than tackling inefficiency and promoting regional economic development.

“It’s not about separation or creating a shield for the Christians, because we don’t believe you can have Monaco in Jounieh and Kandahar in Tripoli,” said Albert Costanian, political bureau member of the Kataeb Party, who prefers the term “regionalism” to federalism. By electing regional representatives locally, rather than having them appointed by the central government, and giving those representatives fiscal and executive autonomy, Costanian told NOW that much of the chronic corruption of the central government could be avoided, while regions could pursue their own economic development programs without depending financially and administratively on Beirut.

Federalism or secularism?

Another common criticism of federalism is the argument that, by granting the premise that identity is fundamentally defined by sect, it perpetuates the same communal divisions that fuel the dysfunction and violence for which it purports to be the solution. As the slogan “Yes to federalism” has been spray-painted by graffiti activists across Beirut’s walls in recent months, it has elicited a counter-campaign by opponents, altering the text to “Yes to secularism.”

This dichotomy, according to Costanian, is a false one, akin to “comparing apples and oranges.” Indeed, he argues regionalism will “accompany the people’s march toward secularism” by abolishing sectarian quotas within regional governorates and allowing for regional legislation in favor of things like civil marriage. “Hopefully we will reach a totally secular system in a few years,” he told NOW.

By contrast, in Shehadi’s view, the two concepts cannot be married so easily. “When you have people of different identities on the same land, you have a choice between breaking down the boundaries or reinforcing them,” he told NOW. He cited the example of 19th-century cosmopolitan cities such as Smyrna, where for all the inter-communal mingling in marketplaces and public squares, each ethnic and religious group lived in segregated quarters, to which they would retreat and “lock the gates” at night.

“Of course,” says Shehadi, “in times of crisis, when people feel threatened, they become more sectarian and they want more extreme sectarian solutions.”

“But the bottom line question is, do you protect boundaries, or break them down totally?”

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

When resistances collide

[Originally posted at NOW]

While reports last week of Hamas members in Lebanon being ordered by Hezbollah security officials to leave the country have since proven false, they have nonetheless revived questions about the state of relations between the Palestinian Sunni Islamist militia-cum-party and its Lebanese Shiite Islamist counterpart.

Having both firmly sided with opposing camps in the Syrian conflict raging next door, the two nominal allies appear to be straining to preserve what they can of a relationship increasingly challenged by political and sectarian differences.

The official line was summed up by former Hezbollah MP Hassan Hoballah, who said Friday that, “What brings us together, in terms of our hostility towards the Zionist entity, is greater than a dispute over the […] situation in Syria.” This was echoed by Hamas’ spokesperson in Lebanon, Ali Baraka, in a phone call to NOW.

However, Baraka also admitted to NOW that, “Of course, relations are not like they were in previous years.” Moreover, he explicitly condemned Hezbollah’s now-publicly acknowledged military intervention in Syria on behalf of the Assad regime, saying, “We are against [it], just as we are against any foreign intervention in the Syrian conflict.”

That includes intervention by Hamas, Baraka added, responding to allegations that the group is training and even fighting alongside the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Damascus and Aleppo. While no hard evidence has surfaced to support the accusations, they appear to be believed by some Hezbollah fighters themselves. Upon returning from the recent battle for Qusayr in Homs province, one such militant told a newspaper, “There’s a kind of irritating familiarity [in the rebels’ tactics]. Hezbollah taught Hamas all those tactics to fight the Israelis. Hamas apparently decided to transfer their experience to takfiri groups [Hezbollah parlance for the FSA].”

Whether true or not, there are certainly other indications of a deepening divorce between Hamas and its fellow members of the so-called ‘Resistance Axis’ – Hezbollah, and the Syrian and Iranian regimes. The London Telegraph reported last Friday that Iran has almost entirely ceased its financial support to Hamas – said to total some £15m ($23m USD) per month – as well as all military cooperation, in retaliation for the latter’s opposition to the Assad regime. (A subsequent article denying this was in turn denied by Hamas’ official website, a website which, significantly, describes the Syrian uprising as a “revolution” and has issued condemnations of regime “massacres” of Palestinian refugees.)

Such developments follow the broader pattern that has emerged since the Syrian uprising began. One month after Hamas’ politburo chairman Khaled Mashaal quietly left his Damascus headquarters in January 2012, the group’s Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah “saluted” the Syrian opposition in a Cairo speech. Mashaal has since based himself in Qatar, whose Emir Hamad al-Thani later paid a visit to Gaza in what was widely interpreted as a message that the Gulf state would henceforth be Hamas’s primary patron.

This new bond with Qatar – which is also among the most forthright sponsors of the Syrian opposition – is likely one reason why Hamas’ relations with the ‘Resistance Axis’ continue to deterioriate, according to Dr. Yezid Sayigh, senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center and former negotiator with Palestinian delegations in peace talks with Israel in the 1990s.

“Clearly Qatar has pledged lots of assistance [to Hamas],” Sayigh told NOW. “It’s possible that there’s been some sort of quid pro quo.”

However, Sayigh said equally significant are domestic pressures on the group in Gaza from friends and rivals alike, most of whom have welcomed the Syrian uprising.

“Having supported the Arab Spring in other countries, especially Egypt, I guess [Hamas] just found it awkward to be supporting the Assad regime, [especially] given that they’re trying to meet challenges in Gaza from people like the Salafists who are more openly supportive of the rebels in Syria.”

Ultimately, beyond Syria, perhaps the larger question is what will become of the ‘Resistance Axis’ now that it appears to have fragmented along political and sectarian lines.

“It’s certainly been weakened,” said Sayigh. “And it’ll be weakened further if the perception grows that this is basically a Shiite axis, or Shiite crescent, connecting the Shiites of Lebanon, Iraq and Iran with the Alawite regime in Syria. If Hamas is the odd one out, that would be very uncomfortable, because they really can’t afford anything that would undermine their [alliances,] with Egypt in particular, but also with the Saudis, who are [still] upset about their takeover of Gaza in 2007. I guess they just don’t have the choice of staying in the Axis of Resistance when almost everyone else sees that in a sectarian way.”

Or, as Dr. Nadim Shehadi, associate fellow at Chatham House, put it to NOW more bluntly:

“Without Hamas, the Axis of Resistance is reduced to a mere sectarian alliance.”

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

A repeat of history at Nahr al-Bared?

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon. Co-written with Nadine Elali and Matt Nash]

In another of what is becoming a series of outbreaks of instability to afflict Lebanon in recent months, three Palestinians were killed and several others wounded between Friday and Monday in clashes with the Lebanese army in refugee camps across the country. While Interior Minister Marwan Charbel was quick to describe the events as a “coincidence […] not planned,” suspicions to the contrary have been fuelled by the particular location of the first killing – the northern Nahr al-Bared camp, site of the months-long battle between the army and the Islamist Fatah al-Islam outfit in 2007 – as well as the timing, less than two weeks since deadly gunfights in nearby Tripoli.

Accounts of what exactly triggered the violence on Monday vary. Arkan Bader, a Nahr al-Bared resident and leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) in the camp, told NOW Lebanon that some youths were attempting to bury Ahmad Qassim, the young man killed on Friday, on a plot of land belonging to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) but under the control of the Lebanese army. The army’s refusal to allow them to enter the land led to a confrontation, which ultimately ended with two dead and some 20 wounded. While an army statement claimed that soldiers initially used tear gas and rubber bullets against refugees armed with Molotov cocktails, Bader and other camp residents claim the army immediately fired live bullets and that the youths were merely throwing stones.

“This could have been dealt with by other means,” said Hassan Shishniyeh, press spokesman for the Palestinian Embassy in Lebanon. “There are other forms of weapons than live bullets which can be used in civil disobedience cases. Everybody knows that Nahr al-Bared is devoid of arms. We ask the Lebanese army not to use excessive force against Palestinian civilians.”

Several people interviewed by NOW expressed the view that the violence was in some way deliberately engineered, as many perceived the 2007 conflict to be. Riad Kahwaji, founder of the INEGMA think tank, placed the blame on pro-Syrian factions within the camp. “It’s most likely that those who confronted the army were elements loyal to the Syrian regime, such as Fatah al-Intifada and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). According to my sources, the Lebanese army has been watching these groups closely, especially in light of what’s happening in Syria, and fears they may be used to stir up problems as a means of diverting attention from next door. I think this is more or less what we’re seeing right now in the camps,” he said.

“No one enters the camps without the knowledge of the Palestinian factions, including the pro-Syrian ones,” he added. “So if there are ‘infiltrators’—as the government claims—who let them in? Experience shows that Islamist elements in the camps are linked to the Syrian regime.”

For his part, Shishniyeh said that in Nahr al-Bared, “There are some who are trying to drag the camps into a position we don’t want to be in; who are trying to incite the army into a confrontation,” although he did not name any particular group. He did, however, make a point of observing that the army behaved more responsibly in Saida’s Ain al-Hilweh camp, where protests went on Monday in response to the Nahr al-Bared events, than it did in the north. “In Ain al-Hilweh, the army was wise in the way it dealt with protests. It retreated to lessen the anger of the people and only returned when things were calmer.”

Nadim Shehade, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at London’s Chatham House, argues that either way, the events have been politically exploited. “The event and timing are weird. If the incident is purposefully done, then it is to blow up the situation in the north. But it could also not be purposefully done; it could have happened and then some people took advantage of it to increase the agitation. It is not necessary that there be a conspiracy, but when it happens it might be to some groups’ interests to increase the tension.”

He adds, however, that such an incident was inevitable, given prevailing conditions in the camps. Nahr al-Bared is the only Palestinian camp in Lebanon where entrance and exit are controlled by the Lebanese army; a situation Shehade describes as “unsustainable.” “The whole issue of the Nahr al-Bared camp has been put on the back burner for a long time. There are certainly underlying factors and tensions behind this outburst. Things are extremely bad for the refugees, and there’s a feeling among them that the government is doing nothing about it. There’s no interaction with the refugees themselves; the only interaction is with the factions. And if you ask the people there, they say the factions don’t represent them, and indeed only add to their problems. There is no proper interlocutor between the people and the Lebanese government,” he said.

“Moreover, the state handles Palestinian refugees purely as a security matter [rather than a humanitarian one]. There was a time when they were treated in a more comprehensive manner.”

Shishniyeh agrees, describing the “humiliated” feeling of many residents of Nahr al-Bared. “There are four kinds of passes they have to show at checkpoints in and out of the camp, there are delays in reconstruction, and many of them are still prevented from returning to their homes. There’s a great deal of resentment among them toward the military cordon [enforced by the Lebanese army]. We ask the Lebanese army to end this military state that the civilians are subjected to on a daily basis. Easing these policies will ultimately lead to a more positive mood that will alleviate the current tensions.”