Walid Jumblatt's Latest Flip

Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt almost personally embodies the complexities and contradictions often present in Lebanese politics. Though a hereditary leader of the Druze, the party he inherited from his father is a leftist one. Though he is a member of the Socialist International, on his last visit to Washington he met with Dick Cheney and appeared at several neoconservative think-tanks. Though his father Kamal was most likely assassinated by the Syrians, he supported Syria for many years, later turning against it and allying with the Hariri-led March 14 Movement. Clear enough?

Well, he seems to be doing it again. He has told his party that his neocon adventures in Washington were a mistake and he has split with March 14, saying he will support President Michel Suleiman politically. The Daily Star reports it here and tries to explain it here. On the lighter side, the always entertaining and informed blogger Qifa Nabki imagines a phone conversation between Sa‘d Hariri and Jumblatt.

Jumblatt is defending his latest flip (or flop) on the grounds that the is "an exceptional and independent case." He is certainly that.

But the flip-flops of Jumblatt's career are part of what I've tried to argue in some of my earlier discussions of Lebanon: Jumblatt's priorities are not defined purely by a zero-sum pro-Syrian versus pro-American view of the world: he is pro-Druze and pro-Jumblatt. As leader of a distinct community in Lebanon, even his party's ideology may be less important than his role as leader of the Druze. Certainly his calculations this time may have been somewhat cynical — things have been drifting since the election; the economy is suffering; and Syria may be making a comeback of sorts. But it's a reminder that in Lebanon, sometimes you can't tell the players even with a scorecard, because the sides keep changing.