Jumblatt Meets ‘Aoun — in Qatar

Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has met with Maronite figure General Michel ‘Aoun — in the Lebanese Embassy in Qatar. This comes amid speculation that Jumblatt is also planning to visit Damascus as part of his increasing distancing of himself from the March 14 Movement.

It is still the case that Lebanese factions whose power bases are in the same mountains often only talk to each other outside the country. Five years after the Cedar Revolution, one might wish for more, but wishing doesn't deliver much in Lebanon, I fear.

Lebanon: At Least, a Maronite-Maronite Rapprochement

All the talk of moving beyond political sectarianism in Lebanon notwithstanding, there has at least been some progress towards reconciliation: Maronites are talking to Maronites.

General Michel ‘Aoun, who having been driven into 15 years of exile from Lebanon under severe military attack by Syria and its Hizbullah allies in 1990 is now, of course, in the logic of Lebanese politics, an ally of Syria and Hizbullah, after years of alienation from many of his own Maronite brethren (especially the very conservative church hierarchy) has met with the Maronite Council of bishops. That's him with Cardinal Sfeir at left.

It is hard for me to understand why people have trouble understanding Lebanon. Lewis Carroll had it figured out a long time ago (and I think I've used this before, but forgive the repetition):

They were, indeed, a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank—the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them, and all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable . . .

What IS a Caucus-race? said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that SOMEBODY ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.

Why, said the Dodo, the best way to explain it is to do it. (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (the exact shape doesn't matter, it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no One, two, three, and away, but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out The race is over! and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, But who has won?

This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes.

On the Eve of the Lebanon Elections

We are always wishing for more democracy in the Middle East. One country that generally has a bit more democracy than it can consume locally is Lebanon, where the individual parties are often seen as stalking horses or surrogates for neighboring states (Syria, Iran, sometimes Israel), Western powers (France, the US) and for their own confessional, ethnic or other communities. As I've said before, too, trying to understand Lebanon in Western terms doesn't work very well: understanding why Michel Aoun and Hizbullah are allied pretty much defies analysis in Western terms, but makes sense in Lebanese ones, at least for now (until next time).

We're only five days out from the Lebanese elections, coming up this coming Sunday.

The always helpful Lebanon watcher who blogs as Qifa Nabki has a well done "The Good, the Bad and the Likely" post which seems to be a good summary of possible outcomes. For those not up on the codewords, "March 8" is the present "opposition" (Aoun, Hizbullah, their allies) and "March 14" is the present government (the Hariri folks, the anti-Syrian Maronites, Walid Jumblatt's Druze). Of course it's not as simple as that but that will have to do for now.

He also points to a piece in The National that discusses what happens when General Aoun's good upper-class Christian Free Patriotic Movement bused in some pro-Hizbullah Shi‘ites from the southern suburb (the Dahiya) to a rally and the latter got a little too rambunctiously sectarian in their chants.

And also: this useful cheat-sheet for keeping track of the returns, if you're that wonkish about Lebanon.

Meanwhile, in the silly season department, apparently the Aoun folks are claiming that Parliamentary candidate Nayla Tueni has changed her religion and thus shouldn't be running for a seat reserved for the Orthodox. Now Nayla Tueni is the twenty-something daughter of Gebran Tueni, who was assassinated in 2005. She is a journalist and Deputy Manager of the influential Lebanese daily Al-Nahar, founded by her great-grandfather Gebran Tueni, run for decades by her powerful grandfather Ghassan Tueni, steered by her late father Gebran Tueni until his assassination, and still the family paper. She's a candidate for the family Parliamentary seat as well, for the Orthodox seat in the Christian Achrafiyeh district.

It isn't clear from the story (from Al-Nahar) what religion Aoun is claiming she converted to, but elsewhere (an Aoun site) we learn that she's supposed to have converted to Islam which she says is because she once listed herself as a Muslim to apply for a Saudi visa. Not very good judgment, perhaps, but hardly solid evidence. Aoun has previously argued that she is too young and too inexperienced to be allowed to run. The point is that her name is Tueni, and that makes her a real threat.

I bring the Tueni issue up not to encourage such accusations but to show how personal, and how hereditary, some of these political rivalries are.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Americans should not automatically treat a March 8 victory — if there is one — as a Hizbullah victory per se. The first link above to Qifa Nabki is a good sanity check as well. Lebanon is nowhere near as simple as Westerners sometimes try to see it. Relax, everybody. It is hardly a perfect democracy (the fact that we have been talking about "the Orthodox seat" in Achrafiyeh should be evidence of that), but it is competitive, and the votes will matter. And no one is going to win by 98.6%.

That's refreshing in itself.

For your weekend reading

If you've been reading for a while you know the drill: on Friday afternoons I sign off for the weekend with a number of links for your weekend edification, enjoyment, or you can just spend time with your families like I plan to. For what it's worth:

• A sentence that has probably never before appeared in the entire history of the English language: "Reactions to Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Israel were surprisingly similar to reactions to the concert by the British pop band Depeche Mode earlier this week." Writers are always struggling to find the right lead sentence. I consider that one a reach.
  

• I haven't yet seen much Western coverage of this, but apparently "a team of specialized American sailors" (sounds like SEALS) from the cruiser Gettysburg, with support from a South Korean naval vessel, rescued an Egyptian merchant vessel in the Gulf of Aden and captured the pirates. And the buried lede: Iran will be sending two warships to join the international flotilla. Here's the CNN version.
  

• An interesting post at Qifa Nabki on rival Druze leaders' use of YouTube and camera phone video to wage an ancient feud (and the Arslans and Jumblatts have been feuding for a very long time). A contribution to the growing literature of carrying on old conflicts in the era of Web 2.0. And the photoshopped (I presume) graphic "DruzeTube: Broadcast Your Za‘im" struck me as brilliant, if you have an appreciation of Lebanese politics and/or Lebanese humor.
  

• While we're on the subject of the Lebanese election campaign, there's a brouhaha brewing among the Maronites over the campaign platform of General Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement, the manifesto of which is called "Towards the Third Republic" (.pdf in Arabic). The basic idea is that the Lebanese "First Republic" was the post-indendence republic based on the National Pact, which was unstable, led to the conflict of 1958 and the civil war of 1975-91, while the "Second Republic" was the reconfigured system set up by the Ta'if accords and in place from 1990-91 onward. The Free Patriotic Mofvement is pushing for a stronger, more stable system. It's a neat catchphrase, and as some others have noted, may be influenced by the longevity of the Third French Republic. Lebanese (and Maronites in particular) tend to think in French terms, and for that matter does anybody else count the number of republics? The French are on their fifth, after all. But Aoun is anathema to some of his onetime allies, and supporters of the March 14 Movement (the pro-Hariri side) are saying that the slogan itself is a dangerous thing, a type of "coup d'etat that threatens state institutions including the presidency, the judiciary, media and the Constitution" Former President Amin Gemayel has also used the "coup d'etat" image. Its probably a tempest in a teapot, but it's raised hackles in the Maronite community. And it's just an electoral slogan.