Lebanon

Peace for a while
May 22nd 2008 | CAIRO
From The Economist print edition

An agreement stops the fighting but has by no means settled things for good


AFTER an eruption of violence earlier this month that left at least 81 people dead, the leaders of Lebanon's factions have pulled back from the brink of what had looked ominously like a reprise of the country's civil war of 1975-90. The deal reached on May 21st, after five days of haggling in the Gulf emirate of Qatar, seems to have ended an epic 18-month squabble that had left Lebanon politically paralysed and without a head of state.

“Today we have no victor, no vanquished, but one winner, which is Lebanon,” declared Marwan Hamadeh, a cabinet minister loyal to the pro-Western majority coalition in parliament known as “March 14th”, which embraces the dominant Sunni and Druze parties as well as liberals and right-wing Christians. Yet most of the gains in Qatar's talks seem to have been won by the opposition, an alliance led by Hizbullah, the Shia party-cum-militia, but also including a powerful Christian party and pro-Syrian leftists. This reflects changed realities on the ground, following the swift but brief takeover on May 9th of loyalist districts in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, by opposition gunmen.

The deal has four main points: parliament must quickly convene to elect as president General Michel Suleiman, chief of staff of Lebanon's army; a national unity cabinet must be formed; agreed new rules for a general election next year must be enforced; and incendiary propaganda must cease. An opposition sit-in in central Beirut must also end, and all sides must forsake armed force.

Agreement on General Suleiman for president was reached long ago, but parliament's Hizbullah-allied speaker, Nabih Berri, had refused to convene the body to elect him unless other opposition demands were met. First of these was granting the opposition an effective veto over policy with a so-called “blocking third” of cabinet seats. That demand reflected feelings among Hizbullah supporters that, after the Shia militia's self-proclaimed “divine victory” over Israel in a 33-day war in the summer of 2006, the pro-Western government could not be trusted to protect Hizbullah's guerrillas from UN Security Council orders that they be disarmed.

The opposition had backed up this demand by withdrawing six Shia ministers from the cabinet in November 2006, so, in its eyes, rendering the government illegitimate for failing to represent all Lebanon's main sects, as required by law.

March 14th had rejected the demand, suspecting the opposition would use a cabinet veto to bring down the government or to block approval of the UN tribunal which is to adjudicate over a series of assassinations, mostly of March 14th people, including a five-times prime minister, Rafik Hariri, that loyalists blame on Syria. Yet in Qatar, March 14th's leaders agreed to the formation of a 30-strong cabinet in which the opposition would get its blocking third of seats, while the new president would name another three.

Passage of a new electoral law was the opposition's other main demand. The rules under which March 14th gained 72 seats in the 128-strong parliament in the 2005 elections, which had followed a spring uprising that forced neighbouring Syria to withdraw its “peacekeeping” troops, were widely recognised as unfair. It was under Syrian tutelage that the law had been fixed, creating broad electoral districts that tended to box Christians, who are allotted half of parliamentary seats, inside majority-Muslim areas.

Everyone seems to agree that the Christians, perhaps 35% of Lebanon's population of 4m, should get half the seats, perhaps because altering this ratio, fixed in the Saudi town of Taif in 1989, after 15 years of war, would stir even worse trouble; before, the ratio was 6:5 in the Christians' favour. But the lingering problem is the Christians' complaint that “their” MPs are elected not by them but by Muslims.

The Qatar deal provides for a return to an older electoral law that divides the country into smaller districts. After last-minute bargaining, a compromise was reached to split Beirut, whose 19 seats were swept in 2005 by March 14th in a low turnout that reflected Christian ire at having their vote diluted, into three districts. The new rules will make it harder for the ruling coalition to retain a strong majority, and should benefit Hizbullah's Christian allies.

Before heading to Qatar, loyalist politicians had insisted that Hizbullah's weapons should be on the agenda. This was not only because the Shia group had so blatantly, and, for March 14th's Sunni constituency, humiliatingly, betrayed its own commitment never to use its guns in internal politics. It was also because the unique exception granted to Hizbullah to bear arms, under terms reached at the close of the civil war, has helped turn Lebanon into a zone of struggle between far bigger regional powers, such as Iran, Syria, Israel and America. Yet, perhaps because the issue is so sensitive, loyalist politicians let themselves be placated by a vague promise that the issue would be looked into by Lebanon's new president.

So the pro-Western March 14th alliance appears to have beaten a diplomatic retreat that, while helping Hizbullah to consecrate its armed presence, is likely to spare Lebanon more immediate trouble. Yet the real losers may not be the loyalist camp, which could, conceivably, win another election, but rather its foreign sponsors, especially the United States and Saudi Arabia, which had pushed hard for Hizbullah to be cornered. Another loser is the Lebanese people, whose relief is tempered by disgust with their feuding political bosses, as well as despair at losing another chance for real reforms, such as a long-proposed electoral law designed to curtail, rather than reinforce, sectarian rivalry.