Short Stories, Long Odds

A considerable percentage of my research at University this semester centered around Lebanon. In late March / early April, some colleagues of mine and I prepared a think tank style position paper on how we would go about “fixing Lebanon,” especially focusing on the problems of Hezbollah and Syrian occupation, and human rights abuses. We were surprised by the Cedar Revolution and many of us were convinced Syria wasn’t going to play ball. Syria later surprised us even more by actually withdrawing.

After the jump, you’ll find my position paper and proposed fixes for Lebanon.

Historical
Historically, Lebanon has been rife with problems. These problems contribute to the human rights abuses perpetrated in Lebanon today; more specifically, the structure of life in Lebanon has contributed to the culture in which these human rights abuses occur.

Lebanon has been involved in some sort of military conflict ever since the end of World War II. A cultural center of the Near East before the conflict, the Israeli / Palestinian conflict landed on its doorstep in the form of Palestinian refugees. They came in waves, both after the Arab-Israeli Conflict of 1948, the Arab-Israeli War of 1968, Black September, and numbered more than 300,000 by 1975, under the leadership of Yasser Arafat and the PLO. A civil war broke out between Maronite Christian militias and the Palestinian refugees in 1975, and Syria seized the opportunity to occupy Lebanon by sending 40,000 of its own troops to ensure that Lebanon would not be overrun by Palestinians. The irony of Ba’athist Syrians fighting Palestinians in a Lebanese land grab merits mention – normally these two would be on the same side. The Maronites began to suspect that Syria was tending only to its own interests and they began fighting in early 1978.

They eventually ended up more or less on the same side when cross-border attacks against Israel lead to the first of several Israeli invasions in March of 1978. Consider that Lebanon’s government had been weakened to a state of total ineffectiveness by the civil war, was then occupied by Syria, and then was later invaded by Israel several times with the intention of evicting the PLO, who continued to use southern Lebanon (and at time, on into Beirut) as center for anti-Israel operations. Lebanon was a mess for more or less the rest of the 20th century.

America became heavily involved in Lebanon during its mediation of the PLO withdrawal from Lebanon in 1982, and during the 80’s chaos reigned – militant anti-American forces (including Hezbollah, the remnants of Amal, and the PLO) carried out unchecked terrorist attacks against American targets.

The weakening of the PLO’s presence in Lebanon and the UN’s involvement brought about the unilateral withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon in 2000. This did not, however, fix the damage to Lebanon’s political and governmental infrastructures done by decades of civil war and armed guerilla conflict. The international community’s inability to do more than write tersely worded letters to Syria has predictably resulted in Syria still maintaining occupation of Lebanon. All Syrian troops are supposed to be out of Lebanon by April 30th, and the sectarian discord in Lebanon may increase or lapse back into violence if the deadline isn’t adhered to.

International / Political

Most of the countries and groups involved in Lebanon’s troubles have little claim to their positions, and all of the countries and groups that should be seriously involved in fixing Lebanon are inactive.

Hezbollah is funded by anti-Israeli militants in Syria and Iran. Despite its claims to legitimacy in the Arab polity, Hezbollah is regularly involved in clandestine terrorist operations against Israel, political or sectarian opponents within Lebanon, and against the United States. The EU has officially classified them as a terrorist group and while the UN has called for the group to disband in SR 1559 though it has yet to officially denote Hezbollah as a terrorist group, something which the UN is normally in the business of doing. Hezbollah is clearly a proxy for Iran and Syria’s anti-Israel operations.

The reticence of the international community to condemn and attack Hezbollah is mostly intertwined with a fear of offending Syria – notably, the United States had a rather rosy relationship with Syria throughout the Clinton administration and the current Bush administration. The political motivations for Bush’s sudden turn against Syrian occupation are legion, prime among them the Cedar Revolution – it is difficult to be the Freedom President and not support a sovereign nation’s cry for independence from foreign occupiers. Had the Cedar Revolution not occurred, the Bush Administration would have maintained its previous stance towards Syria, one of inclusion and gratitude for Syria’s support in the Iraq war.

Human Rights Abuses

The unstable, decentralized governmental structure of Lebanon fosters a culture in Lebanon that lends itself to human rights abuses. The Lebanese Armed Forces and Syrian intelligence agencies regularly detain citizens incommunicado, torture prisoners, and arrest persons who are critical of government policies or Syrian occupation. Several murders and disappearances go uninvestigated every year. The CIA and international organizations report that the courts are highly susceptible to political pressure from pro-Syrian actors, and so Lebanon still lacks an independent judiciary. Government forces regular restrict freedom of movement, speech, and the press. Sectarian conflicts between the citizenry and government agents (especially Syrian intelligence agents) are common; several crimes reported in the CIA’s human rights abuse report in the last two years have been both perpetrated by government agents and religiously targeted.


Lebanon’s current constitution does not specifically prohibit torture, and the government admits that detainees are physically tortured (beatings, electric shock, suspended by the wrists with the hand bound behind the back, mock executions) and psychologically tortured (families being threatened, prisoners being forced to assume postures that are culturally denoted as humiliating). The sufferers of the most serious abuses are regularly aligned with opposition political groups. Women are regularly abused, and the countries prisons fail to meet even the lowest international standards. Hezbollah and the Ministry of Defense continue to deny access to their prisons and detainees to international human rights organizations, and the government does nothing to force them to cooperate. The government, when under pressure from NGOs, will issue statements and resolutions for transparency and access in Lebanon’s correction facilities to commence, which the rest of the government applauds and then immediately ignores. The Parliamentary Commission on Human Rights estimates that only around 33% of prisoners being held by the Government had been charged with a crime. Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officers also often intervene in the judiciary process on behalf of their supporters or agents and protect them from prosecution.

Any and all pro-Israeli, anti-Syrian militia members that either surrendered or were captured after the Israeli Defense Forces withdrawal in 2000 are still being held without charge, although recently they have been allowed access to lawyers and their families. Palestinian refugees are persecuted by everyone, even rival Palestinians. Arbitrary methods of manipulation are used to turn Palestinian refugees against one another – the CIA lists that in certain refugee camps, Palestinians are not allowed to bring in construction materials to repair their houses. Syrian and Lebanese government agents regularly use restrictions such as these as leverage for pressuring refugees to act as informants.



Lists of human rights abuses (as well as the Shia Syrian governments favor of executions) could fill a volume. Lebanon isn’t the worst place in the world to go to jail, but it is pretty bad.

Families / Women / Children

The Lebanese government makes some effort to provide legislatively for the safety of children, child workers, against discrimination against women, the rights of women, and against human trafficking. However, the usual problem persists – while there are laws providing for these considerations they are not regularly enforced. There are also a notable lack of laws specifically prohibiting human trafficking, slavery, or domestic violence. In many cases, a battered woman is legally forced to return to her abusive husband.

Culturally, women have the same problems they do in many Middle Eastern countries, in that they are regularly forced to exist under male hegemony, not just from their husbands but also from any and all male relatives. Many women stay in abusive relationships for cultural reasons, because they buckle to societal pressure, or they fear losing custody of their child or the ability to support them.

Education and the life of the average Lebanese child is a growing concern for the government, but education has failed to become a priority.


The effect on a family of Lebanese citizens is generational and inexorable – all members of the family will have developed in significantly militant, unstable environment, and the effect will be particularly strong upon a family that practices a minority religion or adheres to a different political creed than the rest of their community. Children will no doubt develop with a stunted community or civil sense because they are constantly forced to identify under duress with a national or regional creed which fundamentally differs from either what is practiced in their homes or by someone they know. Political and societal pressures to swing pro-Syria / Shia have been strong in most parts of Lebanon for decades, and the psyche of the developing child (as well as the developing family unit) eventually becomes inextricable from the societal need to meet muster on the ideological front.

The gradual exodus of Christians from Lebanon is a good indicator of the inability of Syria’s current societal structure to support ideological diversity. The government, politics, business, and society in Lebanon have been canted in one direction for a long time, and it takes a long time for a societal imperative to cycle generationally out of a familial construct. Because of this as well as Lebanon’s poor economy and its inability to advance beyond the cursory stages of a developing country will continue to engender unsafe child labor, human trafficking, and the marginalization of the women in Lebanese society. The Government’s defined lack of political will is the largest contributor to this problem.

Solution
In order for Lebanon to be “fixed”, as it were, a lot of housecleaning must be done. Syria must withdraw completely, and Hezbollah must be disarmed and run out of town. A Syrian withdrawal paired with Hezbollah maintenance of arms and position equates to a Syrian reduction of forces. I would argue that Hezbollah is more effective than the Syrian military at furthering Syrian and Iranian interests in Lebanon anyways.



So, the UN and, preferably, the United States and the EU must oversee the withdrawal of Syria and at least the disarming of Hezbollah. Then, the whole governmental infrastructure needs to be recycled.

First, the “government”, being the executive branch, must resign. Along with them, the legislature must also resign. Then, concurring with the hot new fad of Democracy International On The March, full and free elections must be held, under the watchful of Transparency International and the UN.

Once the old government has been exchanged for a new, democratically elected government under the old system, it would fall upon the executive to direct policy towards updating Lebanon’s constitution and penal codes. Then the judiciary must be recycled in a staggered fashion until it has been entirely replaced.

The military and intelligence agencies represent a problem, especially with pro-Syrian agents occupying all of the highest levels of command. So, all commissioned officers and administrators (and their equivalents) must either be shifted or retired. It’s a great idea, because everyone on the bottom gets a promotion!

By recycling the government after Syria and Hezbollah are officially removed from the equation, Syria and Hezbollah will be almost totally removed from the equation. The influence of those two groups upon Lebanese government has resulted in the lack of political will from which most of Lebanon’s problems spring. The human rights abuse problem in Lebanon is institutionalized, with abuses either being openly committed by government actors or independently, free of government care or regulation. What I have proposed is a method of removing the problem elements – the bad apples, if you will – without violence or infrastructural upheaval.