On Sunday, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt escalated his conflict with the Syrian regime by receiving a delegation from Syria's Muslim Brotherhood at his Mukhtara palace. The same day, a group of Christian politicians from the March 14 coalition met at the home of Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea in the Cedars, only hours after Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir had lamented the disunity within the Maronite community, which he contrasted with the situation in other communities. On Monday, Hizbullah's secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, at a farewell reception for the Iranian ambassador, praised Iran, saying it wanted "only good things" for Lebanon (echoing Saad Hariri's recent paeans to his chaperones in Saudi Arabia). Nasrallah underlined that Tehran "has done nothing but enjoin unity in the Shiite sphere, the Islamic sphere and the national sphere."

Each episode said more about communal relations than met the eye. In the past weeks, Jumblatt has expressed fear that a majority of Christians, led by Michel Aoun, would succumb to the temptation of an alliance of minorities between the Maronites and Shiites in Lebanon and the Alawites in Syria. Such an alliance, Jumblatt believes, would be primarily directed against the Sunni majority in the region and against growing Sunni Islamism. In an interview last week with the ABN station, the Druze leader advised Aoun to banish such thoughts, even as Jumblatt's enemies started floating that he, or his father Kamal, had toyed with the ambition of creating a pan-Druze statelet between Lebanon and Syria.

Jumblatt was probably overstating his fears to better leverage them in future negotiations. While the notion of an alliance of non-Sunni minorities has been circulating among pro-Syrian Maronites in the North for some time, it doesn't appear to be a priority for Aoun. In fact, if anything has made the Maronites more likely to radically overhaul their policies in recent years, it is Jumblatt's hardnosed manipulation and containment of the community, a cornerstone of his power. This was shown most forcefully during last year's parliamentary elections, organized according to a law that Jumblatt saw as essential in breaking Aoun's momentum.

How does Syria's Muslim Brotherhood fit into this? Jumblatt and the Druze are vulnerable in Lebanese communal maneuvering. The Druze leader has managed to remain on good terms with Aoun and Hariri while both are locked in unbecoming wrangling, but Jumblatt knows that the Sunnis and Maronites would push him aside if they could do so, or had to. That's why his opening to the Brotherhood appears to be more than just a threat against Damascus; it is Jumblatt's bid to garner Islamist cards to better enhance his position vis-ˆ-vis the Saudi regime and any domestic Lebanese alliance that could lead to his political elimination. He figures that if Syrian President Bashar Assad can persuade the Saudis to defend his Baath regime by threatening them with Sunni Islamists, then he can use the Brotherhood to stay relevant in Riyadh and Beirut.

On the Maronite side, things are a different. The Cedars meeting was an effort to consolidate the Christian camp at a time when the office of the presidency has lost all meaning; and, more specifically, to concoct a united front against Michel Aoun, who was not at the conclave. Aoun's absence ensured that Sfeir's fears of more inter-Maronite schisms will be realized. The Maronite community has historically been all fissures and fractures, if also lively pluralism in lieu of suffocating unanimity. Both Aoun and Geagea at different times during the 1980s tried to eliminate their foes, and ended up, predictably, tearing each other to pieces.

The problem with the Cedars meeting is that Aoun retains the support of most Christians, and the greater the communal polarization, the greater his appeal. This may seem a paradox, with the general claiming to be the least sectarian of politicians. But he also offers no new project for communal relations: He can't stomach the post-Taif Constitution, in whose name he was evicted from Baabda; but he can't endorse the alternative to the united Lebanon that Taif outlines, namely transformation of the country into a confederation of sectarian mini-states. This would smack of partition at a time when Aoun insists he is the incarnation of Lebanese nationhood.

So what you get with the Aounists is a hybrid: The general's supporters are no less sectarian than their adversaries inside the Christian community, or those Lebanese outside, and no less the prisoners of a psychological ghetto; but at the national level their leader continues to peddle a fiction that he is the grand unifier, Lebanon's own Bismarck, even as he allows his followers to persuade themselves that he is really one of them.

Then there is Hassan Nasrallah. He adroitly speaks of Shiite unity and national unity in the same breath, but his party's weapons make illusory any serene discussion of a new national pact, because no one wants to bargain with someone armed to the teeth. What is Hizbullah's vision of communal relations? What type of Lebanon can be built under the grim countenances of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, regardless of the "good" Iran desires for the country? What Lebanon can we expect when the best Hizbullah has to offer by way of a social model is permanent armed resistance against its enemies?

Lebanon's dilemma is that its communal leaders and communities can't even agree how to disagree. Will the country's future political system rely on full implementation of Taif, with its clauses on deconfessionalization, or on something different that will only harden the communities' sense of separation? Whatever the answer, Jumblatt's maneuvering, perhaps motivated by fear of extinction, Maronite discord, and Hizbullah's Kalashnikov-envy are only widening the communal divide. Almost no one dares ask what type of state most people want, even as everyone somehow needs everyone else so there can be balance in the system.

This reality alone is why war is further away than the skeptics imagine. With everyone mistrusting everyone else, who will be allied with whom, against whom? Lebanon is still caught in a vacuum left by a 15-year war and a debilitating 29-year Syrian presence that denied any cross-sectarian political cooperation. It will take time for the society to emerge from this void, but it would be nice to see someone capable of leading the process.  


Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.

 By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, May 04, 2006