Getting to understand Lebanon – its politics and its soul
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi
I have long harboured the wish to visit Lebanon but have always had some misgivings about safety. Most people associate Lebanon with civil war, which after 15 years of sectarian violence, ended in 1990. There was also low level fighting between the Hizbollah and the Israeli occupying army in Southern Lebanon, and who could forget the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila camps just outside Beirut. I was pleasantly surprised that I found it very safe travelling alone recently to most parts of that small country which has an amazingly rich history and beautiful, varied landscape. The only place that I dared not venture was Southern Lebanon, until recently under Israeli occupation before the Hizbollah guerillas drove them out after nearly 20 years. I have always been keen to understand Lebanon, which I thought is the most enigmatic among Arab countries. I was especially curious about the Cedars and Mount Lebanon, two mystical symbols of the Lebanese nation. However I could not get satisfactory answers from Lebanese immigrant families that I befriended when I was studying in Australia in the early 80’s. Now I could understand why – my Lebanese friends in Brisbane and Sydney were simple, sunni muslims who had migrated to Australia to escape the ravages of civil war, whereas the Cedars and Mount Lebanon are exclusive symbols revered by the Maronite Christians for whom the Lebanese nation was carved out from Greater Syria by the French Mandate authority. The French were the guardians of the Maronite Christians and their special relationship stretched back to the Crusades. When the first Crusade arrived in the region of Tripoli in 1099, they were welcomed by the Maronites, who advised them as to the safest route to Jerusalem. The French played a leading role in forcing the Ottomans in 1860 to create the Special Province of Mount Lebanon under european protection for the Maronites. In 1920 the Maronites pressured the French to enlarge Mount Lebanon administrative region to include the major coastal plain, where the major cities are, to carve out for themselves a sufficiently large territory to be able to survive as an independent state separate from muslim Syria. It happened that the major coastal cities of Sidon, Tripoli and Beirut are predominantly muslim. It is this peculiar social mix of Lebanon, which also include the Greek Orthodox Christians, Druze and Shia muslims and later Palestinian fighters and refugees that led to the difficulties and volatility of her sectarian politics until a decade ago.
Travelling in many parts of Lebanon feeling secure and comfortable among its friendly people, and while in Beirut staying at the swanking new Movenpick Hotel built onto the side of a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean where every night there was a glittering party or wedding reception of upper class families, and on top of that the frenetic phase of reconstruction in Beirut, it was hard to imagine that until a few years ago there was a bitter and bloody civil war between Maronite Christians and Muslims, plus a host of permutations of side conflicts – Syrian troops vs. Maronites (in defense of Palestinians), Maronites vs. Palestinians, Syrians vs. the PLO and back to the Maronites, Israeli bombardment of Beirut in pursuit of the PLO, the Hizbollah vs. Israelis, Hizbollah vs. Amal, Druzes vs. Christians, and not least, fighting between Christian militias.. Near the site of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps now stand a new football stadium that one can see as one heads south out of Beirut towards Sidon. But one need not look very hard for the scars of violence past. A doctor friend took me around his hometown of Sidon, an Islamic city where there are still many buildings with pock marks and mosque minarets partly damaged by Israeli shells as they marched north to Beirut. In Tripoli, an Islamic city in the north of Lebanon where Arafat and a core of PLO fighters were entrenched for a period, there were similar reminders of attacks by rival Palestinian factions supported by the Syrians. Downtown Beirut (Beirut Central District) was the site of the bloodiest fighting during the civil war. One can see testimony of this in a few buildings still left with pock marks from snipers’ shells on their walls which become more concentrated around windows frames. Happily today much of Downtown Beirut has undergone massive redevelopment, restoring many of the Ottoman and French Mandate era buildings. The area around Place d’Étoile is especially beautiful, its layout and buildings modeled along Paris Right Bank’s. In the vicinity, within walking distance from one to another are many, very beautiful old churches and mosques. The magnificent Omari Mosque (Grand Mosque), now under renovation, was originally built in the 12th century by the Crusaders as the Church of St. John the Baptist, and later converted to a mosque when the Mamelukes finally drove them out of Beirut for the last time. Nearby are Amir Munzir Mosque built in 1620 and Amir Assaf Mosque built in the 1570’s. And yet there is a huge modern mosque being constructed just nearby. Sharing the same area are the many churches and cathedrals like the Maronite Cathedral of St. George, completely restored after the civil war, the Greek orthodox cathedral of St. George, the St. Louis Capucin Church, among others, all exquisitely beautiful buildings.
The seeds of the civil war was Lebanon’s uneasy mix of confessional groups, with the Maronite Christians given an edge of supremacy over the others by the French at the birth of the nation. Accordingly to its constitution, the President is always a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of Parliament, a Shia Muslim, and Lebanese politics has always had a heavy sectarian bent, its political parties largely organized around these confession groups. Things came to a boil with the first civil war in 1958 between sunni muslims who were largely pro Pan Arabism of Nasser and the pro west Christians. Apart from that sectarian bent, their politics was also intensely clannish. Suleiman Franjieh, elected to the Presidency in 1970 was fiercely militant in his championing of Maronite supremacy and equally fiercely tribal. A commentator said of him, “His only previous claim to fame had been his involvement in the machine gunning inside a church of 22 members of a competing Christian Lebanese clan”. The second civil war, still fresh in many people’s memory today, broke out in 1975 as a result of a heavy Palestinian presence in Lebanon, both as refugees and as PLO fighters after the events of Black September of 1970 in Jordan. The civil war erupted when a bus load of Palestinians were massacred as revenge killings by Maronite Phalange militias. The Militias flourished around political groupings, the most well known of them was the Maronite phalangistes, which had close ties with Israel, and on the muslim side, a loose grouping called the National Movement.
But pure religious motives were probably not the real inspiration for the civil war. The Christian militias at times worked together against the National Movement and the Palestinians, and at other times were engaged in vicious infighting amongst themselves. It is really baffling for an observer from outside the region to grasp that a people who share many things in common – language, ethnicity, Arabic script (even in churches), and almost all having muslim sounding Arabic names, could be at each others’ throat for so long.
But today such a bitter civil war would probably not recur. The memory of death and destruction surely is still painful for the orphan, widows relatives of those who died, and the scars are still evident that many Lebanese would probably be inclined to think that what took place was sheer stupidity. But more so perhaps the influence of religion in people’s lives is much diminished today and increasingly private. With the secular materialist culture which globalization has wrought everywhere especially in the less conservative arab countries like Lebanon, people are more preoccupied with keeping up with the latest things and the most fashionable in popular culture, and few would want to fight and die for a cause. At least that was what I could discern in Beirut. I was there during the height of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, yet it was hard to notice any outrage among Beirutis, and my Arab friends did not talk about it, and even less so Lebanese television with its endless entertainment, talk and games shows. In a way, the much-attenuated influence of religion in daily life and as a social bond may mean less likelihood of a religiously motivated war, but the fast erosion of local culture, both Arab Christian and Arab Muslim, each with their rich traditions and history, and in their place, a secular, western consumerist culture is very disconcerting.
Going back to my earlier curiousity about the mystical Cedars and Mount Lebanon, the most satisfying aspect of my visit to Lebanon was making that long trip up the Qadisha valley, high up in the northern part of the Lebanese mountains. Mount Lebanon, I found out, is not one solitary mountain, but the range of mountains which make up much of Lebanon’s territory. Rising abruptly from the narrow coastal strip, it is a totally different world from the swirl and congestion of Beirut. The Qadisha valley is the spiritual home of the Maronite Christians. They were driven out of Syria by the Eastern orthodox Christians and took refuge in the isolated valleys of Mount Lebanon. This is another world of beautiful mountain scenery and cool alpine climate, with many villages hugging the steep sides of the valley, the houses typically clustered around a church. At the head the valley near the top of the mountains, is B’Charré, the seat of the Maronite patriarchs. Two large churches stand out clearly from a distance, the Mar Saba Church and the Virgin Mary Church. The deep gorge of the Qadisha valley at B’Charré combines spectacularly beautiful natural scenery with some of the most important religious centres of the Maronite faith. On the steep sides of the gorge and valley floor are numerous isolated grottoes, hermitages, chapels and monasteries. For those who had been mesmerized by Kahlil Gibran’s “the Prophet” at some point in their life, B’Charré is the poet-artist’s birth place. The Gibran museum is one of those monasteries, carved out from a rocky promontory overlooking the valley. His body was brought back from New York and the monastery/museum is his final resting place as well as a gallery for his paintings, books and memorabilia.
The Cedars, as a place, is a plateau surrounded by an amphitheatre of snow-capped mountains a few kms up from B’Charré. I had expected to see an extensive forest of Cedars like those of the Moroccan Cedars in the Middle Atlas Mountains, whose wood is extensively used for the beautiful woodwork in mosques all over Morocco. But today all that remains of the once extensive forests is a small stand of Cedars in an otherwise barren landscape. This was it – Al Arz Ar Rabb (the Cedars of the Lord), the soul of the Lebanese nation and source of great pride among Lebanese Christians. This stand contains some of the oldest (1000 – 1500 years old) and largest Cedar trees in Lebanon. The forests were steadily depleted over thousands of years and it was only by the mid 19th Century that the local people became aware of the threat of its extinction. The Maronite patriarchs of B’Charré placed them under their personal protection, building a small chapel in the midst of the stand in 1843 and forbidding any further felling of the trees. There is also a small army camp beside the stand of trees, ostensibly to protect them too one presumes. The Cedars area, quite desolate in May, is actually a large snowfield and an excellent ski resort in winter. From the Cedars the road crosses the highest ridges of the mountains and descend onto the Bekaa valley, and heading south and one can take the much longer way back to Beirut, which I intended to do. But already just above the Cedars the road was still blocked by heavy snow and I had to go back down the Qadisha Valley to Tripoli.
I was very pleased to have finally made that trip to Lebanon, one that I would certainly recommend to others. For such a small nation, Lebanon packs it in terms of outstanding natural beauty and historical monuments – Roman ruins, Crusaders castles and churches, Mameluke and Ottoman mosques, palaces and civil buildings and French Mandate buildings. From another aspect, Lebanon’s recent history like that of Yugoslavia, and to a certain Malaysia too, where people of different cultures and confessions are forced to live together in a nation-state by accidents of history, provides sobering lessons on how to turn such pluralism into a constructive and vibrant force rather than a destructive one.