This seminal study is an impressive synthesis and an eye-opener for those interested enough to learn about the history of one of the most fascinating countries in the world. A tiny nation with great reverberation and repercussion is on the international stage. William Harris analyses the antecedents of contemporary multi-communal Lebanon through the various competing sectarian communities of the country. Lebanon is not an island. If it were, it would have had a chance to heal the scars of the past and present. Precisely because of their horrendous history, the Lebanese obsession with demographics has become something of a national neurosis. Nor is there unequivocal evidence that the Arab Spring and the current Syrian civil war might by sheer coincidence save contemporary Lebanon from itself. Lebanon, in spite of its seemingly unassailable Mount Lebanon, is neither insular nor impregnable. In short, Lebanon is heading for a capacity crunch. The confessional divide helps explain why the Lebanese put up with their infuriatingly slow-moving political set-up. The Lebanese, and in particular the Maronite Christians, are fond of professing Phoenician ancestry. Nevertheless, according to Harris they hail originally from the Orontes Valley in neighbouring Syria, in the vicinity of the modern Syrian cities of Homs and Hama. True, they intermingled with Christian Arab tribesmen who had infiltrated Mount Lebanon in the dying days of the Byzantine Empire. Arabs had infiltrated into Lebanon long before Islam. “Three centuries of domination of the Middle East by the Arab Muslim caliphate, ending with Muslim fragmentation and the Iranian Buyid capture of Abbasid Baghdad, saw Muslim and Maronite establishment in Mount Lebanon. On the coast, the ports became mainly Sunni Muslim and bulwarks of the Umayyad and Abbasid states against Byzantine sea power,” extrapolates historian Harris, professor of politics at the University of Otago. “Meanwhile, Arabs already living in the southern Lebanese hills included clans whose leaders disapproved of Umayyad and Abbasid rule and instead favoured the Islamic leadership of the family of the Prophet Mohamed through his son-in-law the Caliph Ali,” Harris notes. Forever, the attempt at national accommodation proved superfluous. These Arab tribesmen were the ancestors of the present day Lebanese Shia Muslims. Lebanon has over the millennia wrestled with unification. Lebanese history is often associated with sectarianism and hostility between religious communities, but by examining public memorials and historical accounts it has, at least since 600 AD, been a rather unkempt and cosmopolitan country. Lebanese identity is still in the making. Historically, marauders, asylum seekers and emigrants from Egypt and the Levant, Iraq and as far afield as Iran and Central Asia sought refuge in Mount Lebanon, the impregnable stronghold of brigands, monks and religious heretics — Christian and Muslim. We think of Lebanon as a land of emigration. However, historically it was a land of immigration, too. Harris makes that abundantly clear and with academic clarity and persuasive precision. The Lebanese civil war devastated the country. But, as always there were many lessons in this catastrophe. Every time Lebanon emerges from the ashes of a disaster the Lebanese are ecstatic, confident that they have hit a jackpot. Lebanon picks itself up. Yet, often the Lebanese confidence may be overdone. The big question hanging over the tiny Levantine country is whether it should continue pouring its scarce resources into shoring up a rapprochement between the confessional communities vying for political supremacy. This requires rethinking the Lebanese confessional communities' elite's political priorities. Lebanon's great leap forward has always been hampered by its geographical location. Also, because Lebanon ought never to have been an independent country per se. It is part and parcel of the Levant. It is entirely appropriate that a new Lebanese panic over the influx of Syrian refugees in the past two years should have gripped Lebanon. The Syrian newcomers, just like the Palestinians decades before them, pose a threat to the delicate Lebanese confessional balance of power upon which rests Lebanese politics. “In 1933, the Communist Party first came to notice, and an Orthodox [Christian] student at the American University in Beirut, Antun Saadeh, established the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), which promoted a greater Syrian identity with romantic and European fascist tinges,” records Harris. The Lebanese and Syrian identities have for millennia been inextricably intertwined. The seafaring Phoenicians habitually waited for the tide to turn against their rival mercantile port-city states. And, in much the same fashion, the confessional communities of contemporary Lebanon keep a close eye on their sectarian contestants. Such schadenfreude only brought them nothing but wrack and ruin. And so it is with contemporary Lebanon. The catastrophic consequences date from colonial times. “In all the communities, France relied on dividing and ruling among a small elite. Communal allocations after 1926 encouraged politicians to grandstand over sectarian shares in the administration and the country,” Harris expounds. The time was propitious for a great leap forward. Lebanon was destined to become an influential Arab and Mediterranean state. Fast-forward a century and what you see in Lebanon is a more complicated confessional picture. The impressive study of Lebanon by Harris is not the first. Other authors have tackled the prickly topic with equal dexterity. Helena Cobban's 1985 classic The Making of Modern Lebanon is a typical example. Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon by Lucia Volk is another. Lebanese history is often associated with sectarianism and hostility between religious communities. “French investment concentrated on Beirut, seat of the high commission and showpiece of the mandatory regime. Beirut also tightened the grip on trade and service requirements of the Arab interior, as far as Iraq and Arabia. The Ottoman collapse, the city's expertise, French promotion and command of new sea and air transport connections all fed into Beirut's regional dominance,” observes Harris. But, Beirut is not Lebanon. The “Mountain Lords”, as Harris aptly put it, have always dictated politics in Lebanon. The story of the Druze warlord Fakhreddin Maan is fascinating. A case study in its self. “The Shihab sway advanced from part to most of Mount Lebanon through the 18th century until it bequeathed a real Lebanese entity under Bashir II Shihab between 1790 and 1840. Along the way, however, the Druze lost their primacy to the more numerous and economically dynamic Maronites, while the Shihab [Druze] rulers recognised the trend by adopting Maronite Catholicism.” The moral of the story is that Lebanese confessional and ethnic identities are illusive. “In the aftermath of the treaties, the Sunni elite tipped towards accepting Greater Lebanon,” Harris stresses. The treaty in question is the Franco-Syrian one. It prompted Turkey to annex the disputed enclave of Alexandretta, or Hatay, as the Turks call it. “Syrian protests over French surrender of Alexandretta and nonfulfillment of the Franco-Syrian treaty bled to France suspending the Syrian constitution and resurrecting Alawite and Druze autonomy in July 1939,” notes Harris. “This truncated Syrian input into Lebanese affairs,” Harris emphasises. Shia Muslims, Druze and Alawites also Shia Muslims who control neighbouring Syria by virtue of being the coreligionists of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's clan, in other words unconventional Muslims emerged as a politically crucial element in Lebanon. Be that as it may, this is no time for rejoicing for the Shia Muslims in both Syria and Lebanon. The Republic of Lebanon runs by the system of parliamentary democracy. The Lebanese constitution confers its citizens the right to bring about a change in government. The president of the nation is elected for a period of six years by the parliament. He cannot be re-elected. The meticulous study of Harris, a thorough academic work, brings us back to Beirut and the SSNP. If Lebanon's history is eternally linked to that of Syria, then it is also twinned with that of Palestine. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) has long had a presence in Lebanese politics. “From its nerve centre in West Beirut, the PLO developed its political and military wings into a proto-state with a private conventional army. Deference to Syria diminished as Al-Assad became distracted by the Muslim Brotherhood challenge at home after 1979,” Harris extrapolates. “Well-financed media, academic and social organs in Beirut, as well as its territorial base in southern Lebanon, elevated the PLO's profile in the Arab World. Nevertheless, the PLO was a foreign entity in Lebanon, and after Israel's offensive in March 1978, Lebanese Muslims became weary of its usurpation of the state and destructive interaction with Israel. In short, a serious analysis of Lebanon's travails cannot completely exonerate the country's self-appointed sectarian leaders and warlords, nor the Palestinians. The Christians, and the Maronites in particular, present themselves as champions of Christendom in the Middle East. And, as such they committed such diabolical atrocities in the past such as ruthlessly massacring Palestinians and Shia Muslims in the now notorious Sabra and Shatila camps in the southern suburbs of Beirut in September 1982. The Maronite Christians are now virtually cloistered in their hermetical mountain and coastal stronghold north of Beirut and south of Tripoli. The French colonial authorities encouraged the besieged mindset of the Maronite Christians that bordered on paranoia. A radical change was brought about in the Lebanese governmental set up and politics of Lebanon by virtue of the 1943 National Pact, virtually dictated by France. It divided the political offices on a religious basis. Lebanon was a state created as a refuge for Christians in the Levant according to the pact. The country had to have a Christian president. To placate Muslims, the prime minister constitutionally was obliged to be a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Shia Muslim. Can this constitutional truce hold forever? Sequestered in their own enclave, the Maronite Christians understand all too well that any change in the constitution will no doubt open up a disastrous new era of sectarianism. The Balkanisation of Lebanon is untenable today. Yet, the demographic factor is a time bomb. The Muslims, and especially the Shia Muslims, now demand a bigger say in the decision-making process. Some Christian leaders are now aligning themselves politically with Shia Muslim paramilitary groups and militant Islamist movements such as Hizbullah. “In its small territory, Lebanon experienced enhanced integration of core and periphery, of village and city, as migration brought the ‘mountain' to Beirut and more rural and Muslim youth passed through more public schools. The problem was that different ‘mountains' came to different parts of Beirut, and political breakdown was to privilege communal self-consciousness over a real but fragile Lebanese identity,” Harris aptly points out. Now that the worst days of the crisis in Lebanon itself are over, a new challenge has emerged to reshape the Lebanese political landscape. The early signs are foreboding, but this is nothing new. “What if the June 1967 War, with its humiliation of the Arab states and activation of the Palestinians in Lebanon, had not happened? Muslim grumblings about Maronite advantage, Shia grievances about deprivation, and social cleavages were not enough to bring the catastrophe that befell Lebanon in the mid-1970s,” ponders Harris. There is still friction. If Lebanon is to attain lasting respect from fellow Arab nations and Western powers, its leaders must face up to past wrongdoing. However, much more is needed to give Lebanon the bright future it deserves. Reviewed by Gamal Nkrumah
