Since the recent assassination of the head of intelligence —
Wissam al-Hassan, who was known to be aligned with the anti-Syrian
March 14 alliance in Lebanese politics — in Beirut, there has been
much speculation that the internal conflict in Syria could
re-ignite civil war in Lebanon.
Such a line of thought has been raised vis-à-vis Iraq too.
Indeed, just as Shi’ite militants from Hezbollah, which is aligned
with the pro-Syrian March 8 alliance in government, have been
fighting to assist the Assad regime in Syria, so too have Shi’ite
militants from Iraq’s Badr Brigades and the Iranian-backed ‘Special
Groups’ been heading across the border to fight against the
rebels.
However, I posit that civil war is unlikely, for the following
reasons:
Assassinations as the status quo: The fact remains that
the killing of al-Hassan is simply part of a long line of political
assassinations in Lebanon that stretches back decades in the
country’s history. The most recent trend was apparent with the
killing of the anti-Syrian Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February
2005, the assassination of the anti-Syrian communist George Hawi in
June 2005, and the murder in November 2006 of Pierre Amin Gemayel,
who was a key member and MP for the Kataeb Party, which is a
nationalist and predominantly Maronite Christian political
organization that forms a part of the March 14 alliance.
The Kataeb Party wields much less influence than in the days of
the Lebanese Civil War, but stands in contrast with the Free
Patriotic Movement — another predominantly Christian party — that
is aligned with the March 8 alliance. In September 2007, another
member of the Kataeb Party and MP — Antoine Ghanem — was killed
in a bomb attack in Beirut.
What is apparent is that — as in Iraq today — these political
killings flare up from time-to-time, but they do not necessarily
indicate a trend towards renewed civil war.
A similar problem in analysis can be observed as regards the
question of violence in Iraq, where a given wave of bomb attacks in
a particular month is too often taken as a sign of a renewed
Sunni-Shi’a crisis with the possibility of tensions spilling out
into outright civil war.
On the contrary, these attacks — perpetrated almost entirely by
hardline Sunni insurgents — simply represent the status quo for
violence in Iraq today that has stabilized at levels that still
lead to hundreds of casualties a month. In any case, there is no
phenomenon in Lebanon along these lines.
Small-scale protests and clashes: The assassination of
Rafiq Hariri in 2005 brought out crowds of hundreds of thousands of
demonstrators that eventually culminated in the withdrawal of
Syrian troops from Lebanon. Nothing comparable is to be observed in
the aftermath of al-Hassan’s assassination. Media outlets were
quick to note the clashes between police and protesters angered
by the assassination and demanding that the March 8-led government
under Najib Mikati resign, but such incidents are only to be
expected, and did not bring about further wide-scale rioting.
One might wish to draw attention to the outbreaks of
violence that have emerged in the city of Tripoli between
Alawites backing the Assad regime and Sunnis opposed to the Syrian
government, but these clashes are no more than sporadic in nature.
It is not as though sectarian militias are freely roaming the
streets, extorting money from their respective communities to
perpetrate acts of mass ethnic cleansing.
The outbreaks of violence in Tripoli are predictable in light of
the strong influence of Sunni Islamism (recall the burning of the
KFC restaurant there in protest at the “Innocence of Muslims”
movie) that arouses much rage in solidarity with the opposition to
the Assad regime.
Further, the Alawites in the city — as an essentially outsider
“diaspora” community relative to their co-religionists in Syria —
are naturally prone to viewing the Syrian civil war as an all-out
sectarian Sunni-Alawite conflict. Accordingly, many of them will
have no qualms about openly expressing support for the Assad
regime. Note that there is a similar phenomenon of
solid backing for Assad among Alawites in Turkey.
The assessment to be drawn here is that violence in Lebanon
pertaining to the Syrian conflict is still very much a
localized phenomenon, occurring at pinpoints of tension
rather than in large areas throughout the whole country.
Undoubtedly, the weakening or fall of the Assad regime
translates to a weakening of Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon, and
it is notable how muted the group’s response has been to the
al-Hassan affair, which indicates that the organization certainly
does feel
under pressure over the growing perception of its role as a
pro-Assad partisan force in Syria.
It also seems that there are — at least in the civilian ranks
of Hezbollah — signs of
increasing internal disagreement about whether to maintain ties
with Damascus, something that may be reflected in the cancellation
of the party’s convention that is supposed to be held every three
years.
In the event of Assad’s downfall, Sunni opponents of Hezbollah
may feel ever more emboldened to challenge Hezbollah’s position in
the country and push harder the downfall of the current Lebanese
government, but it does not necessarily follow that they are
seeking to achieve this goal by violent means.
Hezbollah still has vastly superior firepower to take on any
armed challenge from within Lebanon, but in the scenario of Assad’s
downfall the group would likely be very wary of protracted violent
confrontation, fearing that it could meet the same fate as the
Assad regime, which, after all, also possesses superior firepower
to that of its opponents from within.
At worst, sporadic incidents of violence will continue, with
frequent displays of brinkmanship by Hezbollah and its opponents,
similar to standoffs that
on occasion have taken place in Iraq between central government
forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga over disputed territory.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah may send delegates to Iran in the hope of
having Tehran play the role of mediator and kingmaker among
Lebanese factions, but there is insufficient evidence to show that
the circumstances are pointing to a return to the bloody and
destructive civil war of 1975-1990.
