Over the Brink

Sada صدى

اصوات التغييرالعربي Analysis on Arab Reform

Over the Brink

August 22, 2013 Heiko Wimmenhttp://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2013/08/22/over-brink/gjqr

Employees of Lebanon’s public sector may soon stop receiving their paychecks, media reports warned in early August. Precisely at a time when most Lebanese scramble to cover back to school expenses, nearly a fifth of the population (counting dependents) could be left without income. Delays and shortfalls are notorious in the public sector, and with the economy and state revenues crippled by the war in neighboring Syria, public finances may indeed soon fall into disarray. This particular episode, however, is more indicative of self-destructive political brinkmanship and the disregard with which Lebanon’s political leadership exploits the fears of citizens. Both the Lebanese government and the parliament would have to convene to release the funds. Yet the pro-Syria/Iran March 8 alliance is blocking the formation of a new government and sabotaging the current one; while the pro- Saudi/West March 14 alliance is retaliating by boycotting parliament. Once more, ordinary Lebanese may become hostages in a political trench war.
Most likely, the problem will be resolved at the last minute through an administrative shortcut that circumvents the blocked political institutions. Once again, all sides will keep face by acquiescing to yet another breach of due process while continuing their strategies of confrontation, which paralyze the institutions of the Lebanese state at the moment they are needed most. While the involvement of Lebanese non-state actors on opposing sides of the Syrian civil war increasingly threatens internal stability, Lebanese leaders would rather sacrifice their institutions than compromise.
Both political camps in Lebanon have high stakes in the Syrian conflict, which drives them to get entangled ever deeper. For Hezbollah, what is at stake is much more than supply routes and rear bases. If Syria were to fall, the whole ideological project of the party and its patron Iran—building a regional alliance against Israel, the United States, and their Arab clients—would collapse. Contrary to the assertions of its detractors, Hezbollah’s military assets were never tools to achieve a better deal for the Shia in Lebanon’s system of sectarian power sharing. And contrary to the party line, defending Lebanon is not their primary purpose—unless that requires defending Homs and Damascus.
The stakes are equally high, if slightly more convoluted, on the other side. Since its ignominious defeat at the hands of the militias of Hezbollah and its allies in May 2008, the Future Movement and the Hariri family have lost growing numbers of their followers to extremist groups and firebrand clerics. As the conflict in Syria rages, battle-hardened radicals are becoming increasingly prominent in Lebanon’s Sunni neighborhoods. This means that the movement risks either irrelevance or a confrontation with Hezbollah that it cannot win. For the Future Movement, only a rebel triumph in Syria—an outcome it is supporting by mediating transfers of arms and fighters into the country—could tilt the balance back to a more equal relationship with a humbled Hezbollah.