John Farmer: Lebanon holds lessons for Iraq

Wonder what Iraq might look like if the U.S.-led effort there fails? Look no further than Lebanon.

Once the jewel of the Middle East, a country where Maronite Christians and a volatile mix of Muslim communities – Shiite, Sunni and Druze – lived more or less peacefully under a constitutional government, Lebanon has been turned into a haunt for radical factions and rogue governments over the past 30 years.

The fragile detente among the country’s diverse ethnic and religious communities came under pressure with the arrival of thousands of Palestinian refugees after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. George Habash’s violent Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine set up shop in Lebanon. And finally, Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization forced its way in after being driven out of Jordan and set up a kind of ministate in the south, from which it could launch guerrilla-style attacks into northern Israel.

Sectarian militia had sprung up everywhere among Lebanon’s Muslim communities, including the Druze; Christians had their own armed force, too – the Phalangists. Syria, ever on the lookout to expand its influence, marched in 25,000 troops and took effective control of the country’s eastern half. And with the PLO in command in the south, Lebanon, for all intents, ceased to function as a sovereign nation. Near anarchy prevailed. Over the years, several elected officials, including two prime ministers and a president, were assassinated.

Israel finally intervened in 1982 to drive out the PLO. But this had an unanticipated consequence: It set the stage for Hezbollah, funded and supplied by Syria and Iran. Today Hezbollah, effectively in control of southern Lebanon from where it fires rockets into Israel, even has elected members of the Lebanese parliament and holds Cabinet offices.

It’s not hard to imagine Iraq, with its Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish ethnic and religious tensions, falling into the same militia-dominated disarray and – like Lebanon – becoming prey to the same aggressive neighbors, Iran and Syria, if the American effort there fails. It’s already part way there.

The Iraq-Lebanon parallel is not limited to their current unrest. Both countries are artificial creations, carved out of the old Ottoman Empire after World War I by the victorious Europeans. In the process, areas along the Bekaa Valley long linked to Damascus were grafted onto Lebanon, sowing the seeds for subsequent conflict. Likewise, Iraq was created by cobbling together Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites who had little in common culturally. The West, in particular Europe, knew best.

Europe’s role in remaking the Middle East map didn’t end there, of course. In keeping with the World War I Balfour Declaration by Britain, it led the United Nations in carving Israel out of Palestine, thus igniting the 50-year Arab-Israeli strife at the heart of much of the region’s unrest.

This was the cauldron of ancient religious rivalries and contrived national boundaries that George W. Bush leaped into when he opted to democratize the Middle East, beginning with Iraq. It goes almost without saying now that neither Bush nor Dick Cheney nor the neo-conservatives who sold them this Mission Implausible had any grasp of the hazards ahead, the risks involved, or their own and their nation’s limitations.

It’s hard to know how things will work out in Lebanon. The Israelis seem less inclined to stop this time without finishing off Hezbollah; they can’t afford to let Lebanon become a staging ground for Islamist militancy. It’s also worth noting that some major Arab neighbors – Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan – have voiced only muted criticism of Israel. They don’t want to see Lebanon fall into the hands of the militants either, especially Iran.

The end in Iraq is equally murky. The nearest thing to a certainty is that the U.S. adventure there almost surely marks the last chapter in a century of Western attempts to micromanage the messy Middle East. No one’s going to make that mistake again.