YEARENDER: Lebanon mired in instability, desperate for solution

Dec 21, 2007, 5:07 GMT

Beirut- The year 2007 in Lebanon ended with a focus on the slogan 'Wake up, before it happens again': a reference to the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990 which many fear will be repeated if rival political leaders fail to put aside their differences.

As the clock ticked towards midnight on December 31, 2006, the Lebanese people had hoped that the new year would bring stability, prosperity and a new president to unite the country and remove lingering obstacles on the political front.

Instead, the fear of violence has loomed over Lebanon, particularly in the last two months of 2007, as parliament failed eight times to elect a successor to pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, whose term ended on November 23.

The rifts between the opposition led by the pro-Syrian and Iranian-backed Hezbollah and the anti-Syrian ruling majority deepened in 2007. Their bickering impacted strongly on political life, paralysed all institutions and prompted outside intervention in the worst crisis since the civil war.

No one had imagined that the political paralysis, which began in November 2006 when six pro-Syrian ministers - five from the Shiite community - quit the cabinet of the western-backed Premier Fouad Seniora, would drag on until the end 2007.

The political tensions spilled into the streets, raising fears that Beirut's alleys were ready for war again. Clashes between students from rival political camps turned bloody in January, with three killed and dozens injured.

Arab envoys and French, Italian and Spanish foreign ministers made frequent visits in the second half of the year in a bid to broker a consensus ahead of the presidential election scheduled for September.

But by the eve of 2008, all efforts had come to naught.

In 2007, Lebanon's opposition failed to achieve its main goal of toppling the Seniora government, which it rejects as illegitimate. The sit-in it had started on December 1, 2006, outside the gates of the government palace in downtown Beirut, continued into a second year.

The tension between the two rival camps heightened after two anti-Syrian members of parliament were killed.

Walid Iddo, an MP of the parliamentary majority of Saad Hariri, was assassinated on June 13, and Christian MP Antoine Ghanem of the Phalangist Party on September 19. Their murders reduced the number of the majority MPs to 68 out of the remaining 127-member parliament.

Pro-government officials again pointed the finger of blame at Syria, linking Ghanem's assassination to the upcoming presidential elections, and claiming his killing was aimed at depriving the ruling coalition of its parliamentary majority.

By convention, a Lebanese presidential candidate is chosen from the Maronite Christian community and needs a two-thirds majority to be elected president during a first round of voting, while a simple majority is enough in any later round.

The government and its Christian, Druze and Sunni supporters want the next president to be independent of Syrian influence. The opposition wants a supporter of Hezbollah's 'armed resistance' and to prevent the government from installing a president aligned with the United States and Europe against Syria and Hezbollah.

The departure of Lahoud, a staunch ally of the Syrian regime during nine years in office, was a long-sought goal of the government installed by parliament's anti-Syrian majority, which has been trying to put one of its own in the presidency.

Negotiations for consensus involving foreign envoys concentrated on the compromise candidate - Army Chief-of-Staff Michel Suleiman - who appeared popular all round since he proved his competence and loyalty to Lebanon in the wake of several security breaches in 2007.

But that the constitution will have to be amended if he wants to become president became a point of contention within the opposition and also among the majority who backed the nomination of Suleiman for president.

Opposition leaders insist that there would be no amendment to the constitution until a political agreement is reached on the next cabinet under the elected president, virtually taking matters back to square one.

Among Suleiman's most serious challenges in 2007 was the 100 days of pitched battles between his troops and radical Palestinians in and around the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Tripoli in northern Lebanon.

The clashes began in May and shredded any sense of security in Lebanon. Fatah al-Islam, a group with with an ideological link to al- Qaeda and many Iraq war veterans, held control of the camp during more than three months of shelling by the Lebanese army.

The fighting at Nahr al-Bared ended in early September and left the army with heavy casualties, but troops had managed to kill most of the 250 Fatah al-Islam members and capture most of its leaders.

In June, six Spanish United Nations peacekeepers were killed along the border with Israel shortly after a Fatah al-Islam spokesman accused the UN of helping the army by bombarding the camp from the sea.

The incident sparked fears that the attack would be a prelude to a wider Sunni fundamentalist bid to destabilize Lebanon.

The uncertainty and security breaches that engulfed the country throughout 2007 have left scars not only on the political life but also on the people of Lebanon.

Rumours of militias rearming and training in the hills prompted a brain drain, with around 22 per cent of Lebanon's 4 million inhabitants actively working on an exit strategy, according to a recent study.

Ultimately, no one knows what will happen in 2008. Some Lebanese believe that even if the election of a new president takes place in the coming week, the country's problems will still not be resolved given its history as a battlefield for wider regional conflicts.