BEIRUT – A century ago, on September 1, 1920, a French general, Henri Gouraud, stood on the porch of a Beirut palace surrounded by local politicians and leaders and declared the state of Greater Lebanon, the forerunner of Lebanon’s fashionable state.
The current French President, Emmanuel Macron, travels to Lebanon to commemorate the occasion, a hundred years later. But the atmosphere couldn’t be darker.
Lebanon has been hit by a series of disasters, to which a currency crisis is added. On August 4, a large explosion in Beirut’s harbor killed at least 190 others and injured thousands of them, the culmination of decades of accumulated crises, endemic corruption and mismanagement through an entrenched ruling class.
In the face of possible bankruptcy and general collapse, many Lebanese celebrate the centenary with the feeling that their joy as a country has failed and they wonder if they are willing to remain in this country in crisis.
“I’m 53 years old and I don’t feel like I’ve had a solid year in this country,” said the prominent Lebanese Alexander Najjar.
Like others of his generation, Najjar lived through the civil war from 1975 to 1990, when Beirut’s call was synonymous with hostages, car attacks and chaos.
He was a teenager when Israel invaded Beirut in the summer of 1982, imposed a sweltering siege of the capital for 3 months, and a young man when Christian militias targeted his weapons in 1989. When former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in 1989. a large truck bombing in Beirut in 2005, Najjar in its thirties.
The following year, Israel and Hezbollah participated in a month-to-month war. Meanwhile, countless other conflicts, episodes of sectarian struggles and other screw-ups have struck generation after generation, causing waves of Lebanese emigration.
But the August 4 explosion, says Najjar, the “summit of a failed state,” evidence that the government can’t even guarantee fundamental public security.
It wasn’t meant to be like this.
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Lebanon fell under French rule, beginning in 1920. France ruled for 23 years until the country gained independence as the Lebanese Republic.
Home to 18 other devout sects, it has been hailed as a style of pluralism and coexistence. The country opted for an un written sectarian settlement, first perceived as a guarantee of stability, but that many Lebanese now a curse: the president would still be Christian, the Sunni Muslim prime minister and the president of the Shia Muslim parliament, along with other shared posts in the same way.
In the 1950s, under the pro-Western presidency Camille Chamoun, the economy prospered thanks to the tourism boom and cash in oil-rich Arab countries.But his presidency ended with the outbreak of the first civil war in Lebanon in 1958, which lasted several months and saw American troops land in Chamoun.
Lebanon peaked in the 1960s and early 1970s, but then went into crisis in 1975, with the start of the 15-year civil war that killed some 150,000 people, who eventually faced Lebanese sects with others. Syrian troops arrived and Israel invaded twice: once in 1978 and once in 1982, in an attack that forced Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his fighters to leave Lebanon.
U.S. interests have been attacked several times, two bombings by the U.S. Embassy and the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Navy headquarters in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. servicemen, the deadliest attack on the Marines since the Iwo Jima war in 1945. On the same day, 58 French paratroopers were killed through an attacker who hit his installation in Beirut.
The 1982 Israeli invasion and attacks on the Americans marked the beginning of what later became the militant hezbollah organization.
After the end of the civil war in 1990, the Iran-backed Shiite defense force was the only one allowed to retain its weapons because it was fighting Israeli occupying forces in southern Lebanon. When Israel withdrew from the south in 2000, Hezbollah retained its tough fighting force, presenting itself as The definer of Lebanon. He fought Israeli forces on a par in 2006, and tensions remain high along the border.
Today, Hezbollah and its allies, led by President Michel Aoun, dominate Lebanese politics and are a majority in parliament.
But the Lebanese are deeply divided over Hezbollah. While many members of the Shiite network are fiercely unwavering with the organization and many non-Shiites sympathize with their anti-Islamic stance, others see it as an imposition of Iran’s will in the country.
Many Civil War-era warlords now lead political factions, retaining positions for themselves or their families and controlling tough local business interests. Factions distribute positions in government departments and public establishments to their supporters or create sectors of activity for them, ensuring their support.
Corruption has skyrocketed over the more than two decades, and the formula of sectarian clientele has left Lebanon with ruined infrastructure, an inflated public sector, and one of the world’s debt rates, 170% of GDP, surpassed by a dominant elegance that has amassed fortunes.
Last October, national protests broke out opposed to the deterioration of the economy and the act of monetary juggling that had been the basis of Lebanon’s prosperity since 1990 collapsed into the greatest serious economic crisis in the country’s fashion history, annoyed by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Lebanon is at its worst in the last hundred years,” lawmaker Marwan Hamadeh said. “We are in the worst stage, economic, political and even in terms of national unity.”
“Lately we are busy through Iran and its missiles,” added Hamadeh, who was seriously injured in a 2004 assassination attempt he attributes to Hezbollah.
Historian Johnny Mezher says that to solve its problems, Lebanon can simply begin by passing a law that strengthens national identity rather than loyalty to its sect and is helping to ensure that it qualifies who gets state positions, rather than sectarian relations.
“Religious figures will be prevented from meddding in politics,” he said.
Even after seven decades of Lebanese independence, France still wields an influence on the small Mediterranean nation.
Two days after the harbour explosion, with Lebanese leaders completely absent, Macron went to Beirut and visited one of the most devastated neighborhoods to greet a hero, chanting “Long France.”
More than 60,000 have signed a petition to position Lebanon’s French mandate for 10 years, a concept that Macron strongly rejected. “It’s up to you to write your story,” he told the crowd.
On his return journey, Macron will plant a tree in Beirut on Tuesday to commemorate the centenary and meet with Lebanese officials to pressure them to form a government and pass reforms.
“There is no doubt that the centenary was expected to be different. We didn’t expect this year to be catastrophic at this level,” said Najjar, who is a lawyer, poet and about 30 books in French, adding one that tells the story of Beirut in the 20th century.
“There’s still hope,” he says. “We’ve hit the back of a rock and things can’t get any worse.”
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