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| World Marketplace |
Cedars of Change
Kamal Dib
11/01/2005
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The events unfolding this year in Lebanon are a test for the entire Middle East.
U.S. officials have dubbed the March demonstrations—some 1.5 million people
strong, these led to the end of Syria’s 30-year occupation—as the Cedar
Revolution, after the country’s national symbol. They continue to harbor high
hopes for a relatively peaceful transition from a fragile, occupied state to a
stable democracy. Although many think of Lebanon primarily in terms of the
horrors of the civil war that raged from 1975 until the early 1990s, for most of
the past 50 years this tiny nation has served as a magnet for Arabs and other
Middle Easterners seeking tourism, banking, health care and education
services.
Three recent developments hold out hope for the Lebanese: the withdrawal of
Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000; the completion in 2002 of
Beirut’s reconstruction; and the end of Syria’s 30-year de facto occupation in
April. Lebanon now has the opportunity to regain its role as a regional economic
powerhouse.
Banking has traditionally been the engine of the economy, and private banking,
much of it in partnership with leading foreign firms, accounts for an important
share of the financial services industry and for the massive amounts of
short-term capital that Lebanon attracts. I know of one banker who would pile
large gold nuggets on his desk as a sign to important clients that their
deposits were safe and could be cashed out any time.
The Lebanese have spent years rebuilding war-ravaged Beirut, once known as the
Paris of the Middle East. Now an ambitious entrepreneurial class has brought its
streets back to life with cafes and clubs. The city of 1.5 million looks like a
cosmopolitan capital again, with its old downtown core of Italian- and
French-style architecture and cobblestone roads, luxury boutiques and a
multilingual, highly status-conscious population that spends vast amounts of
money on designer clothes. Despite this, the city remains deeply in debt due to
the cost of rebuilding, and there are other legacies of its difficult recent
past, such as the power failures it suffers.
Fragile Experiment
Lebanon is home to 18 different religious groups; its government is an ongoing
experiment in Muslim-Christian consociational democracy, modeled along the lines
of Belgium, India and Switzerland, but unique in the Middle East. These nations
also suffer sharp internal divisions along ethnic, religious or linguistic
lines, but like them, Lebanon has managed to remain internally stable because
the elites of each religious community communicate and consult often with one
another.
The country functions under a grand-coalition government that incorporates the
main segments of society and maintains rules or conventions of proportional
representation and proportional employment in the public sector. However, the
constant turnover in the government is a vexing obstacle to stability. The
present cabinet of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is the 68th since Lebanon’s
independence from France in 1943.
Lebanon’s social structure has proven more fragile than other consociational
democracies; members of the ruling coalition can easily orchestrate the fall of
a governing party. Another source of weakness is nascent religious antagonism. A
separation of church and state is long overdue. Unlike the environment 40 years
ago, when Sunni Muslims and Maronite Christians were the dominant political and
economic classes, today poverty and wealth cross religious lines. One cannot say
which religious groups are more affluent than others. But religious affiliations
still create schisms. While business and investment regulations are relatively
secular and blind to a person’s faith, religious affiliation and mutual distrust
play a role in microeconomic behavior among the Lebanese.
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