From Arab Spring to Covid-19

Author: C.R. Pennell, former Al-Tajir Lecturer in the History of Islam and the Middle East, University of Melbourne, Australia

Edited by: Erik Prins

On 17 January 2011, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), investigating the killing of Rafik Hariri, issued its first, confidential indictment. Nearly two months later, on 11 March, the Prosecutor filed an amended indictment, also confidential, followed by media speculation both senior and rank-and-file members of Hezbollah would be named.

US President Barack Obama said that this was the end of an “era of impunity” and that the US and the international community hoped all Lebanese leaders would “preserve calm and exercise restraint.” The Lebanese Foreign Minister Ali al-Shami told him to stop interfering in Lebanon’s affairs.

In June, arrest warrants were issued for four men and in August their names were released. All were Hezbollah members. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, said it was an international plot against his party and rejected the indictment. But he dismissed fears of civil war saying the country’s new government would ensure stability. Saad Hariri, Prime Minister of Lebanon since 2009, said the indictments were a “historic moment.” Shortly afterwards, the opposition members resigned from his unity government, and it collapsed. Hariri remained caretaker prime minister.

In January 2011, Najib Mikati formed a new government dominated by the 8 March Movement and Hezbollah. A year later, on 1 February 2012, the Trial Chamber of the STL announced that the four accused “cannot be found and that each has absconded and does not wish to participate in a trial.” So, their trial would have to take place in absentia. One man who was widely believed to have taken part in the plot to kill Rafik Hariri, his chief of protocol Wissam al-Hassan, a Sunni, was not indicted.

These events coincided with the greatest threat to both Syria and Lebanon that either country had faced since the Second World War: the beginning of the Syrian uprising, part of the Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.

At the start of the Syrian uprising, in March 2011, Lebanese support for the Syrian, largely Sunni, opposition came mainly in the form of speeches, demonstrations and weapons- smuggling. As the crisis continued, Syrians fleeing the Baathist regime took refuge in Lebanon. These refugees were not always well-received by the Lebanese government, but Lebanon was safer for them than other Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, or Turkey.

Numbers climbed from under 5,000 in December 2011 to 29,000 in June 2012, following the shelling of Homs, to 36,000 in August and 101,000 by mid-October, mostly in northern Lebanon and the Bekaa. By January 2014, there were 809,000 and a year later 1,145,000 refugees.

This reinforced the sectarian tensions In Lebanon, particularly in the north, because most of the refugees were Sunnis. Sunnis there resented a Syrian regime that closed the frontier, damaging the local economy, with the acquiescence of the Hezbollah-oriented government in Lebanon. The assassination of Wissam al-Hassan in a car bombing on 19 October 2012 exacerbated these tensions. He had acted as a link to Syrian rebels against the Baathist regime and had, allegedly, taken part in smuggling arms to them.

From its start, the Syrian rebellion affected all political groups in Lebanon. The balancing act that underpinned the Taif Agreement was no longer workable, but the political structure of Lebanon did not change accordingly.

Neither Hezbollah nor the Future Movement were in control of the grassroots of their supporters. Hezbollah and its Lebanese allies, including Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, and Berri’s Amal, explicitly backed the Syrian regime. But the Syrian regime, weakened by its civil war, could not provide much support in return. Instead, Hezbollah tried to protect itself by sending fighters to help Damascus in 2013. That policy preserved its relations with players outside Lebanon, with Iran especially; but inside the country, Hezbollah avoided any action that might provoke a large-scale Israeli retaliation.

Paradoxically, the Syrian Crisis brought an important change to Lebanon by taking the spotlight off Lebanon. In the early 2000s, Lebanon had been part of the frontline in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the revolutions of the 2010s shifted attention elsewhere to Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya.
Hezbollah itself began to extend its reach beyond Lebanon itself. Indeed, its relationship with Syria fundamentally changed.

Hezbollah was no longer dependent on Syria, but it became crucial in keeping the regime of Bashar al-Assad in place. In 2016, it was reported that since 2013, Hezbollah had lost between 1,700 to 1,800 fighters in Syria, more than the roughly 1,200 men it had lost fighting the Israelis since 1998.

Involvement in Syria brought Hezbollah much funding and weaponry, particularly from Iran. That strengthened its military capabilities inside Lebanon and made it impossible for any other groups to challenge it, but it came at great political cost. Hezbollah appeared to be no longer a predominantly Lebanese phenomenon, but part of a regional power struggle. That alienated much of the Lebanese population because the primary focus was no longer on fighting Israel and protecting the oppressed, but on fighting Sunnis in Syria and elsewhere.

Hezbollah could no longer claim to be a cross-communal rallying force in Lebanon in confronting Israel. In the second half of the 2010s, it hardly involved itself with Israel at all. Hezbollah became more turned inwards towards its own Shia community and lost common ground with other Lebanese religious groups.

However, it was still involved in Lebanese governments and that affected how much assistance foreign governments were willing to provide. In February 2016, Saudi Arabia withdrew pledges totalling $4 billion of aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces and Internal Security Forces because of the “stranglehold of Hezbollah on the State.” And in December 2015, the US “Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act” closed off international banking transactions involving Hezbollah, which made it more difficult to remain the main supplier of services to Lebanese Shia.

Consequently, the Lebanese political system was not able to deal with the structural economic problems that the country faced.

On a formal level the system still functioned. In 2016, politicians from both of the two main alliances, March 8 on the one hand and March 14 on the other, patched together an agreement to make the 83-year-old Michel Aoun president. The following year, European governments conceived a plan to restore the Lebanese economy and in April 2018 organised a donor conference in Paris. It focused on infrastructure development, powered by soft loans but was conditional on reforms to stimulate productivity.

Nevertheless, the crisis was too urgent for medium-term solutions. Unemployment stood at 46% and basic services (power, water, and drains) had vanished. In October 2019, there were massive protests when the government announced a financial austerity plan to raise taxes on fuel and tobacco, and impose charges on WhatsApp messages through the internet. The Saad Hariri government resigned but only in January 2020, a new government was formed under Hassan Diab.

The Diab government made no progress with a new economic plan either. Negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) foundered, the big contributing countries saying they would only provide funds for humanitarian purposes. Any other funds were dependent on real economic progress, in particular of the electricity sector (the accumulated deficit of the state-owned power utility equalled 43 per cent of Lebanon’s public debt) and the stabilisation of the currency and the state budget. That meant reaching an agreement with the IMF, which was impossible.

These systemic problems were exacerbated by two immediate emergencies. The first wave of COVID-19 cases came in March. The government handled it quite well, with an effective three-month lockdown, although it was extremely expensive. Then a second wave arrived in August.

The government had to cope not only with that, but with a huge explosion in the port of Beirut on 4 August. It killed more than 200 people, destroyed large parts of the city and left some 300,000 people homeless. On 10 August 2020, Diab and his cabinet resigned and on 30 August, Mustafa Adib, the Lebanese ambassador in Germany, was nominated as prime minister.

After the port explosion, foreign donors rushed humanitarian relief to Beirut, but western governments still demanded the new government should follow a specified timeline of reforms. These included resumption of stalled negotiations with the IMF; a capital control law; a complete audit of the accounts of the Banque du Liban; reform of the electricity sector; independence of the judiciary law; and laws against corruption.

French President Emmanuel Macron warned that this would be “the last chance.” The US government also wanted Hezbollah reined in and imposed sanctions on politicians allied with Hezbollah. Adib then resigned, saying he could not form a new cabinet on that basis.

So, on 22 October, Saad Hariri became prime minister once again, backed by the Future Movement, Jumblatt’s PSP and Amal. Hezbollah, President Aoun’ s Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces did not endorse him. Hariri spent the next nine months quarrelling with Aoun over who would join the new cabinet, and on 15 July 2021 he too resigned. Najib Mikati succeeded him.

Lebanon had fallen into a deep and intractable crisis. Between October 2019 and October 2020, the Lebanese pound had lost 75 per cent of its value. At the end of 2020, over half the population was living below the poverty line, 35 per cent of the workforce was unemployed, and nine in ten Syrian and Palestinian refugees were food-insecure.