Chronicle of the Middle East and North Africa

The Second Lebanese Republic

Second Lebanese republic
After the civil war, reconstruction concentrated on Beirut. The country’s second city, Tripoli, received less attention, although fighting had caused considerable damage there. This picture shows a street scene in Tripoli in late 2001 © C.R. Pennell

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

The Taif Agreement

In January 1989, the Arab League organised a conference at Taif in Saudi Arabia which produced a charter of reconciliation in Lebanon. This was a legal package intended to end the civil war through administrative reforms and resettling the political questions of identity and sovereignty that underpinned the state in the National Pact.

Behind the scenes, one of the main organisers of the Taif Agreement was Rafik Hariri, a Lebanese businessman who had very close relations with the Saudi regime, which gave him Saudi citizenship in 1978. He was heavily involved in the construction industry in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi regime backed him as a man of influence in Lebanon.

The Taif Agreement’s proposed Charter of National Reconciliation began by declaring that Lebanon was by nature an Arab country. It talked of a free, independent, sovereign state and a “final homeland” for all its citizens. It reaffirmed the National Pact of 1943 that coupled the Arab character of Lebanon with its independence both from other Arab countries and from the international divide between the western alliance and the communist bloc. In theory, nothing had changed.

Nevertheless, Lebanon itself had changed since 1943. Sovereignty had been eroded by the occupying Syrian army, the Israeli occupation in the south, and the rise to power of Hezbollah. Consequently, the internal balance that the National Pact relied on had disintegrated. The dominant position that Christian Maronites enjoyed before the civil war began in 1975 no longer existed.

The Taif Agreement had to take into account great demographic changes that affected the politics of Lebanon. It redistributed parliamentary seats on a 50:50 ratio between Christians and Muslims and reduced the power of the Maronite presidency by transferring authority to the Council of Ministers. By changing Lebanon from a semi-presidential system to a parliamentary democracy, it increased the powers of the Sunni prime minister. Moreover, the simple division between Christians and Muslims no longer applied.

Maronite leaders rejected the growth of Syrian influence in Lebanon, but the Syrian government made it clear that it would not withdraw its troops and would assist Hezbollah to continue its military resistance.

Retaining the Sectarian Structure

What became known as the Second Lebanese Republic was in the end as unstable as the first, even though most Lebanese politicians and most of the population publicly welcomed the Taif Agreement. Immediately after approving it, the Lebanese parliament appointed René Moawad as the new president – but he was murdered within three weeks, in an area of Beirut under Syrian control. Parliament replaced him with Elias Hrawi, and Salim Hoss became Prime Minister. Hoss had to quit in December 1990. Omar Karameh formed a government of ‘national unity’, apparently with the backing of Syria, but was rejected by Hezbollah.

The determination of the Taif agreement to ban armed militias and end the sectarian structure was not achieved. The new government included leaders of former militias such as the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Amal leader Nabih Berri. Samir Geagea, who led the right wing (Christian) Lebanese Forces, refused to join the cabinet, even though he said he agreed with the Taif Agreement. In 1991, Geagea dissolved the military arm of the Lebanese Forces and handed its military assets over to the Lebanese Army. Within a year, Jumblatt and Berri had left the government. Both Hezbollah and the SLA, Major Haddad’s militia in the south, refused to disband.

Because the Taif Agreement made no mention of a reconciliation process, there was no inquiry into what had happened during the civil war: no truth commission of the sort that other countries emerging from national trauma had adopted. A form of “state sponsored amnesia” developed instead.

Amnesty laws, passed by the parliament in 1990, gave legal immunity to those who had perpetrated violence during the war and since former militia leaders remained at liberty, many of them entered formal politics. This made it impossible to address such issues as what had happened to the thousands of Lebanese citizens who had disappeared. It prevented inter-communal dialogue from developing and meant no attempts were made to patch up grievances between hostile Christian militias either.

Rafik Hariri’s first term as Prime Minister

Finally, in August and September 1992, the first parliamentary elections were held in Lebanon since before the civil war. In the aftermath, Rafik Hariri became prime minister and remained in that position until 1998. Hariri was widely credited for his role in rebuilding Beirut, working through Solidere, a construction company jointly owned by the government and private investors.

Solidere was established to reconstruct post-war Lebanon as a whole, but it was largely focused on redeveloping the capital. It constructed a new urban centre in Beirut with great speed. Solidere had the power of compulsory purchase and was accused of harassing and underpaying former owners.

Alongside the reconstruction campaign, Hariri privatised major infrastructural industries (telecommunications, airports and roads, energy and electric power) and gave tax breaks to foreign investors. His macroeconomic policy strictly controlled bank reserves and interest rates. This lowered inflation and raised the exchange value of the Lebanese pound.

At first, Hariri was extremely successful in rebuilding the economy and finances of Lebanon and enjoyed the support of the World Bank. Between 1993 and 1997, national income increased at an average of 8 percent, commercial banking blossomed, and the state’s budgetary earnings expanded. Inflation fell from 131% in 1992 to 12% in 1997. But Lebanon’s national debt grew and became the largest per capita in the world. Between 1992 and 1996 the public debt grew from $3 billion to $9 billion.

External forces

The government had some success restoring control over parts of southern Lebanon. In the late 1980s, Syrian-backed Palestinian groups controlled most of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The Fatah movement led by Yasser Arafat fought to regain control and in September 1990, Fatah took possession of the largest camp, Ain al-Hilweh, after fierce fighting.

But Fatah refused to disarm in accordance with the Taif Agreement, so the Lebanese Army attacked Palestinian positions in Southern Lebanon in July 1991 and expelled them from around Sidon. Then Fatah surrendered all its heavy weapons. Only in two refugee camps, Ain al-Hilweh and Mieh Mieh, did it continue to hold on to its light weapons.

However, there were severe limits to this success story. The Syrian army remained in Lebanon and Hezbollah pledged to “keep its weapons while Israel still poses a threat.” The presence of the Israeli army showed that their threat was very real. In 1992, Israeli helicopters killed Abbas al-Musawi, secretary-general of Hezbollah, in a targeted assassination. He was succeeded by Hassan Nasrallah, who would be assassinated by Israel in 2024. Low-level skirmishing between Israel and Hezbollah continued almost constantly across the Israel-Lebanon border until 1996.

On April 11, 1996, the Israeli army launched Operation Grapes of Wrath, a seventeen-day campaign to punish Hezbollah and force the Lebanese and Syrian governments to prevent its attacks on Israel. Israeli planes bombed Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, southern Beirut and the Bekaa. There was a huge exchange of rockets and artillery from both sides, which caused heavy civilian casualties, though, as so often, the exact numbers are hard to pin down. According to UNIFIL more than 120 civilians were killed by Israeli fire and an estimated 500 injured. The Israeli government put the fatalities at 102.

The highpoint was the Qana massacre (18 April) in South Lebanon, when the Israeli military fired artillery shells at a UN compound, where Lebanese civilians were sheltering. More than 100 people were killed and some UNIFIL troops were seriously injured.

At the end of April, Hezbollah and the Israeli government put a temporary end to the fighting with a ceasefire understanding (not a formal agreement) that prohibited Hezbollah from carrying out any attacks on northern Israel in exchange for an agreement that Israel and its South Lebanese Army clients would not attack civilian targets in Lebanon.

A monitoring group, with American, French, Lebanese and Israeli members, was appointed to oversee the ceasefire. This did not bring complete peace, but the number of clashes was substantially reduced. Lebanese civilian casualties went down from 640 in 1996 to 123 in the first eight months of the following year.

By this time, the gloss was coming off the Hariri government. The national debt had skyrocketed, and the economy was in deep trouble. In 1998, Salim Hoss replaced Hariri as prime minister as part of a power struggle between Hariri and Émile Lahoud, who had been elected as the new president with Syrian support.

The interregnum

Lebanon’s political events were still largely driven by outside actors. Above all, the Syrian regime interfered in Lebanese affairs. President Lahoud and Prime Minister Hoss pursued public favour by alleging that Hariri and his allies were corrupt and were colluding with Israel. This alienated Hariri and the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. Both had been Syrian allies, but now they abandoned the Syrian cause. But the Hoss cabinet, faced with the growing financial crisis that had begun before Hariri left office, was unable to cope.

In its external relations, the Hoss government was too weak to negotiate a deal with Israel. The governments of Syria and Israel were negotiating a broader disengagement, and the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made it clear that he wanted to withdraw from Lebanon and remove the pretext for cross-border attacks to continue.

But the Syrian government refused to let go of its leverage in Lebanon and would not allow the Lebanese government to join in the talks. Barak decided to go ahead unilaterally and pulled Israeli troops out of Lebanon at the end of May 2000. But Israeli troops remained in the tiny enclave of the Shebaa Farms that they had occupied in the 1967 war and tensions remained high there.

Hariri’s second term as Prime Minister

In October 2000, Hariri became prime minister again. This was the final year of Bill Clinton’s presidency of the United States and Clinton was anxious to advance the peace process before he left office. In March 2000, Clinton had met Syrian President Hafez al-Assad but failed to salvage the Israel-Syria talks. Assad died in June. In July 2000 yet another Camp David Summit collapsed over competing claims to Jerusalem.

The Israeli unilateral withdrawal from the south in May 2000 ended the 18-year old occupation. This deprived Hezbollah of one of its principal raisons d’être, but the government was too weak to take advantage of it. Hariri himself publicly said that both Hezbollah and the Syrian army were needed to protect Lebanon.

The Palestinian armed militias were clearly too hard to deal with. In 2001, the Lebanese defence minister said that it would be easier to impose security controls around the camps than to risk a full military incursion. This was a very difficult time for the refugees in the camps. There was no hope for employment outside the agency that was responsible for bringing relief to the plight of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency). There were substantial remittances from abroad, but the manual labour available in the Lebanese economy was very badly paid.’

Hariri was finding it increasingly difficult to govern because President Lahoud did what he could to frustrate his economic privatization plans while Hezbollah continued to attack Israeli control of the Shebaa farms. But he found support elsewhere. President Chirac of France helped him get financial relief in November 2002 with an aid and debt package worth $7 billion.

In Washington, the Bush government firmly backed Hariri against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after Syria provided support for Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Lebanese-Syrian crisis came to a head in late 2004. President Lahoud’s constitutional six-year term ended in November, with no obvious Maronite alternative to replace him. Al-Assad commanded Hariri to have the Lebanese parliament put aside the constitution, giving him three more years in office.

In September 2004, the US government and its allies put through a new UN Security Council Resolution (no 1559) which demanded free and fair elections in Lebanon without foreign interference and respect for constitutional rules, the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon and the disarmament of all militias.

Hariri defended the resolution, but the Lebanese Parliament, under Syrian pressure, voted for the constitutional amendment and Lahoud was given another three years in office. On 20 October 2004, Hariri resigned and Omar Karami became prime minister. A little less than four months later a car bomb in Beirut killed Rafik Hariri.

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