Reply #18: Lebanon's Slide Back Into Civil War

[Tempest]

From our very own Teaser:

http://tinyurl.com/493oj

Today's huge opposition protest in Beirut has been painted as a tactical move designed to regain momentum from Hezbollah's huge protest last week. The numbers are comparable, with perhaps a slight edge going to today's opposition protest in Martyr's Square. However, for protests of this scale, size really doesn't matter anymore. It's become clear in the past few days that Lebanon remains a highly fractured community where social fault lines cut in such a way as to apportion roughly equal numbers of people into the "opposition" and "loyalist" camps. But, as concerned obsevers of this situation, we should look at what is really going on here, what these struggles are really about, and where they are likely to end up.

To begin to understand the current situation in Lebanon, we have to turn the clock back all the way to 1932. This is the date of the last Lebanese census. At this time, the population was roughly 54% Maronite Christian and 44%. The parliament was set up according to a quota system in which 6 seats were apportioned to Christians for every 5 seats for Muslims (including the heretical mystic sect known as the Druze). This situation holds in the parliament to this day, and was no small reason for the civil war that lasted from the mid 70s to about 1990.

The problem is that the demographics of Lebanon have shifted strongly toward the muslims since the 1930s. They are certainly a majority now, although the Lebanese government has resisted a new census, for fear of reigniting the sectarian passions of the civil war era. But there is a new dynamic afoot now, one that is by no small measure responsible for the current tit-for-tat protests we are seeing. Not only are muslims a majority of Lebanon's population now, but Shi'ah muslims represent the nation's largest sect. Some will claim that the Shi'ah actually represent a majority of the population, but I think that is unlikely. They probably represent a little less than half of Lebanon's population.

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