Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0216/02161.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 33KB | 544 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02161}
$Pretitle{224}
$Title{Lebanon
Chapter 5A.   National Security}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Robert Scott Mason}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{lebanese
army
lebanon
war
forces
civil
christian
military
government
muslim}
$Date{1987}
$Log{View of the Crusader Castle*0216101.scf
Figure 9.*0216103.scf
}
Country:     Lebanon
Book:        Lebanon, A Country Study
Author:      Robert Scott Mason
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 5A.   National Security

[See View of the Crusader Castle: Sidon]

     By the late 1980s, Lebanon's national security system had broken down
almost completely. To the extent that a state's viability is defined by its
government's ability to safeguard its borders against foreign incursions,
enforce domestic security, and exert a monopoly on the use of armed force,
Lebanon can no longer be considered a state. In 1987 the vestigial Lebanese
government proved incapable of providing security to its citizens.
Furthermore, most Lebanese do not identify themselves primarily with the
state. A heterogeneous collection of mutually hostile religious and ethnic
minorities, the Lebanese population has traditionally pledged its allegiance
to sects rather than to the state (see Sectarianism, ch. 2). The fractious
nature of the population was reflected in a weak central government, which
maintained only a token national army in an environment where neighboring
states supported formidable armed forces.

     Lebanon's Civil War, which began in 1975, was the culmination of
centuries of strife and conflict over sectarian issues and the resulting
struggle for political and economic power. Over a decade of warfare took as
many as 130,000 lives and caused an estimated US $100 billion in property
damage. As of 1987, the basic issues had not been resolved; intermittent but
chronic warfare continued. Because the numerous militias, each representing a
sect, were approximately equivalent in strength, the conflict had reached a
stalemate, with neither victor nor vanquished, only victims. And the
overwhelming majority of victims in Lebanon's warfare have been civilians.

     The Civil War has often been depicted as pitting leftist Muslims against
rightist Christians. But there was considerable ambiguity as to the issues of
contention. Although there were two main sides in the Civil War--the leftist
Muslim Lebanese National Movement versus the rightist Christian Lebanese
Front--each of these umbrella organizations was an uneasy coalition composed
of scores of smaller groups (see Appendix B). Neither side was monolithic, and
when fighting between the two sides slackened ephemeral alliances broke down
and internecine warfare broke out. The Civil War has always been a
multilateral rather than a bilateral conflict, with numerous protagonists.

     By 1987 a dozen years of such conflict had fragmented the Lebanese
polity. Lebanon has been divided since about 1976 into autonomous cantons and
enclaves that function as small states within the matrix of the old state.
Nevertheless, with near unanimity Lebanese politicians opposed partition, less
from optimism than from conviction that only a unified Lebanon could justify
the devastation and decimation the Lebanese people have suffered. To support
this conviction, many Lebanese cited the prophetic writing of native poet
Khalil Gibran: "Pity the nation divided into fragments, and each fragment
deeming itself a nation."

     Furthermore, foreign forces have been drawn into the Lebanese vortex by
this vacuum of power, further complicating Lebanon's internal balance of
power. In the 1960s, Palestinian guerrillas were the first interlopers, and
their presence hastened the Civil War. The Syrian armed forces were invited by
the Lebanese government as peacekeepers in 1976, but they later came to be
regarded by some as a Trojan horse that would bring permanent Syrian
occupation or annexation. The Israel Defense Forces invaded in 1978 and 1982
with the ostensible mission of expelling Palestinian guerrillas who had
ensconced themselves in Lebanon. The Israelis managed ultimately to evict most
Palestinians fighters, but many in Israel believed the moral and material cost
of the campaign had been too high, and they cited the Old Testament warning,
"The violence you do to Lebanon shall overwhelm you." In the 1980s, the United
Nations Interim Force in Lebanon and also United States and West European
contingents of the Multinational Force fought and died in Lebanon as
peacekeeping troops invited by the government to enforce truces and
cease-fires. Some Middle Eastern countries organized proxy forces or
dispatched expeditionary forces into Lebanon for their own reasons. The
Iranian Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards), for example, entered Lebanon in 1982
as volunteers invited by Lebanese Shia (see Glossary) Muslims. Lebanon,
therefore, became an arena for conflict among foreigners, and these conflicts
were superimposed on the domestic conflict.

     Searching for scapegoats, many Lebanese tended to attribute the war
entirely to these foreign forces. As President Amin Jumayyil (also seen as
Gemayel) said, "The current violence, while it is taking place in our country,
is essentially a product of the interplay of foreign forces." The Lebanese
Chamber of Deputies passed resolutions demanding the withdrawal of all foreign
troops from Lebanon and insisting that the Civil War would end as foreigners
evacuated the country.

     Although the Lebanese have tended to look abroad for its cause, the
perennial violence appeared to be endemic and indigenous. This admission was a
difficult one for the Lebanese, who have regarded themselves as more
cosmopolitan and modern than their Arab neighbors. Nevertheless, as one of
Lebanon's leading sociologists, Samir Khalaf, explained in 1986, the
characteristics that account for the resourcefulness, prosperity, and cultural
awakening in Lebanon were the same characteristics that fragmented the society
and weakened its civic and national loyalties.

The Creation of the Army

     Like most of the Middle East, Lebanon has a long history of conflict and
conquest. Unlike other Middle Eastern nations, however, Lebanon also has a
long history of inviting, or at the least acquiescing in, foreign military
intervention. Lebanese leaders have traditionally traded sovereignty for
security.

     Prior to its establishment as a sovereign and independent state shortly
after World War II, Lebanon had existed under centuries of foreign domination.
Many Lebanese cities capitulated to the invasions of the Crusader's in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and Lebanon's Christians collaborated with
the French Crusaders. In the early seventeenth century, the Druze (see
Glossary) ruler Fakhr ad Din II concluded a secret treaty with Ferdinand I,
duke of Tuscany in Italy, to oppose the Ottomans. Italian mercenaries helped
to organize and equip his army on the European model. In 1840 the British and
the Ottoman Turks bombarded Beirut at the behest of the Maronites (see
Glossary) and the Druzes, who had united to fight the invasion of the Egyptian
Muhammad Ali. In the 1850s, the Druzes cultivated a special relationship with
the British, while the French maintained their traditional role as protectors
of the Maronites. In 1860 European nations landed troops in Beirut to protect
Christians and to end a massacre by the Druzes that had claimed over 10,000
Christian lives. And after World War I, Lebanese Christians supported the
French Mandate.

     The Ottoman Empire ruled Lebanon indirectly for almost 400 years
(beginning in 1516) by delegating authority to local amirs (princes), who
raised feudal armies consisting mainly of non-Lebanese mercenaries and some
Lebanese conscripts. During this period, the amirs intentionally integrated
their militia, and Christian Maronites and Druzes served side by side. In the
settlement that followed the Druze massacre of Christians in 1860, Lebanon was
made an autonomous province o