An Elegant Account of How Lebanon Works

BEIRUT -- Trying to make sense of politics in the Arab world is a fascinating and perpetual challenge, and every once in a while a text comes along that clarifies that process and makes it enjoyable to the extent that observing wild political beasts in their natural habitat is entertaining anthropology. Of all the Middle Eastern political landscapes and their species, the most complex by far -- in the modern Arab statehood era since the 1940s -- is Lebanon. Lebanon has also been the most unstable and violent, while simultaneously providing the Arab world with its finest universities, hospitals, publishing houses, cultural troupes, bankers, entertainment and nightlife, and, in many cases, professionals, such as lawyers, engineers and doctors. Most important of all, Lebanon is unique in the Arab world for providing its citizens a degree of personal freedom from state control that remains unmatched by any Arab state.

Making sense of the contradictions that define Lebanon has challenged and eluded most of those who undertake this task, whether native Lebanese, emigrant sons, or fascinated foreigners. A solid, significant and enjoyable contribution to this masochistic fraternity has now appeared in the form of Michael Young's first book, which uses the era after the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri to understand the underlying peculiar dynamics that define and drive Lebanese society and state. The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An eyewitness account of Lebanon's life struggle (2010, Simon and Schuster, 296 pp) uses literary techniques equivalent to those multiple Russian dolls inside one another - each one being a work of art that is fully appreciated only when it is grasped within the whole of its other components.

Young's first level comprises the events in and around Martyrs Square from mid-February 2005, especially the Independence Intifada in the first four months after the assassination. That fits into the next level which is the city of Beirut, here seen as a symbol of what happens when all sorts of politicians -- mountain men from the north, holy men from Iran and the Bekaa, Christian, Muslim and Druze leaders of all stripes, businessmen from every corner of the region -- move into the city and practice their political arts there. The city of Beirut fits into the third level, which is all of Lebanon, which itself in turn is enveloped and reflects the fourth level, the wider Middle East. The fifth and last level is the nearly global ideological struggle pitting, at its simplest, Western liberal consumerism against a Middle Eastern-anchored Arabism and Islamism.

Young says that his book "aims to unpack the Lebanon that emerged between 2005 and 2009, an essential moment in modern Lebanese history." His central theme is that Lebanon's "paradoxical liberalism," which is based on a constantly renegotiated balance among the country's main sectarian groups, was put to the test with the Hariri assassination, the Syrian withdrawal, and the subsequent assertion of power by Hizbullah. He explains how Lebanon's paradoxical liberal character derives from "a complex array of social and political relationships infused with illiberal drives and habits, enforced by numerous fathers who, like Saturn, devour their own children. But these often illiberal relationships have also given rise to a system that, objectively, even reflexively, imposes equilibrium between Lebanon's political and social forces, allowing liberalism -- albeit a paradoxical liberalism -- to thrive in the spaces opened up."

I have read most of what Michael Young has written in recent years, and this is certainly his finest work, providing a more complete and nuanced understanding of what makes Lebanon tick, and how politics, governance, identity and power intersect throughout the Middle East. Like much of his journalistic writing, this book is also defined by strong criticism of Syria and Hizbullah -- the former, in his view, for killing Hariri and subjecting Lebanon to decades of abuse, the latter for working with Syria and, more recently, asserting its dominance through military force and political intimidation. He also correctly and honestly says that he is not an "objective" observer, and that his views are contestable in some respects.

The most satisfying aspect of this book are the insights of Lebanon that Young offers, side by side with his well known criticisms. He often does this through in-depth analysis and vignettes of key components of the country -- the city of Beirut, the Maronites and their leaders, Hizbullah and the Shiites, Sunnis and the Hariri family, Walid Jumblatt and the Druze, Bechir Gemayel, Hassan Nasrallah, Samir Geagea, Michael Aoun and others from this rich pantheon of political anthropology.

Some of his key points and themes include how and why the Lebanese keep returning to "compromise and balance as a way of moving things forward," a phenomenon that he unravels with much skill, credibility -- and, always, elegance. He touches on how foreigners often intervene in the country, how the country suffers from the hubris of individuals, why Hizbullah's ambitions and Lebanese national integrity and character now clash, the need to assert the rule of law -- and to me the most beautiful part of the book: the character and meaning of the city of Beirut as a place where citizens can be what they wish to be, and where, ideally, sectarianism recedes and citizenship plays itself out.


Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.