Lebanon: to be watched

By Christopher Beddow

Revolution in Egypt. Regime change in Tunisia. Headlines and conversations highlight these events as the changes the Middle East has been waiting for, but it's possible that the concept of Egyptian liberal democracy  may deflate just as quickly as the hype that surrounded Iran's "Green Revolution" last year.

What's missing from recent headlines is Lebanon — home of the non-violent 2005 Cedar Revolution that ousted a Syrian occupation and brought to power the most liberal of Arab governments.

Lee Smith, Middle East correspondent and author of "The Strong Horse," sees Lebanon as split between a culture of tolerance and freedom and a culture of people who "love death more than life" — that is, Hezbollah.

A unified government under Prime Minister Saad Hariri has stood since his father's assassination in 2005, but last month it faltered — Michael Totten, a former Beirut resident visited the Hoover Institution last week, wrote in January that "Lebanon's government just collapsed" and warned that this political speed bump could quickly transition into full fledged civil war.

In the case of Lebanon, Hezbollah withdrew from the government coalition and the system could not function — a system long pre-dating the Egyptian unrest of late, a system established by Lebanon's 1926 constitution and revised in the Taif Agreement of 1990 as well as the Doha Agreement of 2008.

Lebanon struggled through a 16 year occupation by its Syrian neighbor, the assassination of Rafiq Hariri in 2005, a Hezbollah war with Israel in 2006, violence in Beirut from Hezbollah in 2008, and, if that was not enough, it will soon see a new prime minister while constantly fearing aggression from Hezbollah.

Michael Young, opinion editor at the Daily Star in Lebanon, is the author of "The Ghosts of Martyr Square," a book that details the struggle of Lebanon since the civil war of 1975 until present day.

While reading his book, I came to see that Lebanon is a microcosm of the entire Middle East — it has Christian influence, conflict with Israel, Iranian-inspired revolutionary ideals, a Sunni-Shia divide, political assassinations, intellectual-backed liberalism efforts, extremist aspirations for government, foreign meddling and a history of violence.

However, Lebanon also has a model for democracy and power-sharing.

If any country should be closely watched in the coming weeks, it is the Land of the Cedars, where the Lebanese people are all too familiar with civil war and corruption, yet have a realistic goal of liberty, sovereignty and peace.

Christopher Beddow is a senior political science major.