Anti imperialist struggle in Lebanon
from Yossi Schwaerz and Fred Weston - 09.03.2005 22:06
A marxist perspective on the unfolding events in Lebanon from a working class internationalist strugle.
Up to one million demonstrate against US imperialism in Lebanon
By Yossi Schwartz in Jerusalem and Fred Weston
Yesterday hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, most of them Shia Muslims, marched through Beirut in support of Syria. The demonstration was organized by the Lebanese Shi’ite movement, Hizbollah, together with another 17 smaller pro-Syrian groups.
The slogans on the placards sent out a clear message: “Thank you to Assad’s Syria”, “No to the USA”, “All our disasters are from the USA”, “No to Israel”, “No to 1559” (referring to the UN resolution calling on Syria to withdraw its troops), “No to foreign interference” and so on.
Some Hizbollah officials and a pro-Syrian security source estimated the demonstration as being one million strong, with people waving the flag of Lebanon. Initial news reports estimated the crowd as being half a million as the demonstration was gathering. Later reports quoted the figure of one million. Whichever figure is true, it an impressive display of strength, in a country of barely four million inhabitants!
People flooded into Riad al-Solh Square in central Beirut, dwarfing last week’s (Tuesday) protests demanding that Syrian troops quit Lebanon. The largest pro-American demonstration was estimated by the pro-imperialist press as 60,000 mainly Maronite Christians.
What is striking is the news coverage in the west. When a relatively small movement erupted last week against Syria and in favour of the US, our TV screens were showing constant footage of the demonstrations. Yesterday’s anti-American and pro-Syrian demonstration, at least ten times bigger than last week’s, has not received the same coverage. This shows the bias of the press in the west, which couldn’t believe their luck when they saw what could be presented as a pro-US demonstration in a Middle East country.
It is worth noticing the difference between the coverage of the capitalist mass media in Israel and the news coming from the Arab states. Haaretz the main bourgeois newspaper in Israel, in its English language edition, did not mention one word about the large demonstration. It just continued to report on the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. But the same newspaper in its Hebrew edition has tried to minimize the extent of the gathering, while at the same time emphasising the threat to Israel, none of which appears in Al Jazeera or other sources.
Of course, the truth is always concrete. How could anyone believe that while the US forces are oppressing the Iraqi people, while the US continues to back Israel in its oppression of the Palestinian people, that in Lebanon the masses would all come out in favour of the Americans? With what courage does Bush order the Syrians to leave Lebanon, when American troops are on Iraqi soil? The hypocrisy of American imperialism is clear to anyone who has eyes to see.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah the leader of Hizbollah, spoke at the demonstration saying, “We thank Syria and its army,” and then went on to “apologise to Syria for the ingratitude” of the Lebanese opposition. Thus we see how this leader has swung one way and then the other. He seemed to be leaning towards the pro-US opposition, but now that the pro-Syrian groups have shown how strong they are, he has swung back to an anti-US position.
Yesterday he called for “a government of national unity and reconciliation” and rejected UN demands for the Syrians to leave and for his own militia to disarm. Today in fact the president of Lebanon, Emile Lahoud, will start talks for the formation of a new government, after the pro-Syrian Prime Minister Omar Karami resigned.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah went on to remind the US that in its last intervention in Lebanon American troops were forced to leave Beirut in 1984, a few months after a bomber killed 241 marines at their base in the capital. “We have defeated them in the past and if they come again we will defeat them again,” he said, drawing chants of “Death to America” from the sea of demonstrators.
He added that his organization has no problem with a Syrian pullout under the 1989 Ta’if Accord that ended Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, after 150,000 people were killed in the conflict. But he opposes UN resolution 1559 calling for a Syrian withdrawal and militia disarmament. “Those who insist on [Resolution] 1559, we say to them your insistence is a revolt against the Ta’if Accord ... and that means a revolt against national consensus,” he added.
The immediate response of Bush was to announce that, “Either Syria goes, or it will be further isolated,” while speaking at the National Defense University. He went on to stress that the US and its allies were determined in their plans to pose Syria with this alternative.
Bush believes he can bully and cajole the peoples of the Middle East into doing his bidding. But things aren’t so simple. The masses in the Middle East can see very clearly what US imperialism, and its allies, are doing in the region. They are rightfully seen as the oppressors. They back reactionary regimes throughout the region. They have come into conflict with Syria recently over the ambiguous position the Syrian regime adopted during the war against Iraq. Bush has not forgiven the Syrian regime for this. As in other cases, not one ounce of opposition, to US policy, however mild, is tolerated. However, whereas the Syrian regime has buckled under pressure, and has begun a gradual pullout of its troops, the masses in the Lebanon think otherwise.
Instead of getting what it wants in Lebanon, US imperialism is simply stoking the fires of ethnic conflict. Clearly the danger of renewed civil war is growing once again in Lebanon due to the intervention of the imperialists.
Around 16,000 Syrian troops have been based mainly east of Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. This deployment of Syrian troops was in fact legitimised by the Arab League during Lebanon’s civil war and through the Ta'if Accord and accepted by US imperialism! The Syrian regime had so far justified its continued deployment of troops in the country by citing the Lebanese government’s requests and the failure of the Lebanese Government to implement all of the constitutional reforms established by the Ta'if Accord.
However, Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000 changed the balance of forces within the country. That is why some Lebanese groups started raising the demand for the withdrawal of Syrian troops as well.
What accelerated the process was the voting of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 in October of last year. This resolution calls on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon and end its “interference” in Lebanese affairs. This further emboldened those Lebanese groups opposed to Syria’s presence in Lebanon, and explains also the eruption of last week’s protests.
Yesterday’s demonstration, as we have seen quite clearly, shows that the spectre of another civil war has not disappeared. Lebanon is a patchwork of different ethnic and religious groups. It was artificially created by the imperialist in the past, putting together diverse groupings with the old and tested method of “Divide and Rule”.
It is a small country of just under 4 million people. And although the overwhelming majority of the population is made up of Arabs (95%), these are divided along religious lines. The Muslims constitute almost 60% of the populations, but these are divided into Shi'ites, Sunnis, Druzes, Isma'ilites and Alawites. The Christians constitute 39%, but these are also divided into several groupings, Maronite Catholics, Melkite Catholics, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Catholics, Armenian Catholics, Roman Catholics and Protestants. In fact seventeen religious sects are officially recognised.
Imperialism has always used the Christian minority as a tool to enforce its policies and defend its interests within Lebanon. Thus we have seen de facto alliances of some of the Christian groups with Israel. Israel’s withdrawal weakened the position of these groups.
For a period Lebanon had managed to establish some form of relative stability after the 1975-91 civil war. The civil war was an absolute disaster for the people of Lebanon. The economic infrastructure of the country was seriously damaged. Its national output was halved. There was a flight of capital from what used to be considered the “Switzerland” of the Middle East.
Since 1991 Lebanon had made somewhat of a recovery. In 1993 the government launched its so-called “Horizon 2000,” plan. By 1994 GDP had started to recover, with quite significant growth up until around 1997. Since then growth has slowed down again with a recession in 2000.
A lot of the growth depended on reconstruction, and this was financed by heavy indebtedness. By 2003 this debt stood at 185.1% of GDP. It was in order to cut this growing national debt, that the Hariri government introduced an economic austerity programme. This involved increased taxation and plans for major privatisation of public resources. As in so many other countries, this policy provoked greater social polarization. Now close to 30% of the population lives below the poverty line.
This pressure on the ordinary Lebanese workers and poor explains the growing militancy of Lebanese workers. This was confirmed by last May’s general strike. (See: The working class is on the move in the Lebanon). The strike was against the increase in the price of fuel. Participation was massive and the state responded with brutal repression. This general strike was preceded by another in October 2003 (See Lebanon: A successful 24-hour general strike against the government’s cuts).
Unfortunately, as we have explained in the above quoted articles, the Communists and the Left in general have not been able to place themselves at the head of the movement. This is due to their policy of two-stageism, i.e. looking always for a so-called “progressive” wing of the ruling class to support. The Syrian regime has also played an important role in holding back the Syrian left.
It is in this context that we understand the development of the Hizbollah movement, an Islamic fundamentalist movement. This movement, apart from its religious and political ideology, is also involved in a lot of welfare work, especially among the poorer layers of society. Thus it has roots among the population. It combines this with anti-imperialist rhetoric, and is therefore seen as a point of reference by many of the population. Yesterday’s demonstration shows that its support is far stronger than the imperialists could have hoped.
The lack of a genuine working class alternative, however poses the real danger of ethnic conflict once more. One small incident yesterday serves to underline this. Some of the demonstrators started shouting slogans against the Druze opposition leader, Walid Jumblatt. Hizbollah stewards stopped this, as they had been given orders that the demonstration had to have a “national” character. However, according to local news sources, at least 75% of those present on the demonstration had been mobilised by Hizbollah.
That explains Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s call for a government of national unity. However, the road forward is not a national unity government with the bourgeois and the religious parties but the struggle for a workers’ government as part of the social transformation of the entire Middle East.
Yesterday’s demonstration of one million indicates that massive subterranean forces are being unleashed in Lebanon. The masses are clearly against imperialism. These forces can be harnessed for a genuine anti-imperialist struggle. If the movement is led by the workers’ parties and is mobilised around the demands of the working class, such as jobs for all, decent wages, good housing, etc., then the mass of the Lebanese workers and poor can be united in one struggle against the common enemy, the Lebanese bourgeoisie and its imperialist backers.
If this does not happen, then in the long run, Lebanon could be facing a nightmare scenario. Another civil war would be disastrous for all ordinary working people in Lebanon. In the vacuum that is forming in Lebanon, Islamic fundamentalism can hijack the mass movement as it did in Iran in the past, with the reactionary priests taking power and crushing the revolutionary wave and killing many left wing activists while forcing others into exile.
Now is the time to raise the red flag not the nationalist and the green flags in Lebanon.
March 9, 2005
See also:
The Crisis in Lebanon deepens By Yossi Schwartz (March 4, 2005)
The Assassination of Hariri: crisis spreads across the Middle East By Rob Lyon and Yossi Schwartz (February 18, 2005)
Death in the Sinai, Gaza and Iraq – power cuts in the Lebanon
All part of the same crisis
The working class is on the move in the Lebanon
Lebanon: a successful 24-hour general strike against the government’s cuts
