Beirut: Although few Lebanese appreciated why the head-of-state of a permanent UN Security Council member would visit their country caught in a state of institutional freeze, Francois Hollande spent nearly two days in Beirut, called on Syrian refugees in the Bekaa Valley, and pledged significant financial and military aid.
Challenged elites were somewhat critical of the French President’s short visit, with the English Daily Star editorialist labelling it: “Much ado about nothing”.
Al Nahar called it “realistic but without a plan to elect a Head-of-State,” while Talal Salam, the owner and editor in-chief of Al Safir, thanked Hollande for coming to Beirut but did not think that the visit left an impact.
Even if few were privy to Hollande’s various discussions with local politicians, what left the intelligentsia dejected was its repetitive aspects. Holding talks with Prime Minister Tammam Salam, Speaker Nabih Berri, former and current presidential candidates Samir Geagea (Lebanese Forces), Michel Aoun (Free Patriotic Movement), Sulaiman Franjieh (Marada Movement), as well as former President Michel Sulaiman and Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri (Future Movement), added little to the pot.
Hollande held talks with several more interesting personalities during what seemed to be a gathering of thinkers — Samir Franjieh (ex-deputy), Ziad Baroud (ex-Minister of Interior), Chibli Mallat and Mona Fayad (university professors), as well as Hind Darwish (editor and journalist) — although the assembled gravitas was probably to naught in a polarised society that was determined to self-destruct.
Of course, the Frenchman backed one of the sole functioning institutions — the military — as he and his accompanying Minister of Defence, Jean Yves Le Drian, pledged to provide fresh assistance, especially after Saudi Arabia ended its aid package to the Lebanese Armed Forces, and received the LAF Commander, General Jean Qahwaji, with whom he presumably discussed how best to channel this help.
He also visited a Syrian refugee camp, aware that the presence of nearly 2 million hapless individuals was untenable in a small country.
Whether the promised sum of money to assist Syrian refugees intended to preserve Lebanon’s security or whether it was a mechanism to prevent refugees to start leaving the country for Europe was unclear.
Cynicism aside, at least four specific additional developments occurred this weekend, which provide food for thought.
Hollande met everyone at the ‘Residence des Pins’, which is the French Embassy but, far more important, at the imposing building from where the creation of Lebanon as a State was declared in 1920. While Hollande did not intend to play a new General Henri Gouraud, the man who invented the country as a modern political entity nearly a century ago, he nevertheless sent a clear message that Paris favoured the current geographical entity — if it can be preserved. This was no small feat at a time when many Lebanese openly discussed partition, with severe and largely unknown consequences if that were to occur, and which will probably end the sole Arab democracy.
Likewise, and though France is often accused of favouring the Maronite community over all others [the Church actually celebrates a mass for France each year that is attended by its ambassador], Hollande received Cardinal Mar Bisharah Butros Ra‘i at the ‘Residence des Pins’.
In other words, he did not trek to the Maronite Seat at Bkirki and, even more important, welcomed both Muslim and Christian spiritual leaders at his place of residence. Importantly, he stopped at the Al Amin Mosque as well as an Orthodox church in Downtown Beirut that, while symbolic, telegraphed to one and all that Paris backed a multi-confessional Lebanon even if the Lebanese seemed to have tired of the experiment.
Equally important, and though Hollande met Sa’ad Hariri, he dispatched a delegation to lay a wreath of flowers at Rafik Hariri’s tomb in central Beirut instead of going himself.
It was worth recalling that Jacques Chirac, a former French president, came to Beirut for Hariri’s funeral, albeit in a private capacity. The message to Sa’ad Hariri was clear: Paris is with Lebanon, not necessarily with one group against another, especially since its favourite candidate for head-of-state, Michel Aoun, was a Hariri nemesis.
Finally, and this was both symbolic as well as refreshing, Hollande flew into Rafik Hariri International Airport (RHIA) in Beirut, which is nominally located in a Hezbollah stronghold with all kinds of security implications, but left the country from Rayak Air Base in the Bekaa.
When the two French presidential falcons lined up to fly out of Rayak towards Cairo, Paris implied that Lebanon was larger than RHIA, and that the Lebanese should not worry if Hezbollah controlled the airport. France suggested that there were alternatives and, even if or when the country was partitioned, people in the country would continue to prosper and engage with the rest of the world. Beirut was not isolated from the civilized world, he seemed to underscore, unless its people chose to do just that.