Opinion | Columnists
The General in Damascus... finally
Aoun has positioned himself as a leader with a following cutting across religious lines and has found friends in Hezbollah as well as in Iran and Syria.
- By Sami Moubayed, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:35 November 24, 2008
- Image Credit: Illustration by Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News
"We have a blood feud with Syria," a prominent media figure from the March 14 Coalition told a friend of mine - a Syrian Christian - who was wrapping up a weekend visit to Beirut.
"I have a blood feud with Walid Jumblatt," she snapped back, "because he killed over 150 Greek Orthodox civilians in Mount Lebanon; many being members of my family!"
Further enraging her Lebanese counterpart, she added, "Hassan Nasrallah does not have Christian blood on his hands. But Walid Jumblatt does, and so does Samir Geagea!"
Christians remember only too well the reply Jumblatt's father, Kamal Jumblatt, gave to then Syrian president Hafez Al Assad at the start of the civil war when asked: "Why are you escalating the fighting? The constitutional document gives you 95 per cent of what you want. What else are you after?"
Jumblatt said he sought to "get rid of the Christians, who have been on top of us for 140 years!"
Christian nationalism is on the rise throughout the region, because of all the persecution the community has been facing in Iraq and the loss of power in Lebanon. The Maronite Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir has repeatedly warned against the collective immigration of Christians.
The Maronite Church says that since the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975, some 730,000 Christians have left Lebanon. Nearly 375,000 of them have settled in Canada. Others are dispersed in France, Australia and the United States.
According to the Public Security Department, a total of 280,000 people left Lebanon during the summer of 2006, forty per cent of them Christians.
Many Christians had returned after the comeback of Michel Aoun in May 2005, after 15 years of exile in France. He was hailed as the last standing giant of the Lebanese Christian community.
That explains why many are looking up to Aoun, a former prime minister and army commander, as a saviour of Arab Christians.
Although Aoun himself was involved in inter-Christian fighting during the civil war - and even bombed certain Christian districts during his "war of cancellation" with Samir Geagea - he was never viewed as a sectarian leader in Lebanon.
His alliance with Hasan Nasrallah is testimony to broad ambitions, and a non-sectarian agenda for Lebanon. At 75, Aoun still dreams of becoming president.
There are districts in the country where Nasrallah wields more powerful than the Beirut government. This Lebanon has neighbourhoods that are dotted with mosques and filled with photographs of Ayatollah Khomeini. The Christians of the south are close to Nasrallah and they like him.
Honeymoon
In Mount Lebanon, the base of Maronite power, however, they resent his growing influence and status as kingmaker in Lebanese politics.
For its part, Hezbollah aims at empowering the Shiite community and co-ruling, by proxy, through a Christian heavyweight like Aoun.
Due to changes in Lebanon, and the exodus of Christians during the civil war and in the 1990s, Aoun realises that becoming a Christian leader - like Geagea is trying to be - is not enough to secure him a seat at Baabda Palace.
He wants to stand as a pan-Lebanese leader, representing all sects, and this explains his alliance with Druze figures like Talal Arslan, Sunnis like Omar Karameh and Salim Hoss, and Shiites like Nasrallah and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.
A newfound axis that Aoun is creating with both Syria and Iran is also frightening to the March 14 Coalition. Last month, he visited Tehran, marketing himself as the only leader who can protect Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In striking contrast, Geagea was visiting President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo and meeting Lebanese President Michel Suleiman in Riyadh, showing just how polarised Lebanese Christians had become.
Next month Aoun will be making a landmark visit to Syria - the first in over 20 years - to meet with President Bashar Al Assad. He is going to visit Christian neighbourhoods in Damascus, historical churches, convents, and Christian villages in the Syrian countryside.
Thousands are preparing a massive reception for the General, forgetting and forgiving his former anti-Syrian policies during his long exile in France. Aoun after all, lobbied for the passing of the Syrian Accountability Act and UNSCR 1559 and returned to Beirut claiming that it was his efforts.
Some in Lebanon are saying, however, that Aoun is a hypocrite. If he was so anti-Hariri, why then did he visit the tomb of the slain prime minister right after he returned to Lebanon? He had harangued them for years with anti-Syrianism, but today, refuses to blame Syria for any of the wrongs in Lebanon.
In an interview with Middle East Quarterly in 1996, Aoun was asked if he dislikes the United States. He replied: "I have never been against the United States and have always respected Americans, a democratic people who forward their values and peace, as we do."
True, Aoun has changed after 2005. Having said that, it must also be noted that because of his non-sectarian views, Aoun is the man who is preventing a sectarian outburst in Lebanon today, living up to his reputation of being a secular, populist leader.
When Christians are asked to choose between "The General" and "Al Hakim" (Geagea) in the forthcoming parliamentary elections of 2009, the world will see just how powerful, and how much of a phenomenon Michel Aoun really is.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst and editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Damascus.
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