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Last Friday the Beirut daily Al-Nahar
published a statement (reproduced on this page) by the “temporary
preparatory committee” of the Movement for a Democratic Left. Among its
members are several prominent Lebanese intellectuals who emerged from, or
once identified with, the Lebanese communist movement, particularly the
Lebanese Communist Party (LCP). Their ambition is to form a new force on the
political left, which is presently dominated by sectarian parties.
The statement was actually three things: It was a reaction to the fact that
leftist parties were barred from entering Beirut International Airport two
weeks ago to greet the resistance fighters released by Israel; it was an
effort to reinsert the left into the resistance narrative and indeed point
out that it was the leftist parties, not Hizbullah, that initiated the
anti-Israeli resistance in the early 1980s; and it was a manifesto affirming
that the movement represents a new leftist alternative.
However, most significantly, and linking all three of these endeavors, it
was a ferocious indictment of Syria’s role in Lebanon and what the movement
described as the Syrian embrace of a “culture of nullification” in the
country, whereby all adversaries of Damascus, real or potential, were being
“nullified.”
The signatories declared that the decision to deny leftist parties entry
into the airport was not an oversight or the result of carelessness. It had
to be understood in the context of “a decision taken by the Syrian
administration in Lebanon 20 years ago, in 1984, following the beginning of
the defeat of the Israeli project, in which the left, through the national
resistance front, played a decisive role.”
The reference was to the fact that in its early incarnation, the national
resistance was an affair of the leftist parties, particularly the LCP, until
the Islamic resistance, which would develop into Hizbullah later in the
1980s, commandeered the process thanks to Syrian support. A reason for this
was Syrian displeasure with the LCP’s growing independence in resistance
operations which helped spark an anti-communist assassination campaign in
the mid-1980s but also a deeper mistrust between Damascus and the remnants
of the Lebanese National Movement, dating back to 1976 when Syria sided with
Christian forces, and which endures to this day because of disagreement over
whether to support Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority.
However, the statement did more than just seek to refresh national memory
and prevent the “expropriation of history.” It was an effort by the
signatories to reclaim legitimacy from the resistance in the run-up to the
launching of a new political force; but also to play the part of any
burgeoning opposition movement and cast doubt on what they called the
“alliance” of politicians and parties dominating the Lebanese political
system that had hijacked and ravaged national political life.
The statement provokes three observations. The first is that it highlights a
phenomenon increasingly noticeable in recent years, but which many have
simply overlooked, namely the alienation from Syria of non-sectarian,
leftist political groups, particularly those emerging from the communist
scene, that have historically had little to do with Syria’s other main
critic, the Christian opposition. What this has led to, however, is a
narrowing of the gap between Syria’s leftist and Christian adversaries,
despite their deep divergences.
Within this context, the language of last Friday’s statement stretched the
boundaries of what had previously been permissible when mentioning Syria
directly, even if the ideas had many times been voiced in softer language.
Indeed, the signatories’ dissection of the corruption at the heart of the
Lebanese political system, and Syria’s responsibility for this, has rarely
been matched in post-war rhetoric
A second observation is that the unmentioned specter hovering over the
statement was Hizbullah, which the signatories sought to demystify, even as
they implicitly recognized the heroism of the released resistance fighters.
It is fitting that two groups of ideological true believers, one secular the
other religious, should be at odds, and one could almost picture the
annoyance of Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his followers,
who must have thought they had permanently airbrushed the left out of the
resistance tale, which Hizbullah has spent over a decade burnishing in
splendid exclusivity.
The third observation is best expressed in a question: Does Lebanon need a
new party of the left, rebuilt on the wreckage of communism? An answer is
not easy. An intellectual-based party, as the Movement for a Democratic Left
is bound to become, will have limited sway in a sectarian society, and it is
presumptuous to assume that even a reinvigorated ideology of the left would
somehow succeed in transforming Lebanon. On the other hand, the movement has
scored a bull’s-eye in raising the issue of the Syrian presence, on which
most Lebanese can agree and which remains infinitely more relevant to the
society than post-Marxian doctrine.
What will be far trickier is defining what kind of Lebanese state a new
leftist movement will embrace, particularly when much of the group’s
statement, except for the passages on Syria, was penned in the primeval
idiom of the Lebanese National Movement. The country plainly does need new
ideas, and the Movement for a Democratic Left may provide some. But the only
realistic salvation for the post-war state is to ensure it becomes as small
and invisible as possible, and one really wonders whether that is in the
cards for any leftist party, democratic or not. |
