So, do tell, what's been going on while I was away, part four

Oh, right! Another election! This one, in Lebanon, produced results less surprising but still significant for the country's future.

I had mentioned on June 17 that the surprise move by Michael Aoun to join a pro-Syrian alliance had cut into the seats predicted to go to those grouped around the coalition headed by Saad al-Hariri. To secure a majority in parliament, Hariri needed to get 21 of 28 seats up for grabs in the last round of voting, which took place on June 19.

Well, not only did they get the necessary 21, they took all 28, giving Hariri's bloc a safe majority of 72 seats in the 128-seat parliament, although less than the 85 or so seats - a 2/3 majority - originally predicted. It is, in any event, the first parliament with a majority opposed to Syrian power in Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war.

That majority, however, may not be enough, as the coalition that makes up Hariri's so-called Future Movement could still crash and burn on what Reuters called "Lebanon's treacherous sectarian politics." Indeed, CNN reports that

Adib Farha, a Middle East analyst at American University in Washington and a former adviser to Rafik Hariri, called Sunday's results "great news for Lebanon, great news for its economic recovery and great news for national reconciliation."

But he said the results also could reignite sectarian tensions in a country that fought a grinding civil war from 1975-90 - the conflict that brought Syrian troops into Lebanon in the first place.

"There is concern that the Christians, the majority of whom voted for a hawk [i.e., Aoun,] in last Sunday's round against the moderates, might misconstrue the election results of today as a victory for the Muslims," Farha said.

"Unfortunately, in politics, oftentimes perception becomes more important than the truth."

A real stumbling block is dealing with UN Security Council demands that the pro-Syrian Hizbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon be disarmed. Everyone agrees it needs to be discussed, but getting beyond discussion may prove several orders of magnitude more difficult. For one thing, Hizbollah itself and its political ally Amal together hold 35 seats in parliament. (Aoun's bloc occupies the remaining 21 seats.) And while Reuters likely overstated the case when it referred to Hizbollah's "Islamic resistance" as "near-sacred" among Lebanon's Shiites, it is most certainly true that, as I said last time, that the group is

still honored by many in southern Lebanon as being responsible for driving Israeli forces out of the area

and thus a political force to be reckoned with quite apart from its status as a militia. Indeed, Hariri's main ally, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, has pledged to "protect" Hizbollah, leaving Aoun's bloc the only one clearly supporting disarmament.

Since any Lebanese army attempt to wrest the arms is seen at home and in the West as a recipe for civil war, small, fragile Lebanon's hands are tied over Hizbollah, whoever is in power

and in spite of the demands of the West and threats to withhold aid if no progress is made on that front.

There is also likely to be continuing conflict between Hariri's majority grouping in parliament and Lebanon's president, Emile Lahoud, who is strongly pro-Syria and has two years to go in his term. That conflict took on a sharper dimension with the car-bomb murder of former Communist Party leader and anti-Syrian activist George Hawi last Tuesday, the second such assassination of an anti-Syrian figure this month; the previous victim was newspaper columnist Samir Kassir. Fears of additional attacks have blended with outrage among the anti-Syrian forces, who blame Lahoud for the murders as well as for that of Rafik Hariri on February 14. It was that death that sparked the massive street demonstrations that brought down the government and lead to the elections and the new parliamentary alignment.

The coalition leaders demanded the dismantling of the close links between the Lebanese and Syrian security agencies, which they say are behind the assassinations....

Lahoud is "ensuring protection to the existing security and political system and ... is responsible for all its practices," the coalition said in a statement Thursday after a two-hour meeting of its newly-elected legislators and other figures.

"The terrorist cycle ... can be brought to an end only ... by the president stepping down and by dismantling the intelligence structure," it said. ...

The coalition ... also called for a U.N. team that is already investigating Hariri's slaying to expand its probe to uncover the killers of Kassir and Hawi.

It said those killings - as well as a failed attempt in October to kill legislator Marwan Hamadeh - appeared to be "one crime by one decision by one perpetrator."

But with Aoun, who has become the main Christian political leader, supporting him, it becomes difficult to force Lahoud, a Maronite Christian, out and he may well be able to serve out his term, promising two years of political conflict and turmoil.

All this lead the Daily Star (Lebanon) to sadly conclude in an editorial today,

[t]hus it seems that despite all the recent optimism and calls for change, the old sectarian system is firmly entrenched in Lebanon.

The elections did indeed mark a change for Lebanon, a, if I can be allowed the cliche, new direction. But while it's been said that the journey is not the destination, it's equally true that the destination is not the journey - or, to express that with more clarity, while it's true that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, having taken that step, the destination is still a thousand miles (minus one step) away. Lebanon has taken a big step, but there's a long way to go.

Footnote: Another problem for Lebanon is that it faces $36 billion in foreign debt, one of the world's biggest figures, and the nation in under a lot of pressure from the usual suspects to "stabilize" its economy by privatizing and open-marketing everything in sight, that is, to turn itself into another vassal of what John Perkins calls the corporatocracy, in return for easier terms on debt repayments.

If the US wants to help Lebanon on its way (as opposed to just hamming up statements about a "Cedar Revolution" - a phrase invented by White House PR flacks - in a clumsy attempt to make Shrub look good) one thing it could do right now is forgive Lebanon's debt and press the other G8 countries to do the same - now, unconditionally.