Doha pact codifies Bush setback in Lebanon

The agreement negotiated among contending Lebanese paties in Doha, Qatar, on May 21 reflects the military and political victory of the progressive Hezbollah-led opposition in Lebanon over the Bush regime and its clients in the Lebanese government. The victory came in early May after the pro-imperialist government had made an aggressive provocation against Hezbollah.

The goal of this provocation was to disarm the Lebanese groups that resisted Israeli attacks or, failing that, to promote fighting along sectarian lines in Lebanon. The pro-imperialist forces underestimated the mass support for Hezbollah and its allies and overestimated its own strength. Hezbollah’s lightning victory handed U.S. imperialism a sharp setback and led to the agreement.

Because it led the struggle in the south of Lebanon that expelled Israeli occupation forces in 2000 and also led the Lebanese resistance that stopped another bloody Israeli invasion in 2006, Hezbollah enjoys mass popularity throughout the Middle East. This includes broad support within Lebanon, even from outside its mass base in the poverty-stricken Shi’ite community south of Beirut.

Hezbollah’s allies include another Shi’ite-based group named Amal, the Lebanese Communist Party and the former military and Christian leader, Gen. Michel Aoun. More than any other mass organization, this coalition represents the oppressed masses and the working class in Lebanon.

On the other side, Washington, Tel Aviv and the Arab regimes that collaborate with imperialism—Saudi Arabia and Egypt, for example, as well as many wealthy rightist Lebanese—treat Hezbollah as a threat to their regimes’ stability.

Under Lebanon’s sectarian system, the president is always a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Shi’ite Muslim.

Gen. Michel Suleiman, head of the Lebanese army, was named president of Lebanon on May 25 in Beirut. After the army refused to intervene in the last round of fighting on either side, Suleiman became one of the few Maronite Christian political leaders acceptable to both the Lebanese regime and the opposition.

Suleiman’s appointment, filling the president’s post empty since November, was part of the Doha agreement. The other parts included that:

A new 30-person cabinet will consist of 16 seats for the pro-U.S. governing group known as the “March 14 Coalition,” 11 seats for the Hezbollah-led opposition, and three to be named by Suleiman. This division should give the opposition veto power over important government decisions, but not enough power to press its own program. Fouad Siniora, the current prime minister, will step down, but the pro-Western forces will appoint the prime minister until at least 2009.

Washington, whose ambassador publicly endorsed the Doha agreement, had supported the Lebanese army and Siniora. The U.S. will surely continue its hostility to the Hezbollah-led opposition. Washington explains this hostility as opposition to the Syrian and Iranian governments, but behind U.S. policy is imperialist fear of any mass organization fighting for liberation in the Middle East.

In return for the Doha concessions, the Hezbollah-led opposition has already dismantled the tents that its members had set up in downtown Beirut 18 months earlier when they demanded one-third representation in the government for one-third of the population, an obviously fair democratic demand.

Hezbollah also won the reappointment of the director of security of the Beirut Airport and the right to maintain its own communications network, a valuable part of its defense force. This regime’s attack on these two key elements of Hezbollah’s defensive arsenal provoked the fighting in early May.

That provocation left Hezbollah no choice but to fight. When Hezbollah supporters took over most of Beirut in hours, it became apparent Bush and the March 14 Coalition had underestimated Hezbollah’s political prestige. March 14 leader Walid Jumblatt then accused Hezbollah of trying to seize power.

In Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s last major address May 8, he answered Jumblatt’s charge: “They accused us of wanting to take power, to attempt a coup d’état. But if they all come to hand over power to us, we will tell them that we don’t want this responsibility, the government has to be the responsibility of the entire country, not of a part or a group alone.” By May 10, Hezbollah had handed Beirut back to the Lebanese army.

Washington has incited sectarian conflict in Iraq to prevent a united resistance from ending the U.S. occupation. The U.S. also promoted fighting between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Palestine to weaken that national movement. There is evidence U.S. imperialism will continue trying to apply this “divide and conquer” strategy in Lebanon.

A New York Times story on Lebanon published every incident its reporters could find that conceivably involved hostility between religious sects, apparently drumming up those sentiments against Hezbollah. (May 18)

Regarding the “divide and conquer” tactics, Nasrallah said in the same speech: “It is not a conflict between religions, but one between one force with a program of resistance, and one that is pro-colonialist. But they would like to make it seem like a religious conflict. Here there will never be a religious conflict between Sunni and Shiite, Christian, never, because there are many Sunni, Christian, Druze and Shiite leaders who are with the resistance and have made this position public.”

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