Date: Jan 21, 2019 Source: The Daily Star Is Lebanon headed toward more sectarianism? Hussein Dakroub| The Daily Star BEIRUT: Nearly three decades after the end of the 1975-90 Civil War, Lebanon does not appear to have recovered from the devastating effects of the strife that killed more than 150,000 people and left the country’s infrastructure in ruins. Rather, the multisectarian country seems to be taking a downhill slide toward further confessionalism and sectarianism with all the dire consequences this entails for the country’s stability, struggling economy and the coexistence formula, political analysts said Friday. Neither do the country’s rival political leaders seem to have learned any useful lessons to avert a renewal of a sectarian conflict. Instead, they have failed to abandon their sectarian-entrenched positions and policies that would help in defusing deep-seated tensions among various sects and subsequently, move Lebanon to what Speaker Nabih Berri and other officials called recently a “civilian state.” To the shock of the majority of the Lebanese who aspire for a civilian state that would replace the country’s sectarian-based ruling system, the past few days have seen four purely sectarian meetings sponsored separately by the religious authorities of the Maronite, Sunni, Shiite and Druze sects aimed at asserting their roles in running the country’s public affairs. These meetings underscored, among other things, divisions over how the country should be run, and also reflected long-standing fears within the Christian community of changing the current governing formula based on equal power sharing between Muslim and Christians. These fears stem largely from the fact that Muslims now constitute the majority in Lebanon’s population of more than 4 million as a result of large demographic changes in past years. “These religious meetings reflect sectarian and confessional divisions in the country. In the absence of a fully functioning government and the failure of rival leaders to resolve the country’s political and socio-economic crises, the religious councils and bodies acted to play the role of politicians and raise their grievances,” political analyst Kassem Kassir told The Daily Star. “We are in the throes of a long-simmering political system crisis. “Thirty years after the civil war, the country is drifting further toward a sectarian and confessional split,” he said. “These religious meetings showed that the political struggle in Lebanon is taking a sectarian and confessional tinge.” “In the absence of a national dialogue sponsored by the president, similar to those held in the past to resolve the country’s chronic political and economic problems, we see religious and sectarian meetings taking place,” Kassir added. Sami Nader, a professor of economics and international relations at Universite St. Joseph, concurred, saying these religious meetings sent a “clear signal” about the collapse of the “national contract” and the “national project” among the Lebanese to run their country. “Besides deepening the sectarian divide, these religious meetings reflect a further political disintegration,” Nader, also the director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs, a Beirut-based think tank, told The Daily Star. “The failure to form a new government for nearly eight months, as a result of differences among feuding parties over the distribution of Cabinet shares, has put the country in an impasse. The country is standing on the abyss,” Nader added. Last week, the Higher Shiite Council held an emergency meeting to voice support and solidarity with Berri and his Amal Movement in rejecting Libya’s invitation to the 2019 Arab Economic and Social Development Summit scheduled to be held in Beirut at the weekend. The council said Libya’s participation in the summit would be “a challenge to the feelings of the Lebanese and offensive to the case of Imam Musa Sadr and his two companions.” It also warned in a statement after the meeting attended by ministers and lawmakers from the Amal Movement and Hezbollah of “potential public reaction that might arise from the insistence to invite the Libyan delegation.” Berri and his Amal Movement are opposed to Lebanon having ties with Libya because of the 1978 disappearance of the movement’s founder, Imam Musa Sadr, and two of his companions during an official visit to the country when it was ruled by Moammar Gadhafi. Libya has officially announced that it would not attend the summit after Amal supporters last week tore down and burned a Libyan flag near the summit venue and replaced it with the Amal flag. The next day, the Higher Islamic Council, affiliated with Dar al-Fatwa (the seat of the Grand Sunni mufti), met under Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdel-Latif Derian to voice support for the convening of the AESD summit in Beirut despite the Shiite Council’s opposition to Libya’s invitation. Derian had in past weeks chaired special meetings at Dar al-Fatwa designed to show support and solidarity with Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri in the face of attempts by rival politicians to infringe on his prerogatives in the formation of a new government. Then came a meeting this week of the country’s four main Christian parties called for by Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai in Bkirki that was opened with Rai’s speech warning against attempts to change the current ruling system based on equal power-sharing between Muslims and Christians. Wednesday’s meeting was attended by heads of Maronite parliamentary blocs and lawmakers from the Free Patriotic Movement, the Lebanese Forces, the Kataeb Party and the Marada Movement. Rai had called the meeting to consider ways to resolve the Cabinet formation crisis and to cope with worsening economic conditions. Rai, who has lamented in his weekly sermons the delay in the Cabinet formation, said the nonimplementation of the Taif Accord and the Constitution were at the root of the chronic political crisis. He voiced the Maronite community’s fears of attempts to establish a tripartite system of governance including Christians, Sunnis and Shiites that would bolster the Muslims’ hold on power at the expense of the Christians’ role. “This [situation] has raised fears of proposals being made covertly and overtly for changing the system and identity, and about a constituent conference [to establish a new political system] and a tripartite system of governance that would undermine the Christian-Muslim coexistence formula,” Rai said. The Druze Spiritual Council also held a meeting Thursday chaired by Druze religious leader Sheikh Naim Hasan apparently designed to reaffirm support for former MP Walid Joumblatt, head of the Progressive Socialist Party, as the sect’s undisputed political leader in the face of his Druze opponents. “We trust Walid Beyk’s wise and national policy and its responsible historic role in protecting Lebanon and our Druze sect,” Sheikh Hasan said during the meeting at the headquarters of the Druze sect in Verdun. The meeting was boycotted by two of Joumbatt’s archfoes, MP Talal Arslan and former minister Wiam Wahhab, both of whom are Syria’s allies, reflecting a split within the Druze sect. Joumblatt is an outspoken critic of Syrian President Bashar Assad. “The Maronites held a meeting to focus on their cause and fears about changing the ruling system. “The Sunni religious leaders remain entrenched behind Prime Minister Saad Hariri, rejecting attempts to undercut his powers in the Cabinet formation,” Kassir said. Similarly, the Shiite political and religious leaders figures met, “but they turned the national case of Imam Musa Sadr into a sectarian one,” he said, referring to street protests staged by Amal’s supporters against Libya’s invitation to the summit. Remarking on the Druze Spiritual Council, Kassir said: “It’s clear there is an internal power struggle within the Druze sect. The aim of the meeting was to consecrate Joumblatt’s leadership against his opponents Talal Arslan and Wiam Wahhab.” In response to the consecration of Joumblatt’s leadership, the Central News Agency said Friday the Druze arena was preparing for the “birth of Druze opposition” with Arslan and Wahhab being its top leaders. Former archfoes Arslan and Wahhab buried the hatchet last month following the killing of Wahhab’s bodyguard in the Chouf village of Jahilieh. A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on January 19, 2019, on page 2.