Lebanon limps into 2008 after a year of damaging political turmoil and assassinations that have dampened the economy and left the presidency vacant for weeks.
The year ended as it started, with the Western-backed ruling majority and the opposition, backed by Syria and Iran, locked in a bitter stand-off, in the worst political crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. At the centre of the crisis is the failure of lawmakers to elect a president to succeed Emile Lahoud, who stepped down on November 23 at the end of his term.
The tug-of-war triggered mediation by France and the United States, who accused Syria of interfering, and repeated warnings from the West that Lebanon could sink into further chaos. Ten sessions in parliament to pick a successor for Lahoud foundered since September. A last-ditch attempt was set for December 29, days before parliament was due to go on recess from January until mid-March.
"If 2006 was the year of war and confrontation (because of the Hezbollah war with Israel), 2007 was the year of stand-off and paralysis in Lebanon," Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, told AFP.
"Either before the holidays, we have a president and we're on a positive course and things will go back to a fairly healthy situation, or we enter 2008 paralysed, stalemated, limping." The year began with January riots by students loyal to the various feuding camps that left seven dead and led to a brief curfew being imposed for the first time since the end of the civil war.
The violence fuelled the lingering political crisis, which erupted in November 2006 when the opposition pulled its ministers from Prime Minister Fuad Siniora's Western-backed government, demanding greater representation.
By year's end majority and opposition politicians agreed to elect army chief General Michel Sleiman to succeed Lahoud, but remained at odds on how to amend the constitution to allow civil servants from becoming presidents.
They were also far apart on the shape of the future cabinet. Meanwhile, political assassinations that have haunted Lebanon since the 2005 murder of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri claimed three more victims, including for the first time a military figure, Brigadier General Francois el-Hajj.
Hajj's killing in a powerful car bombing on December 12 shocked Lebanon since the top army officer was tipped to replace Sleiman as the head of the army if he became president. MPs Walid Eido and Antoine Ghanem were killed in car bombs in June and September, in what many saw as attempts to chip away at the slim majority the ruling coalition holds in parliament.
Syria was accused of orchestrating the killings but denied involvement. Damascus also blamed Washington of torpedoing Syrian-French efforts to end the crisis in neighbouring Lebanon, which French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner visited seven times in 2007.
The year also witnessed a 15-week battle deadly between the army and al Qaeda-inspired militants from Fatah al-Islam in one of Lebanon's poverty-stricken Palestinian refugee camps. More than 400 people, including 168 soldiers, died during 15 weeks of battles that sparked fears of violence in other camps that have become breeding grounds for extremism.
In June, six UN peacekeepers were killed in a car bomb in the south of the country, prompting concern the troops deployed to monitor peace along the Lebanon-Israel border could be drawn into the crisis. The United Nations beefed up its presence in the south after the devastating 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. The conflict was sparked by the abduction of two Israeli soldiers by the militant Shiite group.
Although the fate of the two soldiers remains a mystery, 2007 saw the first prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah in nearly four years.
In October, Israel handed over the remains of two Hezbollah militants and a prisoner in exchange for the remains of a drowned Israeli citizen, whose body had washed up on the Lebanese coast. The Jewish state also received information on a missing airman.
On the economic front, a bleak situation was forcing young professionals to leave in droves seeking their livelihoods abroad, and discouraging many tourists from visiting the country. "Business is largely dependent on the political and security situation," said Jacques Hokayem, president of the merchants' association in the Christian coastal town of Jounieh, north of Beirut.
The International Monetary Fund and the Moody's ratings agency added to the pessimism by warning of a further slide in an economy already crushed by 40.5 billion dollars of public debt. "It will be very difficult (for the economy) if the political vacuum leads to instability and by mid-2008 the Lebanese will feel the crunch," said Francois Bassil, president of the banks' association in Lebanon.
Carnegie's Salem said although there was not much to cheer about as the year comes to a close, at least the situation was not worse. "What is positive about the year is not great, but we did not go to war, we did not come to blows, we did not descend into chaos," he said.
Comments
Comments are closed.