Lebanon and Syria

While working in Haiti, a Sierra Leonean doctor joined our team as a food security advisor.

He was a nice guy who knew many Lebanese from his homeland and we had lots of interesting discussions together.

One night while we were discussing the politics in the Middle East, he asked about the Syrian role and continuous intervention in Lebanese politics.

It seems that someone convinced him that all the problems of Lebanon were only because of the Syrian intervention.

How funny people can be when they try to attribute the problems to one side, forgetting the other sides that have probably a similar or bigger role in creating them.

From the information that I got from my colleague, I quickly realized that the person who gave him the information was a supporter of the Lebanese Forces party; an anti-Syrian and pro-Israeli Christian militia.

What my friend didn’t know, and of course I explained to him later, that the Lebanese forces are the one who actually brought the Syrian into Lebanon.

Of Course my Sierra Leonean friend was lost and maybe only then he realized how much complicated is the Lebanese politics.

Actually when the Lebanese forces militia were getting close to be defeated by Fateh and its allies, they asked Hafez el Assad to send his troops to save them. So the Syrian forces came and turned the result of the civil war. But of course after that, they wanted to stay. Then the same Lebanese forces militia had to ask Israel to send its troops to kick the Syrian troops out. So the Israeli forces came and kicked Fateh and the Syrian out, but of course they also wanted to stay. Then the militias of west Beirut requested weapons from Libya, Syria and Iraq to fight the Israeli and quick them out of Beirut. Also the people of south Lebanon, who were until then not participating to the civil war, asked Iran to send them weapon to kick the Israeli out. And this is how Iran came to the Lebanese scene and Hezbollah was created. Then again, the same Lebanese forces militia assisted the Syrian troops to attack the stronghold of General Aoun, their main opponent in the Christian part of Lebanon as it was recognized then. And finally, after that Hezbollah Kicked the Israeli troops out, most of the Arab countries, especially KSA and Egypt, realized the danger of the high appreciation that Hezbollah gained between the Arabs and got more seriously involved in the Lebanese politics.

Now this is a small part of the story just to show the domino effect that was created during the war. But a lot of others countries were involved and still in the Lebanese politics such as Arabs and European and of course the main player was and still the USA.

Now of course my Sierra Leonean friend explained that maybe the Christian forces had no other choice to do so to prevent their defeat.

Then I had to explain again that if the Muslims were not treated as second grade citizens before, they would have never joined forces along with the communist and socialist parties to support Fateh in its war with the Christian forces.

And when I explained to my friends that the Christian forces didn’t involve all the Christians and that some of them were members of the communist and socialist parties… he was really lost.

Are you?

Come on, I didn’t go into details yet