CLASH OF POLITICS OR CIVILIZATIONS? SECTARIANISM AMONG YOUTH IN LEBANON [*].

• Author: Asmar, Christine

THE SECOND LEBANESE REPUBLIC, created by the 1989 Ta'if Agreement, is rife with paradoxes. Recognizing that sectarianism was one of the principal causes of the conflict that had racked the country since 1975, those Lebanese politicians who gathered in Ta'if implicitly and, in some cases, explicitly, pledged to reform the political system to overcome this defect. Yet what emerged from Ta'if--more in its implementation than in its actual content -- was not a "de-confessionalized" Republic, but one in which the balance of power between confessions had been tilted in favor of Sunni and Shiite Muslims, away from Maronite Christians. Thus Ta'if reinforced confessionalism by reforming it, correcting the historical imbalance in favor of Maronites that had contributed to the destabilization of the political system.

That the Second Republic did not overturn but in fact reinvigorated confessionalism gave rise to another paradox, which is that the former critics of that system of sectarian balance have become its protagonists, while its former advocates are now its opponents. Chief among the latter are Shiite Muslims, whose new found political strength, combined with their plurality of the population, compels many of them to view confessionalism as a system which denies Shiites the power they would exercise under one based on majority rule. Secularized, middle class Maronites, who formerly constituted a major subcomponent of the anti-confessional forces, appear now to be fearful of the rising power and numbers of Shiite and more willing to accept the confessionalized status quo.

Predominant among Ta'if's arrangements for the domestic political system was the conversion of the dominant presidency, the sole preserve of Maronites, into a power-sharing troika comprised of a weakened Maronite President, a somewhat strengthened Sunni Prime Minister, and a Shiite Speaker of Parliament whose role, formerly far less important than the other two, was significantly upgraded. In the event this tripartite division shifted power dramatically toward the Prime Minister, and hence toward the Sunni community, reducing the role of the President--and therefore of the Maronite community -- apparently more than was envisioned at Ta'if. The term "troika" is, moreover, misleading, for the three do not pull in tandem as is implied in that term.

Related to the reallocation of power between these three key roles was what was thought at the time of Ta'if to be a redistribution of power between the executive and legislative branches to the benefit of the latter, as well as the devolution of power from the national to the local level. Upgrading the role of the Speaker, increasing the size of the parliament, and reducing the power of the President, were all thought to have paved the way for an invigorated Chamber of Deputies. But post-Ta'if parliaments have for the most part been more acquiescent to the executive than their predecessors, and probably less representative as well. No power has yet been devolved to any unit of local government.

Ta'if was to have been a new political beginning, yet it perpetuated the political power of the "warlords" who had divided the running of the country between themselves for the better part of fourteen years of conflict. It failed to provide for the emergence of a new political class to formulate policy for rebuilding of the country on new foundations. Ta'if was also to have signaled a thaw in inter-confessional hostilities, but instead it may have simply frozen animosities while facilitating the restoration of a central government, leaving unresolved the vital issue of inter-confessional relations, especially at the level of the "street."

The Second Lebanese Republic, in sum, is fraught with political paradoxes that intertwine sectarian relations, constitutional arrangements, economic reconstruction and foreign intervention. While these paradoxes have been much described and analyzed, what has received scant attention is their impact on the attitudes and behavior of Lebanese of different sects. Are these paradoxes exacerbating inter-confessional hostilities or reducing them? Are they stimulating a heightened sense of Lebanese nationalism or undermining it? Are they bringing about a greater commitment to Lebanese political institutions or alienating the population, or some sections of it, from them?

The behavioral evidence with which these questions might be answered is mixed. Occasional outbursts of public protest punctuate what appear to be long periods of apathetic indifference by the public. Elections seem to have stimulated considerable political activity, yet they have been condemned as contests with pre-determined outcomes for positions of little importance. The lack of overtly expressed inter-confessional hostility coexists with considerable covert grumbling and expressions of fear and resentment, especially on the part of Maronite Christians. Acquiescence to Syrian will, coupled with public pronouncements of fealty to Damascus, coexist with privately expressed resentment. In sum, just as the post-Ta'if political system appears to be paradoxical in many regards, so too does political behavior and presumably, therefore, the attitudes underlying that behavior.

The purpose of this investigation is to attempt to assess the impact of the paradoxes of Ta'if on the attitudes of a key sector of the Lebanese population. Since the Second Lebanese Republic, like the First, is a "precarious republic"[1] built upon an elaborate division of roles and power between religious sects, the most vital issue is whether or not the political preferences, attitudes, and behavior of the members of the different sects are converging or diverging. Presumably if Maronites, Sunni, Shiites, Druze, Orthodox and others are becoming more alike in their personal experiences, general beliefs, and political attitudes and the means by which they act upon them, then the political load to be borne by the relatively fragile institutions of the precarious republic will be reduced. Conversely, if those beliefs, attitudes and behaviors are diverging, greater stress will be placed upon governing institutions.

A hypothesis suggested by the paradoxes described above is that they are exacerbating tension and hostility between sects, thereby causing the members of those sects to diverge in their attitudes and ultimately, presumably, their behavior. The counter hypothesis is that the "unfinished business" of Ta'if, including the presence of foreign forces (Israeli as well as Syrian); the continuation and in some senses the intensification of confessionalism; the political predominance of warlords after the war has ended; and the lack of resolution of questions involving the roles and responsibilities of the key political institutions - are all creating a shared frustration among those of all sects and possibly even agreement on what needs to be done to improve the Second Lebanese Republic.

The method by which these alternative hypotheses were investigated was an attitudinal survey of students enrolled at five Lebanese universities. The rationale for drawing the sample exclusively from these young adults enrolled in universities lay in the fact that, more than their parents, they are the products of Ta'if, having arrived at adulthood under its provisions. Their beliefs and attitudes can thus be expected to reflect the paradoxes of Ta'if more than do those of their parents. Moreover, youth tend to hold attitudes comparatively intensely, thus facilitating the task of identifying trends in their early phases or when they are fairly weakly held across the population as a whole. The apparent intensity with which some educated youth are attracted toward Islamist or primarily Christian movements is a case in point. It is also true, of course, that these youths will have an increasing impact on the political system as they enter full adulthood, since they may reasonably be expected to hold leadership p ositions in the elite. Hence their attitudes will be more germane to future outcomes than those of their parents. A final, pragmatic consideration was that, in the Middle East, it is very much easier to administer questionnaires to students than to any other types of respondents.[2]

THE SAMPLE

Surveyed in mid-1996, the sample of 917 university students was drawn from a range of faculties across university campuses in Lebanon. Of the institutions involved, three were in Beirut: the American University of Beirut (AUB); the Lebanese American University (LAU) Beirut campus; and Hagazian University. Located outside Beirut were the LAU Byblos campus, and Balamand University. The largest contingent of students (57.5%) came from AUB. The greatest concentration of students in the sample overall was in the Arts and Sciences Faculty (44.9%), followed by Engineering (15.7%) and Business (13.6%). In each university Arts and Sciences is the largest faculty (comprising, for example, 51% of AUB), so that the sample was reasonably representative of faculty distributions in the student body as a whole. The gender distribution in the sample was almost symmetrical (50.5% female, 49.5% male). Over 70% of respondents were in the 20-24 age group, spread fairly evenly over first to third years of enrolment. While 89.2% w ere Lebanese citizens, just over one-fifth of the sample declared some other citizenship or nationality (including Jordanian, Palestinian, North or South American and Australian). It is sometimes advantageous for students in Lebanon to enroll as "foreign" students rather than Lebanese citizens, since the admission requirements for the former are less rigorous. [3] In cases of dual nationality - which is allowable in Lebanon - there may thus have been some under-reporting of Lebanese citizenship, especially since non-Lebanese were instructed not to answer the questionnaire.

This group of students could be seen as enjoying elite status in educational terms...