12
August 2006
Mountain Man
The leader of Lebanon's Druze talks
about the Syrian threat.
MUKHTARA, Lebanon--I knew Walid Jumblatt had a passion for the history of the Second World War, but I didn't especially relish waiting for our interview
under the
severe gaze of Marshal Zhukov, atop a steed trampling Nazi standards. I
recalled what the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa had written of Mr. Jumblatt's
collection of bulky socialist realist canvases, after visiting his mountain
palace at Mukhtara, where Lebanon's paramount Druze leader spends much time
these days: "It was impossible for me to know if these paintings were
there as an exquisite postmodern irony, or as an involuntary homage to kitsch,
or because he really liked them."
Doubtless all three, since Mr. Jumblatt
maneuvers dialectically, particularly in his politics. Once a prop of Syria's
order in Lebanon (though the regime of Hafez Assad had murdered his father,
Kamal, in 1977), he became the man most responsible for its overthrow in 2005. This
betrayal earned him a sentence of death in Damascus, which is why he rarely
leaves Mukhtara, from where he leads the mostly poor, mostly rural 200,000-strong
Druze--like a "tribal chieftain," he once told me. It is a tribute to
his political skills, but also to his hard-nosedness, that his influence far
transcends the microscopic size of his community. At 57, he has been at the
center of Lebanese public life for 29 long years.
It takes a good hour and a quarter to reach his home from Beirut, since Israeli
aircraft have bombed the shorter route via the southern coastal road. I kill
time by asking an aide about the main topic of conversation wafting though the
waiting room--how to manage the thousands of Shiite refugees who have escaped
south Lebanon to regions controlled by Mr. Jumblatt. The aide tells me that the
relief effort is stretched to the limit, and that providing help will become a
considerable problem in the coming weeks.
Mr. Jumblatt personifies patronage
politics at their most essential. His is a hands-on management style, and there
is sophisticated method to what can be mistakenly interpreted as Mukhtara's
ambient disorder. The Druze leader runs his life with Germanic precision. His
papers are well-organized, as are his publications, his collection of magazine
covers, his weapons (I notice a Glock and several clips across the room), his Soviet-era
regalia--even the more sinister memorabilia, such as the identity card his
father had on him the day he was killed, pierced by a bullet.
As we kick into the interview, Mr. Jumblatt
doesn't wait for a question. He describes the visit to Beirut the previous day
of Condoleezza Rice, and particularly the international effort to set up an
expanded peacekeeping force in South Lebanon to end what, by now, are two weeks
of fighting. "At first they said they wanted to create a buffer zone of 20
kilometers to put in an international force. But what does that mean when
Hezbollah can fire rockets over your back? Now there is a new formula: the
demilitarization of the South."
Mr. Jumblatt is dubious. "Rice
didn't clarify how the international force would deploy. As I've told the
Americans: As long as Syria can send weapons to Hezbollah, there will be no
change in the situation. Not with this regime in Damascus. We need a force that
can cover all of Lebanon, like in Kosovo. Monitor the Syrian border, then talk."
The United States is not thinking
about such a scheme, Mr. Jumblatt tells me. And that's why he plainly feels
that American ambitions are likely to crash against the reality on the ground. If
Hezbollah refuses to disarm (and it does), "then we enter a phase of all-out
war, endless war, with the possibility that this will weaken the Lebanese state.
Let us also remember that the Syrians a few days ago promised the Americans
they would help them fight al Qaeda. This was, in fact, a backhanded warning
that Syria could use al Qaeda to kill innocents in Lebanon."
(Mr. Jumblatt sounds even less
confident a day later. I call him up for a reaction to the early-morning
address by Hezbollah's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, in which he
promised to bomb deeper inside Israel. Our conversation takes place amid
reports that the Israelis have suffered heavy losses in fighting for the town
of Bint Jbail. "Even if Nasrallah loses positions, Hezbollah's fierce
rearguard is making it increasingly difficult to set up something afterwards. I
doubt we will see a multilateral force if this continues. If Nasrallah comes
out victorious, he will dictate his conditions to the Lebanese state--if he
still accepts the state.")
There is a strong desire for
retribution in the Shiite community. Quite a few politicians, including Mr. Jumblatt,
have implied that Hezbollah's abduction of two Israelis soldiers was
irresponsible, which many of the group's faithful deem to be a stab in the back.
This prompted Mr. Nasrallah to declare, ominously, in an Al Jazeera interview
last week: "If we succeed in achieving the victory . . . we will never
forget all those who supported us. . . . As for those who sinned against us . .
. those who let us down, and those who conspired against us . . . this will be
left for a day to settle accounts. We might be tolerant with them and we might
not."
What does Mr. Jumblatt think of that
threat, obviously directed against him and his political comrades? "Nasrallah
was talking in the name of the Syrian regime. He thinks he's a demigod. Like [Iran's
President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad he's waiting for the 12th Imam, the Mehdi. This
aspect of Shiite religious mobilization can be frightening." He pauses. The
phone is ringing--one of the countless times this has happened as his men ask
for guidance on organizing the aid effort. Before closing, he issues
instructions that trash be removed from a certain location. A lady had earlier
called complaining about it.
Mr. Jumblatt's relations with
Hezbollah are complex. He has been the group's most vociferous critic in recent
months, and yet it was he who broke its isolation last year during the "Cedar
Revolution," by helping engineer an election law preserving Hezbollah's
quota in Parliament. Why? Partly to protect his own electoral stakes, partly
because he thought he could profit politically from being the middleman between
Hezbollah and the coalition opposed to Syria. But the arrangement later
collapsed when the party refused to break with Damascus, and Mr. Jumblatt realized
that his own chances of reconciling with the Syrians were negligible. An
inveterate calculator, the Druze leader has surely factored easing Hezbollah's
anger into his hospitality for the Shiite displaced. He even adds, for good
measure: "I don't care if the refugees put up Hezbollah flags and photos. I
can understand this emotional reaction." (What he doesn't say is that he's
allowed this in order to lessen Shiite frustration to avert tension between
Shiites and Druze.)
Given the estimated 500,000 to 700,000
people made refugees, most of them Shiites, will Hezbollah be more flexible on
an overall settlement? "It makes no difference to Nasrallah," Mr. Jumblatt
says. Nor should one expect much from those critical of Hezbollah's
unilateralism. "We need a prominent Shiite to work with us, particularly [Parliament
Speaker] Nabih Berri. Nasrallah thinks he's at the peak of his power, but you
have to talk to the Shiites; you cannot allow them to be frustrated and
humiliated. You have to reason with Nasrallah. The destruction we've suffered
is not worth two Israeli captives, having a private army, declaring war and
peace. But we need a Shiite to say this to Nasrallah."
It is the Syrians, however, who feed
Mr. Jumblatt's anxieties. As he surfs the Internet at night--a pastime for
which he is known to depart early from dinner parties--he can read the mounting
calls in the U.S. and at the U.N. to bring Syria into a deal to control
Hezbollah. For the Druze leader, this has existential implications. It could
mean a Lebanese homecoming for an Assad regime that wants his head. "Syria
and Iran have strengthened their cards in Lebanon today," he insists. As
for the Bush administration, its Syria policy is "confused."
Starting earlier this year, Mr. Jumblatt
tried to help refine the administration's strategy. On a trip to the U.S., he
actively peddled the idea of regime change in Damascus, telling Ms. Rice:
"The U.S. says Syrian behavior must change, but nothing will change for as
long as this regime is in power. The U.S. must open a dialogue with the Syrian
opposition, including the Muslim Brotherhood, which has accepted pluralism in
its political program." However, all the signs from Washington are that Mr.
Jumblatt will be disappointed.
Iran's role in starting the latest
round of Lebanese violence is a theme Mr. Jumblatt has repeatedly raised in
interviews. I play devil's advocate and suggest there is no evidence yet of
direct Iranian implication--or does he know something I don't? He doesn't
answer directly: "It's enough for Hezbollah to have the famous Fajr-1 and
Fajr-3 rockets to show such involvement. The last I heard, these devices were
not manufactured in Lebanon!" In that case had he heard that Iranians were
fighting alongside Hezbollah? "Yes, we've heard rumors that Iranian Basij
militiamen are participating in the fighting. I believe these stories."
In 1976, at the height of the civil
war and less than a year before his assassination, Kamal Jumblatt traveled
around the region to rally support against Arab endorsement of the Syrian
army's presence in Lebanon. Jumblatt and his Palestinian allies were then
fighting Syria. His trip started well, and he was received by top officials. But
by the end of the tour, the Arab states had reached a consensus on backing a
Syrian deployment, and Jumblatt suddenly found doors closing in his face. That
isolation led to his eventual elimination. This explains why his son has always
been sensitive to the dangers of quixotism, even as he now risks finding
himself in a trap similar to his father's.
"I'm afraid that because of the
chaos in Lebanon today, Syria might try to assassinate people here." Does
that include him? "Yes, me, but also Fuad Siniora," the prime
minister. But even if Mr. Siniora does survive, can his government do so, given
that it is collaborating with the U.S. to tackle Hezbollah's arms? "Either
he survives or we must accept the coup d'état fomented by Syria and Iran. That
will determine whether Lebanon remains democratic."
No Jumblatt interview is complete
without malicious wittiness. Asked about how the Lebanese conflict will develop
in coming weeks, he says Israel's ground war will determine the outcome. "But
if Hezbollah's missiles are pushed back, they will soon be here; no, they may
soon be on Hamra Street," a shopping drag in the center of Beirut. "It
took us a full 24 hours to negotiate the removal of a single missile from near
the Pepsi-Cola factory," an enterprise just south of Beirut owned by a
wealthy Druze family.
Mr. Jumblatt laughs at the absurdity
of the episode, but he is making a serious point. Hezbollah can wage war from
wherever it wants, regardless of its countrymen's preferences. Then he stands
up and heads for an anteroom. "Let's see what the former minister wants,"
he sighs.
* Mr. Young, a Lebanese national, is opinion editor at the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut and a contributing editor at Reason magazine.
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