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PARIS — Beggars can’t be choosers, unless they’re Lebanese politicians.
Standing on the edge of a cliff that's crumbling beneath their feet, the country's leaders are still haggling with French President Emmanuel Macron — the only global heavyweight to have offered them a potential path to safety.
A month after the massive explosion that ripped through Beirut's port and eviscerated large parts of the Lebanese capital — killing nearly 200, injuring thousands and leaving scores homeless at a time when the country was already reeling from a financial meltdown and the coronavirus pandemic — Lebanon’s political class has done next to nothing to help survivors or alleviate the hardship. And the investigation into the explosion has produced no credible leads. Instead, they have spent the bulk of their time wheeling and dealing to hold on to power.
On Sunday, the eve of Macron's arrival in Beirut, much of the political class rallied behind Lebanon's Ambassador to Germany Mustapha Adib as the country's next prime minister. His nomination is all but certain to be accepted by the other political stakeholders but was decried by some in civil society as lacking credibility and as yet another attempt by the ruling class to avoid real change.
Adib served as chief of staff to former Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who is perceived as part of a ruling class that's accused of corruption and mismanagement.
The French president is returning to Beirut Monday evening, nearly a month after his last visit, to chart a way forward based on reforms in exchange for bailout funds and to mark the centenary of the creation of modern-day Lebanon under a French mandate.
The plan is to midwife a political agreement that leads to a "credible" government able to carry out the long-standing reforms demanded by both a sizeable part of the Lebanese population and international lenders who would provide a bailout. This new government would also be tasked with organizing elections within a year.
"The president is not going to Beirut to approve an agreement between parties, he is going to obtain clear operational commitments from them in the framework of the new contract he laid out during his last visit," an Elysée official said Sunday night after Adib's nomination was announced. "He will be demanding so that these commitments are implemented such that the aspirations that the Lebanese expressed to him are reflected."
But, through their nomination of Adib, some believe the Lebanese political parties are manoeuvring to kick the can further down the road.
"The political class has settled on an individual who will not threaten its interests and in no way represents the kind of change or policy inflection needed," said Emile Hokayem, senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"This nomination shows the limits of French policy and leverage in the absence of an organized opposition with electoral legitimacy. Macron’s hands are now tied: by going to Lebanon, he will be seen as the foreign godfather of a cabinet that is unlikely to do what is needed," Hokayem said.
Beyond France's historic ties and Lebanon’s ills, caused by systemic corruption and an entrenched sectarian political system — whose foundations were laid by France on the very date Macron will be commemorating Tuesday — the country is a microcosm of many global flashpoints. This explains, at least partly, Macron's involvement, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
Lebanon has the highest per capita concentration of refugees in the world and its potential collapse threatens to reignite a migration crisis for Europe. It is an important foothold in the Eastern Mediterranean. One of its main political groups, Hezbollah, regularly engages in armed conflict with Israel and is a listed terrorist organization in some European countries, including Germany and the U.K., as well as the United States. And the tug of war between the U.S. and Iran has strong Lebanon links, given Iran’s umbilical bond with Hezbollah.
It is unclear how much American buy-in the French initiative has. The two have profoundly different approaches to Hezbollah, with the U.S. applying a policy of maximum pressure against the group.
"The French initiative only concerns the French," U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea told a Lebanese newspaper Saturday. But the attributes of the desired government that she laid out are similar to what the French are seeking.
France has historically taken the European lead on Lebanon, and continues to do so. On Tuesday, when Macron visits the ravaged port to meet with NGOs, he will be joined by ambassadors from a few other European countries.
Macron’s last visit, two days after the Beirut port explosion, refocused international attention on Lebanon and unblocked aid. France also has a unique position with the three major religious groups in the country, without which no solution can be reached.
The current Lebanese president, Michel Aoun, a Christian Maronite, sought asylum in France at the end of the civil war. Macron played a central role in rescuing former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, when he was held by Saudi Crown Prince Mohamad bin Salman in late 2017. And Macron is the only Western leader to be in touch with a high-level Hezbollah official, the head of the group’s parliamentary bloc. The armed group has become the main protector of the current political system.
To leverage those advantages, Macron and his team have spent countless hours working the phones with the various Lebanese stakeholders, as well as major international actors such as U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
On this trip, Macron intends to use his preferred foreign policy method: mano a mano negotiations — he will be gathering Lebanon’s various political leaders three different times in the space of 24 hours.
“I will spend time to try to finalize something,” Macron told reporters Friday evening in Paris at a Q&A with the Presidential Press Association.
But many in Lebanon doubt Macron's initiative can lead to real change, given how involved the embattled political parties, accused of corruption and violently repressing protests, are.
Yet Macron says his efforts have already started paying off.
“The launching of [compulsory parliamentary] consultations [to name a prime minister] by President Aoun after my discussions with him, as well as decisions by former Prime Minister Hariri [not to be considered for the premiership] are a signal that something is happening,” Macron said Friday.
Before consultations were called and Adib's name was put forward, rumors ran wild in Lebanon about Macron being forced to postpone his trip as Lebanese politicians weren’t ready to negotiate. The French presidency suspects these lines were spun by the parties resisting the changes being asked of them.
Essentially, what Macron is asking of Lebanon’s political leaders is nothing short of suicide: for them to change their very DNA, the way politics and government have been run in the country for three decades, and from which the leaders have drawn great personal profit. That's why they are putting up such a fight.
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