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Syria and the Lebanon Model

Nassif Hitti asks whether the "Lebanon model," which breeds fragile and sectarian democracies, is suited for Syria.
A pro-democracy protester displays her palms that are painted with the national colours of Syria during a demonstration in Sanaa January 17, 2013. The demonstrators were calling for Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to make more decisions to complete the preparations for national dialogue and to demand that Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh be put on trial, according to organisers. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi (YEMEN - Tags: CIVIL UNREST POLITICS)

Lebanon, in its history of sectarian conflict and through its means of solving it, has come to be seen as dual role model in the Levant.

Several similarly diverse societies in the region, where diversity is usually a source of enrichment, have seen the retreat of secular or civil ideologies and the rise of sectarianism in their place. Once the shackles of an authoritarian regime have been thrown off, we often witness that the resultant conflict can become a sectarian one, fought with either guns or declarations; a clear example of this can be seen in Iraq. Syria, now locked in a stalemate with little prospect of any political or military solution, has seen its conflict fall into one that is largely sectarian. Notwithstanding the other important internal political and external strategic factors, we can see the spreading of a Lebanese-style sectarian conflict that weighs heavily on the national politics in both old and newly divided societies.

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