Lebanon and Al-Taif in the Syrian mirror

Written by Nasser Kandil,

Despite that many Lebanese people boast of the system of the political and media liberties which they enjoy its revenues in an equal or more sometimes of the level of the freedom which the Western world knows, but in general the Lebanese people admit of the deformation and the retreating of the democracy which they live, even they are ashamed to say that it based on a confederation  of suspended sectarian emirates for any democratic process, even the presidential election becomes a process that is dictated by the outside on the Lebanese, so they surrender although they know that it is a scandal of the claims of sovereignty and the independence. Moreover the Lebanese parliament becomes a set of closed trains which are determined by the leaders of the sects without paying attention to their programs or what are their components and their efficiencies , as long as the recruitment system and the services cycle which constitutes the most prominent duties of any country towards its citizens, they do not enjoy it without the passage through the leaders of the sects including the medical care and the education which are subject inside and outside the country to the sect’s regime. This ill bilateral has pushed the President Salim Al-Hoss to say that in Lebanon there is a lot freedom and a little of democracy.

Under this sectarian regime the eyes of the Lebanese were always towards the ruling model in Syrian by virtue of the neighboring and closeness, so they resort to comparison in all the levels and aspects of comparison which are in favor of the Syrian example except the feature of liberties which Lebanon is exceeding so far while the Syrians are doing the opposite, they see the excellence of the model of their country in everything is in lack of the Lebanese feature which is represented by the freedom, the Syrian example represents a daily challenge in front of the Lebanese people. Syria which its population is equal five times of Lebanon and the national total income equals two times of the national income of Lebanon, it provides free education and medical care to its citizens, it has an advanced service network on the level of roads, electricity, and telephone in prices that are less of one to ten percent of the one which the Lebanese people pay without getting a service that is half of what the Syrian citizen has. The Lebanese people see that the Syrians enjoy a level of security and political stability and above that a rank of an active regional player for their country which turns into a source of pride and glory for its citizens because of its attitudes towards the Arab issues at their forefront the Palestinian issue, and the choice of resistance, while Lebanon is a weak fragile country where there is no security stability that is always open to the civil war option, and a political confusion that threatens of disrupting the constitutional merits or because they are compelling to the outside. Every Lebanese person who is not affected by the racism towards Syria wishes in his secret, if he can combine in his country between the feature of freedom and the features of the political governing regime in Syria.

Neither the Lebanese people nor the Syrian ones have paid attention that this coexistence between the two regimes in the two neighboring countries is impossible, one has to influence the other, or to exchange the positive features with each one of them. Syria is getting a higher degree of political and media liberties benefiting from the Lebanese practice gradually, while Lebanon is getting used to the secular civil aspect of the Syrian country which is conversant with religion, and which is able to reassure the sectarian components in a different way of sharing the positions on sectarian basis, thus organizing the society gradually according to this ticking bomb, till the Syrian crisis has occurred, some of the Lebanese felt happy , they wrote, and declared that what is going on is because of  the Lebanese impact, as the forces of March 14^th  have said that all the experiences of the Arab Spring have followed its movement which has been launched 2005 as a popular crowd against the Syrian presence in Lebanon after the assassination of the Prime Minister Rafik Al-Hariri, at the theoretical level some of the writers of this team did not hesitate to say that it is the infection of the Lebanese freedom which invaded the Syrian people and their country has resisted that till the explosion occurred.

The time has passed, the facts of the Syrian crisis have emerged as a war that has been waged by the West countries, Gulf, Turkey, and Israel making use of the weak elements in the performance of the institutions of the Syrian country, agitating the fire of a sectarian strife towards bringing fighters of Al-Qaeda Organization, taking care of them , training and arming them, but the goal which seemed apparently as a  democratic regime that has been plotted for Syria has soon faded in favor of announcing the Emirate of Al-Nusra and the Caliphate of ISIS, while the final goal which has to be achieved is related to the location of Syria, it position in the political geography in the most important and most sensitive region in the world strategically, economically, and security. Syria is the knot of insertion for gas and oil pipe lines’ maps for more than a quarter of the world wealth in the most two vital sectors in the world of energy, because Syria is the only neighboring country for the occupied Palestine within the choice of reluctance and supporting the resistance, it has links with Iran and the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine, this has put the security of Israel as a guarantor force of the high interests of the West under danger. Syria provides for the Asian depth which extended till China on one hand and Russia on the other hand across Iran the marine outlet to Europe, it is the Mediterranean country which extents along the coast façade of the Western of Asia. But with the difficulty of achieving the war goals and the emergence of the real players in the arena, the public American French Saudi Turkish speech has started about a new form of ruling in Syria that depends on following the Lebanese model which based on the sectarian division,  which the UN Envoy Steffan De Mistura has called on behalves of them the inspiring role of the Lebanese model, but the history has revealed that the deceleration of the Lebanese and the Syrian elites in mixing the value of freedom with the composition of the civil non sectarian country and the country of economical and social care in order to constitute a genius ruling regime that is unable to be violated has been brought from the impossibility of coexistence, and the tolerance of Syria of transferring its passive and positive model to Lebanon, but its sponsoring of the sectarian model, strengthening its structure and enhancing its leaderships, till the Lebanese model  has crept in its worst conditions to Syria, contrary to what the philosophers of March 14^th by the force of the freedom model said,  they just want to transfer to Syria the sectarian regime which makes Lebanon subject to the abroad and makes it at a permanent date with the civil wars, moreover makes it paralyzed with every merit, and which constitutes the protection overage for the system of corruption and depravation which is enough to have a comparison between the current issues including garbage and electricity between these two countries to see that Syria after five years of war is in a situation that cannot be compared with the miserable condition which Lebanon lives.

Once again the time passed and the project of the Lebanon model “the inspiring“ has failed, Vienna’s meeting has happened to devote Syria as a secular unified country, to devote its army, its rank and the regional international need which it represents in the war against terrorism, but with the flow of freedom and democracy in the structure of the political regime without affecting the national independence which the Syrians have paid its cost high. In a way or another, the recipe of the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has succeeded in overcoming the obstacles to transfer Syria to the banks of democracy and freedom without affecting its national resisting option, and without permitting of its exposing to the tests of the cancerous sectarian killing poisons, which is enough to accept its experiencing once to be rooted and thus its eradication becomes charged and difficult.

According to the rule of the impossibility of coexistence between the two different regimes to the extent of rivalry, the question becomes, will the Lebanese and the Syrian people pay attention this time that the shortest way after the excellence which the Syrian model will gain at the end of the war and the crisis, with the features of freedom and democracy which were added to the concept of the strong civil secular independent country is a proactive Lebanese meeting that starts with the admission of the failure of Al-Taif system and the going to non-sectarian regime that Al-Taif Agreement has paved its way gradually, in addition to the adoption of parliamentary elections that depend on the relativity basis , before this transition becomes a need in Lebanon after the Syrian recovery, and maybe becomes an evitable safety valve for the stability of Syria in order to prevent the leakage of the sectarian poisons?