Equal power, unequal population

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The Lebanese political crisis is rooted in a decades-old power sharing agreement among rival religious groups, but that deal no longer reflects the country's makeup.

The system was designed to keep a balance among the various sects, dictating that power must be shared between a Maronite Christian president, a Sunni prime minister, and a Shia speaker of parliament. But the system barely has changed since it was put in place in the early 1940s, when Lebanon won its independence from French colonial rule.

Today, this structure risks creating a failed state because the largest religious group, the Shia, cannot secure the largest share of power.

Already, the crisis precipitated by the Shia militia Hezbollah illustrates the unraveling of the one democratic success story in the Middle East that the Bush administration has seized for the past 18 months. Since Dec. 1, Hezbollah and its allies have held an open-ended sit-in and daily protests against the U.S.-backed Lebanese government led by Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.

Hezbollah's protest

In the short term, Saniora's government began losing Shia support after Washington backed Israel during last summer's war against Hezbollah. But the problem is rooted in the fact that Shias do not have power equal to their numbers because of the nature of Lebanon's political structure. Fresh off its perceived military victory against Israel, Hezbollah appears to be challenging the entire system.

"Before the war, Hezbollah was unsure about how to proceed politically," said Khalil Gebara, co-director of the Lebanese Transparency Association, an anti-corruption group. "Hezbollah now wants its political dividends from the war."

Publicly, Hezbollah leaders say they are committed to the current system and that they want Saniora's government to either resign or be expanded to give the Shia party and its allies more power. Hezbollah also wants parliamentary elections to be held next year - instead of as scheduled in 2009 - under a new election law.

Few Lebanese expect Hezbollah's protest to immediately produce a deep change in the political structure. Already, Arab and Western powers are trying to shore up Saniora's government and help it fend off the popular challenge. The main Arab power brokers - Saudi Arabia and Egypt - are supporting Saniora to avoid setting a precedent of mass protests toppling an Arab government. The Lebanese crisis also has created a new proxy conflict between Shia-dominated Iran, which supports Hezbollah, and Sunni Arab regimes allied with the United States.

The two sides have been negotiating through Arab League mediators, but they are at an impasse. Ultimately, analysts expect each faction to give up some of its demands and reach a compromise. But without addressing the root causes, another political crisis is likely to emerge.

"There will be a deal, but the main issue - the vision of Lebanon - will remain unresolved," Gebara said. "What kind of Lebanon do we want?"

Government structure

Gebara's question has dominated Lebanon since it gained independence in 1943. The French handed most power to the French-speaking Maronite Christian elite and created the confessional system, which divided parliamentary seats and executive offices among the major sects. The system was enshrined under the 1943 National Pact, an unwritten agreement among Lebanese leaders that allotted the presidency to Maronites, the premiership to Sunnis and the speaker of parliament to Shias.

Seats in parliament were divided on a 6-to-5 ratio of Christians to Muslims, and that partitioning was extended to most government jobs. The division was based on a 1932 census, which showed Maronites as the majority in Lebanon. Since then, the government has refused to hold a new census.

Today, the State Department estimates that Lebanon's population of 4 million is about 70 percent Muslim and 23 percent Christian (the rest are Druze, Alawite and other minorities). Lebanese researchers say the Shia community is slightly larger than the Sunnis.

By the 1960s, when Muslims began to outnumber Christians, calls grew to change the balance of power. The political imbalance was one of the driving forces that prompted each sect to form its own militia and led to the outbreak of civil war in 1975.

Because of the confessional system, some scholars say Lebanese political institutions never got a chance to develop, and the country remained dependant on the powerful clans and feudal landlords that held sway in much of Lebanon. The concept of zaeem, or a confessional leader who usually inherited leadership from his father, became paramount during the war.

"Few Lebanese were invested in developing the constitutional institutions of the state," said Ghassan Ghizi, a law professor at Lebanese University. "So everyone remained loyal to their sectarian leader and the families that supported him."

During the civil war, which lasted until 1990, Sunnis and Shias were largely allied. But the current conflict has fractured them, with most Shias supporting Hezbollah and most Sunnis backing Saniora. Christians are divided between the two factions. In its protest, Hezbollah is allied with Michel Aoun, a former army commander and prominent Maronite politician.

New accord

At the end of the civil war, Lebanon's political class chose to continue its sectarian system. The roots of that choice began with the 1989 Taif Accord, brokered by Saudi Arabia and Syria. The agreement - named after the Saudi city of Taif, where it was signed - restructured the National Pact by taking some power away from the Maronites. Parliament was expanded to 128 members, divided equally between Christians and Muslims.

The agreement reduced the power of the Maronite-held presidency. Prior to Taif, the prime minister was appointed by and beholden only to the president. After Taif, the prime minister and his cabinet were appointed by parliament with the president's approval. Taif called for all militias to disarm - with the exception of Hezbollah, whose militia was labeled a "national resistance" against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

Taif also called for eventually abolishing the sectarian system, although it gave no timeframe for doing so. "All the factions in Lebanon constantly affirm that they will abide by Taif," Ghizi said. "Yet no one publicly acknowledges that Taif said ending confessionalism should be a 'national priority.'"

Taif allowed the emergence of a strong prime minister who could become a counterweight to the president. Rafik Hariri, a billionaire construction tycoon, served as premier for most of the 1990s and until late 2004. He clashed frequently with the Syrian-backed Lebanese president, Emile Lahoud, and he developed a powerful constituency among Sunnis.

In February 2005, Hariri was assassinated in a massive bombing as his motorcade drove through Beirut's seaside corniche. The killing cast a harsh light on Syrian domination over its smaller neighbor. Faced with international pressure and mass protests, the Syrian-backed prime minister resigned and Damascus pulled its 14,000 troops out of Lebanon.

Now, the political conflict has spilled out into mass protests and there is talk of altering the Taif Accord. "Lebanese are always afraid of changing any social contract," Gebara said. "Because the problem is that, in Lebanon, social contracts are changed only in times of violence."