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Backgrounder: Lebanon's Weak Government

Council on Foreign Relations

Author: Esther Pan, Staff Writer
July 20, 2006

Introduction

Lebanon's government has been in turmoil since February 2005, when former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed in a massive car bombing in Beirut. His death, widely blamed on Syria, prompted massive street protests and enough international pressure to push Syria out of its smaller neighbor after nearly thirty years of occupation. Despite legislative elections—deemed free and fair—that brought in a new parliament last summer, Lebanon's government is still weak, divided, and nearly powerless to control or constrain the strongest faction in the country, Hezbollah.

What is the current state of the Lebanese government?

The government is deeply divided, reflecting the country's fractious population. Many of Lebanon's leaders—including the president and the speaker of parliament—are seen as puppets of Damascus, and the parliament is split between an anti-Syria coalition and a pro-Syria alliance. After a national dialogue between political leaders failed in the spring, the country's leadership just stopped working, says Joshua M. Landis, assistant professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Oklahoma and an expert on the region. The failure of the national dialogue "froze this terrible split in Lebanese politics and made sure [the government] was divided and weak," he says. The government is "largely composed of technocrats who were sharpening pencils," says Richard Murphy, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Murphy says the Lebanese leaders are "unnerved by the challenge of the Israelis and depressed by the amount of damage to the infrastructure and the country's image as a summer tourism destination." Thus far, the economic damage to Lebanon caused by the Israeli offensive is estimated at nearly $2 billion.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.