Dotting the I’S & Crossing the T’S
Forty years of Arab civil war
Written by Nasser Kandil,
For forty years ago, when the Civil War has broken out in Lebanon, no one thought that there will be such an event of a cultural and structural influence that will ravage the Arab countries , and that the germ which seemed that it sneaked to kill the Lebanese body, will turn to be during forty years a terminal illness that expands and takes roots in all parts of the Arab body, and becomes a reason for the weakness of unity’s elements within its entities, where it can dismantle and re-unit these elements on a sectarian and doctrinal basis.
In the main, the looks were for an event that constitutes the beginning of the war in Lebanon, as a security event that can be controlled soon, and the life returns to its normal situation, but from one round to another in the war, the Lebanese were thinking that it was the last round, and even when the Arabs interfered in Lebanon to stop the war led by Syria, neither the Lebanese nor the Arabs were expecting that it is a truce between the happened rounds and the coming ones.
From one era to another in the process of the cold and hot civil war, Lebanon has lived the illusion of the quick exist, and the healing of the war’s germ. Moreover, no one can believe that after twenty years from the start of war there will be sequent rounds that are awaiting the Lebanese after the glare of Al Taif Agreement. The Lebanese have waded their short rounds for many times, while they were talking about the success of avoiding the return back to them , for example the attack of Ashrafieh was one of the rounds, and the decision of breaking up the resistance’s communication network towards the seventh of May and ending with Doha Agreement was the longest round of war, but the Lebanese were not paying attention that since the thirteen of April they have entered an open civil war, where the severity of the rotation of rounds, and the duration of the intervals between the rounds were the limit of goodness which the Lebanese were expecting for their country.
The ongoing civil war in Lebanon is a cultural structural situation; it affected a country that has been separated in managing its affairs in the agreement and in the disagreement into two tracks, a track to deal with it as a civil country that is closed against the foreign interventions and is able to practice its political maturity and resorting to the institutions to solve its disputes, it is a country in which its citizens associate with their country with a mono identity that is the citizenship, and a track of a sectarian doctrinal micro-states that are open to loyalties that make for every micro state a foreign area that protects and makes it feel with warmth, more than the warmth of belonging to the homeland, thus every internal disagreement will be an expression of an external situation or an area of interferences and foreign intervention, but when the Lebanese have chosen the interest of experiencing the abroad, and have chosen it for the first time, the decision was no longer for them.
The Lebanese have deep rooted in the culture of fragmentation, integration, and the looking towards the abroad comparing with how they were during the war, so they became in the heart of war more than before, because the doctrinism has been added to the sectarianism, and it became even more dangerous and severe than it, moreover the disintegration in the national structure has been widened in all directions, as well as the external interventions have been expanded, and their provoking became publically and shamelessly. Moreover they have a legitimacy, and even the leaders presented them as an exit from the crisis, the people as well were waiting for them as the addicts who are waiting for the poisoned drugs, and the promotion became for the sectarian and doctrinal loyalties as an original identity, so it was the time to admit of its legitimacy and its right of progress. The federalism became an imaginary slogan for some people, But this demographic Lebanese integration was not desired to be a beginning of an integration that expands in the rest of the Arab countries, and when its impact began to appear the whole world turned its back to Lebanon, waiting to finish the resolving of the consequences of the Arab disintegration and managing them with the Lebanese experience, and later on the abroad may return back to Lebanon to clean the wounds from their pus, and may not if the wound was still able to agitate anxiety in the Arab body.
From Lebanon to Iraq to everywhere the civil wars have spread, and what is left is a limited number of Arab countries which are still living the consequences of the war, while apparently they seem that they are very well. Egypt has been distributed on many fronts, Libya in its east and west, Sudan in the south and north and Morocco in its desert, Syria has a war because the civil war has not broken out, and Yemen is the last war that we witness, on a behalf of a war that has not been announced yet in Saudi Arabia and is no longer far, while Bahrain is like a boiler and when Saudi Arabia is exploded, the Gulf will be ignited and Jordan will be split.
Without the birth of the noblest phenomenon in the Arab history from Lebanon, which is the resistance, and without the honesty of the loyalty to its choices, the rounds of the Lebanese war would be the wildest, and the noisiest. Moreover, the major issues would not be remembered, even more Palestine would be in the oblivion.
What makes Lebanon protected is that the resistance is so strong, and cannot be ignored in every war, it makes an equation its basis is that “who wants war does not bear it, and who bears it does not want it “ and what will prevent the Arabs from exploding more blood is that the monster of the sectarian and doctrinal extremism whom the West has breaded in order to attack brutally the national concept, which its growth was distorted in the Arab countries since the projects of the uncompleted independence were, was no longer satisfied with the national grounds, it is looking towards the West countries, so it entitled the terrorism and the war was against it, but its eradication militarily will not end it as a cultural distort, the fire will remain igniting, but maybe the resistance and what it represents as a compass that reminds of Palestine is still the only receipt to reform a national identity for each Arab country that sank in its blood as a result of e imaginary conflicts between all sects, creeds, and tribalism. Palestine is still the criterion for showing the Arab’s attitude and entity, and the justification of building an Arab unified army.
The civil national country is not mere a receipt for citizenship, fighting corruption, or a way for building the institutions and the civil peace, but it is an identity that can alone constitute a reverse path for what the Lebanese have chosen during the war on behalf of all the Arabs, and as Arabs who are able to choose. Now it is the choice affects the Lebanese as well as the Arabs. Now do the Lebanese dare to choose on their behalf and on the behalf of all Arabs, as they have chosen the war for them and for the Arabs the suitable antidote which cures from the poison and to announce the combination between the culture of the civil country and the culture of the resistance and the independence?.
Translated by Lina Shehadeh
2015-04-16 | عدد القراءات 1887
