Blog Post 3
Since the first days of Lebanon’s independence, there has always been the presence of foreign countries and I personally think that these foreign countries don’t seem to understand what independence means even though they seem to stand by it and try to preach it all over the globe. France granted Lebanon’s independence back in 1920 under the name of The State of Greater Lebanon and Lebanon celebrated for a short period of time before realizing nothing had changed. The pinnacle of comedy was France granting Lebanon a new flag and that flag in question was France’s flag with the Lebanese cedar in the middle of it. The whole idea of independence was basically a political plot for France to calm down the Lebanese citizens from any form of revolution. They did grant Lebanon their own government and right to govern themselves but French forces were always present as well as France was overly generous in helping Lebanon create their own constitution that ended up being modeled just like the French Third Republic. Lebanon’s education system was mostly constituted by Foreign mission schools as well as having French culture alongside the French language being taught. This so-called State of Greater Lebanon was an effective way of convincing the Lebanese citizens that they were granted an “independent” state that funny enough still promoted everything France stands by and supports. I would go ahead and call it a new form of colonization rebranded under the name of independence.
Once Lebanon actually received its independence on November 22nd, 1943, It was dealing with the repercussions of world war 2 that hadn’t ended by then. A national pact was made at that same time that stated that Lebanon would be a multiconfessional state that was agreed on by the Sunni, Shia, and Maronite leaders. This pact would affect its political factor more than simply its population, this pact required that the president would be Maronite Christian, the speaker of the parliament to be a Shia Muslim, its prime minister be Sunni Muslim, and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament and the Deputy Prime Minister be Greek Orthodox. This independence doesn’t last for long though because Lebanon’s constant religious fights and the complete instability of ideologies end up in the occurrence of a military/religious crisis in 1958. Tensions present between the different religions that are trying to govern Lebanon result in Lebanese Muslims demanding the country become a part of the United Arab Republic that was created by Syria alongside Egypt. So the Christian parties afraid of these tensions causing problems ends up requesting help from the United States of America. How convenient that not too long ago from that period, Israel was created and granted Palestine’s land. The United States mainly feared the fact that Syria and Egypt would create a unified state that would be dominant in the Middle East. In this case, The US sent forces over to Lebanon to intervene and impose peace upon this country without letting it govern itself. This is quite the recurring pattern and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Lebanon getting overwhelmed by countries and having these countries impose their ideas with force becomes something quite casual. This same process happens in 1976, Syria intervenes to help the Christian side. Shortly after that, Israel invades Lebanon while this entire civil war sparked and has been going on for a year and occupies the South in Lebanon. Any person taking a look at how many forces were already present in Lebanon would think that Lebanon has such a weak army and had such little stability that it should’ve never gotten this independence. This doesn’t stop there though, the UN intervenes to get Israel out of Lebanon, they were successful with removing the army but they still had control over that southern area. To show how divided Lebanon was and how that division weakened it, a multinational force made up of Americans, French, Italian and British armies helped Lebanon with the Israel situation. During that time the political Shia Muslim party Hizbullah was receiving aid from Iran. So looking at how many countries have simply been in Lebanon to save it from its own bad doings and how divided it is truly shown how impressive of a country Lebanon was. Lebanon couldn’t control its citizens because of its division and that miscommunication between all these different groups of people resulted in such problems that international help was needed to fix the situation.
Lebanon never got the opportunity of being independent and when it did the Muslim population created a lot of problems with all the neighboring countries. This state of instability affected the entire population, people encouraging these wars or whoever was against it. On an economical level, this was felt, the Lebanese lira started losing its value and that is still seen nowadays. These political parties trying to apply foreign countries’ agendas in Lebanon are causing division and this ends up causing the countries opposing these agendas to take decisions against the Lebanese civilization. The Lebanese population is caught up in an international battlefield and everybody is suffering because countries are trying to have this control over Lebanon. Lebanon is quite a small country and it is rich in resources but securing Lebanon as a modern-day colony by applying a certain country’s agenda means that country gaining control over the Middle East. A lot of resources are simply running low because certain countries don’t agree with Iran’s intervention in Lebanon and one of the main countries opposing that is the United States of America. The US is putting pressure on Lebanon’s economy because Hizbullah is applying Iran’s agenda in Lebanon and the US demanding Lebanon must drop Hizbullah as a political party so it can go back to things as they were. The economic crisis currently happening in Lebanon shows how its independence is simply a term granted and not an actual state of stability the country can have. So reducing everything to simple terms, Shia Muslims are receiving help from Iran, The United States of America is working on fueling a revolution in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia is helping out Sunni Muslims and Christians are receiving support from France. All these international countries' “help” and “intervention” are simply causing Lebanon more division and more problems. All of the population is suffering mentally, physically, and economically because of this repeated unwanted and undesired pressure that these foreign countries are imposing.
This cycle of international intervention has been affecting all the population in Lebanon without leaving any part of the population unharmed. Everyone who might be supporting them is dealing with a bad economic crisis. This economic crisis is creating a big form of instability in the country, people lost all forms of trust in their government and are slowly leaving Lebanon thinking nothing can’t be fixed. Lebanon’s case can be fixed if the Lebanese population decided to stop applying foreign countries' agendas and try to see the progress Lebanon is able to make. It’s a really difficult process and being able to get rid of such effects of foreign countries will leave negative impacts on Lebanon’s international relations. The Lebanese population has to understand the ability to detach religions from politics and simply see the progress, the economic growth, and the stability that can be acquired if they were to focus on how they can develop. There must be a big detachment from religion and politics, this same principle needs to be seen and comprehended by the population to start thinking of each person from a different religion as an enemy and more as a person seeking to develop Lebanon to its best state possible. All political parties need to abandon foreign countries' agendas and start focusing on creating Lebanon’s agenda and how they are able to recover from all the past experiences and finally learn to govern themselves. It’s a truly hard task for the Lebanese population to depend upon itself after every difficult situation they had to deal with especially the way they are suffering during these times.