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On February 14, Lebanon will commemorate two years since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Lebanon has only known a semblance of peace a few years at a time. But even in its tragic history, not many periods have been as violent and unsettled as the last two years.

In the course of this very short period, Lebanon has known 15 targeted bombings and 9 attempts at political assassination, 6 of which succeeded and 3 that led to maiming. Interspersed were the toppling of two governments, endless demonstrations, and sit-ins. To top it all, a 34-day Israeli military aggression beginning last July led to the near-total destruction of a freshly rebuilt infrastructure and the displacement of more than a quarter of the population. Now the entire country is ripped in half in political disagreement and once again on the brink of civil war.

One wonders how that is even possible. Did we not learn anything in our bloody, 16-year civil war (1975-1990)? Have we not learned that there are no winners in civil strife, only losers that end up weeping amid the ashes? Only last week, the escalation of opposition-led demonstrations reaped a handful of deaths and over a hundred wounded.

The issues are, of course, complex, and one could enumerate many causes behind the current deadlock, all of which would incriminate most of our Lebanese politicians. (I use the term "politician" only metaphorically, since it is quite obvious that our honorable "feudal lords" have forgotten—or perhaps never learned—that political office is a calling to accountability and civil service rather than to the exercise of despotism and partisanship). But I want to turn instead to a more profound and fundamental reality, which I believe to be at the root of the current situation.

Since the end of the civil war, successive Lebanese governments have applied themselves to rebuilding the stones—the flesh of Lebanon, rather than its soul, its people. The struggle has been to restore the economy by reviving the glory of Lebanon, the "tourist attraction," the Disneyland of the Middle East.

There is a seductive and compelling argument going around, which would have us believe that pouring billions of dollars into a country's economy will stabilize it politically. I point this out because the same erroneous belief is still the basis of the thinking behind Paris III, the economic summit for Lebanon held January 25 in France. The same fallacy is being perpetrated in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The reality is that drenching the economy of a post-war nation with fresh dollars manages to maintain a semblance of peace for a decade, during which the financial investments are so significant and the stakes of investors so high that economic voices are able to keep more revolutionary voices in check. However, the strata of society that have historically felt underprivileged will continue to feel so, never too invested in an economic stability with benefits they will hardly ever reap.

The results of this economic strategy have been unfolding in Lebanon between a more affluent Sunni-Maronite-Druze bloc striving for peace and economic stability, and a primarily Shiite opposition (represented by Hezbollah and Amal) that has little to gain from government economics. This time, however, the Shiite bloc is also joined by a considerable portion of the Maronite Christian population under the leadership of General Michel Aoun and his "Free Patriotic Movement" Like the Hezbollah and Amal parties, the Maronite position centers on an indictment of the government, which is seen as corrupt and representing the wealthy.

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February (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51