It Kills to be a Politician in Lebanon

[Neil D]

It kills to be a politician in Lebanon. Christians, Muslims, Druze ... the list of community leaders struck down by assassins in Lebanon's 63 years of independence goes on and on.

The toll of slain politicians, as well as clerics and journalists known for their political views, is at least 35 -- more than one every two years.

Two presidents were killed by bombs just before or after their inaugurations. One prime minister was blown up in a helicopter; another was killed four months after leaving office in a suicide truck bombing that also slew an ex-Cabinet minister and 21 other people.

Thursday's funeral for Pierre Gemayel, shot dead Tuesday, presented pictures that have become all too familiar to Lebanese in the past two years: hundreds of thousands of people walked behind a flag-draped coffin, wet eyes and speeches that mixed grief with defiance against the killers. If the past is anything to go by, the death of the Christian minister of industry will not be the last assassination.

"The season of farewells is long and the killers' appetite is big," wrote Editor-in-chief Rafik Khoury in Thursday's edition of Al-Anwar.

Gemayel, a rising star of a prominent political clan, was the fifth member of his family to die violently, and the sixth anti-Syrian figure to be killed in the past two years.

His uncle, president-elect Bashir Gemayel, was killed in a bomb blast in 1982 only days before his inauguration. Coincidentally both Pierre and Bashir were 34 years old when they died.

The assassinations began in the early 1950s when Prime Minister Riyad Solh, a leader of Lebanon's struggle for independence from France, was gunned down in Amman, Jordan.

In February 1975, Maarouf Saad, a Sunni Muslim parliament member, was shot to death while leading a fishermen's demonstration in the southern port city of Sidon. His killing was one of the sparks of the civil war that broke out two months later when Pierre Gemayel's grandfather survived an assassination attempt on April 13, 1975.

Assassins struck again and again during the civil war when the country's Christians and Muslims turned on each other, drawing support from different foreign powers.

Gunmen shot dead Kamal Jumblat, leader of the Druze community in the Chouf mountains in 1977.

The next year, Tony Franjieh, a Maronite Catholic and oldest son of former President Suleiman Franjieh, was gunned down at his home in the mountain resort of Ehden along with his wife, their 3-year-old daughter, and 30 aides and guards.

In 1987, Prime Minister Rashid Karami, a Sunni Muslim, was killed by a bomb planted under the seat of the army helicopter that he was flying in.

On Independence Day 1989, President Rene Mouawad was assassinated after only 17 days in office.

Others to be assassinated were Grand Mufti Sheik Hassan Khalid, spiritual leader of the Sunnis, in 1989, and Danny Chamoun, a right-wing Christian leader shot dead with his wife and two sons at their east Beirut home in 1990.

Very few killers have ever been brought to justice.

Lebanon is "unrivaled by any other country in the world" in the number of unpunished killings, former Prime Minister Salim Hoss wrote in the leading newspaper An Nahar on Thursday. Hoss himself survived a car bombing in 1984.

The end of the civil war in 1990 brought a respite in political killings. Lebanese hoped that the country had turned a page.

When the pause was broken in January 2002, with the killing of former Christian militia leader Elie Hobeika by a car bomb, it was seen as a settling of past scores.

But a new chapter of political assassinations began with the massive truck bombing on Feb. 14, 2005, that killed Hariri and 22 others. The suicide attack changed Lebanon's political landscape, forcing Syria to withdraw its troops and generating political tensions to the pitch that is heard today.

Since then, a series of unexplained bombings have killed or maimed six anti-Syrian politicians and journalists. A new low was reached in September 2005 when a bomb blasted prominent Christian television anchorwoman May Chidiac in her car, tearing off an arm and a leg. It was the first time a bomb had targeted a woman.

The assassinations produced a crop of young widows -- some of whom have taken over their husbands' political mantle. They are often seen consoling each other at funerals.

The attacks also caused a boom in sales of bullet-proof vehicles.

The anti-Syrian majority in Lebanon blames the Syrian regime for those killings, a charge Syria denies. A U.N.-created international tribunal is expected to be set up to try suspects in Hariri's assassination and the subsequent bombings.

The editor-in-chief of Al Hayat newspaper, Ghassan Charbel, has facetiously suggested that a way out of the tug of war between the government and the opposition would be for the politicians to agree on "Cabinet of Martyrs" -- as Middle Easterners describe a person killed for a cause.

"A cabinet of martyrs in a country that floats on the blood of martyrs," he wrote bitterly in Wednesday's edition of the London-based paper.

He also told the president, government and opposition "to look at their watches" because the country was fast approaching the edge.(AP)

Beirut, 24 Nov 06, 14:17