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A Puzzling Run for President in Lebanon

[Los Angeles Times] Tony Badran - The keynote speaker at Hizballah's massive Beirut demonstration last week was a Maronite Christian, Michel Aoun, an army general driven into exile by Syria in 1990 but who has been oddly friendly with Syria and its local allies since his return to Lebanon last year. Aoun's primary objective is to become president (a position that by long custom goes to a Christian leader). To achieve this goal, he concluded a political alliance with Hizballah in February. There's a cardinal rule in Lebanese politics that the president must be acceptable both to his own community and to the others. Aoun is neither. His positions have been antithetical to the Maronite patriarchate. Aoun's alliance with Hizballah and Syria's puppets has infuriated the anti-Syrian Christian community, which aimed much of its anger at him after the assassination of Maronite cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel last month. By agreeing to be the vanguard of a Shiite-led coup attempt against a Sunni prime minister, he has broken an unwritten rule against getting his community involved in a Sunni-Shiite conflict, potentially putting the already polarized Maronite community at risk. The writer is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
2006-12-08 01:00:00
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