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Jumblatt, Walid.
Druze leader of the Progressive Socialist Party
and leader of the leftist alliance, The Lebanese
National Movement after the death of his father.
Leadership of the PSP also passed to Walid
Jumblatt upon his father's death, but few expected
that he would last politically. Born in 1949 and
educated at the American University of Beirut and
in France, Jumblatt was not politically active in
his youth. He had earned a reputation as a
playboy, commonly wore jeans and a leather jacket,
rode a motorcycle, and broke with tradition by
marrying a non-Druze Jordanian woman. Jumblatt's
political inheritance was shaky from the start, as
he lacked the political stature, experience, and
charisma of his late father. Between 1977 and
1982, opposition to his leadership within the
Druze community emanated both from the rival
Arslan clan and the Druze religious establishment.
At
the end of the traditional 40-day mourning period
for his father's death, Jumblatt was summoned to
Damascus
to meet with Syrian President Hafez Assad. "How
you resemble your father!" Jumblatt later recalled
Assad saying upon his arrival, a not-so-subtle
hint that the young Druze leader would share his
father's fate if he did not support Syrian control
of
Lebanon. During a subsequent meeting, Assad
reportedly pointed to an empty chair and remarked:
"Your father, Allah have mercy on him, used to sit
in that chair over there." The fate that befell
Kamal Jumblatt would prove to be a powerful
incentive for the young Druze leader to tow the
Syrian line. In most other matters however, he was
following in his father's foot steps, he
championed the Palestinian presence in
Lebanon
and repeatedly called for the destruction of the
state and the annihilation of the Maronites.
Durinng the 1980s he frequently called for a blood
revenge against the Maronites and wanted a repeat
of the 1860 massacres.
In
June 1982, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon and
quickly occupied the Shouf region. Jumblatts PSP
militia failed to fire a single shot in against
the Israeli entry into the Shouf. For a few
months, Jumblatt remained at his home in Mukhtara
and maintained contact with occupying Israeli
forces, hoping to broker a deal whereby
Israel
would keep the Palestinians out of the Shouf and
recognize Druze autonomy. To his consternation,
however, Israel facilitated the entry of the
Christian Lebanese Forces (LF) units commanded by
Samir Geagea into the area. Frustrated, Jumblatt
left his home and moved to Damascus to secure
support against the LF. Since the new Lebanese
regime of President Amine Gemayel had forged
political ties with the Arslan clan, Jumblatt was
more than willing to join the National Salvation
Front, a pro-Syrian alliance of militias opposed
to the central government and the May 1983
non-belligerency agreement it signed with Israel.
Armed with massive amounts of Syrian-supplied
Soviet weaponry, Jumblatt's militia began driving
LF forces out of the Shouf in the fall of 1983.
When Israeli forces pulled out of the area in
August-September 1983, Jumblatt's forces overran
sixty Maronite villages, slaughtering around 1,500
innocent civilians and driving well over 50,000
out of their homes in the mountainous areas east
and west of Beirut. On 11th September 1983 whilst
the Druze where massacring Christian civilians in
the Chouf, Walid Jumblatt announced his policy
while making a speech in
Damascus:
"With the help of our Syrian allies we have
removed the Christians and only the Druze villages
will remain from now on. Such is our objective".
When Jumblatt's militia overstepped itself and
attempted to overrun the Souq al-Gharb pass
protecting the capital, Lebanese army troops
commanded by Michel Aoun brought the offensive to
a halt. Nevertheless, Jumblatt's victory made him
the undisputed leader of the Druze community, a
position which has not been seriously contested to
this day.
The
PSP scored a major strategic victory by obtaining
an outlet to the sea in the Iqlim al-Kharoub
region. This, however proved to be a double-edged
sword, as it obstructed Shi'ite aspirations to
build an autonomous enclave in southern Lebanon
contiguous with Shi'ite neighborhoods in the
southwestern portion of
Beirut.
Periodic fighting between the PSP and the Amal
militia of Nabih Berri persisted in
West
Beirut
and surrounding areas throughout the remainder of
the civil war despite their mutual alliance with
Syria, engendering a deep-rooted animosity between
the two leaders that continues to this day.
Throughout the war-torn 1980's, Jumblatt remained
within the Syrian fold, supporting the Assad
regime's efforts to torpedo any reconciliation
agreement that did not explicitly grant
Damascus
political and military control over
Lebanon and spent much of his time trying to
remove Amin Gemayel from power. However, unlike
Berri, Jumblatt maintained good relations with
other external actors, most notably Libya and the
Soviet Union, and even resumed back-channel
contacts with the Israelis, in order to keep his
options open.
Jumblatt was handsomely rewarded for his wartime
services after Syrian forces captured Beirut in
October 1990. The Assad regime saw to it that
Jumblatt received cabinet-level positions in
successive Lebanese governments and that electoral
districts were gerrymandered to ensure his
reelection to parliament in 1992 and 1996.
According to an informed source, Jumblatt used
this political power and position to achieve
considerable wealth. During each of the last three
election cycles, he received around $5-7 million
from candidates wishing to join his electoral
coalition. Under the Hrawi government for example
he was made minister of the displaced, most
ironic, as he was directly responsible for most of
the displacement in the first place. In a 1995 BBC
interview Jumblatt, while serving as a Lebanese
minister repeated is often stated words of treason
"There is something called Lebanese entity - I
don't believe in it. Lebanese nationalism does not
exsist for me."
During the late 1990's, the son and heir apparent
of the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, began
methodically undermining potential opposition to
his succession. In 1998, he assumed control of the
"Lebanon file" from Syrian Vice-President Abdul
Halim Khaddam and brought about the ouster of
Syrian Military Chief-of-Staff Hikmat Shihabi,
fearing that they would use their political
connections in
Lebanon
to undermine his authority. Both were key allies
of Jumblatt and then-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri,
and so Syria's domestic political purge naturally
had ramifications in
Lebanon.
In the fall of 1998, Bashar backed the election of
Gen. Emile Lahoud as president of Lebanon,
engineered Hariri's ouster as prime minister, and
took away Jumblatt's cabinet portfolio. Jumblatt
was furious. In place of the pro-Syrian warlords
who dominated previous Lebanese governments, the
Syrians now granted power to the heads of security
and intelligence services appointed by Lahoud,
most notably Gen. Jamil al-Sayyid, the
director-general of the General Security
Directorate (Sureté Générale). Jumblatt then
became a vocal critic of this militarization of
Lebanese politics: "If Lahoud is just counting on
mingling the military with civilian affairs, and
if he wants to rule out the old political class. .
. this will lead to troubles inside Lebanon."
Nevertheless, he avoided explicit criticism of
Syria,
indeed at every opportunity Jumblatt reminded the
Syrians how good a friend he had been to them
during the war and how his troops and Syrian
soldiers "had fought like brothers, side by side
in the same trenches".
This
began to change during the summer of 2000 as
Bashar Assad took over full control of the Syrian
regime from his father. Just days before the elder
Assad's death, Syrian officials leaked to the
press that Shihabi had embezzled millions of
dollars from Syrian purchases of Soviet-built arms
during the 1980's and would soon be indicted.
After Shihabi hastily departed for Los Angeles,
Jumblatt publicly defended his former Syrian
benefactor. Syrian officials quoted in Al-Hayat
lashed out at Jumblatt, noting that "corruption is
the same everywhere and the corrupt always close
ranks." It became clear that Jumblatt could not
count on Syrian support in the upcoming
parliamentary elections in August-September 2000.
In order to secure votes from Christian residents
of the Shouf, he did a total U turn on his war
time stance and forged electoral alliances with
the Christian Kata'ib and National Bloc parties
and negotiated a "political charter" with Amin
Gemayel, who had returned to the country in July.
Moreover, he began calling for a "correction" of
Syrian-Lebanese ties and condemning Syrian
interference in the political process. As a
result, Jumblatt and his political allies scored
landslide victories and obtained three cabinet
positions though Jumblatt himself did not join the
government.
Syrian officials evidently expected the Druze
leader to return to the fold after the elections.
Jumblatt, however, was unwilling to dispense with
the newfound popularity among the population at
large that came with his public criticism of
Syria. In November, when Christian members of
parliament criticized the Syrian occupation during
a televised debate, Jumblatt could not resist the
opportunity to reiterate his objections to Syrian
interference in Lebanese politics. "I do
understand the importance of stationing some
Syrian troops (in Lebanon) for strategic purposes
and the requirements of Syrian national security
in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict,"
Jumblatt told the parliament, "but I do hope the
Syrian leadership will review some of the points
which have nothing to do with strategic
requirements." He added that Prime Minister
Hariri's claim that the Syrian occupation as
"necessary, legitimate and temporary" was too
vague. "If the presence is necessary, let us
decide its timetable."
Syrian officials were shocked and quickly began
measures to rein in their wayward ally. During the
next parliamentary session, MP Assem Qanso, a
member of the Lebanese branch of
Syria's
ruling Ba'ath party, told Jumblatt, "You have
exceeded all limits," when he rose to address
parliament. "The Israeli war is coming," said
Qanso, warning him that "uncovered and covered
[Israeli] agents . . . will not be protected from
the rifles of the resistance fighters by any red
lines or by seeking refuge in embassies," a remark
interpreted in the Lebanese press as a veiled
assassination threat. "We tell Walid Jumblatt that
the Israeli war is at our door. Does he want to
meet his ally [former Israeli prime minister]
Shimon Peres?"
Meanwhile, Syrian officials told the press that
Jumblatt and other members of the PSP were "no
longer welcome at an official level" in Damascus.
As if to underscore precisely what this meant for
his political future, a few days after Jumblatt's
outburst in parliament, the Syrians invited Talal
Arslan, his main Druze political rival, to
Damascus for a red carpet visit.
Jumblatt was shaken by the Syrian countermeasures
and canceled two public debates, but condemned
what he called the climate of "political and
intellectual terrorism that is being established
in the country" and warned of " the danger of
confiscating the modicum of freedoms left and of
the consequences of responding to political
statements with the language of threats and to the
force of opinion with the logic of force." Hariri
tried to mediate between Jumblatt and Assad, but
the Syrian president was furious and refused to
meet with the Druze leader but mutual public
recriminations between Jumblatt and Syrian
officials persisted throughout the Spring of 2001.
On
March 19 2001, Reuters reported that Syrian army
units deployed into the Shouf and took up
positions around Mukhtara (Syrian troop movements
in the Shouf had been earlier been reported by the
Lebanese press on March 8). Jumblatt told
reporters that he would "rather not discuss" the
matter, while carefully noting that he did not
mind if Syrian forces deployed in the Shouf for
"strategic purposes." However, news of the
deployment caused an uproar during a parliamentary
session devoted to budgetary matters. "What does
the Syrian deployment in the Shouf today, with
heavy weapons, mean? . . . I demand to know what
the government's position is on these actions
which take place on Lebanese soil," declared MP
Albert Moukheiber, touching off acrimonious
exchanges between pro-Syrian MPs and a handful of
other Christian opposition deputies.
On
April 11 2001, the pressure on Jumblatt reached a
new, unprecedented level when a mail bomb exploded
in the
village
of
Bkheshtey,
severely injuring the sister and niece of Druze MP
Akram Chehayyeb, a senior aide to Jumblatt.
Afterwards, Jumblatt solemnly told reporters, "It
is not through terrorism that we will reach
dialogue." Jumblatt had signalled he was ready to
make up with the Syrians. Perhaps, then, it should
come as no surprise that when Maj. Gen. Ghazi
Kanaan, the chief of Syrian intelligence in
Lebanon, called the beleaguered Druze leader
earlier this month and invited him to Damascus to
meet with Assad, Jumblatt accepted. On May 22
2001, he arrived in the Syrian capital for the
first time in eight months. Upon his return to
Lebanon Jumblatt's criticism of Syria dropped
dramatically.
In
September 2004
Syria
forced the extention of Emile Lahoud's term in
office by a further 3 years against the will of
the Lebanese people. Prime Minister Rafic Hariri
resigned. Syria arranged the appointment of the
very pro-Syrian Omar Karami as the next Prime
Minister. Fed up with the Syria, the United States
and France tabled a Resolution against Syria. The
United Nations Security Council passed Resolution
1559 which calls on Syria to cease intervening in
Lebanese internal politics, withdraw from Lebanon,
and for the disbanding of all Lebanese militias.
The resolution was adopted in 2 September 2004.
Syria dismissed it as trivial. The Lebanese
opposition parties continue to demand freedom for
Lebanon and as the year 2004 drew to a close Walid
Jumblat switched sides, joined the opposition and
became one of the most outspoken critics of the
occupation. Hariri also joined the opposition but
was not openly vocal leaving his strong ally Walid
Jumblat to complain about the Syrian occupaton.
The
opposition continued with its campaign to liberate
Lebanon and Jumblat became even more vocal in 2005
angering
Syria.
The head of the Syrian Baath party in Lebanon,
Labor Minister Assem Qanso (Kanso, Kansou)
verbally attacked Jumblat "You will be crucified
above the garbage dump of history as a symbol of
your ungratefulness, of your back-stabbing" and
warned, "You are not out of reach of our
militants" and called Jumblatt a "foreign spy".
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