Outright Assassination Read online

  Beyond the Arabic language, the saga is hardly known outside a narrow circle of academic specialists. There is no book in English – or in any other major European language for that matter – that attempts to give a concise, clear and authoritative survey of the controversy. There are chapters on certain aspects of the subject, on individual participants or on specific issues, but there is no one volume that provides a unified treatment of the saga with a view to helping the general intelligent English reader as well as the student to form a clear picture of causes and consequences. Even in the most direct studies on modern Lebanon, the Sa’adeh saga is treated by scholars mostly at a quite general level.

  The existing secondary literature is even less helpful. In contrast to the rich literature on the general phenomenon of Lebanese political crashes, there are relatively few comprehensive historical studies of the Khoury era. It was not until recently that the drought was broken with the publication of Eyal Zisser’s major study Lebanon: The Challenge of Independence.10 Zisser explains the dearth of literature on the “independence era” (ahd al-istiqlal) as follows:

  The voluminous struggle over the valid interpretation of Lebanese history failed to elicit much interest in the events of 1943–52. Researchers inclining to a deterministic view thought of that decade as marginal and as devoid of influence on what was in any case destined to follow. For them, an understanding of Lebanon had to be anchored in an analysis of the emergence of Greater Lebanon, of the National Pact, of the 1958 crisis and, most of all, of the civil war. But their counterparts, too, did not find much to attract them to this particular period, at least not beyond the initial struggle for independence and the formulation of the National Pact. Most scholarly histories of either school therefore devote no more than a few lines to the entire decade.11

  Zisser’s book has a chapter on the Sa’adeh saga but it doesn’t go far enough. Other attempts are no better.12 Most are ill-informed, full of factual errors, narrow in scope, bizarre in their organization and emphasis, and generally lacking in enthusiasm. Some can be followed only by Lebanese specialists, while others are far too general and brief to satisfy the needs of the reader who wishes to acquire an adequate knowledge of the subject.

  The task here is to portray and explain the puzzling complexity of a political trial that went very wrong. Critical to this task is an understanding of the confusing and muddy borderland where politics, criminality, and law often overlap. However, the reader must be alerted as to what this volume is and is not. It is a multidisciplinary exploration of the historical and theoretical underpinnings of a political saga involving variables in politics and law and societal responses to it. It is not a comprehensive historical work or a legal treatise; although some events and law matters are examined in depth, most are referred to, if at all, at a quite general level. Generally, this volume is less a history of a trial than it is a dramatic representation of a tragic episode.

  Structurally, Outright Assassination falls into three general sections. The first section is an exploration of Sa’adeh’s political discourse and attitude towards the power structure in Lebanon. It covers his turbulent relationship with the Lebanese State from its origin in 1936 to the period immediately preceding the trial. It would be futile to attempt to explain the controversy without a lucid understanding of Lebanese state politics and Sa’adeh’s reaction to it. The controversy was ideological as much as it was political, and not a straight-forward treason case as it has often been made out to be.

  The second section is an attempt to unravel without interruption the last threads of the plot against Sa’adeh’s life. It is a step by step reconstruction of the trial and execution, with its slow and measured procedure, based largely on press reports, published testimonies, and personal recollections of those who lived in that period. In the absence of court records, it is very difficult to confirm the accuracy of the information, but there does seem to be strong consistency between the various accounts. From this re-enactment, the discussion proceeds to an analytical review of the trial process under national and international law.

  The third section provides a round-up of the myriad reactions generated by the case both inside and outside Lebanon. The intention here is not to record every detail of the Sa’adeh affair, but to touch instead on the salient aspects, and thus both pave the way for further studies on these topics and to provide a backdrop for those generally in need of dependable information. After that is an enumeration of the various assumptions and theories that have developed about the case in an effort to determine to what extent they differ from one another and why these differences occur. Generally, we will be concerned with developing an inventory of how far these theories have brought us to an understanding of the saga. The section will conclude with a survey of the fallouts from the saga and its repercussions on the main parties.

  The present book originated in the need to discover answers. This attempt is made in the full knowledge that, for the foreseeable future, it will not be possible to explain the “why”, “who” and “when” of the Sa’adeh saga more accurately until the secret archives of the Lebanese security services and military court, where Sa’adeh was tried and executed, are opened for public scrutiny. Until then we have to rest content with the available information.

  Notes

  1 It is claimed that Husni az-Zaim watched proceedings from behind the door but refused to make an appearance. Another claim is that Sa’adeh threw back at him the pistol that Zaim had earlier presented as a token of friendship. Neither claim can be confirmed. See Adib Kaddoura, Haqa’iq wa Mawaqif (Facts and Stances). Beirut: Dar Fikr, 1989.

  2 An-Nahar, Beirut, 9 June, 1949. See also Nada Raad, “Tueini talks about his turbulent relationship with SSNP: death of party founder Saade seen as turning point.” Beirut: Daily Star, Saturday, 22 May, 2004.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Fikr. Beirut, No. 73, 1 July, 2000: 76.

  5 For an introduction on this relationship see Adel Beshara, Lebanon, The Politics of Frustration: The Failed Coup of 1961 (History and Society in the Islamic World). London and New York: Routledge and Curzon, 2005.

  6 On Sa’adeh’s life and thought see Adel Beshara, Syrian Nationalism: An Inquiry into the Political Thought of Antun Sa’adeh. Beirut: Bissan Publications, 1995; Antun Sa’adeh: The Man, His Thought. London: Ithaca Press, 2007.

  7 Ron Christenson, Political Trials: Gordian Knots in the Law. 2nd ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Press, 1999.

  8 Otto Kirchheimer, Political Justice. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961.

  9 Antoine Butrus, Qissat muhakamat Antun Sa’adeh was i’idamehe (An Account of Antun Sa’adeh’s Trial and Execution). Beirut: Chemaly & Chemaly, 2002.

  10 Eyal Zisser, Lebanon: The Challenge of Independence. London: I. B. Tauris, 2000: 176–192.

  11 Ibid., xi.

  12 See the chapter on Lebanon in George M. Haddad, Revolution and Military Rule in the Middle East. 3 Vols. New York: Robert Speller and Sons, Publishers, 1971; Chapter eight in Patrick Seale, The Struggle for Syria: A Study of Post-War Diplomacy 1945–1958. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.

  1 ESSENTIAL BACKGROUND

  Antun Sa’adeh has the dubious distinction of being the first and last political figure to be executed in independent Lebanon. A committed ideologue, Sa’adeh was positioned to the left of mainstream Lebanese politics and the confessional system, which he considered too impractical and slow to forge an independent national life.1 His life was tinged by a spirit of rebellion, which led him to scorn all half-measures and vacillation and which influenced the intransigence with which he later stuck to his program of national revival. But “rebel” he was, and as rebel, we may be sure he paid the price that always goes with such independence of thought and action.

  Admired for the broadness of his intellectual sweep, his single-minded concentration on the national cause, and his commitment to rational principles, Sa’adeh was destined for a personal tragedy. But no one, including his politica
l detractors, envisaged that it would be through the death penalty. Many expected him to die in cold blood or to live the rest of his life on the run or in exile, but not to be executed behind closed doors in Star Chamber style.2 Many more expected the State, in the longer run, to triumph against him but they never imagined that it would be without any physical or moral restraint. This was an intolerable breach of faith.

  In order to understand how Sa’adeh came into circumstances that cost him his life, it is necessary to recreate the “rebel” before our eyes, placing ourselves, as far as possible, in his intellectual environment, and to touch upon the salient features of his relationship with the Lebanese State. During the last half-century this relationship has been normally discussed – or more often simply alluded to – primarily within the context of the political development of Lebanon. Because of this, the existing secondary accounts are strikingly inconsistent in the information they provide. They have given rise to an amazing variety of conflicting theories and evaluations. Here, however, we study the relationship as an internal affair involving complex relations among all the players who participated directly or indirectly in it. We explore its evolution phase by phase, and the central issues at question are taken as a whole and considered within a wider context than that of traditional scholarly interest in modern Lebanon.

  Lebanon: The Long March to Statehood

  At different periods in its history, Lebanon or Mount Lebanon before 1920, a mighty range which begins northeast of Tripoli and extends approximately to a region east of Sidon and Tyre in the south, has held an important position as a shelter for minority and persecuted groups, including its historic Maronite Christian majority, the monotheistic Druze, and local Shi’a Muslims. Other sects that are known to have settled in the Lebanon region are: Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Jacobites, Syrian Catholics, Chaldean Catholics, Nestorian Assyrians, Latins (Roman Catholics), Protestants, Sunni Muslims and Jews. These sects co-existed, often with antagonistic interests, but could not mold into a unity of any measurable degree. Like “outright castes,”3 each sect managed its own internal affairs and personal status laws independent of the other sects.

  In the mid-1800s, as nationalism penetrated the Syrian environment, this arrangement came under close scrutiny. Functionally, nationalism and sectarianism are opposites: nationalism is a collective spirit in which the relationship of the members of a nation is, theoretically, an equal relationship between citizens; sectarianism, on the other hand, refers (usually pejoratively) to a rigid adherence to a particular sect or party or religious denomination. It often implies discrimination, denunciation, or violence against those outside the sect. Moreover, as exclusive communities, sects “defy the environment in which they grow”4 and their members tend to possess a strong sense of identity that limits “one’s contact with others and the kind of occupation that was open to the individual.”5

  With the advent of nationalism, Mount Lebanon found itself at a new crossroad in history. It became the stage for a major literary revival spearheaded by a small but active intellectual stratum willing to question the existing order of things. And so, amidst the pervasiveness of a sectarian mentality, various nationalist tendencies began to appear with fresh concepts and universal claims about how the region should be organized. Chief among them were:

  A secular Syrianist tendency, which considered Mount Lebanon an indispensable part of Syria;

  A pan-Arab tendency, which emphasized a national union on the basis of a singular Arab identity; and

  A Lebanonist tendency, which portrayed events on and around Mount Lebanon within a distinctly Lebanese context.

  By the turn of the twentieth century those tendencies were clashing over whether Lebanon’s identity was to be considered from a pan-Arab (or pan-Syrian) or a narrower nationalist Lebanese perspective. Although Lebanese Christians were the first intellectuals to promote a sense of pan-Arab (or Syrian) identity, they grew alienated from the movement after pan-Arabist theoreticians, for whom the very concept of historical Lebanon was increasingly anathema, began holding sway. Many felt that Lebanon’s identity could only be understood within the context of greater Syria and eventually a larger pan-Arab framework. The dividing lines eventually coalesced roughly around sectarian groupings, hampered by a rigid and static stratification, and the national identity of Lebanon remained undecided.

  On September 1, 1920, against a background of intense national confusion, the French High Commissioner in the Levant, General Henri Gouraud, surrounded by a hand-picked audience of local religious and political leaders, declared the birth of Grand Liban (Greater Lebanon).The new entity, in addition to the pre-war mutassarafiyyah (governorate), included new areas and towns that were inhabited by a majority of Sunni and Shi’a Muslims. It increased the Sunni Muslim population of the new state by eight times, the Shi’a Muslims by four times, and the Maronite Christians by only one-third of their original number in Mount Lebanon. The inclusion of such significant new population groups was deemed necessary for economic viability, but it brought with it serious problems. First, Greater Lebanon engulfed two areas unequal in their level of capitalist development and their access to services and resources: the more advanced area of Beirut and Mount Lebanon, constituting the center, and the less advanced areas of northern, eastern, and southern Lebanon, constituting the peripheries.6 Second, the new entity was created against the wishes of a significant number of its population. A large number of the center’s residents were Christians, and many of them, particularly Maronites, were advocates of the new state. A good number of the peripheries’ residents were Muslims, and many of them, in addition to a good number of Christians, leaned toward reunion with a Syrian/Arab nation. The different concentrations of sectarian communities in the center versus the peripheries also meant that Christians, predominantly of the center, had better access to resources while Muslims, predominantly of the peripheries, had less. This access also varied with class differences, with the upper classes of various religious affiliations in both regions having much better access to resources.7 Third, the inclusion of a substantial Muslim element undermined the new entity because the overall Maronite community slumped to about thirty per cent of the population. The French may have done that in order to weaken the Syrian Arab national movement in Syria and, simultaneously, to secure long-term Maronite dependency on them.

  The initial main challenge for Greater Lebanon was to create a sphere for the two large religious groups and several other religious communities to live and function side by side. In 1926, a Lebanese Constitution was drafted under French supervision to pave the way for the Lebanese republic and its transformation toward a Western parliamentary democracy. Under the Constitution, all Lebanese were guaranteed the freedoms of speech, assembly, and association “within the limits established by law.” There were also provisions for freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship, as long as the dignity of the several religions and the public order were not affected. A structure for the electoral system, legislative and executive institutions in addition to the juridical and bureaucratic structure, was also provided by the new constitution, but it was based on a confessional political representation that followed a ratio of 60% to 40% between Christians and Muslims.8 The purpose was to give Lebanon a political framework where the different confessional groups in an already polarized and sectarian society could coexist and follow a “national” consensus. However, many Muslims saw the Constitution as an expression of Lebanese independence and Christian and French colonial domination. In fact, Muslim representatives at the Constitution draft meetings made it clear that they were against the very idea of expanding the limits of mostly Christian Mount Lebanon to create Greater Lebanon incorporating Muslim areas and insisted that the record show their reservations. On another level, the Constitution combined two contradictory facts: the implementation of a Western political system based on equality and universal suffrage was one wanted fact, while a deeply rooted sectarianism in both
Lebanese political and social culture was another actual fact that counteracted the former goal.9

  Another problem was this: By superimposing Lebanon’s confessional-style politics on a democratic agenda, the new constitution, with tacit French approval, enabled a limited group of Christian families in Mount Lebanon and Beirut and Shiite and Sunni feudal landowner families in the coastal cities to usurp power for themselves. Cooperation among these families took place only in terms of a common interest that strengthened their own positions and increased their wealth. No space was given in this structure for those politicians or groups who aimed to transform the country into a democratic, pluralistic and fair society. From time to time political parties did appear but they were basically thinly disguised political machines for a particular confession or, more often, a specific zaim (political leader). Lacking traits common to parties in most Western democracies, they had no ideology and no programs, and made little effort at transcending sectarian support. Moreover, the absence of real political parties, in the sense of constitutionally legitimate groups seeking office, led to a new form of political clientelism, based upon but by no means identical to the older feudal system. It reduced the political process to one of squabbles over patronage rights.10

  As a result, Lebanon became again a centre-stage for old divisions and disagreements over national identity. Two distinctly “nationalist” camps formed: a Christian Maronite camp that advocated for an independent Greater Lebanon within its existing “historical and natural boundaries;” and a mainly Muslim pan-Syrian Arab camp calling for “either complete unification with Syria, or some sort of federal system respecting a ‘Lebanese particularism’.”11 Both camps put on an “ideological” show – the unionist tendency even organized a campaign of civil disobedience to promote its cause – but the rivalry soon fizzled out into political jockeying for power and prestige. As soon as “Muslim politicians had come to realize that, whereas they might be of first-rate importance in Lebanon, in a Greater Syria they would at best be second-rate next to political leaders from Damascus and Aleppo”12 they sought a face-saving accommodation within the Lebanese system. Likewise, most Lebanese nationalists began to recognize the need for the nascent state to co-operate with its Muslim hinterland and began a process of national reconciliation that involved greater inclusion of Muslims into the political process. That process was suspended with the outbreak of World War II.