From: elie@hdtv.njit.edu (...NADINE...)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.lebanon
Subject: What the puppets don't want to tell you. IMPORTANT
Date: 21 Jul 92 11:01:00 GMT
Organization: New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, N.J.

Toward "Cultural and Educational Unity"

This article is excerpted from "Lebanon in the 1990s: Stability without Freedom?"
(Global Affairs winter 1992).
The author, who holds dual Lebanese and American citizenships teaches
philosophy at the Catholic University of America and is the Middle East
Associate at the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

By Habib C. Malik

On October 13. 1990. the Syrian army, supported by artillery,
tanks. and aircraft. rolled over the last remaining enclave of
Lebanese resistance to Syrian occupation. The spearhead of this
resistance. the entrenched [General] Michel Aoun. already weak-
ened by months of intra-Christian fighting but still enjoying
widespread popular support which cut across religious and com-
munal lines. was chased out of his headquarters and sought refuge
at the French embassy in Beirut. Many of his followers were
massacred by the advancing Syrians who now seized the Christian
heartland of Mount Lebanon and east Beirut.

With Aoun out of the way and the world ' s eyes averted, the Syrians
over the next months proceeded to railroad a skein of questionable
Legislation through Lebanon's by-now rubber stamp parliament,
and under the approving gaze of an essentially puppet government
in Beirut. First. on November 24, came Law Number 29 obliging
Lebanon officially to join the Arab Organization for Education,
Culture. and the Sciences (established in 1964), and to adhere to its
charter. The law, along with the text of the charter, were published
on December 6 in the Official Journal of the Lebanese government
where such laws and related documents customarily appear. This
government publication, while open to the general public, does not
circulate like the regular press. None of the country's newspapers
printed the text of the charter in question, and so the news just
spread oralIy that virtualIy overnight a law had been passed with the
intention of ''Arabizing" the country's educational system. This
caused considerable alarm: many private religious schools pro-
tested vigorously and vowed to disobey any decrees of this sort
handed down by the government.

A careful examination of the text of the charter calling for cultural
and educational unity among Arab states. and considering some of
the subsequent public statements made by supporters of the new
law,lead to the conclusion tha the initial popular reaction of alarm
was not unfounded, and that the tears underlying it are very real. To
begin with, the preamble of the charter states unequivocally that its
ultimate purpose is to achieve the essentials of Arab cultural unity.
Such a monolithic approach to matters of education and culture is
antithetical, if not outright anathema, to the inherent idea of
Lebanon as a land of interactive pluralism, marked by the peaceful
coexistence of diverse communities with overlapping but distinc-
tive cultural orientation. Lebanon has served historically as a
haven for persecuted minorities who brought with them the varied
cultural ingredients that went into shaping the Lebanese kaleido-
scope. Educational and socio-cultural autonomy have therefore
always been delicate and highly charged matters in Lebanon. But
now, suddenly and in the shadow of Syrian hegemony. this
hornet's nest was being stirred.

Article 8 of thc Arah organizations charter, for example. talks
about member countries working together to raise future genera-
tions "on the principles of religion.'' Art iclc 15 stales emphatically
that member countries will cooperate to revive and propagate
"Arab Islamic culture.''lt is clear that the framers and signers of the
charter meant by rcligion Islam, and intcndcd "Arab'' to signify

"Islamic." What then of Lebanon 's other religious traditions? And
what about the rights of the nonreligious? the clear implications of
the charter violate articles 18, 19, and 26 of the Universal Decla-
ration of Human Rights (1948) and the UNESCO Declarations
(1978), both of which affirm freedom of religion, opinion, and
education .

Moreover, Article 12 of the Arab charter further centralizes
education by proposing the adoption of a "mother textbook" that
would serve as the principal standard reference for all schoolbooks
treating Arab history, geography, language, and literature. This
means there is to be a single standard interpretation of these
subjects, accepted by all signatories of the charter. A party-line
assimilationist interpretation is obviously intended here which
cannot be acceptable to most of the communities comprising
Lebanon, each of which has an autonomous educational and
cultural tradition and a distinct outlook on the region and its place
in it. Unfortunately, however, the Lebanese Ministry of Education
has lately been insisting that a standardized textbook history of
Lebanon be taught in all schools with a definite slant in favor of the
country's alleged "Arab identity.'' Unless the word "Arab" is
defined in a way that does not make it automatically synonymous
with "Islamic," the Christians of Lebanon cannot under any
circumstances agree to this idea.

Another disturbing feature of the charter has to do with Article 10
which declares: "The member countries agree that Arabic will be
the language of teaching and research at all levels of education."
Foreign languages are to occupy at best an ancillary position in the
pedagogic process. Yet studying the sciences, for instance, in
anything other than the languages of those cultures currently
producing all the scientific breakthroughs would be a travesty of
education and a step back into the Dark Ages. Arabic is not now
one of those languages. The study of foreign literatures in other
than their native languages constitutes a culturally impoverishing
step for any civilization. These are measures a country like
Lebanon, which has prided itself on its cosmopolitanism, its
traditional openness to the world, its multilingualism, its achieve-
ments in the fields of translation and cross-cultural exchange
simply cannot affordQand remain Lebanon. They threaten not
merely to stifle socio-cultural diversity, but to impede the free flow
of ideas and impair the overall climate of intellectual freedom that
clearly .sets the country apart from its neighbors.

Opponents of Law Number 29 assert that it centralizes and
politicizes education and renders it ideologically driven. to the
ultimate detriment of tree thought. With the exception of the last
180 years, the enterprise of learning throughout Europe and
beyond has been largely in the hands of private, non-governmen-
tal, and often religious institutions. In the nineteenth century. some
European states like Prussia and France experimented with state-
run schools, but not generally with a view to peddling a prevalent
political ideology. Aberrations in the state control of education
began to appear in this century in the Soviet Union, fascist Italy.
and Nazi Germany. Eastern Europe, the communist world, and
parts of the Third World soon followed suit. Many Third World
dictatorships have thrived on erecting elaborate rate apparatuses
of indoctrination throughout their school systems. The Arab
world's record on education has been far from exemplary; Syria.
indeed, is regarded as one of the educational backwaters of the
region. Feelings run high among Lebanon's private educational
institutions, as well as among many professors at the Lebanese
University which is government-funded, that the slightest com-
promise with regard to the country's tradition of liberal education
runs the risk of sending it down the slippery slope of totalitarian-
ism.At the very least, hasty steps in the name of an elusive regional
unity threaten to dissolve the special characteristics and under-
mine the outstanding achievements of Lebanon in the educational
field. They also act as a convenient prelude to the extermination
of any remaining semblance of sovereignty that Lebanon may still
possess. To be sure, educational reform in the country is certainly
needed; but it should be in the direction precisely of greater
openness, diversity, and enhancement of the private sector.

The public uproar caused by the prospect of tampering with the
system of liberal education has had Ministry of Education and
other government officials scurrying to allay people 's fears and to
reassure the private schools and colleges that in fact no drastic
changes will take place. But the intentions of those who inspired
and engineered Law Number 29 in the first place remain the same:
to purge Lebanon of all foreign cultural-educational influence; to
restrict the scope of free and creative academic inquiry; to
politicize the process of learning and scholarship; to control what
information is made available to people; to engage in ideological
inculcation; and to assimilate Lebanon into its wider Arab and
Islamic milieu. Even though the law has not been enforced, it sits
there dormant on the books awaiting more favorable circum-
stances at any time in the future.

The "Brotherhood" of Lebanon and Syria

By the spring of 1991, and notwithstanding the outcry over
education, the Syrians had become sufficiently emboldened in the
wake of the Gulf war and the "warm" relations they now had with
Washington to push for a treaty with the government of Lebanon
that would underscore the "brotherhood" supposedly existing
between the two countries. The result was the May 22 Treaty of
Brotherhood, Cooperation, and Coordination Between the Leba-
nese Republic and the Syrian Republic." As might be expected,
the language of the treaty is replete with ideological jargon aimed
at highlighting the underlying "oneness" of the two states and their
peoples. Expressions like "the distinctive brotherly ties" that form
"the roots of kinship, history, single affiliation, common destiny,
and common interests" are alternated with an emphasis on achiev-
ing "cooperation and coordination" in a wide range of areas from
economics to security and defense. Much more disturbing is the
undisguised push toward firmer Institutional absorption and
assimilation of Lebanon through the creation of a Higher Council
composed of the leaders of the two states, and a number of
subordinate committees to oversee what can only be described as
the overall process of merger that is to unfold.All major decisions
are to be arrived at "jointly" between the two unequal partners,
which of course translates into the stronger (Syria) dictating to the
weaker (Lebanon) on every level.

The treaty also states that at no time ought Lebanon to "be made
the source of a threat to Syria's security," and that Lebanon must
"not allow itself to be a passageway or a base" for any power,
seeking to undermine that security. The implication is that a weak
Lebanon constitutes a power vacuum and hence a threat to its
brotherly neighbor; thus Syria has the obligation to step in and fill
this void to guard its own security and, in so doing, to protect
Lebanon from external hostile forces. If every state followed the
logic of this argument with respect to a more fragile neighboring
state, international chaos would ensue or, rather, a number of
regional hegemons. This would particularly be the case if the
evidence of continuous meddling by the stronger in the internal
affairs of the weaker were incontestable, as is the situation here.
Also, the continued presence of Syrian troops in some capacity
in parts of Lebanon is left deliberately open-ended in Article 4 of
the treaty. For their part, the Syrians point to the fact that for the
first time in any official and binding document they spell out their
"recognition" of Lebanon's sovereignty and independence as a
state. Article 3 reads: "Syria, which holds dear the security,
independence,and unity of Lebanon...shall not allow any action
that threatens Lebanon's security, independence, and sover-
eignty." The purely rhetorical character of this assertion is
underscored by its failure to be mirrored in any concrete action
on the ground.

Promulgation of this "Treaty of Brotherhood," bringing Lebanon
ever more intimately into the Syrian orbit, was barely noticed by
the intemational community.This in itself is a poignant commen-
tary on the extent of the world's disinterest in genuinely preserv-
ing Lebanon as a sovereign state. The announcement of the treaty
made no ripples in official Washington. In fact some State
Department functionaries sought privately to reassure the anx-
ious that, after all, such treaties should not be taken too seriously
or too literally. On the other side of the Atlantic, the French
emitted a few feeble protests. On May 29 French Foreign
Minister Roland Dumas demanded that free parliamentary elec-
tions take place in Lebanon to coincide with a pullout of Syrian
forces from Beirut and the mountains to positions further east in
the Bekaa Valley. This was swiftly met with a barrage of verbal
attacks on France by a number of Lebanese government officials
taking their cue from Damascus. Interestingly, a month later, the
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, now like other militia chiefs a
Minister of State in the Lebanese government and an appointed
representative to parliament, admitted in a candid radio interview
that "we the government meet once every week, but the agenda
and the order of business for the day are usually set for us in
advance and communicated to us a day or two earlier. All
sensitive subjects have been examined and resolved outside the
confines of government. Certain concerned parties are some-
times made privy to the secret, but generally we are the last to find
out and the decisions pass without anyone really knowing how. ' '

The floodgates of "special agreements'' were opened by the
"Treaty of Brotherhood," which in tact stated as much when it
anticipated that a whole series of these agreements would in the
near future be signed by the two countries. The most significant
and perhaps sinister. of them is the ''Defense and Security
Agreement Between Lebanon and Syria" of August 17th. Be-
sides openly integrating the security and military establishments
of the two countries, the agreement creates a quasi-legal frame-
work for continued Syrian intervention in Lebanon's internal
affairs and infringement of its sovereignty. In the spirit of making
sure that Lebanon "does not become a source of threats against
Syria's security," the agreement states that each country must
enforce a ban on "all military, security, political, and media
activity that might harm the other country." Furthermore, asy-
lum, safe passage, and protection must be refused "to persons and
organizations that work against the other state's security." And
then comes the rub: "If such persons or organizations take refuge
in either of the two states, this state must arrest them and hand
them over to the other side at the latter's request." In theory,
therefore, any Lebanese citizen residing in, or returning to, his or
her country can be arrested and handed over to Syrian authorities
at the arbitrary request of Damascus because he or she is deemed
a "security threat."

A spinoff agreement to the one on defense and security came in
early September in the form of a joint pledge by the two countries
to combat the drug trade that centers around the Bekaa Valley.
This highly publicized step was taken, it was reported, at the
urging of the United States. The irony of such an American
demand is painfully apparent to anyone with even a cursory

knowledge of the subject of drugs in that part of the world. To
expect the Syrians to perform anything more than cosmetic
countermeasures against the lucrative drug trade (for the very
practical purpose of helping lift the congressional ban on aid to
Syria) would be like expecting the mafia to voluntarily close up
shop and turn itself in.

More agreements were on the way. In early October, the draft of
an agreement was announced lifting restrictions on overland
traffic of goods and people between the two countries and
eliminating customs and transit fees. In effect, with the stroke of
a pen, the internationally-recognized Syrian-Lebanese border
was rendered even more porous and illusory than it has been
since the Syrians first crossed it, and stayed. And to those who
would argue that such a step benefits Lebanon 's ailing commer-
cial trade sector, it should be pointed out that since last summer
the Syrians have been flooding the Lebanese market with their
cheap and inferior agricultural produce and squeezing the local
Bekaa farmers out of business. An agreement on water h; ex-
pected. focusing on the source of the Orontes River which
originates in Lebanon and flows through Syria. as are other
agreements on assorted economic, cultural, and health matters.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.lebanon