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“Perceptions of existential 

threat among the Shia community 

coexist with a paradoxical sense 

of hubris and power that became 

especially evident after Hezbollah’s performance in the 2006 war 

with Israel. Both feelings translate 

into a growing aggressiveness on 

the part of Shia political actors, 

which extend to debates over 

state institutions and decisions as 

well as strategies of social control 

and the silencing of dissenting 

voices within the Shia 

community.”

November 15, 2013

Sectarianism in Lebanon and Syria

The Dynamics of Mutual Spill-Over

Joseph Bahout

E-mail: jobahout@gmail.com

peaceBrieF159

Summary

•	 When the Arab revolutionsreached Syria, the Sunni-Shia cleavage in Lebanon was already

well in the making. Syria’sturmoil only added fuel to an existing fire in Lebanon.

•	 Syria’s crisisisintensifying Sunni-Shia tensionsin Lebanon on two levels,symbolic and

identity-based on the one hand, and geopolitical or interest based, on the other hand.

•	 The shift toward identity-based orsymbolic forms ofsectarianism can probably be explained

by the existential character the struggle in the Levant istaking, whereby both“communities,”

however imagined or over-constructed, are coming to perceive themselves as defending not

only theirshare of resources or power, but their very survival.

•	 Lebanon’s minority communities – including Christian and Druze – are increasingly anxious

about the changing regional environment. 

•	 Lebanon and Syria must face the difficult equation ofsectarian diversity and national unity. 

Background

The armed conflict that has come to define the Syrian revolution has unleashed dormantsectarian

tensions and cleavages within Syrian society, and hasspilled over into neighboring countries,

mainly Lebanon, where conflicts along old but renewed fault-lines are now rampant.

When discussing sectarianism in the“twin”Levantstates of Syria and Lebanon, especially after

the dynamics unleashed by the Syrian revolution, it is critical to bear in mind the distinctive forms

thatsectarian dynamics have taken in the two countries. Both Lebanese and Syrian societies

reflect communitarian and, in the Syrian case, ethnic differences, and both can be described as

“plural”or“heterogeneous,”but a crucial difference distinguishesthe dynamics ofsectarian politics

in Lebanon and Syria. Sectarianism in Lebanon has not only been recognized and acknowledged

as a sociological fact; it has also been formalized and legalized within state and non-state institutions and inscribed in the constitution. Lebanon’ssectarian power-sharing system tracesits origins

and consolidation back to the mid-19th century, with the establishment of the Mutasarrifiyya, the

Ottoman province of Mount Lebanon, in 1860. It wassubsequently reinforced with the creation

of the Republic of Lebanon in 1920 and its 1926 constitution, and in the National Pact of 1943

that wasrenewed by the 1990 Taif Agreement, that revised the formal constitution but without

structurally touching the aspectsrelated to politicalsectarianism. In contrast, with the exception of
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Sectarianism in Lebanon and Syria

page 2 • PB 159 • November 15, 2013

a brief period under the French Mandate, Syria’s political construction has been marked by a very

voluntaristic,“Jacobin,”and centralized nation-building experience, to the extent of even stigmatizing sectarian affiliations or proclamations ofsectarian identity. These patterns were amplified with

the rise of Arab nationalist partiesin the 1950s, and further reinforced from the 1960s onwards

with the coming to power of the Baath Party in a variety of forms. The epitome of this contrast

is especially visible in the political posture of the Christian communitiesin the two countries.

Where Lebanon’s Christians were crucial to the emergence of Lebanonism as a“partial”form of

nationalism in the Arab East, Christiansin Syria were more often than not advocates of pan-Arab

nationalism.

At a moment when exitstrategiesfor Syria’s ordeal often evoke the path of a“Taif formula”of

sectarian power-sharing, thisstructural difference in the historical trajectories of the two countriesis

worth recalling. Itsuggeststhat embedding sectarianism in Syria’sstate and non-state institutions

may be more complicated and lessstable than advocates of a Taif-style outcome for Syria suggest. 

A second consideration concernsthe issues ofsequencing and causality. If it is undeniable that

the Syrian crisisincreasingly threatensto infect Lebanon’s body politic, one hasto bear in mind that

sectarian tensionsin Lebanon, and especially Sunni-Shia tensions, pre-date the beginning of the Syrian revolution. Its most recent incarnations can be traced to 2005 and the profound fissures caused

in Lebanon by the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, but the roots of the cleavage can be

found in the making and implementation of the Taif Agreement itself, and the architecture of power

that wasimposed in post-war Lebanon under Syrian tutelage. The post-warsystem can be summed

up as having transferred political hegemony from the Christian Maronite community to an ambiguousshared dominance of the Sunni and Shia communities, with Syria mediating their competitive

excesses, and domesticating the two rising forces of liberal Sunnism following Hariri’s murder and

the more statist, anti-Western Shiism of Hezbollah. A first and serious crack in this delicately balanced edifice occurred in 2003, when many Lebanese perceived the Iraq war and the fall of Saddam

Hussein as a shift in the sectarian equilibrium that worked to the detriment of Sunni Arabs acrossthe

region. Hariri’s death amplified these perceptions; Hezbollah’s bold performance in the July 2006 war

and itstakeover of Beirut and other Sunni areasin 2008-2009 effectively consolidated such concerns.

Therefore, when the Arab revolutionsreached Syria, the Sunni-Shia cleavage in Lebanon was

already well underway. Syria’sturmoil only addsfuel to an existing fire.

The Syrian Crisis and Sunni-Shia Tensions in Lebanon

Syria’s crisisisintensifying Sunni-Shia tensionsin Lebanon on two levels,symbolic and identitybased on the one hand, and geopolitical or interest based, on the other hand.

These levels are not mutually exclusive: more often, one nurturesthe other and the two are often

expressed in waysthat make it difficult to distinguish between them. Nevertheless, it is certain that

Syria’s open bloodshed has brought profound change to mechanisms of inter-sectarian mobilization

in Lebanon, transforming what had been more interest-based and“political”modes of mobilization into identity-based and“religious”modes. From stories about conversionsto Shiism -forced or

induced- that are widespread in Sunni areas, to the mobilization of Shia brigadesin the name of

defending the holy shrine of Sayeda Zeinab in Damascus; fromYouTube videos displaying proregime Shabbiha forcing young revolutionariesto kneel in front of Assad’s photo and shout“la ilah

illa Bachar”; to increasingly entrenched narratives circulating in the Southern Shia suburbs of Beirut

that Damascus’burning isthe scripted prelude to the Mahdi’sreturn and the end of times, there has

been a dangerous blurring of“interest-based”and“identity-based”boundaries.
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Sectarianism in Lebanon and Syria

page 3 • PB 159 • November 15, 2013

Thisshift toward identity-based orsymbolic forms ofsectarianism can probably be explained

by the existential character the struggle in the Levant istaking, whereby both“communities,”

however imagined or over-constructed, are coming to perceive themselves as defending not

only theirshare of resources or power, but their very survival. The more intense the conflict and

the more open-endedly violence is deployed, the more thatsectarian competition isinternalized

as a zero-sum game, where negotiation and compromise are equated with defeat and loss.

For the Lebanese Shia community, the potential fall of the Assad regime is a vital blow to the

resistance axislinking it to Iran, and beyond this, the basisfor a Sunni continuum from Lebanon

to Iraq through Syria, that will threaten to return the Shia community to an era ofsubordination

and Sunni domination. Similarly, for Lebanese Sunni- and their allies, only the fall of Assad will

free them and the Lebanon they envision from Iranian-backed Shia hegemony, and permit

justice to prevail after years of living in the shadow of Shia violence. These local aspects of

sectarianization mesh with regional trends, as well, feeding into the“warm”war between Iran

and the Gulf Sunni monarchies, and between Iran and Turkey, as well.

The Psychology of Sectarian Representation in Lebanon 

As a result of the above trends, a more intense, perhaps exaggerated psychology ofsectarian representation istaking hold in Lebanon. Perceptions of existential threat among the Shia community

coexist with a paradoxicalsense of hubris and power that became especially evident after Hezbollah’s performance in the 2006 war with Israel. Both feelingstranslate into a growing aggressiveness

on the part of Shia political actors, which extend to debates overstate institutions and decisions as

well asstrategies ofsocial control and the silencing of dissenting voices within the Shia community.

Within the Sunni community, the cumulative effect of recent events, including the empowerment of Shia after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the assassination of Hariri in 2005, the Hezbollah

“coup”in Beirut in 2008-2009 and, later, the toppling of Saad Hariri’s government, has produced

an unbearable accumulation of humiliations and resentment. These perceptions are reinforced

by a growing sense of distrust toward state institutions, especially the Lebanese Army, which

isincreasingly perceived as a vigilante extension of Hezbollah when crucialsecurity decisions

must be made. The sense of humiliation and resentment is also made potentially dangerous by

an erosion of the traditional political leadership inside the Sunni community, with Saad Hariri

living abroad for the last two years and an absence of other contendersto fill the vacuum he has

left behind, as well as a parallel and seemingly unstoppable rise of radical Salafi factionsfurther

mobilized by the ongoing fight in Syria. On the regional level, traditional Sunnisupport has been

weakened by Saudi Arabia’sshifting prioritiesfollowing the Arab uprisings of 2011 and the soft

rift between the Kingdom and Qatar.

Alongside these two“super-communities,”which are at odds on the Lebanese scene, are

sectsthat increasingly perceive themselves as endangered“minorities.”While Christian political

concernssince the end of the war Lebanese civil war in 1990 focused on growing marginalization and the loss of pre-eminence, they are now directed toward the lethal polarization between

the Shia and Sunni camps. This process has also been at work since 2005 and the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, but it has been consolidated and crystallized by the conflict in Syria and

the powerful imagery it projectsin terms of the anti-Christian and anti-minority rhetoric that is

evident among some elements of the opposition. A“Maaloula effect”—referencing one of the

world’s most ancient Christian settlements which was caught up in the civil war over this past

summer—hasfurther amplified the uncertain fate for Levantine Christiansin the wake of the

Arab Spring. In a slightly different pattern, the Druze community is also watching with anxiety as
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Sectarianism in Lebanon and Syria

page 4 • PB 159 • November 15, 2013

itsregional environment unravels. Thissmall community,stretched over triangular area at the intersection of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, is well aware that for years or decadesto come the region is

likely to be in the grip of fierce infighting, and that the Druze will confrontsignificant challengesto

avoid being further weakened as broadersectarian trends unfold. Whether in the Shuf mountains

of Lebanon or the Jabal Druze of Suwaida in Syria, old-new ideas of buffer zones and self-security

are re-emerging in the Druze quest for communal neutrality.

Sectarian Diversity and National Unity in an Emergent Middle East

The Syrian cauldron has already reawakened longstanding issuesrelated to sectarian and communitarian accommodation in the region, questionsthat nation-states have repressed for more than

five decades. From the quasi-institutional federation put in place in Iraq after the fall of Saddam, to

the difficult question of how the Alawi factor will be addressed in post-Assad Syria, to the Kurdish

resurgence reaching across Syria and Iraq into Turkey, the difficult equation ofsectarian diversity

and national unity is bluntly on the table again. Lebanon will in no way escape these questions. Its

propersectarian answer, that of a consociationalsemi-democratic architecture, is now seriously

shaking, and itsreshuffling isinextricably tied to regional trends and, in particular, to the conflict

currently playing out in Syria.

About This Brief

Joseph Bahout is a professor of 

Middle Eastern Studies at Sciences 

Po, Paris and a senior fellow at 

Académie diplomatique internationale (ADI). He also serves as a 

consultant to the French Ministry 

of Foreign Affairs in the Policy 

Planning Unit. This Peace Brief is 

one in a five-part USIP series on 

sectarianism in the Middle East.