The eruption of violence between protestors and the Lebanese Army that left six dead and scores wounded on May 27 had little to do directly with the Syrian occupation or the nationalist opposition movement. It did not originate in or spill over to the universities, and there were few students among the thousands who took to the streets. The acute feelings of outrage that prodded hundreds to storm and burn a government ministry had nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict, or the war in Iraq. The visceral public anger underlying Lebanon's bloodiest outbreak of domestic unrest in over a decade may have been covertly instigated, but it erupted from an old and familiar source - the urban Shiite poor. Although Lebanon is very different today than it was 30 years ago, within this massive demographic some things never change.

The riots originated in the neighborhood of Hay al-Soulom with a small protest against government gasoline taxes by no more than a hundred members of the General Labor Confederation (GLC). Their agenda was much broader, prominently displayed on their banners: "the budget deficit is in the stomachs of the rich, not the pockets of the poor."[1] The government's crushing gasoline tax (which accounts for about 40% of the consumer price and disproportionately affects the poor) not only contrasts sharply with the country's status as a financial tax haven, but is justified by Lebanese officials as a response to the country's sky high public debt (around 34 billion, or 185% of GDP), which reached this level because of political corruption. Moreover, as heavily taxed as the poor are in Syrian-occupied Lebanon, the government maintains one of the world's lowest levels of real spending (expenditures minus graft) on social services that benefit them.

According to police, some of the demonstrators tried to storm a military truck, prompting soldiers to open fire, killing five people. Over the next six hours, throngs of people poured out into the streets across the Shiite suburbs, many of them chanting slogans against Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Around 300 club-wielding demonstrators stormed the Labor Ministry and set an entire floor of it ablaze. Rioters burned tires on the airport highway and reportedly lobbed hand grenades at troops who arrived at the scene in armored personnel carries.

The speed at which the riots spread led to speculation that there was a "hidden hand" behind them aimed at forcing the resignation of Hariri, much as then-Prime Minister Omar Karami was brought down by widespread labor protests in May 1992. After the riots died down, Hariri obliquely warned against "exploiting social issues" and "using young people for personal political ends."[2] "I do not believe the incidents were impulsive," said Beirut MP Nabil Freij, an ally of Hariri. "The matter is not the making of the GLC, but rather of people who took advantage of the protest."[2]

The prime minister clearly suspects his political archenemy, President Emile Lahoud, who has fought Hariri's economic reform program tooth and nail, and in so doing has frequently presented himself as a defender of the poor. Lahoud has been quietly lobbying the Syrians for an extension of his tenure in office after the expiry of his six-year term in November. Since Hariri opposes a term extension, convention wisdom holds that his departure from office is a necessary precondition for it. The Syrians have ruled out a government reshuffle for the time being, so the thinking is that whoever may have had a hand in organizing the riots did so to persuade Damascus that the prime minister is a liability.

It's possible that Lahoud (or people close to him) had a hand in the riots - the president enjoys close relations with Hezbollah and the two could have conspired together. Although the GLC claims that it never incited protestors to use violence and made a point of publicly calling for them to disperse once they did so, some suspect that the union conspired with the president. GLC President Ghassan Ghosn is a close ally of Labor Minister Asaad Hardan, a leading official of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) who is solidly in Lahoud's corner. It is not inconceivable that the union's leadership acted in concert with the military to mobilize the public against Hariri. The fact that military units, rather than internal security forces, were sent to monitor protestors on the morning of May 27 lends weight to this hypothesis.

The timing of such a move would likely have been inspired by the recent municipal election defeat of Hariri's allies in his own hometown of Sidon by a rival coalition list formed with the encouragement of Syria. Interestingly, Hariri was in Damascus visiting Syrian President Bashar Assad when the rioting broke out - some see this as evidence that the conspirators were trying to influence Assad's hand, but others insist that undertaking such a plot with Hariri in the Syrian capital would have carried too great a risk of offending the Syrians had it been discovered (which seems probable, in light of their heavy intelligence presence in Lebanon).

The main problem with this hypothesis, however, is that a conspiracy to have the military fire on protestors would leave the prime minister blameless for the violence in the public eye - it is Lahoud, not Hariri, that controls the army and the security agencies. Other conspiracy theories abound. Some say that the riots were instigated by Sobhi Tufaili, a former Hezbollah secretary-general whose followers launched a violent challenge to the authorities in the late 1990s. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has hinted that American agents were involved.

A more plausible explanation is that the riots were exactly what they appeared to be - a spontaneous eruption of urban Shiite anger. Interestingly, although 35 soldiers were injured (most of them slightly) as the riots spread and the crowds became more frenzied, there was only one further death after the initial killing of five protestors - that of a firefighter combating the blaze at the Labor Ministry. Everyone in the security establishment, from the foot soldier to the general staff, seemed to understand that what was happening could potentially have set the entire capital ablaze had the Lebanese army continued to act indiscriminately. There were no Hezbollah banners in the growing crowds of angry citizens - the militant Iranian and Syrian-backed Islamist movement was not in control of the Shiite street that day.

Notes

  [1] Reuters, 27 May 2004.
  [2] Agence France Presse, 28 May 2004.
  [3] The Daily Star (Beirut), 28 May 2004.