The elimination in southern Lebanon on February 4 of the intellectual Lokman Slim, a fierce opponent of the Hezbollah, a Shiite politico-military formation with close ties to Damascus and Tehran, has raised the specter of political assassinations in this country. Karim Emile Bitar, director of the political science department of Saint Joseph University in Beirut, traces the history of this scourge, recurring in Lebanon, and analyzes its springs and consequences on local political life.
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How can we historically understand the use of political assassinations?
Political assassinations serve to eliminate embarrassers, but also to sow chaos, to change the course of history, by creating a shock, by causing more ink to flow than blood. Russian anarchist thinkers theorized it. They speak of “propaganda by the deed”, of the possibility through these actions of accentuating the fault lines within a society, of triggering cycles of violence and repression which would force the population to choose its camp.
When did the political assassinations go back to Lebanon?
One of the first assassinations to have marked the XXe century, in Lebanon, is that of the Druze leader Fouad Joumblatt, in 1921, victim of a rivalry between families of Chouf. It is the father of Kamal Joumblatt, himself assassinated in 1977, and the grandfather of Walid Joumblatt, current leader of this community. At his home in Beirut, the latter hung on the wall a portrait of his grandfather, another of his father, left an empty place in case he too was eliminated.
After the end of the French mandate (1923-1943), the first political assassination was that of Prime Minister Riad Al-Solh, the father of independence. He was killed in 1951, [à Amman], by members of the Syrian Nationalist Social Party (PSNS), in retaliation for the execution of their leader Antoun Saadé, a year and a half earlier, after a masquerade of sedition trial. A Lebanese study center has recorded 104 assassinations since 1943 targeting politicians, journalists, diplomats and religious figures, and 94 attempted assassinations.
Can we distinguish different periods?
The phenomenon gained momentum in the 1970s, thanks to the civil war (1975-1990), the displacement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Lebanese territory, and because the country of the Cedars became the scene of rivalries between regional or international powers. From there, we can distinguish several “families” of assassinations, which sometimes correspond to distinct chronological phases: the eliminations carried out by Israel of Palestinian figures, such as the writer Ghassan Kanafani in 1972 and the operation on rue Verdun in 1973, fatal to three PLO cadres; the settling of scores between Lebanese factions during the civil war, such as the liquidation of Christian leader Tony Frangié in 1978 by his rivals the Lebanese Phalanges; the assassinations sponsored during this conflict by regional actors, including that of Bachir Gémayel, the leader of the Phalangists, in 1982, a few days after his election to the presidency, killed by a member of the PSNS at the instigation of Damascus. Then there are the assassinations by Israel of leaders of the Shia Hezbollah movement, such as Abbas Moussaoui, struck down by missile fire in 1992.
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