Jumblatt, Walid. Druze leader of the Progressive Socialist
Party and leader of the leftist alliance, The Lebanese National Movement
after the death of his father. Leadership of the PSP also passed to Walid
Jumblatt upon his father's death, but few expected that he would last politically.
Born in 1949 and educated at the American University of Beirut and in France,
Jumblatt was not politically active in his youth. He had earned a reputation
as a playboy, commonly wore jeans and a leather jacket, rode a motorcycle,
and broke with tradition by marrying a non-Druze Jordanian woman. Jumblatt's
political inheritance was shaky from the start, as he lacked the political
stature, experience, and charisma of his late father. Between 1977 and
1982, opposition to his leadership within the Druze community emanated
both from the rival Arslan clan and the Druze religious establishment.
At the end of the traditional 40-day mourning period for his father's death, Jumblatt was summoned to Damascus to meet with Syrian President Hafez Assad. "How you resemble your father!" Jumblatt later recalled Assad saying upon his arrival, a not-so-subtle hint that the young Druze leader would share his father's fate if he did not support Syrian control of Lebanon. During a subsequent meeting, Assad reportedly pointed to an empty chair and remarked: "Your father, Allah have mercy on him, used to sit in that chair over there." The fate that befell Kamal Jumblatt would prove to be a powerful incentive for the young Druze leader to tow the Syrian line. In most other matters however, he was following in his father's foot steps, he championed the Palestinian presence in Lebanon and repeatedly called for the destruction of the state and the annihilation of the Maronites. Durinng the 1980s he frequently called for a blood revenge against the Maronites and wanted a repeat of the 1860 massacres.
In June 1982, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon and quickly occupied the Shouf region. Jumblatts PSP militia failed to fire a single shot in against the Israeli entry into the Shouf. For a few months, Jumblatt remained at his home in Mukhtara and maintained contact with occupying Israeli forces, hoping to broker a deal whereby Israel would keep the Palestinians out of the Shouf and recognize Druze autonomy. To his consternation, however, Israel facilitated the entry of the Christian Lebanese Forces (LF) units commanded by Samir Geagea into the area. Frustrated, Jumblatt left his home and moved to Damascus to secure support against the LF. Since the new Lebanese regime of President Amine Gemayel had forged political ties with the Arslan clan, Jumblatt was more than willing to join the National Salvation Front, a pro-Syrian alliance of militias opposed to the central government and the May 1983 non-belligerency agreement it signed with Israel.
Armed with massive amounts of Syrian-supplied Soviet weaponry, Jumblatt's militia began driving LF forces out of the Shouf in the fall of 1983. When Israeli forces pulled out of the area in August-September 1983, Jumblatt's forces overran sixty Maronite villages, slaughtering around 1,500 innocent civilians and driving well over 50,000 out of their homes in the mountainous areas east and west of Beirut. On 11th September 1983 whilst the Druze where massacring Christian civilians in the Chouf, Walid Jumblatt announced his policy while making a speech in Damascus: "With the help of our Syrian allies we have removed the Christians and only the Druze villages will remain from now on. Such is our objective". When Jumblatt's militia overstepped itself and attempted to overrun the Souq al-Gharb pass protecting the capital, Lebanese army troops commanded by Michel Aoun brought the offensive to a halt. Nevertheless, Jumblatt's victory made him the undisputed leader of the Druze community, a position which has not been seriously contested to this day.
The PSP scored a major strategic victory by obtaining an outlet to the sea in the Iqlim al-Kharoub region. This, however proved to be a double-edged sword, as it obstructed Shi'ite aspirations to build an autonomous enclave in southern Lebanon contiguous with Shi'ite neighborhoods in the southwestern portion of Beirut. Periodic fighting between the PSP and the Amal militia of Nabih Berri persisted in West Beirut and surrounding areas throughout the remainder of the civil war despite their mutual alliance with Syria, engendering a deep-rooted animosity between the two leaders that continues to this day.
Throughout the war-torn 1980's, Jumblatt remained within the Syrian fold, supporting the Assad regime's efforts to torpedo any reconciliation agreement that did not explicitly grant Damascus political and military control over Lebanon and spent much of his time trying to remove Amin Gemayel from power. However, unlike Berri, Jumblatt maintained good relations with other external actors, most notably Libya and the Soviet Union, and even resumed back-channel contacts with the Israelis, in order to keep his options open.
Jumblatt was handsomely rewarded for his wartime services after Syrian forces captured Beirut in October 1990. The Assad regime saw to it that Jumblatt received cabinet-level positions in successive Lebanese governments and that electoral districts were gerrymandered to ensure his reelection to parliament in 1992 and 1996. According to an informed source, Jumblatt used this political power and position to achieve considerable wealth. During each of the last three election cycles, he received around $5-7 million from candidates wishing to join his electoral coalition. Under the Hrawi government for example he was made minister of the displaced, most ironic, as he was directly responsible for most of the displacement in the first place. In a 1995 BBC interview Jumblatt, while serving as a Lebanese minister repeated is often stated words of treason "There is something called Lebanese entity - I don't believe in it. Lebanese nationalism does not exsist for me."
During the late 1990's, the son and heir apparent of the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, began methodically undermining potential opposition to his succession. In 1998, he assumed control of the "Lebanon file" from Syrian Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam and brought about the ouster of Syrian Military Chief-of-Staff Hikmat Shihabi, fearing that they would use their political connections in Lebanon to undermine his authority. Both were key allies of Jumblatt and then-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, and so Syria's domestic political purge naturally had ramifications in Lebanon. In the fall of 1998, Bashar backed the election of Gen. Emile Lahoud as president of Lebanon, engineered Hariri's ouster as prime minister, and took away Jumblatt's cabinet portfolio. Jumblatt was furious. In place of the pro-Syrian warlords who dominated previous Lebanese governments, the Syrians now granted power to the heads of security and intelligence services appointed by Lahoud, most notably Gen. Jamil al-Sayyid, the director-general of the General Security Directorate (Sureté Générale). Jumblatt then became a vocal critic of this militarization of Lebanese politics: "If Lahoud is just counting on mingling the military with civilian affairs, and if he wants to rule out the old political class. . . this will lead to troubles inside Lebanon." Nevertheless, he avoided explicit criticism of Syria, indeed at every opportunity Jumblatt reminded the Syrians how good a friend he had been to them during the war and how his troops and Syrian soldiers "had fought like brothers, side by side in the same trenches".
This began to change during the summer of 2000 as Bashar Assad took over full control of the Syrian regime from his father. Just days before the elder Assad's death, Syrian officials leaked to the press that Shihabi had embezzled millions of dollars from Syrian purchases of Soviet-built arms during the 1980's and would soon be indicted. After Shihabi hastily departed for Los Angeles, Jumblatt publicly defended his former Syrian benefactor. Syrian officials quoted in Al-Hayat lashed out at Jumblatt, noting that "corruption is the same everywhere and the corrupt always close ranks." It became clear that Jumblatt could not count on Syrian support in the upcoming parliamentary elections in August-September 2000. In order to secure votes from Christian residents of the Shouf, he did a total U turn on his war time stance and forged electoral alliances with the Christian Kata'ib and National Bloc parties and negotiated a "political charter" with Amin Gemayel, who had returned to the country in July. Moreover, he began calling for a "correction" of Syrian-Lebanese ties and condemning Syrian interference in the political process. As a result, Jumblatt and his political allies scored landslide victories and obtained three cabinet positions though Jumblatt himself did not join the government.
Syrian officials evidently expected the Druze leader to return to the fold after the elections. Jumblatt, however, was unwilling to dispense with the newfound popularity among the population at large that came with his public criticism of Syria. In November, when Christian members of parliament criticized the Syrian occupation during a televised debate, Jumblatt could not resist the opportunity to reiterate his objections to Syrian interference in Lebanese politics. "I do understand the importance of stationing some Syrian troops (in Lebanon) for strategic purposes and the requirements of Syrian national security in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict," Jumblatt told the parliament, "but I do hope the Syrian leadership will review some of the points which have nothing to do with strategic requirements." He added that Prime Minister Hariri's claim that the Syrian occupation as "necessary, legitimate and temporary" was too vague. "If the presence is necessary, let us decide its timetable."
Syrian officials were shocked and quickly began measures to rein in their wayward ally. During the next parliamentary session, MP Assem Qanso, a member of the Lebanese branch of Syria's ruling Ba'ath party, told Jumblatt, "You have exceeded all limits," when he rose to address parliament. "The Israeli war is coming," said Qanso, warning him that "uncovered and covered [Israeli] agents . . . will not be protected from the rifles of the resistance fighters by any red lines or by seeking refuge in embassies," a remark interpreted in the Lebanese press as a veiled assassination threat. "We tell Walid Jumblatt that the Israeli war is at our door. Does he want to meet his ally [former Israeli prime minister] Shimon Peres?"
Meanwhile, Syrian officials told the press that Jumblatt and other members of the PSP were "no longer welcome at an official level" in Damascus. As if to underscore precisely what this meant for his political future, a few days after Jumblatt's outburst in parliament, the Syrians invited Talal Arslan, his main Druze political rival, to Damascus for a red carpet visit.
Jumblatt was shaken by the Syrian countermeasures and canceled two public debates, but condemned what he called the climate of "political and intellectual terrorism that is being established in the country" and warned of " the danger of confiscating the modicum of freedoms left and of the consequences of responding to political statements with the language of threats and to the force of opinion with the logic of force." Hariri tried to mediate between Jumblatt and Assad, but the Syrian president was furious and refused to meet with the Druze leader but mutual public recriminations between Jumblatt and Syrian officials persisted throughout the Spring of 2001.
On March 19 2001, Reuters reported that Syrian army units deployed into the Shouf and took up positions around Mukhtara (Syrian troop movements in the Shouf had been earlier been reported by the Lebanese press on March 8). Jumblatt told reporters that he would "rather not discuss" the matter, while carefully noting that he did not mind if Syrian forces deployed in the Shouf for "strategic purposes." However, news of the deployment caused an uproar during a parliamentary session devoted to budgetary matters. "What does the Syrian deployment in the Shouf today, with heavy weapons, mean? . . . I demand to know what the government's position is on these actions which take place on Lebanese soil," declared MP Albert Moukheiber, touching off acrimonious exchanges between pro-Syrian MPs and a handful of other Christian opposition deputies.
On April 11 2001, the pressure on Jumblatt reached a new, unprecedented level when a mail bomb exploded in the village of Bkheshtey, severely injuring the sister and niece of Druze MP Akram Chehayyeb, a senior aide to Jumblatt. Afterwards, Jumblatt solemnly told reporters, "It is not through terrorism that we will reach dialogue." Jumblatt had signalled he was ready to make up with the Syrians. Perhaps, then, it should come as no surprise that when Maj. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, the chief of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, called the beleaguered Druze leader earlier this month and invited him to Damascus to meet with Assad, Jumblatt accepted. On May 22 2001, he arrived in the Syrian capital for the first time in eight months.
Upon his return to Lebanon Jumblatt's criticism of Syria dropped dramatically
and it may well be the case that these two war time friends and allies
have put their diffrences aside and are back in the same trenches, however
in Lebanon, public displays of congeniality are usually not a reliable
indicator of intentions.Whether Jumblatt's trip to Damascus signifies the
end of his campaign to end Syrian hegemony in Lebanon remains to be seen.