Lebanese politician recounts civil war displacement

BEIRUT - Alternative Staff

January 2003

A civil society is doomed to failure in the Arab world unless Muslim scholars update their religion and integrate into it principles of secularism and citizenship, according to a senior political activist.

Fayez Azzi, a lawyer who joined the Arab Baath Socialist Party in his youth but left it later and became one of former Army Commander General Michel Aoun’s advisors during Aoun’s tenure as head of the interim military government between 1988 and 1990, said that progressive platforms in the Arab world could be hardly advanced.

In a book entitled From Michel Aflaq to Michel Aoun, published by Riad El-Rayyes Books in 2003, Azzi retold his experience as a political activist. Coming from the Eastern Sidon area, Azzi joined the Baath Party during his college years between 1958 and 1962.

Azzi’s activism among the Baathists’ rank and file took him to student conferences around the Arab world, including the Palestinian Gaza Strip then under Egyptian rule, during which he established links with the different Palestinian factions.

Azzi quit the Baath at the heyday of clashes between Palestinian factions and Lebanese security forces. As an attorney, he decided to defend Palestinian fighters before Lebanese courts. Azzi’s Palestinian links took him to the late leader, Kamal Jumblatt, and the leftist National Movement.

The writer said that he repeatedly tried to convince the National Movement not counter the actions of the rightist Lebanese Front, which would contribute to further national divisions, but to no avail.

Despite his repeated claims that he was never a politician, Azzi reported his nomination for the 1972 elections on Jumblatt’s ticket in Chouf saying that he lost due to a counterfeit operation that aimed at rescuing reelection of late President Camille Chamoun to Parliament.

After failing the national elections, Azzi headed to different countries, including Iraq, where he was set to embark on starting a business. In Iraq, he recounted bitter experiences with a totalitarian Baathist regime, which made him further doubt the rule of Baathists in the Arab world.

When Azzi came back to Lebanon, civil war had started in 1975. The Lebanese Front’s attacks on Muslim civilians and their consequent eviction from Christian area prompted a counterattack on the part of the National Movement on Christian residents of Muslim areas.

Jumblatt and his Lebanese and Palestinian allies chose Iqlim al-Kharroub to hit back and their offensive caused a wave of residents’ displacement. From this point until the conclusion of the civil war, Azzi became an advocate of bringing back the displaced to their villages.

Azzi’s ties to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Jumblatt made him a target for Syrian interrogators who arrested him and questioned him about his ties with the Iraqi Baath. The Syrian animosity forced Azzi to take off to Paris where he met former Syrian officer, Mohammed Maarouf, who introduced him to the Syrian leadership namely Syria’s vice president Abdel-Halim Khaddam, known for his handling of the “Lebanese file.”

Azzi visited Khaddam frequently demanding that the Syrian official pressure Chouf MP and head of the Progressive Socialist Party Walid Jumblatt, whose militia controlled areas of Christian displacement, to allow the displaced back home.

Azzi was disappointed, however, to see his efforts to solve the displaced issue going nowhere. During this period, Azzi had moved to Eastern Beirut and had established links with Aoun. His connection with the General and Syria made him one of the many brokers who frequented Damascus to mediate the relations between Aoun and the Syrian leadership.

Azzi’s book is a first-hand account of the Lebanese civil war. Even though it is brief and jumps from one incident to another without a chronological context, the book has an index that identifies all personalities mentioned.