The Syrian War: Spillover Effects on Lebanon

Nowhere have the spillover effects of the overlapping domestic, regional and international war for Syria proved more devastating than in Lebanon.1 Whether in terms of increased sectarian agitation and violence, refugee flows, the mushrooming of local and transnational Salafi-jihadi cells, or the matrix of regional and international actors involved, the Syrian war has placed new economic, social, political and security strains on an already overstretched Lebanese system. The metrics alone are astounding. As of winter 2017, the number of officially registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon was 1,011,366.2 The Lebanese government estimates that nearly half a million additional refugees are not registered with UN agencies, bringing the total to a quarter of the Lebanese population.3 The World Bank calculates that the financial and economic costs of this refugee population amounts to some $4.5 billion per year.4 These socioeconomic and fiscal pressures compound Lebanon’s security conditions. Small crimes have increased by more than 60 percent since 2011; Syrians make up 26 percent of Lebanon’s prison population; and human trafficking of Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is commonplace.5 The war has also intensified the domestic and regional political struggle over post-Syria Lebanon and the crisis of postwar power sharing. The 1989 Taif Accord that ended Lebanon’s civil war (1975-90) was anchored on a particular regional-international constellation involving a Saudi-AmericanSyrian guardianship over Lebanon that was directly supervised by Damascus. As this guardianship turned into an open geopolitical confrontation after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafic al-Hariri, it triggered a contest over who rules post-Syria Lebanon between two multisectarian political gatherings — the March 8 and March 14 coalitions — that overlapped with a wider geopolitical one. Led primarily by the pro-Iranian Shia Hezbollah party, the March 8 coalition6 sought to defend Syria’s interests in Lebanon. By contrast, the March 14 coalition7 gathered political groups opposed to Syria, led by Saad al-Hariri’s pro-Saudi Sunni Future Movement. Albeit these were multi-sectarian coalitions that disagreed over different visions of Lebanon, its security priorities and its alliance choices, they nevertheless expressed a political struggle among the mainly Sunni and Shia political elite and