The man who is always one step behind
What is impeding the solution in Lebanon? Some may provide as many answers to this question as there are regional and international centers of influence, from Tehran to Damascus to Washington. Others may say that the answer lies in the sectarian power structure and the disrupted balance of political interests among the domestic forces who are competing over and within the system.
However, a special issue has come to impose itself on the Lebanese people, and pro-government and opposition supporters alike agree on labeling it in their private circles as “the Aoun knot.” Michel Aoun himself confirmed this knot when he told reporters with revealing sarcasm, “My mission is to block.” Yet what is the truth behind the “Aoun knot,” and what is his story with blocking?
The answer may be summed up in one central issue, namely that Michel Aoun is, par excellence, the man “who is always one step behind.” Indeed, going back to the 1990s, we notice that former General Michel Aoun declared a blind war on Syria based on pretexts and slogans, most of which were more than justified. In so doing, he cooperated with Iraq, hoping to come out of the war as president. However, he plunged into that war one step behind the whole world, which had made up its mind about toppling Saddam Hussein and commissioning Syria with ruling Lebanon based on a US decision. The General thus lost the war as well as the presidency, “winning” instead an exile in Paris.
After a long stay in exile, Aoun returned to Lebanon following the Syrian withdrawal, and his path crossed with Syria’s allies, who he relied on in order to reach the presidency. Yet the former general was once again a step behind the whole world, which had made its mind up about ending the Syrian regime’s influence in Lebanon. The presidency slipped through Aoun’s fingers once again in Doha, and he thus landed in Beirut against a backdrop of disappointment for his supporters, even as he brought along Christian rights, which were almost secured and which he used to console both himself and his partisans.
Even with regard to the details of the Doha Agreement, Aoun was one step behind. Amidst regional and international unanimity on electing Michel Sleiman as president, General Aoun made the halls of the Sheraton Hotel in Doha resound with his daily obsession by pushing for the formation of a transitional government, which he kept on hoping to win over, until he was shell-shocked by the phone call made by Iranian Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in which he announced the end of the transitional government dream and the start of the “President Sleiman” nightmare.
The trip back from Doha to Sleiman’s election was the shortest that the former general ever took. Upon his return, he was confronted with the majority’s decision to reinstate Siniora as prime minister. When it dawned on Aoun’s allies that this decision was ineluctable and irrevocable, they merely played along. Then, while everyone was busy with portfolios, shares and sectarian distribution of government seats, and while they all agreed that the Doha Agreement completed the Taif Accord, Aoun came up once more one step behind everybody else when he started questioning the choice of Siniora and calling for reducing the prime minister’s prerogatives. Only this time he was pitted against the whole world, the Taif Accord and his allies all at once. Some remained silent, but others were just unable to do so as he compelled them to react. Following this episode, Aoun glossed over what has been left unsaid.
The General, who once said, “The world can crush me, but it will not force me to sign,” may be a man from a distant past or the symbol of opposition and confrontation against absolutely all world decisions. He may be characterized by legendary stubbornness, which may transform the “Aoun knot” into a new law to be introduced in political science and history in quite the same way as Freud introduced the legend of Oedipus to psychoanalysis in order to understand his patients. This whole scene probably hides a single truth, namely that the former general will always remain one step behind the world, his projects will always fail, and his partisans will be on a permanent rendezvous with recurrent disappointment.
Written by Okab Sakr