Gwynne Dyer: Lebanon won't be a pushover for Americans

Does the United States invasion of Iraq have a silver lining? Is democracy about to spread through the Middle East, toppling one odious regime after another?

And will they be replaced by moderate, peace-loving, America-loving governments? Paula Dobriansky thinks so, and she claims that the non-violent demonstrations in Beirut and the resignation of the pro-Syrian Lebanese Government prove her case.

Dobriansky, a neo-conservative, is undersecretary of state for global affairs in the Bush Administration.

On February 28, she greeted the demonstrations in Beirut with the following claim: "As the President noted in Bratislava just last week, there was a rose revolution in Georgia, an orange revolution in Ukraine and, most recently, a purple revolution in Iraq. In Lebanon, we see growing momentum for a "cedar revolution" that is unifying the citizens of that nation to the cause of true democracy and freedom from foreign influence."

The "purple revolution" is a phrase invented by Bush Administration flacks to link the January elections in Iraq, conducted under foreign military occupation and largely boycotted by the country's Sunni Arabs, with the spontaneous non-violent uprisings that have brought democracy to several dozen other countries, from the Philippines to Ukraine, over the past two decades.

Whatever else it may be, Iraq is not a case of spontaneous non-violent revolution against tyranny. On the other hand, the Lebanese protesters who are demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops from their country do fit that general pattern: there seems to be a case to answer here.

This hypothesis of "democratic infection" is bolstered by the recent men-only partial municipal elections in Saudi Arabia and the announcement by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that opposition parties will be allowed to run candidates in the next presidential election.

But those are token gestures to deflect American pressure by regimes inextricably tied to the US.

A free adult-suffrage election for an Arabian Parliament and Government in the near future is about as likely as a defeat for Mubarak in his campaign for a fifth term as President of Egypt in September.

Lebanon, by contrast, is undoubtedly a genuine "people-power" event (to use the phrase coined in the streets of Manila in 1986).

It has long had the institutional forms of a democratic country, although its deep sectarian divisions - Maronite Christian, Orthodox Christian, Sunni Muslim, Shiite Muslim and Druze - distorted everything, even the constitution. But for the past 15 years the Syrian intelligence services, backed by a substantial Syrian military force, have had the last word on everything that happened in Lebanon.

The Syrian Army first entered the country in 1976 (with the blessing of the US) soon after the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war.

Thirteen years later, its continued presence was legitimised by the Taif treaty that brought the war to an end, and the Syrians insist that their presence is vital even now to "stabilise" the country and keep the Lebanese from going for one another's throats again.

And until the Syrians pull out, we will never know if that is true or not.

Syria's President, Bashar Assad, has been under severe pressure to withdraw from many quarters (notably the US, France, Egypt and Saudi Arabia), but he has been under equally strong pressure at home to stay.

The revenue that Syria creams off in Lebanon helps to sustain its own moribund domestic economy, and a humiliating defeat in Lebanon could pave the way for a challenge to the Baathist regime in Syria itself.

And some Governments in the region fear that a full Syrian withdrawal might turn Lebanon back into a playground of Palestinian and Islamist militias in short order.

But to return to the original question: are the Lebanese responding as one to an example of democratisation that has been set by the US occupation of Iraq?

Well, they are certainly not responding as one.

The Shiite community, which is closely allied to Syria and accounts for almost half of Lebanon's population, has been virtually absent from the Beirut demos and from the talks that have produced a "united" opposition front.

As for the example that the US is setting in Iraq, Lebanese opinion was probably well-represented by Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader who has become the spokesman of the "democratic opposition".

When the Iraqi resistance fired rockets at the Baghdad hotel where visiting US Assistant Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying last year, Jumblatt expressed the wish that the rocket had hit Wolfowitz personally (and was denied a US visa as a punishment). These people are not US puppets.

Long-congealed positions are starting to melt in the Middle East, and a wave of something is about to sweep through the area, but it isn't necessarily democracy.