The Fragmentation of the Political-Religious Field in Tripoli, Lebanon in the Aftermath of the Syrian Withdrawal (2005-2015)

This paper, based more than 200 interviews with political leaders, Salafi clerics and grassroots activists between 2008 and 2015, analyses the political failure of Sa‘d Hariri in Lebanon. After the assassination of Rafiq Hariri (14 February 2005) and the Syrian withdrawal, Hariri’s son, Sa‘d, attempted to federate a national Sunni public mobilized against Syria, Hizbullah and Iran. Hariri failed, and this is today evident from his absence from the country, since 2011, along with the fragmentation of Sunni political authority between secular Sunnis and Salafis. Facing strong structural obstacles – the lack of a militant cause, for which followers were willing to risk their lives, save the negative cause against Syria, and the competition from a transnational Salafi counter-public, Hariri could however have succeeded had he played his cards differently. Yet, instead of establishing stronger socialization mechanisms in poor quarters, Hariri opted to work through local gate-keepers (“electoral keys”). Facing competition from Shi‘i Hizbullah invigorated by its “divine victory” in its 2006 war against Israel, Hariri clientelized Tripoli’s Salafi leaders. Using the collective memory of a massacre committed back in 1986, Hariri put in motion dynamics that he proved unable to control. Tripoli’s Salafi electoral keys benefited from the favourable climate to further their own, transnational, causes. A set of events between 2007 and 2015, including the arrest of presumed Salafi-Jihadi activists by the state, crystallized the conflicts of interest between the Salafis and Hariri. With the Syrian crisis, which began in 2011, secular Sunni elites in Lebanon faced a Catch-22: They knew that they risked becoming politically irrelevant if they failed to echo the concerns of the Sunni street; yet giving in to sentimental, sectarian declarations (especially against the army command) was considered to increase the risk of civil war. This made it difficult to sustain Sunni secular leadership.