The Sunni Tragedy in the Middle East

Abstract

Northern Lebanon, the mountainous terrain bordering Syria and the coastal plain centered on the city of Tripoli with its nearly 130,000 residents, has long been the heartland of the country’s Sunni Arabs, along with the old scholastic and population hub in the southern city of Sidon. The outbreak of mass popular protests and eventually armed rebellion in neighboring Syria against Bashar al-Asad’s government in the spring of 2011, and that country’s continuing descent into an increasingly violent and sectarian civil war, has had a profound effect upon Lebanon, particularly in the north, for both geographical and demographic reasons. First, northern Lebanon borders strategic areas of central-western Syria (e.g., the town of al-Qusayr) and is located just south of the major Syrian port city of Tartus. Second, the north’s population includes significant minority communities of Christians and Alawis, the latter of which are largely aligned politically with Damascus. These factors have made the border regions particularly dangerous, for while the Lebanese army attempts to maintain control of the country’s territory, Iran-aligned Hizbullah pours fighters and military supplies into Syria and militant Sunni groups (e.g., ISIS and Jabhat Fath al-Sham [JFS]) seek to establish a foothold in Lebanon from which they can pursue their anti-Asad campaign. Bernard Rougier is uniquely placed to write about the contemporary history and complex web of politics among Lebanon’s Sunni factions and particularly the rise of jihadi militancy among some of its segments. The book under review, like Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), is based upon extensive in-country fieldwork and interviews beginning in the early 2000s and ending in 2014. It provides a fascinating and nuanced overview of jihadism’s rise as a viable avenue of political frustration and expression in the wider milieu of Lebanon’s intra-Sunni socio-political competition and a fast-changing regional situation. Rougier argues that the contentious political disputes and competition among the country’s mainstream Sunni political figures (e.g., the al-Hariri family), as well as the impact of Syrian control of large parts of Lebanon between 1976 and 2005 and ensuing power vacuum after its withdrawal, enabled the emergence of jihadi militancy. Northern Lebanon also became a center of competition among regional actors through their local allies, which pitted ...