Lebanese Feudal Elite--Passing of an Era Brings Mixed Feelings in Troubled Land

They were wealthy, educated, cosmopolitan in their taste for the finer things of life.

Lebanon’s feudal elite ran the country as a private club, with a restricted membership and an etiquette handed down from father to son.

Christian or Muslim, they were often landowners on a grand scale or members of the intelligentsia with enough family money to buy themselves a newspaper to run or a safe seat in Parliament.

Some were ruthless, ready to use violence to safeguard their states-within-a-state to the extent of calling the U.S. Marines to come ashore and help out.

Even today, especially in rural areas, the surviving elite of the old Lebanon are still revered.

But Lebanon will not see their like again, and their passing evokes mixed feelings.

Some regard this fading generation as including people who invited foreign intervention and were largely to blame for the civil war that broke out 13 years ago and still shows no sign of ending.

“These effete people designed the system that got us into this mess,” said a senior militia officer, a man in his 30s from a poor family and with a radical view of Lebanon’s ills.

For others, particularly the middle class, a decline of the ancient regime and a diminution in stature of the surviving gentry leave a vacuum in leadership. After all, had not several statesmen emerged from the old national elite?

Taqi Eddine Solh, a former premier who died last month at age 79, was regarded as a gentleman of the old school and very much a moderating influence.

Scion of a prominent Sunni Muslim family, he was educated at the American University of Beirut and began a career as a journalist.

Twice premier, he was one of the architects of the 1943 National Pact, which sought to contain the fires of communal competition by dividing top governmental jobs along religious lines, so everyone got a share.

That was the theory. In practice, many Lebanese say, some got a lot more than others and the system simply papered over the cracks instead of building a real sense of identity.

The last surviving politician who helped formulate the pact is Shia Defense Minister Adel Osseiran, a landowner from southern Lebanon and, at 83, a man still admired for his personal charm and gentle approach to intractable problems.

A very different man was former President Camille Chamoun, who died last year at age 87.

A hard-line champion of Christian prerogatives, his attempts to draw Lebanon into the Baghdad Pact--a British-sponsored buffer against a tide of Arab nationalism personified by the late Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser--precipitated the country’s first civil war in 1958.

Chamoun’s response was to invite the United States to intervene, and U.S. Marines landed at Beirut.

A northern warlord politically active at least until a few months ago is former President Suleiman Franjieh. His close personal friendship with Syrian President Hafez Assad dates back to 1957, when Franjieh sought refuge in Syria after a gunfight with another northern clan in a village church.

Also a Maronite Christian, he ran again as candidate in Lebanon’s presidential election in August at the age of 78--but Christian deputies opposed to Syrian influence in the country boycotted Parliament, and the vote failed to take place.

Instead, outgoing President Amin Gemayel handed over the reins of office--what little there was of it--to a Christian army officer of modest origins, Michel Aoun, who set up an administration to rival a Muslim-led Cabinet in West Beirut.

Gemayel may be the last of his Maronite family to play a prominent role in national affairs.

His father, Pierre Gemayel, formed the Falangist party in 1936.

In 1982, Amin’s younger brother Bashir was elected president in the wake of the Israeli invasion.