LEBANON UNREST.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 64, Issue 34, 19 November 1943, Page 6

LEBANON UNREST.

HISTORY OF REBELLION. / i “CONTINENT IN MINATURE.” The latest unrest reported from Lebanon is nothing - now to a country with 4000 years of mediaeval history. First recognised as an independent State in 1920, Lebanon passed under British and Free French control in July, 1941, when the Vichy forces retired from the country following the entry of Allied forces into Syria a month earlier as a counter-stroke to German infiltration.

As independent States, Syria and Lebanon were placed under the mandatory power of France in 1920. The territory originally was organised into five areas, but since 1925, two of these, Damascus and Aleppo, were united to form the "Republic of Syria. A second area, known as the Sanjak, was ceded to Turkey in 1939. The remaining territories are Lebanon, Latakia and Jebel Druse. Following the Allied occupation, it was arranged in March of this year, that free elections were to be held in both Syria and Lebanon..

The authoress Rosita Forbes describes the history of Syria since the last war as a succession of hopeless rebellions* punctuated by alternative reprisals and concessions on the part of the then mandatory Power, France.

“Independence has always been the firebrand of Middle Eastern politics,” states the authoress, “but ‘national freedom’ is interpreted in many different ways. To civilised Lebanon it means autonomy with an elective Parliamentary system and a treaty with France, according to which Syria shall be financed and protected in return for flying the Tricolour in as few places as possible. “To Damascus Moslems it means a kingdom or republic including absolute dominion over the Christian seaboard and the Druses of the Haurau, who are Arab only by generic name and hardly Moslem at all. It is probable that to Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans and such strange survivals as the devil worshippers and the devotees of the moon, fish, water, or the colour blue, scattered over Syria, the most consoling definition of freedom would be incorporation in a French colony.

"Unfortunately for high commissioners attempting to administer their mandate for the mutual benefit of all rates concerned, Syria is a continent in miniature. Among its important elements are the two sharply-divided Moslem parties, Sunnites and Sliia.s, each over 150,000 strong, and a third as many worshippers of the symbolic golden calf in Jebel Druse. Syrians, Greeks and Armenians are split into Orthodox and Catholic factions. Maronites and Metouelis carry on persistent feuds with the Bedouin, who are still in the days of Abraham, and with the Chaldeans, whose spiritual home is still in Babylon. Jews, Ottoman and Osmanli Turks, Latin and Balkan merchants add to the confusion of centuries.

“How can a Western Power cope with this? Syria has had too much of everything, too much government, too much taxation, too many races and religions, too many promises and ministries and nationalists and officials.”