Maarab, Lebanon
Samir Geagea is reluctant to speak much of the attempt on his life last month. It was here, at his home in Maarab, a fortified villa high in the mountains, where one or more snipers allegedly took aim at the head of the Lebanese Forces, a Christian majority party. But Geagea begins to open up, putting the episode in the context of a series of assassinations that began more than seven years ago, starting with the car bombing of the anti-Syrian member of parliament Marwan Hamade, which left him wounded and killed his driver. Next was the February 14, 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, for which the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has named Hezbollah responsible. “What is behind them all,” says Geagea, “is the idea of changing, by force, the political balance of power in Lebanon.”
Geagea is not an easy man to get rid of. Unlike the rest of the country’s political leadership, Geagea refused to compromise with the Syrian-Lebanese security establishment that presided over Beirut in the wake of the country’s 15-year long civil wars, and was imprisoned on a variety of charges. Released in 2005 after more than a decade in solitary confinement, he apologized to the country, in particular the Christian community that he led in war, including a fratricidal chapter of the conflict during which Christians killed each other. Many Christians refused to forgive him, and instead chose to align themselves with former head of the Lebanese Army Gen. Michel Aoun, now an ally of Hezbollah and an enemy of the country’s pro-democracy March 14 movement. With other once prominent March 14 figures now sidelined—Sunni leader Saad Hariri is temporarily in exile and Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt is weighing his options with the outcome of the Syrian uprising still up for grabs—Geagea is today the most vocal advocate of Lebanese democracy.
