long had considered their country’s de facto government. During the remainder of
March, and well into April, convoys of trucks took Syrian soldiers and equipment
eastward across the Lebanon-Syria border. On April 26, Syria reported to the United
Nations that it had completed its withdrawal from Lebanon of all military and intel-
ligence units.
The Security Council issued a statement on May 4 praising the “significant and
noticeable progress” toward compliance with Resolution 1559 while awaiting confir-
mation from UN officials on the ground of an actual withdrawal. The council also
renewed its call for the disarming of all militias in Lebanon, the other step demanded
by Resolution 1559. On May 23, Annan reported that UN observers had verified that
Syria had indeed withdrawn all its military and intelligence forces from Lebanon, “and
so, in principle, Lebanon should be free of all foreign forces today.”
The Lebanese then held parliamentary elections—the first in more than three
decades not overshadowed by civil war or military occupation by neighboring coun-
tries. The elections took place on four successive Sundays beginning on May 29, rotat-
ing around areas of the country. Among the more noteworthy participants was Hizbal-
lah. The Shiite organization had for several years been reconstituting itself as a political
party and social service agency. Also of note was the faction of Maronite Christians
headed by Michel Aoun, a former army commander who had declared himself presi-
dent in 1988 and then fled to France after Syria moved against him. In one of the
many odd twists of Lebanese politics, Aoun made a dramatic return to Lebanon early
in May and aligned himself with parties that supported Syria, his former enemy.
Voters gave a majority of 72 seats in the 128-member parliament to the March
14 Coalition of parties headed by Saad Hariri that had united principally around the
demand for Syrian withdrawal. Even so, the elections demonstrated that Lebanese vot-
ers still clung to the sectarian lines that had always defined the country’s politics. One
of the most notable such results was in southern Lebanon—dominated by Shiite Mus-
lims—where Hizballah and the long-standing Shiite party Amal captured 23 seats.
Their showing gave the Shiite parties an effective veto over major government actions
requiring a two-thirds majority. After weeks of intense jockeying for power, Fouad
Siniora, a banker who had served as Rafiq Hariri’s finance minister, emerged as the
new prime minister, with five representatives from Hizballah and Amal serving in his
cabinet. Amal leader Nabih Berri remained Speaker of parliament, a post he had held
since 1992.
Despite Lebanon’s successful elections, violence remained a potent force in
Lebanese public life. During 2005, car bombs took the lives of three other leading
anti-Syrian figures: Samir Kassir and Gibran Tueni, columnists for the influential al-
Nahar,and George Hawi, the former head of Lebanon’s Communist Party. Tueni was
killed on December 12, the same day that Detlev Mehlis, a UN-appointed German
investigator, submitted the second of two reports to Secretary-General Annan strongly
implying that top-level Syrian officials had ordered the assassination of Rafiq Hariri.
Hizballah later blocked an attempt by the United Nations to obtain the Lebanese gov-
ernment’s official cooperation for prosecution of those responsible for Hariri’s mur-
der. More violence visited Lebanon in 2006, when a Hizballah attack on an Israeli
military post sparked a month-long war and another leading anti-Syrian figure, Pierre
Gemayal, namesake and grandson of the long-time Phalange leader, was assassinated
(Hizballah-Israeli War, pp. 365–368).
LEBANON AND SYRIA 361