When I first heard President Trump’s suggestion that Syria might help solve Lebanon’s Hezbollah problem, my mind didn’t go to diplomacy or strategy. It went elsewhere.
It went back to the 11-year-old girl I once was, emerging from a makeshift shelter in a vermin-infested underground parking garage in Beirut after another night of shelling by Syrian forces, then walking to school and stepping over a corpse lying in the street. It went back to the sound of whistling. To this day, a sudden whistle can trigger a reflex of dread in me because it evokes the sound of incoming missiles. It went back to the wailing of our neighbor Lucine when her son Melkon was killed by a shell in our building. It went back to the tears of my friend Thérèse, whose uncle was kidnapped and never returned.
Mention Syria in front of many Lebanese of my generation, and these are the kind of memories that rise to the surface: Syrian troops suffocating Lebanon for almost thirty years. Syrian intelligence penetrating every institution. Political assassinations haunting the country. Lebanese politicians, journalists, intellectuals and activists living under fear. Elections being manipulated. Decision-making being outsourced to Damascus.
Hezbollah is undeniably a problem. No country can truly be sovereign while an armed organization operates outside the authority of the state.
These are the things we remember. Not because we are trapped in the past, not because we believe Syria has not changed. It’s because history leaves marks. Some on nations. Some on cities. Some on the human nervous system.
Which is why I feel a chill every time President Trump raises the possibility of soliciting Syria’s help. Once may be improvisation; repetition turns it into a worldview. This is like suggesting that a former jailer should be invited back to reorganize the prison.
The deeper issue is not Trump himself. The assumption embedded in the proposal is more disturbing than the proposal per se. Trump is merely revealing how Lebanon is still perceived internationally: a territory to be managed by others, a file to be handed from one regional actor to another, a challenge to be solved from the outside.
Hezbollah is undeniably a problem. No country can truly be sovereign while an armed organization operates outside the authority of the state. I have personally written repeatedly about the disastrous consequences of Hezbollah’s military dominance has had on Lebanon’s institutions, economy, foreign relations, and national life. But there is something profoundly unsettling about the idea that the solution to one Lebanese problem might be to place Lebanon, once again, in the hands of another country. Once sovereignty becomes conditional, it disappears.
The issue is not whether the new Syria is like the old Syria, or better, or worse. The issue is that while Syria has changed, the thinking about Lebanon apparently has not. It continues to be discussed as though its troubles must always be resolved by someone else.
We know very well that this is not Assad’s Syria. The regime that once cast such a long shadow over Lebanese political life is gone. Millions of Syrians have suffered, struggled, and sacrificed in pursuit of a different future. They deserve the opportunity to rebuild their country in peace and dignity. And I sincerely hope they succeed. I also hope that Lebanon and Syria can finally establish the kind of relationship both peoples deserve: one based on mutual respect, partnership and equality. But that is precisely why the suggestion troubles me.
The issue is not whether the new Syria is like the old Syria, or better, or worse. The issue is that while Syria has changed, the thinking about Lebanon apparently has not. It continues to be discussed as though its troubles must always be resolved by someone else. Not by the Lebanese army. Not by Lebanese institutions. Not by Lebanese political actors. By someone else. Always someone else.
During the last three decades, Hezbollah justified its weapons, and its subordination to Iran, by claiming Lebanon needed protection from external threats. Now we are told that another external power may be needed to remove those weapons. Different actors. Same premise — that Lebanon cannot stand on its own feet.
Lebanon has spent decades moving from one patron to another, one alleged protector to another, one external sponsor to another, while postponing the harder task of building a state capable of protecting itself.
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The more troubling question is not why others see us this way. It is why we continue to accept it. Have we learned nothing? Or do we actually deserve it?
The truth is that foreign guardians rarely impose themselves on a country that is capable of governing itself. They enter through cracks that already exist. Every time a Lebanese faction has invited an external “protector” to strengthen its position against another Lebanese faction, it has helped reinforce the idea that Lebanon is incapable of managing its own affairs. Foreign tutelage has always had local partners.
This is not an argument against cooperation with Syria. On the contrary. The two countries share a border, intertwined economies and countless human ties. Cooperation is necessary. But cooperation is one thing; guardianship is another. Friendship is not tutelage. Partnership is not supervision.
The irony is striking. For decades, Lebanon was treated as Syria’s backyard. Now, just as both countries have an opportunity to build a healthier and more equal relationship, to move beyond decades of domination and dependency, we are presented with a proposal that echoes an old and familiar logic: that we should return to a model in which Syria becomes responsible for managing Lebanon’s affairs.
The end of Hezbollah’s military dominance, and of the subordination to Iran that sustains it, should not mark the beginning of another era of foreign management. Otherwise, what exactly will have been achieved? Replacing one dependency with another is not sovereignty.
What Lebanon needs is not a new guardian. It needs a new contract with itself. A state that alone controls weapons. A state that alone decides questions of war and peace. A state that maintains relations with all, while becoming the instrument of none
Lebanon’s only viable future lies in disentangling itself from the conflicts of others. Not through isolation, and certainly not through indifference to the suffering of neighboring peoples, but through a clear national commitment that Lebanon should belong neither to one regional camp nor another.
What Lebanon needs is not a new guardian. It needs a new contract with itself. A state that alone controls weapons. A state that alone decides questions of war and peace. A state that maintains relations with all, while becoming the instrument of none. Call it neutrality, dissociation, active nonalignment, or simply common sense. The principle remains the same: Lebanon must cease to be a proxy battlefield and become a country again.
I wish the new Syria stability and success. I hope it emerges from years of suffering stronger, freer and more prosperous.
But if Lebanon is ever to become a genuine state, the solution to its crises cannot be to place them in someone else’s hands yet again.
We have already lived that story. We know how it ends, because we paid for it dearly. The lesson was expensive enough. we should not have to pay for it twice.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MBN’s editorial stance.
