Outright Assassination

by Adel Beshara

  In terms of the Sa’adeh killing, the most relevant model of repression is that which is commonly associated with state-sponsored killing of a movement’s leader. According to this model, “All too frequently, governments kill social movement leaders in an attempt to halt challenges to state power.”99 Apparently, governments engage in the practice out of the conviction that repression can obviate a movement’s recovery after its leader’s murder:

  In broadest terms, repression reduces the political opportunities that facilitate movement development. It makes organizing difficult and dangerous, as those who seek to activate indigenous organizations or form new ones become easy targets for sanctions. Repression can therefore cause ordinary movement participants to drop out, fearing the costs and risks involved. Additionally, repression can inhibit the formation of new resistance groups that seek similar goals. Less directly, it can create a sense of hopelessness and resignation, undermining the “cognitive liberation” often seen as crucial to mobilization. Finally, repression may also generate internal tensions and destroy unity, as activists suspect one another of being infiltrators or government collaborators.100

  The proposition advanced here deals with a particular genre of social movement leaders: the prophetic type. These are leaders who have deep conviction about goals and are prepared to go against conventional wisdom.101 Prophetic leaders are set apart from ordinary men by their exceptional personal qualities or extraordinary insight and accomplishment. On the whole, prophetic leaders share some or all of the following features: (1) espouse ideas that challenge fundamental aspects of the society; (2) possess great symbolic and mobilizing power over different segments of the population; (3) exercises significant effects on elements extending well beyond the organizations they titularly head; (4) display uncompromising behavior toward traditional authority or the power-holders; (5) occupy the centre-stage within their movements and (6) inspire loyalty and obedience from followers and have no significant backing from abroad. It is claimed that prophetic leaders are prone to physical elimination more than other genre of leaders because they are often irreplaceable and thus more rewarding for the purpose of a movement’s destruction:

  Although the loss of an administrative leader will be a serious blow, recognized succession processes and designated deputies can limit disruptions after the killing. By contrast, in the case of prophetic leaders, lines and processes of succession are usually cloudier. Conflict may quickly engulf a movement’s top echelons as secondary figures scramble for the mantle of leadership. Because prophetic leaders are less likely to routinize their authority than administrative leaders, the movement may falter in factional infighting.102

  Looking at Sa’adeh’s killing from this perspective gives meaning to his execution as a predictable but necessary step in the destruction or weakening of his political movement. Two factors support this perspective. The first is the breadth of Sa’adeh’s challenge, which displayed features that have consistently been found to increase states’ uses of repression against a movement’s leader. Sa’adeh held a distinct leadership role in his political movement and was also its public voice and key administrator. In particular, he was instrumental in popularizing the movement and wrote prodigiously, often in visionary terms, and without concessions. In addition, Sa’adeh was central to the movement’s key mobilizations, not only planning and orchestrating them but also providing their inspirational core through his speeches and courage. The fact that he was perceived by the regime as the most prominent figure in his political movement and its primary source of popularity and strength made his killing all the more necessary.

  The second factor relates to the character of the Khoury regime. Scholars of state repression generally explain the use of coercive tactics in terms of the degree of democracy in a political system, with autocracies behaving more repressively and full democracies less so. In an extension of this point, a threshold has been placed on the relationship between democracy and repression with scholars now arguing that not all steps toward democracy exert an equal, negative impact on levels of state repression. In other words, the incentives for repression are likely to be strong as democracy is extended before it is fully institutionalized.103 In that case, attributing Sa’adeh’s killing to state repression makes a lot of sense because the Khoury regime was a transitional regime (or a mixed regime with elements of autocracy and democracy)104 and transitional regimes, on the whole, appear to perpetrate the greatest violations against dissidents. Alyssa Prorok explains why:

  The logic of this argument is based on the convergence, in mixed regimes, of three factors. First, the partial opening of a political system provides previously excluded groups the ability to mobilize in an attempt to change the “political and distributive order”. Because semi-democratic states open enough to allow the public expression of dissent, but not enough to alleviate sources of dissatisfaction, citizens of these regimes are likely to make a large number of demands, which, due to the lack of stable institutional infrastructure in mixed regimes, cannot be adequately channeled into the political arena. Finally, institutional fragility and incoherence, and the tenuous nature of legitimacy in mixed regimes, make dissident threats more dangerous to leaders of these states than to either democratic or autocratic governments. Fearing popular revolt and political overthrow, mixed regime leaders feel compelled to respond harshly to opposition threats. Proponents of this theory thus predict high levels of repression in mixed regimes as threats to the ruling elite increase and alternative methods of social control are rendered ineffective or nonexistent.105

  Thus, Sa’adeh’s killing, like that of other prophetic leaders, was symptomatic of regime repression directed at prominent leaders who hold a great moral and symbolic authority within movements. What would the outcome have looked like if Sa’adeh had been a mere figurehead within his movement, or if he had had strong ties with a foreign state, or if the scope of his influence was negligible, or if he had been more conciliatory toward the power-holders and more accommodating of the state? The answer to this question is inevitably speculative, but if the Lebanese state’s treatment of “unruly” individuals before and after Sa’adeh’s execution in 1949 is any indication, the outcome is apt to be different: probably a political compromise with the SSNP without Sa’adeh being required to even put in an appearance before the court.

  There exists two other closely related issues that must be stated. The first is that the idea of killing Sa’adeh as a way of destroying or weakening his vision and movement did not originate with the Khoury regime. As early as 1936 a senior officer of the French Sûreté Générale is reported to have said: “If we must eliminate the Syrian National Party we must then eliminate its leader Antun Sa’adeh, for Sa’adeh is the Syrian National Party and the Syrian National Party is Sa’adeh.”106 The French detected an automatic correlation between Sa’adeh and his party and tried to take it apart through soft repression, such as imprisonment and exile. The Lebanese regime that killed Sa’adeh in 1949 went one step further: when all else failed, it turned to physical extermination. As a barometer of its repressive behavior, the idea of eliminating Sa’adeh tempered the Khoury regime on at least three occasions before it succeeded in 1949.107 The first time occurred in 1947 when it issued a warrant for his capture “dead or alive” after Sa’adeh refused to present himself for interrogation. As a rule, the appellation of “dead or alive” is invoked against dangerous political offenders and only under conditions of extreme necessity as a last resort. It is principally a de facto license to kill with the offer of prosecutorial immunity to the killer. In the present context, the main stimulus for the appellation was Sa’adeh’s head – an actuality made even stronger by the fact that the Lebanese government issued the deadly warrant even though it knew where Sa’adeh was “hiding.” The second time that the Khoury regime targeted Sa’adeh occurred at Jummaizeh in June 1949. Jummaizeh was a definite plot against Sa’adeh and not a mere an act of immediate danger. It occurred with the foreknowledge o
f the Khoury regime and possibly with its direct involvement.108 What is not clear is the priority that Sa’adeh’s killing occupied in the scheme of things. The incident was planned either to induce a grave slip-up for greater retribution against Sa’adeh or to secure the murder of Sa’adeh through the agency of a third party. The third and perhaps most conspicuous attempt on Sa’adeh’s life by the Khoury regime occurred after he was taken into custody on 7 July, 1949. On this occasion, the security men who took delivery of Sa’adeh from the Syrians on 7 July were instructed to eliminate Sa’adeh along the way using the familiar pretext that he was shot while trying to escape: the ruse was aborted at the last minute.

  The second issue is more complex but just as important. To execute a political figure of Sa’adeh’s stature is not simple by any standard, even with the right pretexts. It is a risk that most governments would much rather avoid. Therefore for the Lebanese government to have taken this risk certain propitious factors had to be present or else it would not have attempted it.

  As with other aspects of the Sa’adeh saga, it is difficult to determine accurately why the Khoury regime did not regard execution as a risk. The matter is less obvious than traditionally assumed and remains intensely debated and researched by historians. Nonetheless, at least four factors are clearly discernible. The first was the impression that since Sa’adeh had no powerful allies his execution would not pose a particular danger to regime power. Sa’adeh is mainly to blame for this. During his struggle with the Khoury regime, he purposely maintained a certain distance between himself and the political forces in the country out of the belief that both the government and the opposition were part of the same political establishment.109 Such neutrality enabled Sa’adeh to retain ideological credibility, but deprived him of political allies to lean on in difficult times. Although the Lebanese opposition was just as determined as he was to get rid of the Khoury regime, it did not get directly involved with him and refused to come to his aid at the crucial moment. Like most Lebanese, it found his vision of radical change too extreme for its liking. The Khoury regime was thus able to proceed against him self-assured that its action would be likely to evoke no more than scant protest.

  Second was the belief that execution precluded the possibility of sectarian disturbance against the regime. An Orthodox Christian at birth, Sa’adeh did not regard himself, nor was he regarded, as a sectarian leader. His antipathy towards the religious establishments placed him outside the support network that other Orthodox Christians were entitled to under the country’s confessional structure. The Orthodox Church acknowledged no commitment toward him, nor did Sa’adeh acknowledge any commitment toward the Church. In fact, the Orthodox Patriarch showed no visible interest in Sa’adeh or in his row with the Khoury regime and adopted the same carefree attitude as that of other denominational Christians. From a practical point of view, that made Sa’adeh’s execution a less risky undertaking than it might otherwise have been. It probably would not have happened had Sa’adeh had been a Maronite or a Druze or a Sunni Muslim leader. At any rate, that is the considered view in Lebanon at present.

  Third was the anticipation that Sa’adeh’s execution would not evoke condemnation in the “civilized” world. No Arab country was likely to object to his killing: Egypt and Saudi Arabia had strong aversions to Syrian nationalism; Syria had already made its feelings quite clear; and Jordan and Iraq had no apparent interest in Sa’adeh despite their common interest in the Fertile Crescent. Execution of a belligerent adversary was also in Israel’s national interest. Condemnation from the international community was also improbable in view of Sa’adeh’s revolting image abroad: the French considered him an agent of British interests; the British saw him as a threat to the regional status quo; the Soviet Union reviled his brand of nationalism; and the United States loathed his ‘fascist’ doctrines. This serene opposition to Sa’adeh conveyed an atmosphere of unmatched cordiality for his execution and allowed the Khoury regime to move quickly without worrying about the external fallouts.

  Fourth was the repressive atmosphere of the post-war era and the drive to clean up the world of undesirable radicals – the “kooks,” bigots, and Nazi sympathizers, even Communists.110 Michal Belknap describes it as an era “of notable political trials, characterized by resort to vague conspiracy charges, prosecution of individuals more for what they represented than for what they had done, and lack of concern about due process.”111 The prosecution of the leaders and members of the American Communist Party during the Foley Square trials in 1949 is a case in point.112 The Nuremberg trials, between October 1945 and November 1946, of twenty-two Germans selected as representatives of organizations and episodes from the Third Reich that the victorious powers found particularly reprehensible, are another feature of that era. Elsewhere, the crackdown on subversives reflected a policy of extermination of ideological enemies.113 Antun Sa’adeh was executed in this climate of repressive hysteria, a fact alluded to by Kamal Jumblatt in his interpellation in 1949:

  Most of us would have noticed, not long ago, how a surge in political assassinations, trials, and intimidation of powerful leaders and political parties swept across the states of the Near East one after the other. It moved from Iran, where reputable progressive figures and parties, including the Communist parties, were harassed and battered, to Iraq and then to Egypt where unknown assailants killed the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, to Damascus where all political parties were dissolved and their leaders persecuted. It was only a matter of time for Lebanon’s turn to come and, naturally, after everyone else because, thanks God, we always come last.114

  Sa’adeh’s reputation abroad as a fascist made it easier for the Khoury regime to prosecute and sentence him to death knowing in advance that it would not be condemned for its action. Its constant reference to fascism and Nazism at his trial and in its tardy explanations has to be seen and understood within this psychological context. The same principle applies to the deliberate omission of any reference to Sa’adeh’s anti-Communist tendencies, which might have caught the attention of Western governments.

  Conclusion

  The scenarios discussed in this chapter succeed in the task of illuminating an aspect of a political event that clearly has been ignored for too long. They offer different perspectives and different conceptual insights into why it happened and who may have been involved at one point or another. Judgmental scenarios that attempt to explain the saga in strictly political or personality terms may appeal to people who prefer cognitive simplicity over complexity. Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, suggest something much bigger and much more sinister, and are attractive. The reason is silence, and “silence implies mystery”:115 it is the most damning piece of evidence for a conspiracy. The fact that someone has gone to such pains to create a false impression points to a conscious effort to deceive.

  Overall, the scenarios discussed in this chapter are both inconclusive and highly speculative. The complexities presented by each scenario confirm, above all, the need for deep political analysis, as opposed to conventional “conspiratorial” analysis, and thus for a framework that incorporates “all those political practices and arrangements, deliberate or not, which are usually repressed rather than acknowledged.”116 From that vantage point, understanding the Sa’adeh execution at a deeper level requires a crisp, clean, clear, insightful, and penetrating map that encompasses the roles of the key players and their motives, as well as analysis of the events surrounding Sa’adeh’s death, and of the structural defects within the Lebanese system that allowed such a crime to occur and to go unpunished.

  If the Lebanese State had been more forthcoming with the information, much of the mystery around Sa’adeh’s execution would have been dispelled. By refusing to open its files the Lebanese State has not only perpetuated the cycle of suspicion but has also denied the public the opportunity to know the truth. Until new flows of information are obtained many questions are likely to remain forever unanswered and we may never know fo
r certain what really happened.

  Notes

  1 Lebanese Government, Qadiyat al-Hizb al-Qawmi (The Case of the National Party). Beirut: Ministry of Propaganda and Information, 1947: 5–6.

  2 Said Fakhr ad-Din was killed during a French-led attack on the Lebanese government temporary headquarters in Bshamoun on 15 November, 1943. He was subsequently decorated with the medal of National Struggle (al-Jihad al-Watani) by President Khoury! See Gibran Jreige, “Ma’rakat al-Istiqlal” (The Battle of Independence), Sabah el-Kheir, 11 June, 1983: 42–43.

  3 See relevant sections on the Khoury regime in by Michael C. Hudson, The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon. New York: Random House, 1968.

  4 Lebanese Government, Qadiyat al-Hizb al-Qawmi:8.

  5 See Istijwab Jumblatt al-tarikhi lil-hukuma hawla istishhad Sa’adeh ome 1949 (Jumblatt’s Historic Interpellation to the [Lebanese] Government over Sa’adeh’s Martyrdom in 1949). Beirut: SSNP, 1987.

  6 Qadiyat al-Hizb al-Qawmi. Beirut: The Lebanese Ministry of Information, 1949: 32.

  7 Ibid., 35–56.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Ibid., 38–39.

  10 Qadiyat al-Hizb al-Qawmi: 38–39.

  11 Ibid.

  12 See Urfan Salloum in “Defense of the Social Nationalist before the Military Tribunal in Damascus” (in Arabic). Damascus: n.p., 1955: 22–28.