1989 - The Taif peace pact for Lebanon

PARIS: The Taif Agreement was the outcome of a concerted attempt by Saudi Arabia to bring an end to the Lebanese Civil War that began in 1975. 

Other parties involved in the process included Syria’s President Hafez Assad, the US administration, and the various Lebanese factions fighting in the war. Saudi authorities wanted to find a solution that involved all of those involved, to halt the war and improve upon the 1943 Lebanese National Pact. 

That pact was an unwritten agreement between Lebanese President Bechara El-Khoury and Prime Minister Riad Al-Solh that established an independent Lebanon as a multi-confessional state. It represented a power-sharing arrangement between Christians and Muslims, whereby the president was always required to be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of the parliament a Shiite. 

The powers handed down in this way were of particular benefit to Lebanon’s Christians. The civil war required an adjustment to this equilibrium. It also required an adjustment in Lebanon’s relations with the Arab world, during a period in which Assad was growing more powerful with the aim of becoming more influential and hegemonic in Lebanon. 

Beginning in the late 1970s, Saudi Arabia had been a part of all Arab and international efforts to end the war in Lebanon. The Taif Agreement was fathered by Hussein El-Husseini, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament. He visited Saudi Arabia, where he was hosted in Taif under the guidance of the Foreign Minister, Prince Saud bin Faisal, and a Lebanese friend of the Kingdom, a businessman named Rafik Hariri who would later serve as Lebanon’s prime minister from 1992 to 1998 and 2000 to 2004. 

The deal ultimately reached included political reforms that gave full power to the Council of Ministers and greater power to the Muslim prime minister, compared with the previous arrangement whereby power was concentrated in the office of the Christian president. It also established special relations between Lebanon and Syria, and a framework to begin the withdrawal of Syrian forces from the country. 

However, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa later denied any commitment had been made to Prince Saud for Syria to withdraw from Lebanon. It was only after the assassination of Hariri in 2005 that Syrian forces finally pulled out. 

The Taif Agreement was approved by the Lebanese Parliament on Nov. 5, 1989, the same day Rene Moawad became the country’s president. He held the office for only 18 days before he was killed by a car bomb that claimed his life and 23 others. 

Prior to the Taif Agreement, Saudi Arabia had pushed for peace conferences in Geneva and Lausanne, in 1983 and 1984 respectively, that failed to end the war. However, Saudi authorities continued to mediate, with the involvement of the Arab League Tripartite Committee to Lebanon, under the chairmanship of Prince Saud. 

The representatives on the committee from the other members of the tripartite, Morocco and Algeria, were their foreign ministers, Abdellatif Filali and Sid Ahmed Ghozali respectively. They were joined by the Arab League’s special envoy to Lebanon, Lakhdar Brahimi. Syria’s President Assad, excluded from the committee, was enraged. 

During the last meeting of the committee, in Rabat in 1988, before the Taif process began, the three ministers summoned Al-Sharaa, the Syrian foreign minister, and told him they had proof Syria had been arming both Prime Minister Michel Aoun’s army and the Lebanese Forces, led by Samir Geagea.  

Aoun had been appointed interim prime minister that year by departing president Amine Gemayel, who did not accept Assad’s diktats. 

Assad’s forces responded by pounding the Christian stronghold of Achrafieh. Aoun, protected by French Ambassador Rene Ala, then left for France to begin his long exile.  

Brahimi, the Arab League envoy, enlisted Paris-based Dr. Ghassan Salame, a Lebanese professor of international relations, as an advisor to help establish a ceasefire agreement and prepare for a meeting with Lebanese deputies.  

Concurrently, Brahimi, Salame, and other deputies worked on drafting a text for the deputies to approve and adopt. 

The first report from the committee, issued in mid-July 1989, was perceived by the Syrians as hostile. Assad met Algeria’s President Chadli Bendjedid in Algiers and accused Brahimi of anti-Syrian bias. Prince Saud independently continued his attempts to persuade Syria to agree to a ceasefire. 

As the various efforts to end the war continued, Saudi authorities worked through two negotiators: Hariri and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who between 1983 and 2005 was the Kingdom’s ambassador to the United States. This marked the start of Hariri’s involvement in Lebanese politics. 

King Fahd entrusted Prince Bandar to direct the efforts to find a solution for the situation in Lebanon, and Hariri shuttled between various capital cities to organize a conference in the Kingdom to discuss reforms and the election of a president. 

International pressure, and the continuing efforts of Prince Saud, eventually compelled Syria to accept a ceasefire agreement, paving the way for the drafting of the text for the Taif Agreement by several deputies.  

Hariri managed to persuade the Lebanese deputies to come to the gathering in Taif. They agreed to correct the balance of power in Lebanon, giving more influence to the Council of Ministers and the Muslim prime minister. 

However, Assad disliked Hariri and resisted his appointment as Lebanon’s prime minister for years. Eventually, Assad met Hariri on several occasions, though when Hariri did eventually become prime minister, Assad insisted on having a say in the appointment of certain government ministers. 

Saudi Arabia took the initiative and helped to get the Lebanese Parliament operational, since previous negotiations with militias had failed to achieve peace. Eventually, the Taif Agreement was concluded and implemented but Aoun never accepted its terms. Following the assassination of President Moawad after just 18 days in office, as he returned from Lebanese Independence Day celebrations, Deputy Elias Hrawi, who was favored by the Syrians, was appointed his successor. 

One unforgettable sentence uttered by a brilliant French diplomat, having served in Lebanon, still rings true in view of the disastrous situation that has prevailed there for the past several years: “The political class who made the civil war in Lebanon is still in power, but it cannot succeed in ruling the country.” 

• Randa Takieddine is a Paris-based Lebanese journalist. She covered the last committee meeting in Rabat before Taif in 1988 for Al-Hayat and headed the newspaper’s bureau in France for 30 years.