There are truths that one avoids to name because they disturb, because they crack comfortable stories and expose deep fractures. The question of allegiance to Lebanon is one of them. It silently crosses society, it structures political tensions, it feeds crises repeatedly, but it is rarely posed in all its radicality.
In essence, a State is not only held by its institutions. It is based on membership. Adherence to a simple idea: ultimate loyalty belongs to the common homeland. When this loyalty becomes shared, hesitant or split, the state enters an area of fragility from which it never really emerges.
Lebanon is now in this uncertain space.
To understand this crisis, we must go back to the historical depth of the country. As early as the 16th century, under the impetus of Fakhreddine II, a first form of political entity was emerging rooted in Mount Lebanon. Christian and Druze communities are gradually developing an organic relationship with a local territory and political structure, foreshadowing allegiance to a Lebanese entity even before its modern formalization.
When Greater Lebanon was proclaimed in 1920, the Sunni community was in a more ambivalent situation. One party adheres to the Lebanese project, but another projects a wider Arab continuity, embodied by Faisal I and his project of a kingdom centered on Damascus. This initial tension marks a lasting relationship with the State.
This ambivalence will continue and express itself forcefully during the years of civil war. The alliance of a part of the Sunni forces with the armed Palestinian organizations, in their confrontation with the structure of power dominated by Christians, was perceived by a large part of them as a rupture of the Lebanese implicit pact. In this reading, this moment was experienced as a shift in allegiance, where the internal conflict intertwined with external causes and forces.
But history is changing. With Syria’s rise in power, then its alliance with Iran, and especially after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, a transformation is taking place. For a large part of the Sunni community, the margins of external allegiance are closing. In the face of regional actors that have become dominant or hostile, refocusing on Lebanon is gradually becoming the only viable political option.
The path of the Shiite community is different. For a long time marginalised, it experienced an awakening in the 1960s under the impulse of Moussa Sadr, whose project is deeply Lebanese: to integrate, represent, and dignite, but still within the national framework.
His disappearance in 1978, on the eve of the Iranian theocratic revolution, opened a breach. This revolution introduces a new centre of gravity. Gradually, part of Lebanese political chiism is part of this dynamic, particularly through Hezbollah, which embodies a articulation between a local armed force and a regional strategy. The Amal movement is also evolving politically in this environment.
It is here that the central question appears in full clarity.
Lebanon cannot exist for a long time with structural allegiances external to itself.
Because allegiance is not a mere affinity. It is a hierarchy of decision. And when an actor places an external reference above the state, the state ceases to be the centre of gravity.
But a more difficult question then arises.
Can a state control the allegiance of its citizens?
The answer in a modern state is paradoxical.
A State cannot control consciences. It cannot impose internal loyalty by decree. It cannot prohibit belief, sympathy, religious or cultural identity. Any attempt to directly control intimate allegiance would lead to an authoritarian state, not a sovereign state.
But a State can and must control the concrete manifestations of such allegiances when they become political, military or financial.
This is where the decisive border lies.
A citizen may feel close to an external cause. But it cannot act, finance, arm, coordinate or decide on the basis of an external authority if this affects national sovereignty. This is no longer an opinion. It’s an action.
And any action falls within the domain of the State.
Thus, sovereignty does not require control of hearts, but rather control of acts.
This means in concrete terms: banning any military chain of command outside the state, controlling external financing, transparency of flows, strict supervision of political relations with foreign powers, and the ability of intelligence to identify any parallel structure. This also means that the decision on war and peace can only belong to national institutions.
In other words, the state cannot demand internal loyalty, but can demand operational loyalty.
It is this distinction that avoids both naivety and authoritarianism.
Because a weak state tolerates everything and disappears. An authoritarian state imposes everything and distorts itself. A sovereign State sets clear limits: freedom of belief, but exclusivity to strategic action.
This is where the national pact needs to be rethought.
Not as a parallel coexistence of allegiances, but as an assumed hierarchy. All identities are legitimate. All memberships can exist. But a single allegiance must structure the political decision: that of Lebanon.
This implies active neutrality. Not an empty neutrality, but a sovereign neutrality, which refuses to be drawn into the conflicts of others, which protects its territory, and which prohibits internal actors from becoming relays of external strategies.
Lebanon cannot be both a nation and a platform.
He must be back to being a center.
And this will not go through gross coercion, or denial, but through lucid reconstruction: controlling acts, regulating flows, restoring authority, and restoring the state the ability to be the ultimate arbitrator.
In essence, sovereignty is not an issue of ideology.
It’s a question of limit.
And a country exists only when it is able to draw and enforce that limit.
The question is now asked in its simplest and most demanding form.
Does Lebanon want to be a State that tolerates all allegiances, or a State that organizes their overcoming?
Because between these two options, there is no lasting compromise.
There’s a choice.
