Lebanon has recently received a visit from Pope Leo XIV. In this exclusive conversation with europeanconservative.com, Lebanese political activist, federalism advocate, and President of the Maronite Union Amine Iskandar reflects on the profound challenges facing Lebanon’s Christian communities amid demographic upheaval, economic collapse, and shifting regional dynamics. Speaking with Rafael Pinto Borges, he traces the historical foundations of Lebanon’s Christian identity, assesses the impact of the Taif Agreement, and outlines why he believes federalism is now essential for preserving the country’s pluralistic character—and for ensuring that Christians can continue to call Lebanon their home.
Lebanon has long been a unique refuge for Christians in the Middle East, balancing Eastern and Western influences. How do Lebanese Christians preserve this distinct identity amid ongoing political and social challenges?
In the turmoil of the Levant and Middle East, Lebanon has consistently preserved its unique character, thanks to its natural mountainous protection, as well as its independent Christian cultural institutions. Mount Lebanon and East Beirut are especially rich in terms of schools and universities, many of which have also established and continue to run the country’s most important hospitals.
Historically, Lebanon distinguished itself from the rest of the region when, in the late 7th century, a Maronite bishop, Saint John Morun, had a clear understanding of national construction and civilizational existence. He understood that in order to survive, a people needed an ecclesiastical institution as well as a political and military one. Accordingly, he founded the Maronite Church, becoming its first patriarch, and also led the so-called Marada Christian army.
This made the Maronites and Armenians exceptional among regional Christian communities, unlike the Syriacs, Assyrians, Roum, and Copts, who could not pursue political autonomy. The Maronites’ and Armenians’ tradition of self-defense has enabled them to withstand historical adversities and continue their struggle to this day.
The Maronite patriarchate of Bkerké has consistently stepped in during times of political void, especially when Christian leaders were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. This 13-century-old synergy between spiritual and temporal institutions continues to fortify the Christian presence in Lebanon. For instance, when the main Christian force (Lebanese Forces Party) was banned and its leader jailed from 1994 to 2005, the Maronite Patriarch led the resistance.
The Taif Agreement of 1989 altered Lebanon’s power-sharing structure, reducing Christian political influence. How has this shift affected Christian communities’ ability to shape the country’s future, and what strategies could restore their role?
The most dangerous aspect of the 1989 Taif agreement imposed by the Syrian occupying forces was not merely the reduction of Christian political influence but the denial of their identity. The agreement has annihilated the Christians by denying their particularity and identity. It asserts that Lebanon is an Arab country in both its identity and affiliation. In doing so, it facilitated what Raphael Lemkin would describe as cultural genocide.
As Milan Kundera wrote:
The first step in liquidating a people … is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was.
This erasure is the Taif Agreement’s true legacy and a principal cause of the large-scale Christian emigration from Lebanon. Many Christians are leaving a country that no longer reflects their identity.
Taif also fractured the head of state, dividing it among three conflicting authorities: the Christian president of the republic, the Sunni prime minister, and the Shia speaker of parliament. This perverse arrangement rendered the country nearly ungovernable.
Taif confiscated the weapons of all the parties but authorized the Islamist Shia Hezbollah to grow its arsenal, to become a state above the state, and to threaten its population.
Taif naturalized half a million Muslim Arabs who do not share the slightest common cultural characteristics with Lebanon.
Taif is a constitution based on contradictions and is intentionally unachievable, ungovernable, and impossible to implement. It states that Lebanon is a final (unique) homeland to all its citizens, and at the same time, it defines Lebanon as part of a bigger Arab homeland. It promotes decentralization while insisting on the firmly centralized regime that denies the country’s diversity and its pluralistic character.
Lebanon’s economic collapse has hit Christian communities hard, with many facing poverty or emigration. What specific challenges do these economic pressures pose, and how are Christians working to maintain their presence?
Since 2019, the Christian society in Lebanon has been left exposed to all dangers. Nothing has been done to protect it. The Church seems absent, and the political parties, while some are trying their best, have been extremely weakened since the numerous massacres of Christians in the seventies and in the eighties. Demography is the strength of a political party, and this demography has been terribly weakened.
The 2019 artificial financial collapse has annihilated the most important sector of the Lebanese economy: the banking sector. The middle class (which is overwhelmingly Christian) was the main victim of this disastrous event. It was immediately followed by the August 4th, 2020, double explosion that destroyed all of East Beirut and its northern suburb. This is the only Christian capital in a region stretching all the way from Beijing to Tangier. It was devastated by the explosion of Hezbollah’s and the Assad regime’s munitions illegally stored in the port.
This led to the destruction of all the Christian hospitals and most schools and universities, as well as the most important museums, art galleries, historical architecture, and nightlife of the Middle East. Everything the Christians were able to rebuild and revive since the end of the war in 1990 was swept away. Following this double catastrophe, more than 80% of the Christian youth have left Lebanon.
In 1975, at the beginning of the Lebanese war caused by the Palestinian fedayees [guerrilla attackers], followed soon by the Syrian army, the Christian population of Lebanon made up nearly 2 million of Lebanon’s 3.5 million population. In 2019, with the influx of more than 2 million Sunni Syrians, the total population has grown to 7 million, while the Christian population remained at 2 million.
As a comparison, Kuwait’s indigenous population has grown from 300,000 in 1975 to 1.2 million in 2015, while the number of Christians in Lebanon never changed. The number of Lebanese Armenians has fallen from 350,000 in 1975 to 50,000 today. This gives an idea of the ongoing Christian hemorrhage due to forced emigration by massacres, corruption, and intentional impoverishment.
After the 2020 port explosion, the Christian population is estimated to have been dramatically reduced again, while new waves of Muslim refugees continue to arrive from Syria. Today, Lebanon’s Christian population has fallen well below 2 million, while the number of Syrians in the country has almost reached 3 million. This demographic observation is enough to consider that Lebanon, as a Mediterranean and pluralistic country, has already ceased to exist.
The influx of Syrian refugees has changed Lebanon’s demographic landscape. How are Christian communities navigating these shifts, and what risks do they face if demographic trends continue to marginalize them?
The unique aid provided to the Lebanese Christians was European visas for students and sometimes scholarships, as well as emigration visas for entire families to the USA, Canada, and Australia. At the same moment, the UN and especially the EU have annually injected billions of U.S. dollars to maintain the Syrian migrants on Lebanese soil. Any Syrian who would leave Lebanon was threatened by NGOs financed by the EU with losing his financial aid. That aid was well beyond the Lebanese families’ salaries after the 2019 financial collapse.
In 2022, the Vatican exhorted each parish in Lebanon to help integrate “Syrian” migrants and help their families in finding housing and jobs. No such appeal was made for the thousands of Christian Lebanese families devastated by the 2019 collapse and 2020 explosion. This disparity left many Christians with no option but to emigrate.
Christian populations across the Middle East have faced persecution and decline. What unique strengths do Lebanese Christians bring to the region, and how can they inspire other Christian communities to persevere?
The Christians in Iraq have decided to rely on the state institutions for their protection. Their patriarch, Louis Sako, has been very firm on that principle. This led to the almost total disappearance of this six-thousand-year-old civilization from its homeland. What is left of the Christians in Syria is starting to form autonomous defense forces to ensure their security and free presence.
What has preserved the Christian free presence in Lebanon for centuries was their ability to insure their own military institution. Since their disarmament in 1991, they have experienced only decline: emigration, impoverishment, arrests, military trials, accusations of treason and collaboration with the enemy.
You’re a well-known proponent of federalism for Lebanon. How would a federal reorganization of the country make life better for its Christians and, indeed, for other communities?
Since the Taif implementation in 1990, Christians have been paying taxes that are entirely spent in the districts controlled by Hezbollah. Their own regions have been completely abandoned, and their infrastructure has deteriorated terribly. The public sector has the highest ratio of state officials in the world. It is mainly made up of fake jobs and serves to transfer the wealth from the Christian provinces to the Hezbollah and Amal families. This has led, after 30 years, to the complete impoverishment of the historically prosperous Christian Lebanon, accelerating the emigration process.
Other communities in Lebanon also suffer from this inequality and injustice. This is particularly the case of the Sunni Akkar-Tripoli province that is agonizing while the central government never granted it the right to operate its airport, port, oil refinery, world exhibition center, and so on.
True decentralization on all levels—administrative, fiscal, and political—is strongly recommended. It is vital for all communities. This federal regime would allow each cultural group to manage its economy, tourism, and education and to be able to transmit its heritage to future generations.
Since 1975, the populations of Lebanon have been fighting for the control of the central government and to impose their identity on the rest of the country. A federal regime would allow each group in Lebanon to prosper according to its own culture, identity, and views without clashing with others.
Lebanese Christians have a history of resisting external domination, from Ottoman rule to other occupations. How does this legacy shape their current efforts to safeguard their cultural and religious identity?
What happened under the Mamelukes, then under the Ottomans, is an improper example that cannot be assimilated to the current situation. The Maronite patriarchate of Bkerké, as well as the Christian parties, are committing a lethal error by relying on this lesson of the past. The demographic reality is not at all the same.
Between the fall of the Crusader states in the late 13th century and the arrival of the Ottomans in 1516, the Mamelukes have organized a continuous genocide stretching over two centuries. They were able to empty all of central and southern Mount Lebanon of its Christian population.
It is only after the departure of the Mamelukes, and with the Capitulations signed by Francis I of France and the Ottoman sultan Suleiman I in 1536, that the Christians were finally able to redeploy from northern Mount Lebanon and start rebuilding their villages in the center and in the south. At that time, emigration to the West was not an option, and the Christians had to wait patiently in the northern mountains for two centuries before reintegrating their villages. It took them four centuries, from 1516 to 1914, to rebuild and to repopulate their country with the help of their Druze fellow citizens.
During the WWI genocide against the Armenians, Greeks, and Syro-Assyro-Chaldeans, a famine (Kafno) was orchestrated by the Ottomans in Christian Mount Lebanon. 220,000 Christian Lebanese (more than 40% of the population) died of hunger. While they were dying and emigrating, their villages remained empty. They were thus able to rebuild their communities again after the liberation of their country by France in 1918.
Today, every house, every apartment, every shop that is abandoned is immediately occupied by millions of non-Christians all over the Christian mountains of Lebanon and East Beirut. By exhaustion and by impotence, Christian leaders are refusing to take this crucial fact into consideration. The Church still imagines that after this calamitous decade, things will go back to normal as they did after the Mamelukes and after WWI. This analysis is disconnected from reality.
Lebanon’s sectarian tensions often place Christians in a delicate position. How are Christian leaders fostering unity and protecting their communities in the face of rising polarization and conflict?
The Lebanese Forces Party is the most powerful party today in Lebanon. This Christian party remains a central pillar—not just for Christians but also for moderate Muslims. However, its influence, like that of the other Christian parties and the Church, is constrained by demographic loss. The abandonment of the dechristianized West has only compounded their difficulties.
For our European readers, what practical steps can the global Christian community and conservative movements take to support Lebanese Christians in preserving their heritage and securing their future?
The West should stop financing the colonization of Lebanon by Syrian populations disguised as refugees. It should stop financing the transfer of Christian youth from Lebanon to the West, and it should instead help them with creating job opportunities in their homeland. To encourage them to go back home, the West should help Lebanon regain its true original Mediterranean pluralistic identity.
Federalism is the only solution that respects all of the cultural groups. It must be implemented urgently before it is too late. Every year counts. Every year means another thousand Christian families abandoning their historical homeland.
The disarmament of Hezbollah is only an illusion. Before Hezbollah, there were the Syrians and the Baathist ideology. Before the Syrians, there were the Palestinians and the Nasserist ideology. Every new turmoil in the Middle East will always be weaponized by local communities to take control of the central government and impose their identity on the country. A real sustainable solution is one that allows each cultural group to prosper in its own province while practicing its own culture and identity.
