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from the mid-1990s onwards . The breakdown of the Syrian-Israel peace negotiations in 2000 , the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon and regional tension in the wake of the Iraq invasion then led to deteriorating relations between Hariri and the new President of Syria , Bashar al-Assad .
An important factor in the ability of various businessmen to rise to high political office was their position in Lebanon ’ s confessional politics . The prevalence of Sunni politicians among the new contractor bourgeoisie is striking . Emigration patterns played a role because it is possible that Sunni Muslims were more drawn to the Gulf , Shia would be more likely to migrate to West Africa or the Americas , and Christians were drawn to Europe . However , a more important factor is the state of the civil war era leadership among different communities . The Kataeb party , the Lebanese Forces and Aoun monopolized leadership among Maronites . There was limited space for a Maronite businessman to become a political leader . Some Shia contractors had become wealthy in the Gulf or in West Africa but they tended to support established political movements such as Hezbollah or Amal , which had virtually monopolized leadership within their community . Among the Druze , Walid Jumblatt ’ s Progressive Socialist Party ( PSP ) was the dominant force . The situation of Sunni leadership was very different . The pre-war Sunni zuama had been marginalized by popular Nasserite movements and their militias during the civil war , helped by their alliance with the PLO . The militias lost much of their power after the expulsion of the PLO from Beirut in 1982 and military action by Syrian-allied Shia and Druze militias in 1983 and 1984 . 32 Sunni Islamists never achieved the same prominence , coherence and influence within their own community as Hezbollah did within the Shia community . The assassination of the Sunni Mufti Hassan Khalid in 1989 further fragmented the community ’ s leadership . This fragmentation allowed for the rise of Hariri and other Sunni businessmen to high political office . No pre-war zuama or civil war militias could automatically lay claim to the role of Prime Minister , the highest position reserved for Sunnis in Lebanon ’ s power-sharing formula .
When Hariri became Prime Minister of Lebanon in 1992 , he still styled himself mostly as a “ national ” leader rather than a confessional one . He contrasted his reconstruction program with the confessional violence of the militias . His student loan program was already winding down and Hariri refused to engage in the kind of large-scale grassroots clientelism usually associated with confessional leadership . He also sought to shape public opinion through his TV channel Future TV , a stake in the al-Nahar newspaper , fostering close relations with a large number of journalists and eventually starting his own newspaper called al-Mustakbal ( Future ). Hariri ’ s neglect of his own community led to some disappointment among the
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See Skovgaard-Petersen Jacob , “ The Sunni Religious Scene in Beirut ”, Mediterranean Politics , 3 , no 1 ( 1998 ): 69-80 . 12