BEIRUT -- After devastating conflicts in each of the previous three years, 2009 was the year when stability returned to Lebanon.
Whereas clashes in recent times further exacerbated Lebanon's sectarian rifts, political disputes in 2009 were dealt with along parameters which forced cooperation. Disagreements were met with dialogue, not violence.
Democratic elections, held successfully in June, did not usher forth the unrest many had said threatened.
The vote was marketed by partisans of government and opposition parties to be the first chance in living memory for the Lebanese to exercise their democratic right, free from foreign influence. Going to the ballot box, it was said, was the ideal way to demonstrate true independence.
It was not even close.
One of the few serviceable democracies in the Middle East, Lebanon's government is elected along confessional lines. The President is always a Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni and the Parliament Speaker a Shiite.
While this framework has its flaws -- and they are numerous -- it at least ensures that all religious blocs have some sort of representation at a parliamentary level.
The Lebanese voted in 2009 in accordance with this tripartite system, but the system itself is not entirely Lebanese.
It was born, as many Lebanese political epochs are, from adversity which verged on civil war. In May 2008, fighting broke out in west Beirut between pro-government and opposition gunmen. Scores of people, mostly civilians, were killed while the Army retreated for fear of its impartiality and nonpartisanship disintegrating.
Pitted against the backdrop of the July-August War with Israel in 2006 and the conflict which killed more than 400 at the northern Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in 2007, the fighting of May 2008 was the last straw for a country whose politicians and dissident individuals lived in constant fear of assassination.
The Doha Agreement was struck on 21 May, 2008; the fruit of negotiations from representatives of the Lebanese National Dialogue Committee. It was these rounds of talks that implemented the three-pronged parliamentary system we see in Lebanon today.
The agreement was hailed as a Lebanese accord which brought 18 months of political turmoil to a close. But it wasn't very Lebanese at all. Discussions took place at the behest of the Qatari Emir and were interspersed with consultations with the Arab Ministerial Committee.
Lebanon's proudest political consensus was not exclusively Lebanese; it required international mediation and the blessing of external Arab delegates.
After the vote in 2009, the newly-elected parliament took more than four months to decide on the makeup of its cabinet.
International representatives from France, Russia, the US and Egypt -- to name just a few -- fell over themselves during visits to Beirut explaining how they would never interfere with cabinet formation.
The latter's foreign minister summed up the mood in September, warning against the "danger of allowing foreign parties to play on the Lebanese arena."
But foreign parties have used Lebanon as their playground for decades and 2009 proved no different.
During the months of political prevarication, it was Lebanon's worst kept secret that no cabinet would be formed before regional adversaries Saudi Arabia and Syria resumed dialogue. When Saudi's King Abdullah visited Syrian President Bashir al-Assad in Damascus at the start of October, it did not take long for an agreement to be reached on the Lebanese cabinet. Last minute wrangling dealt only with minor ministerial allocations; the major hurdle had been overcome. With all the rhetoric of Lebanese affairs remaining in Lebanon, 2009 showed us again that regional and international players must move before the game is won. There is little doubt that both Saudi Arabia (representing US interests) and Syria (speaking partially for Iranian incentives) came together over Lebanon for their own strategic benefit. But advantages gained from Abdullah's Damascus visit did not exclude Lebanon.
UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, with trademark understatement, remarked that Saudi-Syrian rapprochement was "widely perceived to have contributed to ease the political situation in Lebanon."
The stability this reconciliation engendered politically is also likely to have security ramifications. The assassinations of previous years have dried up as killers acting on behalf of regional players are no longer motivated to disrupt the security of a state which benefits all sides.
Lebanon in 2009 is a vastly calmer place than in previous years. Its people now have a democratically elected national-unity government, now finally addressing societal issues. But to say Lebanon is free from international influence is false. Not only in pressure exerted from neighboring states, but also in the very democratic mechanisms it now claims as its own, Lebanon still feels the force of regional and international tutelage.
Judging by the stability 2009 has brought to the country, that is no bad thing.