I wrote the following brief history and background of post-colonial Lebanon for the website that the VII Foundation is developing in support of the publication of Imagine: Reflections on Peace:
Shatila Refugee Camp, 2007
Nichole Sobecki, EPIIC ’06, EXPOSURE ’04-‘08
Lebanon has endured decades of sectarian struggle, bitter internecine conflict, bloody vendettas, suicide bombings, invasions, and wars.
Since its independence in 1943 from France’s Mandatory rule, Lebanon’s fragile governance has been based on its National Pact, a complex division of power granting preferential status to the then majority Maronite Christian community, over its Shiite, Sunni, and Druze citizens. The rationale for this was Lebanon’s 1932 census, the only official census conducted to this day.
Despite being the Arab world’s first democracy, Lebanon has been in a perpetual battle for supremacy between its eighteen sects, enflamed by religious hatred, extremist leftist secular politics, and Palestinian radicalism. This noxious brew ultimately immersed the country in a brutal civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990. The war was marked by many atrocities, including the 1976 Karantina massacre of approximately 1,500 Palestinian refugees by right-wing Christian militias. The casualties counted well over 100,000 fatalities, and an estimated one million internally displaced people.
In 1975, Syria, which always considered Lebanon to be part of “Greater Syria,” aligned itself with the Christian Maronites. In 1982, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards entered to arm and support their Shiite co-religionists. The nucleus of their army became Hezbollah, which in 1983 committed a devastating jihadi suicide bomber attack on the barracks of US Marine Peacekeepers, hastening the American departure from Lebanon.
The Saudi-brokered 1989 Taif Agreement finally ended the atrocities and enacted structural reforms in an effort to create a more equitable political balance of power. It disarmed sectarian militias, but allowed Hezbollah to retain its arms as a “resistance force” against Israel.
Lebanon’s sovereignty has frequently been violated. In 1948 and then again in 1967, the country was forced to absorb Palestinian refugees fleeing Israel. In 1970, a large number of Palestinian fighters fleeing Jordan entered Lebanon after failing to overthrow the Hashemite Kingdom. The Palestinians attempted to create their own armed enclave among the Shiite Muslims in the south, but their presence was deeply resented. Palestinians cross-border incursions into Israel prompted two Israeli invasions of Lebanon, one in 1978 and one in 1982. The Israelis forced the Palestinian’s north into Beirut, beseiged the city, and forced Arafat’ and his fighters to depart for Tunisia. The Israelis then created a security buffer zone in southern Lebanon and occupied the twelve-mile territory through a mercenary Lebanese force for eighteen years, until 2000.
Recently, Lebanon’s fragile internal equilibrium has been further battered, with one and a half million civilians escaping the Syrian civil war crossed the border, seeking refuge. Currently, refugees compose a staggering one-quarter of the Lebanon’s population, the largest proportion refugee per capita in the world. Temporarily settled in camps, towns and cities, fifty-eight percent of them live in extreme poverty. The strains on its infrastucture and economy have been severe.
The Lebanese government’s problematic policies towards refugees further complicate its search for peace and stability. Palestinians are kept stateless. Even if born in the country, they cannot gain citizenship and they are banned from most professions and business ownership. Two-thirds of the estimated 175,000 Palestinians live in poverty in refugee camps.
The country also suffers from other challenges. Institutions are exceedingly weak, rule of law is ineffective, and corruption is rampant. These all contribute to stark inequality and wealth disparity. Given the decades of chaos, unrest and violence, far more of Lebanon’s citizens have opted to live abroad than in their own country.
While Lebanon’s civil society is weak, it has at times exposed the potential for reform. In 2005, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed in a truck bombing, in which the Assad Syrian regime was implicated. A massive, sustained non-violent protest movement, the Cedar Revolution, finally ended thirty years of Syrian occupation. And in 2015, a coalition of nonsectarian students, social actvisits, and remnants of a middle class, all disgusted with an ossified system of patronage and political paralysis, organized the “You Stink!” movement. Sparked a garbage collection crisis of many months, they organized mass demonstrations challenging the status quo. The mobilization ultimately had limited environmental impact, but the challenge was enough to unify the usually polarized factions, which came together to narrowly defeat the protesters in 2016 municipal elections.
To this day, Lebanon remains a hot arena for proxy warfare between Palestinian factions, Israeli forces, Hezbollah and other Shiite clients of Iran, and Saudi Arabian influence. In 2017, Saudi Arabia invited Sunni Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Riyadh, where he was detained and forced to publicly resign in a humiliating attempt to collapse a Lebanese coalition government that empowered Hezbollah. Hezbollah nonethless gained strength and ministerial positions in the 2019 elections and remains a powerful and coercive force.
Domestically, the Taif Agreement failed to confront Lebanon’s intense underlying domestic emnities, providing no process for reconciliation of the powerful Christian, Muslim and other Lebanese sectarian factions. In her essay, “Fire Under the Ashes,” Robin Wright identifies how identity politics have hardened in Lebanon and in much of the Arab world. She believes that “perhaps the most enduring legacy of Lebanon’s civil war may be a string of new wars,” whether internal or external.
The odds of success seem remote for the demands of young reformers: that the country’s veteran warlords finally cede to a new technocratic leadership. Lebanon remains an avatar of what conflict experts term “negative peace,” the absence of overt violence, in stark contrast to “positive peace,” efforts at harmony and community healing. The Palestinian actress, activist and writer, Mira Sidawi, born in Lebanon’s Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp, asserts that “peace needs equality,” and speaks of her desire to “work in the path of peace. A path to freedom for everyone.” She asks, “Perhaps we should all lose the privilege of identity. Why can’t we all become refugees?