Clerics, militias and civil wars: the Lebanese case

The civil war in Mount Lebanon and the massacres of Christians in Damascus and other cities in 1860 ushered in a new era to the Levant region, leading to the establishment of the Mount Lebanon Mutassarifate and strengthening the move towards confessionalism in public life. This paper, based on unpublished documents from the Archives of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as articles in the Greek press and literary reviews, aims to explore the image of the various ethnic, linguistic and religious groups of Syria in the Kingdom of Greece during the 1840s–1860s. The presence of Greek merchants in the region and above all the strong ecclesiastical ties of the local Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch with the Constantinople Patriarchate add broader perspectives to the Greek ‘discovery’ of Syria. The character and ‘mission’ of the Greek Orthodox Church in the region was analysed by the Greek consuls in Beirut, who also formulated or advanced blueprints for the aims of Greek ‘cultural diplomacy’ in Syria. The different shades of opinion were highlighted during the first Greek ‘humanitarian intervention’, in the summer and autumn of 1860, when Greek war vessels sailed to Beirut to assist the needy and transport some local Christian refugees to Greece. For the government in Athens, this mission was a question of prestige. For Greek journalists and writers, it had much broader implications since it reinforced a feeling of cultural affinity between Greeks of the nation-state and the Christians of Syria.

Litigants and Neighbors: The Communal Topography of Ottoman Damascus

Civil war and male infertility in Lebanon

SPHERES OF INTERVENTION: FOREIGN POLICY AND THE COLLAPSE OF LEBANON, 1967-1976 James R. Stocker Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016 (vii + 296 pages, notes, index, illustrations, maps) $45.00 (cloth)Reviewed by Jeffrey G. KaramIn Spheres of Intervention: Foreign Policy and the Collapse of Lebanon, 1967-1976, James R. Stocker reconsiders the role of the United States in Lebanon's path to the civil war that erupted in 1975. Combining declassified documents from the National Archives and various American presidential libraries, as well as some Arabic and French sources, Stocker advances two main arguments. The first is that US policy toward Lebanon was subordinated to strategies toward the Cold War and the broader Middle East; the second is that the US played a role in the process of Lebanese state collapse (4, 5). Both arguments are meant to convince the reader that rather than focus on one set of factors, a proper study of involvement in Lebanon between 1967 and 1976 should incorporate the different domestic, regional, and international factors that shaped policy at the time. Stocker considers Lebanon's slide into mayhem alongside other regional and international events, such as the October War of 1973, the detente between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the various disengagement agreements and disagreements between a number of Arab states and Israel during the 1970s, making his account of the underlying factors that ignited the Lebanese Civil War among the most comprehensive.Spheres of Intervention consists of an introduction, eight chapters, and an epilogue. In the introduction, Stocker discusses interests in Lebanon and surveys existing literature on the causes of the civil war, which include the fragility of Lebanon's political system, foreign meddling in Lebanon's internal affairs, the effects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and poor socioeconomic development. The first three chapters deal with important junctures between the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and the Jordanian Civil War of 1970, known as Black September. Chapters four and five focus on the heightened tension and subsequent skirmishes between Palestinian militants and the Lebanese government leading up to the October War of 1973, as well as the state of sociopolitical affairs in Lebanon before the outbreak of the civil war. The last three chapters examine the first two years of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-76) and the intense negotiations between various Arab states, the United States, and Israel to broker temporary peace between the warring factions. More specifically, chapters six and seven demonstrate that Lebanon became a battleground for regional contestation between Syria and Israel, as well as between Syria and different Arab states. The epilogue fast-forwards through Lebanon's civil war and ends with the United States calling on the Lebanese government to implement UN resolutions, particularly regarding the disarmament of Hizballah's armed forces and other militas on Lebanese soil and, in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri in 2005, the creation of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.As the product of serious research drawing on multiple sources, Spheres of Intervention is unique in the way it approaches policy and the beginning of Lebanon's civil war. Parts of the book's analysis, however, prompt concerns about the interpretation of sources and linkages (or lack thereof) between important events in the time period covered. The first concern relates to the author's extreme reluctance to connect the dots between the various archival materials. It is understandable that Stocker refrains from making grandiose assertions that cannot be properly substantiated. Nevertheless, the author's analysis of military and financial support to right-wing Christian militias is very limited and troubling. As a matter of fact, Stocker vacillates between implicating the United States in taking sides, particularly by supporting Christian militias in the build-up to the Lebanese Civil War (18, 63-64, 131-32), and dismissing this partisanship by claiming that the United States refrained from actively fueling civil conflict (63-64, 144, 166, 224). …

First person: Ali Bazarbachi, MD, PhD: The professor at the American University of Beirut has advanced the treatment of leukemia and cancer research in the Middle East and worldwide.

With the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, a new map largely replaced the centuries-old demography of the Syrian Orthodox and the Syrian Catholic communities in southeast Turkey. Many people went to the newly formed Iraq, others went to Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. However, following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Syrian Orthodox and Syrian Catholic communities living in Palestine, principally in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, were forced to fl ee their homes. The June War of 1967, as well as the First and Second Intifadas, also caused many of the Syrian Orthodox who had settled in Israel and the West bank to relocate once again. Many people also fl ed the Civil War in Lebanon (1975-90).

Nineteen years after the end of the long Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), we find that traumas and memories of the war years still haunt the novels of many Lebanese writers. For example, images of the civil war as well as everyday life in the post-war era permeate recent narratives of such novelists as Elias Khoury, Rabī' Jābir, 'Ulwiyya Subuh, Nadā Awar Jarrār, and Rābih 'Alameddīne. The war experience has defined and shaped the writing techniques and narrative stylistics of a number of Lebanese novelists who belong to different generations. How do novelists fictionalise the traumas associated with an experience such as the civil war? In this study, I aim to investigate three related themes, namely trauma, memory, and identity by exploring Elias Khoury's two early novels Gates of the City [Abwāb al-Madīnah] and The White Faces [al-Wujūh al-Baydā'], which were both published in 1981, whilst drawing comparisons between them and Rabī Jābir's novel Rālf Rizqallah in the Mirror [Rālf Rizqallah fī al-Mir'āt], which was published in 1997. Despite the time span which separates Jābir's novel from those of Khoury, Jābir's text shares some significant characteristics with The White Faces in relation to novelistic form and structure, whilst overlapping with some themes of Gates of the City, particularly in the representation of such traumatic disorders as disorientation, nightmares, depression and severe anxiety when reflecting on the experience of the civil war. Thus, this study will address and discuss two interrelated questions: how do Khoury and Jābir fictionalise the experiences of trauma, memory, and identity in the three novels? And, in what ways are such representations significant in relation to living through the Lebanese civil war?

This article examines Catherine Leroy’s photograph of a fedayee as seen in God Cried (1984) that offers a nuanced perspective on an unconventional representation of a Palestinian freedom fighter, particularly within the context of the Palestinian liberation struggle in the refugee camps during the civil war in Lebanon (1975–1990). The photograph challenges prevailing western media depiction of Palestinians as subversive terrorists, aiming to restore their humanity and contesting the constructed image of the fedayee as a menacing thug. The article demonstrates how Leroy’s lens becomes a tool for reclaiming the Palestinians’ right to be visible as a human subject, transcending the biased portrayals perpetuated by some Israeli and western media.

Over the years, political scientists have largely come to accept four assumptions about civil wars. These assumptions are useful when applied to civil war as a concept. Unfortunately, they are invalid when applied to idiosyncratic cases like the Lebanese Civil War, and one must therefore exercise caution before generalizing from them. This essay discusses why the Lebanese Civil War defied political scientists’ usual assumptions about civil conflict. It suggests that countries sharing Lebanon’s idiosyncrasies will also resist the four assumptions. Finally, it uses survey data to undercut a view commonly held by the media and public—that different ethnic groups do not socialize with one another during times of conflict.

Civil wars are episodes when ethnic violence is likely to be observed. However,while some civil wars lead to extreme forms of violence such as ethnic cleansing,this is not always the case for every civil war. Then why do some civil wars breedethnic cleansing and not others? What sort of factors that are related to the contextof the civil war and the involved actors shape the likelihood of an ethnic cleansing?Which theories of political conflict explain these diverging outcomes better? Basedon two prominent civil wars of the last century, the Lebanese Civil War and the YugoslavWars, this article tests the hypotheses on political opportunities and grievancesin order to explain why the latter led to an ethnic cleansing while the formerdid not. Based on the systematic tests of these theories in comparative case studies,the study finds that factors related to political opportunities such as regime changeand political and military dominance are more useful in explaining the variationbetween the two cases whereas the factors that correspond with grievances suchas economic dominance and hatred do not explain the outcomes.

In 1977, United States president Jimmy Carter wanted a comprehensive peace for the Middle East. Amid the devastating civil war in Lebanon, Israel had found common ground with Christian militias and turned against the Palestinians. However, Carter's peace had to include Israel, and his persistent headache was to get the Jewish state to accept his suggestions, be it in Lebanon or in the negotiations with Egypt. Thus, Carter had to sacrifice any heroic peace for Lebanon on the altar of Egyptian-Israeli peace.

ACADEMIC AND POLICY CIRCLES have recently devoted much attention to agendas in civil wars. Their findings: the economic functions of violence contribute significantly to the duration of civil wars; they also pose serious obstacles to conflict resolution. This article takes another look at the impact of economic agendas on the attitudes of belligerents to conflict resolution. I argue that the economic activities of insurgents can become a source of political and military vulnerability and thus contribute to decisions to negotiate a peace settlement.After a brief methodological note on research into economic agendas in civil wars and a review of the main findings of the literature on the subject, I challenge the prevailing understanding of the impact of economic agendas on the course of civil wars and use the example of the Lebanese Forces, the main Christian militia in the Lebanese civil war (1975-90), to illustrate the connection between economic agendas, strength, and vulnerability.(f.1)DEFINITIONS AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUESThe term 'economic agendas' refers to the belligerents' involvement in black-market activities, ranging from transactions carried out 'off the books,' which are not different in substance from regular economic transactions, to criminal endeavours, which, by their very nature, contravene the law. Underground economic activities differ from conventional economic transactions in three respects:(f.2) - Unregulated: Since they are kept secret from governments, they fall outside the purview of a multitude of laws regulating exchanges of commodities and labour. - Untaxed: They do not generate tax revenues for the state or contribute to social security programmes. - Unmeasured: They are reflected in no official statistics on the economy.The nature of the activities raises special methodological problems that account, in part, for the relative dearth of empirical studies. Connections to the criminal 'underworld' shroud war economies in a secrecy that hinders efforts to obtain tangible evidence of theoretical claims. The context of civil wars, with the attending disruption of normal life, makes data collection arduous and research in the field hazardous.Within these limitations, it is, nonetheless, possible to sketch the role of the black market in the decision-making of the Lebanese Forces.(f.3) Indeed, this is a particularly instructive case. When the structures of the state collapse, as they did in Lebanon during the civil war, belligerents are often able to secure control over territorial enclaves wrested away from the state. The underground economy becomes the main economic activity within these enclaves. This may not necessarily increase the transparency of specific transactions; it does, however, provide a better sense of the scope and nature of the belligerents' economic undertakings.ECONOMIC AGENDAS IN CIVIL WARSAlthough relatively new to academic analysis, the study of economic agendas in civil wars has already generated a significant body of literature, which can usefully be divided into two main streams. One emphasizes greed as a primary motivation of violence; the other situates the economic agendas of combatants within the framework of efforts to address grievances.(f.4)When the motive is greed, violence is aimed at circumventing the law. Its immediate functions are local rather than national in scope. When a state collapses, military capabilities give warlords the means to extract economic resources for private profit.(f.5) Violence becomes a continuation of economics by other means.(f.6) Therefore, there is more to war than winning; for bandits or warlords it is logical to perpetuate conflict as a means of pursing economic interests. The policy implications are stark. There can be little prospect for conflict resolution as long as economic benefits flow to combatants. Sanctions, such as economic embargoes, may be the only available means to force combatants to the negotiating table. …

The second case study looks at Jocelyne Saab’s early work. She is well-known for fiction films Dunia, Kiss Me Not on the Eyes (2005) and What is Going On (2010). However, it is less well-known that she started her career as a documentary maker during the Lebanese Civil War. She recorded the war from the inside. Saab is especially effective in her attempts to deal with the trauma of the civil war for children, safeguarding a national memory that has become entrenched in amnesia. Her films, such as Lebanon in Torment (1975), Beirut Never Again (1978), Letters from Beirut (1979) and Once upon a Time in Beirut (1995) illustrate how Lebanon’s film culture is in fact defined by (civil) war. While Saab lives between Cairo and Paris, Beirut is one of the most modern cities in the Arab world, and is stereotypically known as the Paris of the Orient. It has become the centre of cinema production in the region and has inspired many young filmmakers to reconstitute their Lebanese identity through documentary. In this context, Lebanese documentary is an intellectualist art form and an opportunity to experiment.

In April 1975, a small incident in the Beirut suburb of Ain al-Rummanah sparked off a civil war which was to destroy the fragile unity of Lebanon. It also set a pattern for over fifteen years whereby the Lebanon became the proxy battlefield for the Arab-Israeli conflict and, just as importantly, for a number of destructive inter-Arab conflicts and disputes. As such, the Lebanese civil war, which lasted until autumn 1976, can be considered as the antithesis of the Rabat Summit. While Rabat had been a visible demonstration of Arab unity and collective Arab purpose, the Lebanese civil war highlighted the continuing salience of Arab disunity and the political and ideological tensions in inter-Arab relations. Both at Rabat and in Lebanon, the PLO played a central and formative role. However, while at Rabat the PLO had been the catalyst for forging an Arab unity around the Palestine question, in Lebanon it was a principal cause of a violent intra-Arab conflict which was to destroy much of Lebanon’s social fabric.

7. Fallen Cedar