Lebanese Civil War Research Articles

Conflicted presence: The many arrivals of Palestinians in Lebanon

Abstract No refugee arrival is ever a single event. Arrival repeats, but it is not the same each time. Each arrival is shaped by previous experience as well as future expectation. Considering the multiple layers that constitute refugee arrival is thus necessary to understand such experiences. Palestinians, who have experienced many arrivals, offer an instructive case. This article focuses on Lebanon, where Palestinian presence has always been challenged, and challenging. And this presence has also undergone many changes over the years. Approaching presence through the lens of the built environment, it explores how the construction, inhabitation, and destruction of buildings change over time and are historically layered. The article takes up three distinct moments in Palestinian history in Lebanon: (1) the early years/first arrival; (2) the time of revolution [thawra]; and (3) rebuilding after destruction by Israeli invasion and the Lebanese civil war. Together, these snapshots of different layers in cumulative arrival offer a textured image of Palestinian presence. An exploration of these layers shows that the formal recognition that derives from hereness is often the smaller part of its impact. Presence has a power that regularly defies the discursive, legal, and even affective limits that people and governments seek to put on it.

The toll of cascading crises on Lebanon's health workforce

The toll of cascading crises on Lebanon's health workforce

Claiming an Individual: Party, Family and the Politics of Memorialization in the Lebanese Civil War

Imad Nuwayhid (1944–1975) was a young Lebanese leftist intellectual, hotel employee, and fighter for the Lebanese Communist Party. Alongside thousands of others, he died during the first phase of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1976). This article explores Imad’s life, death, and legacy through the methodology of ‘Microhistory.’ Consulting Imad’s writings alongside party sources, and conducting interviews with those who knew him, it serves as a window into the politics of memorialization in the Lebanese Civil War with a focus on the Lebanese Left. It argues that multiple actors, ranging from party to family members, produced Imad’s ‘martyr narrative.’ Like others of the era, regardless of party, the narrative stressed ideology and sacrifice over individuality to mobilize the living to fight. These strategies did not, however, unfold without resistance. In the case of Imad, some family challenged the party, positing counter-narratives and claiming Imad as theirs: a Nuwayhid. Their actions seek to restore Imad as an individual, but not always as he lived. These findings contribute to the literature on the Lebanese Civil War and its memory, providing a personal touch through a new and novel level of analysis: the individual, their sources, and the battle over memory that surrounds them.

What does antisectarianism oppose? Lebanese communists’ debates on sectarianism, 1975–1981

ABSTRACT This article traces the debates of communists regarding the issue of sectarianism during the Lebanese civil war. Sectarianism in the Middle East has received significant attention, and in the same vein, there is a rising interest in thoughts opposing sectarianism. However, ‘sectarianism’ is an ambiguous term, and it is important to delineate exactly what a specific antisectarian thought opposes. The debates of the Lebanese communists prove this point well. Lebanese communists took part in the civil war (1975–1990), calling for the abolition of political sectarianism, but also collaborated with forces promoting interests specific to Muslims, and this was deemed by some as ‘sectarian’. Thus, the communists had a difficult task of theorizing their position opposing sectarianism, while allying themselves with allegedly ‘sectarian’ forces. In this context, communists debated the meaning of ‘sectarianism’, deliberating whether sectarianism is a social or political problem. By tracing these debates, I will argue that it is necessary to consider antisectarianism not as one thought that opposes an already determined ‘sectarianism’, but as specific thoughts that contest the definition of ‘sectarianism’ it seeks to overcome. Such a view will enrich our understanding of the history of secular thought in the Arab region.

The Lebanese Civil War 1975–90

This article argues that the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90) was in essence a terror of state directed by mercantile economic and political elites (the comprador class) controlling the Lebanese state and society against the middle and poorer classes (the working class). The aim of this terror or organized violence was to subdue the subordinate classes, which in the late 1960s and early 1970s rebelled against the confessional system that operated for the benefit of the comprador class. The rebellion was expressed by members of the working-class joining cross-confessional nationalist and leftist parties. Hence, violence was aimed at reestablishing the confessional order as a means to restore a hegemonic system that served the interests of the comprador class at a time when this class was rehabilitating its economic role by resurrecting the financial system, which had received a severe blow in the late 1960s. It effected this rehabilitation through the Taif Agreement signed between Lebanese parliamentarians in 1989, under the auspices of Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, to favor the new mercantile elite led by Rafiq Hariri.

Conflict on Mount Lebanon: The Druze, the Maronites, and Collective Memory

Conflict on Mount Lebanon: The Druze, the Maronites, and Collective Memory

The Psychological Legacy of the Lebanese Civil War in Paramilitary Veterans

ABSTRACT The experiences of irregular combatants and the psychosocial impact of their participation in violent conflict are poorly understood in comparison to the body of research available on military veterans in developed countries. The Lebanese civil war (1975–1990) was an archetypal intra-national armed conflict, involving thousands of civilians turned fighters. Fifteen former fighters were interviewed about their active involvement in the war. The qualitative analysis reveals a persistent psychosocial burden decades later. Former paramilitary fighters have needs that overlap only partially with those of regular veterans. Further research on this population would be beneficial to global peacebuilding efforts and conflict prevention.

Abject Talks Gibberish: “Translating” Abjection in Rabih Alameddine's An Unnecessary Woman

The Lebanese Civil War, stretching over two decades of Lebanon's history, features prominently in any discussion of Rabih Alameddine's An Unnecessary Woman (2014), a novel fashioned according to the pent-up frustrations of a post-trauma period. Alameddine's novel manifests traumatic signposts of the civil war, which make it indelibly situational, and accordingly latches onto complex psychological issues. It is branded with the mark of “abject,” which besots its pages, a phenomenon that threatens identity beyond measure, triggering even an existentialist entropy. In making an effort to (persistently) “describe” this complex phenomenon beyond ken, the novel enmeshes in a baroque and a quite wordy style that tells of an arduous quest on the author's (and characters‘) part to find the “right” word for “abject.” Drawing mainly on Sigmund Freud's essay “The Uncanny” and Julia Kristeva's Powers of Horror, this article proposes to skirt the psychological archaeology of “abject” in An Unnecessary Woman. It argues that the Lebanese Civil War is not the originator of the characters’ feeling of abjection in the novel. Rather, it contends that this feeling, already inherent in the human being and thus universal, is activated by abject threats, such as, in this premise, the civil war, its suspect entourage, and aging.

Daring to Teach the Civil War in Lebanon

Daring to Teach the Civil War in Lebanon

Building a Proto-State on Quicksand: The Rise and Fall of the Palestinian State-in-Exile in Lebanon

In the wake of its relocation to Lebanon, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) transformed from a guerrilla force into a state-builder. This article explores this transition and argues that the creation of the Palestinian protostate in Lebanon was largely guided by the country's civil war–induced state collapse after 1975, which created both opportunities and needs that forced the Palestinian movement to engage in state-building. Enticed by new opportunities and constrained by the Lebanese Civil War's volatility, the Palestinian movement shifted its strategic priorities from cross-border campaigns against Israel to fighting within Lebanon. These new opportunities and needs also encouraged the PLO to transform itself into a semi-conventional force, which led to its defeat in 1982 and the collapse of the Palestinian proto-state.

Identity Crisis in Arab Diasporic Novel: A Case Study of Lebanese American Novel

Very little has been written on cultural identity and national identity in contemporary Lebanese novel in the diaspora. This study explores how border identity is presented in Rabih Alameddine's Koolaids (1998), I, the Divine (2001), and The Angel of History (2016), three novels about the failure of the Lebanese immigrants to establish their cultural identity in the diaspora. It also gives a bird's-eye view of the myriad problems encountered by the immigrants while trying to build their cultural identity. Rabih Alameddine, a Lebanese American writer whose early literary pursuits focus on melting in the new homeland, represents the impossibility of redefinition and introduces the immigrants' remarkable preoccupation with the quest for national identity and nationhood. He mixes melancholic and ridiculous moments to represent the quest for cultural identity in order to subvert the neo-orientalist discourse which is based on the East/West dichotomy. Moreover, the use of multiple settings and narrators in each novel is also a common theme that explains the physical and psychological effects of the Lebanese civil war and the Lebanese ethnic categories in the diaspora.

Mohamed Mohamed Eid Soliman

It is with great sadness that the family of Mohamed Mohamed Eid Soliman announces his passing at the age of 73. He died peacefully at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, surrounded by...

The Greek ‘discovery’ of Syria: the 1860 civil war in Lebanon and Damascus and Greek public opinion

ABSTRACT 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.

Objects of transgenerational memory: challenging hegemonic historical narratives of war in Lebanon

This article examines how objects embedded in the domestic life of the generation of the Lebanese civil war and the subsequent generations evoke stories that disrupt the state�s hegemonic production of history. The article explores stories surrounding two objects that survived the war, and took on residues of memory later heard and retold by the subsequent generation. These objects illuminate ways in which the legacy of intergenerational memory is produced and transmitted�and how these alternative spaces and stories emerge in present struggles, including the October 2019 revolution. In the first section, the article examines how material objects operate as intergenerational symbols of the experiences of war and as media for the process of narrativisation. In the second section, the argument explores the role of the material as a witness to what resists language and as a locus to memory�s temporality. In the third section, the article looks into the affective dimension of the material object as it provokes an opening to narration and challenges linear understandings of history. This search through material and domestic objects seeks stories that resist closure, and is essential to understanding today�s struggle against the Lebanese political class.

Marginal memories of Lebanon�s civil war: challenging hegemonic narratives in a small town in North Metn

This article focuses on the �hidden public culture� formed by individual memories of violent conflicts, with particular reference to the Lebanese Civil War (1975�90). Taking memory as a terrain through which individuals can contest authoritarian governance and repressive memory scripts, the article argues that personal memories of ordinary citizens can contribute to illuminate the power relations that structure war memorialisations. Through a series of interviews, the article analyses militia practices in a small town in North Metn to challenge the idea that militias were merely defending a territory from external enemies. Militia abuses against the populations they were meant to defend during the Civil War are also used as a starting point to reflect on Lebanon�s present. This case study is then used as a starting point to advocate for the use of personal memories in the research of violent conflicts as a way to broaden our understanding of conflict�s lived experiences.

İç Savaşlar Ne Zaman Etnik Temizlik Doğurur? Lübnan ve Yugoslavya Vakaları

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.

THE LEBANESE STUDY COMMITTEE: A CHRISTIAN THINK TANK IN WARTIME LEBANON (1975–1982)

AbstractThis article seeks to shed light on the Lebanese Study Committee, an overlooked centre of intellectual production and political activity during the Lebanese Civil War. It was comprised of legal experts and Maronite monks of the Lebanese Maronite Order, and emerged at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik in 1975. The committee was created at the initiative of the Catholic clergy in order to endow the Christian war effort with an ‘intellectual pole’ capable of studying recent developments and provide solutions aimed at defending the interests of the Christian society. By making use of hitherto inaccessible primary sources, its internal and external publications, the article elucidates the activities and ideas of the committee, which worked to counteract leftist discourse and propaganda. By paying attention to the context of the Lebanese Study Committee's emergence, the article also brings to light a history of interaction between lay, clerical, state, and para-military institutions. It concludes that its creation is the direct consequence of the grassroots mobilization of conservative agents, which is reminiscent of the ways in which Western conservatism was revived in the same years.

Within small things. Reflections on techno-social boundaries between prehistory and recent past during a Lebanese fieldwork

The village of Qleiaat, in the Mount Lebanon, has recently been the centre of archaeological activities aimed at studying late prehistoric and Early Bronze Age vestiges. But from the very beginning this research has also tried to investigate with purely archaeological means the remains of the recent past of the village, especially the pithoi used in the 19th-20th centuries for food storage, and the ruins left by violent clashes that took place in Qleiaat at the end of the Lebanese civil war. Through a reflection on the possibility of reconstructing physical frontiers starting from the archaeology of fossil techniques, this paper applies to a recent case-study an approach used until now only for prehistoric material culture. The aim is to recognize the frontier between the militias having clashed in Qleiaat in 1988-1990 on the basis of the chaînes opératoires of the pithoi.

Quagmire in Civil War. Schulhofer‐Wohl, JonahCambridge, Cambridge University Press (2020), 340 p., ISBN 9781108708265

Quagmire in Civil War. Schulhofer‐Wohl, JonahCambridge, Cambridge University Press (2020), 340 p., ISBN 9781108708265

The Taif Agreement 1989 and its Role in ending the Lebanese Civil War

The Taif Agreement 1989 and its Role in ending the Lebanese Civil War