Lebanese Civil War Research Articles

A Careful Minuet: The United States, Israel, Syria and the Lebanese Civil War, 1975–1976

During the spring of 1976, the Syrian army unexpectedly intervened in the Lebanese civil war. Syria’s President Hafez al-Assad had shifted his allegiances, abandoning his Muslim–Palestinian partners and joining the conflict in order to prevent the Christians from losing. Assad feared that if the PLO managed to tip the balance of power in Lebanon in its favour, an Israeli response would be inevitable. Following his move to prevent this, Israel did nothing. This uncharacteristic prudence from Israel when faced with Syrian forces entering Lebanon has been attributed by many analysts to a ‘red line agreement’ which asserted a de facto partitioning of Lebanon into Israeli and Syrian spheres of influence, negotiated in secret by the powerful US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Drawing upon American and Israeli archival sources, this article argues that the ‘red line agreement’ was in fact no agreement at all but rather a short-lived Syrian–Israeli marriage of convenience within which the Americans acted as mediators. The Syrians and Israelis danced ‘a careful minuet’ in southern Lebanon, constantly probing each other’s strategic thresholds while seeking US assurances that neither would attack the other.

Wars, Weapons and Terrorists: Clandestine Operations of the Polish Military Intelligence Station in Beirut, 1965–1982

This article examines the Polish Military espionage in Lebanon during the Cold War. Thorough analysis of recently declassified files of the Zarząd II Sztabu Generalnego Wojska Polskiego (Second Board of the General Staff of the Polish Army) allows reevaluation of the role played by the intelligence station codename “Cedr”/”Balbek” in Beirut from 1965 to 1982. The available archival records challenge the notion that Polish military intelligence was effective and conducted a long-term espionage strategy in Lebanon. In fact, since its establishment, the station lacked HUMINT capabilities and relied mostly on open source data. Moreover, the ambitious plans to set up a special intelligence post in Lebanon in case of the outbreak of a Third World War were hindered because of the civil war that started in 1975. Internal instability and bloody military conflict, however, enabled Polish intelligence to acquire significant amounts of Western-made weaponry, which boosted at the same time clandestine contacts with Middle-Eastern terrorist organizations. Warsaw profited from the Lebanese civil war by supplying different factions with arms and by using murky brokers and middle-men for obtaining embargoed goods.

The Lebanese Civil War and post-conflict power sharing: continuation of conflict dynamics in post-conflict environments

ABSTRACT Lebanese political dynamics are often characterized by political confessionalism, neo-liberal economics, corruption, and its particularity as an Arab state with Western social orientations. Although these characterizations may seem, at times, contradictory, this article argues that they are part of a political structure that initially developed during the Civil War (1975–1990) that was sustained by Lebanon’s post-conflict power sharing agreement. This article builds on the critiques present in the developing scholarship on post-conflict power sharing, demonstrating how dynamics established as a consequence of the Civil War continued into the post-conflict period. This has led to the reproduction of sectarian boundary inflammation, limitations on democratic and civil society mobilisation, and political stagnation. The article concludes with an analysis of the 2015 Garbage Crisis as exemplary of sustained Civil War dynamics and the consequent constraints on civil society mobilisation caused by these dynamics.

The Long Drive to Prison

The Long Drive to Prison

Memory within and without the photographic frame: Wadad Halwani’s The Last Picture… While Crossing

Wadad Halwani’s short documentary film, The Last Picture…While Crossing (2009), is in the main about the late Odette Salem, whose two children were disappeared in September 1985, during the civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990). This essay discusses how Halwani adapts photographs and previously made video footage to situate Salem as a site of memory. While the film constitutes a memorial practice to tell a story of Salem and her activist milieu, it works to situate memory of her plight as an ethical modality of address and response. In doing so, the film exposes a public audience, both actual and potential, to Salem’s and Halwani’s circumstances and their arduous efforts in engaging their circumstances. The argument foregrounds memory as a circumstantial tension between the significance and resonance of photographs, in respect to circulations of photographic reproductions and exhibitions as modalities of public exposure.

Desire under conflict: The potential for queer in Hoda Barakat’s The Stone of Laughter

ABSTRACTThis article examines Hoda Barakat’s original rendition of gender and sexual otherness in The Stone of Laughter (1990), the first Arabic novel with a queer protagonist, Khalil. The analysis sheds light on pre-modern Arabic literature’s celebratory depiction of homoerotic desire vis-à-vis the dearth and negative connotations of the theme in modern Arabic fiction. The article explores Barakat’s implementation of surrealism in her portrayal of Khalil’s sexuality and the reality of his choices within the context of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90). Khalil’s queer identity, which marks his dissidence, becomes a form of resistance that challenges the status quo of his hetero-patriarchal society and the unresolved sociopolitical issues that led to the War.

Empathy and the Lebanese Civil War of 1958 in the USA

This article examines the role that empathy played during the US intervention in the Lebanese civil war of 1958, also known as Operation Blue Bat. Through deep readings of public texts, it explores how a minority of Americans empathized with Lebanese opponents of President Camille Chamoun. After the arrival of US forces, Lebanese anti-Chamounists made their voices heard and feeling felt in the USA via global information providers, enacting cultural interventions. Lebanese dissent was headline news, engendering empathetic processes that reoriented US ways of feeling, thinking, and acting. By using empathy as a point of entry into historical intercultural relations, this article unearths how genuine transnational understandings were socially formed during a moment of conflict. Ultimately, it argues that a focus on empathy gives foreign relations scholars an avenuethateschews nefarious Orientalist binaries and their powers in the process.

Rogues, degenerates, and heroes: Disobedience as politics in military organizations

Disobedience in military organizations affects critical outcomes such as the quality of civil–military relations, the likelihood of civilian abuse, and battlefield effectiveness. Existing work on military disobedience focuses on group dynamics; this article instead investigates the circumstances under which individual officers disobey. We argue that officers interpret military orders based on their concurrent positions in multiple social networks and that, contingent on the soldier’s environment, such orders can “activate” tensions between overlapping social network identifications. These tensions create motivations and justifications for disobedience. We develop this theory via in-depth case studies of individual officers’ disobedience in the Chinese military and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), combined with an examination of 10 additional cases outlined in an online appendix. Relying on primary sources, we demonstrate how identifications with overlapping social networks led two ostensibly dissimilar officers to disobey in similar ways during the Sino-French War (1883–1885) and the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1989). Our theory thus shows how overlapping social networks create conditions of possibility for even well-trained, loyal commanders to disobey their superiors. In doing so, it highlights the critical fact that even within the context of intensive military discipline and socialization, individuals draw on identifications with varied social networks to make decisions. Further, it implies that individual disobedience should be studied as conceptually separate from collective events such as mass desertion or unit defection.

The Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon Post 1990: Dilemmas of Survival and Return to Palestine

This article addresses the issue of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, their camps, their resistance, and the challenges they have been facing “as refugees” to survive in the deeply divided state of Lebanon and to return to Palestine. Currently there are about 450,000 Palestinian refugees scattered among 12 official and recognized Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon as well as many refugee gatherings; this number is part of the 6 million Palestinian refugees who are scattered in the world as a result of the establishment of the Zionist entity in 1948. However, on December 11, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly issued the UN resolution 194, during its third session, which stipulated that Palestinians have the right of return to their homes in Palestine. The Palestinian right of return is a Right and therefore it is not negotiable and cannot be compromised under any condition and/or circumstance. There have been continual attempts and proposals to terminate this Palestinian right of return to historic Palestine. To stop these toxic proposals from reaching their goals and to achieve their strategic goal, the Palestinian resistance has the legitimate right to use any means necessary, including armed struggle against the occupiers. The Palestinians in Lebanon are part of this process and they have been struggling on all levels to achieve their civil and human rights in order to improve their social and economic conditions in their refugee camps. Furthermore, the Palestinians have the legitimate right to continue their national struggle against Israel, which is the only way for the Palestinians to achieve their national goal for total liberation. However, there have been additional challenges affecting the Palestinians and their refugee camps in Lebanon post 1990; by the end of the Lebanese Civil War, the Palestinian refugee camps witnessed the emergence and growth of takfiri groups. Consequently, the Palestinian refugees have been sandwiched between oppressive Lebanese rules and the rise of the takfiris inside the camps. The article attempts to answer the following questions: What are the challenges affecting the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon? How can the Palestinians protect their identity from erasure and achieve their right of return to Palestine? Which internal and external groups currently control the camps? In what ways has takfiri ideology impacted the Palestinian identity? How can the Palestinian refugees and their camps survive under such conditions?

Étude de causalité entre la consommation d’électricité et la croissance économique au Liban

This article studies the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in Lebanon over the period 1971-2012. This relationship is examined using cointegration and Granger causality tests. The results of the estimates indicate that economic growth and electricity consumption in Lebanon are not cointegrated and that there is no causal relationship between variables according to Granger’s tests. However, a unidirectional causality is detected in the post-war period (1990-2012), ranging from electricity consumption to economic growth. The results of this research prove strongly, and with an econometric approach, that electricity consumption was the fundamental sourceof economic growth after the civil war in Lebanon, which explains the appearance of this causal relationship. In addition, the most relevant implication of this study is that mitigation of current power generation shortages should be a national priority, given its potential positive effect on the Lebanese economy.

Violence, displacement, contact, and attitudes toward hosting refugees

How do individuals’ personal experiences with various aspects of political violence affect their attitudes toward hosting conflict refugees? More specifically, how do their personal exposure to violence, their own personal experience of being displaced, and their recent contact with refugees influence these attitudes? To explore answers to these questions, we draw upon a recent survey of 2,400 Lebanese residents where we identify individuals who experienced violence during the Lebanese civil war (1975–90), those forced to flee their homes during that conflict, and those who enjoy recent contact with Syrian immigrant and/or displaced populations. We examine whether these distinct experiences affect respondents’ regard for members of the Syrian refugee population. Results demonstrate that historical exposure to violence and experience of displacement have no discernible impact on individual attitudes toward hosting refugees. We find much stronger evidence that attitudes are associated with whether individual respondents have had contact with Syrians in Lebanon; those with such interactions are significantly more likely to support hosting refugees, to consider hiring a refugee, or to allow one of their children to marry a refugee. Our findings suggest exposure to violence by itself does not correlate to positive sentiments toward refugees, especially over time. Further, finding ways to create positive contact between refugees and native populations may be associated with improving attitudes and relations between the two populations.

Challenging Panopticism through Representations

Abstract The Burj al-Murr appears in the Beirut cityscape as a towering concrete tube dotted with rectangular windows. The construction of the tower began in 1974. The eruption of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 radically altered the building’s purpose. Today, this towering ruin holds diverse meanings. In this article, I examine eight contemporary visual works (2001–2016) featuring Burj al-Murr. These works are analyzed as representations that challenge the Murr Tower’s ties to panopticism. Although the term panopticism is understood throughout the article to hold negative connotations and the term challenging implies defying the panopticon, the term challenging can also imply stimulation. Hence, as artists and designers appropriate Burj al-Murr, they defy the negative associations tied to it. They also stimulate its alternative potentials. In doing so, they raise questions regarding the uncertain future of this panoptic tower and representations of it yet to come.

Venezuela’s Toxic Relations with Iran and Hezbollah: an avenue of violence, crime, corruption and terrorism .

Venezuela’s relations with Iran date back into the sixties when both were founding members of the OPEC. Iran’s influence in Latin America has become quite large since the Iranian revolution. Iran sees Latin America as a strategic priority for its global positioning. The Lebanese immigration towards South America has begun a while ago. But there’s a period, during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) when a large number of Lebanese immigrants came to the continent. Back then, according to some experts, Hezbollah and Iran took advantage of this mass migration and infiltrated their agents and recruiters among the Muslim migrants. Hezbollah is probably the most organized terrorist organization in the World in respect to its illegal financing activities. The group funds its regular operations through all sorts of crimes. Hezbollah has a tight relationship with Iran. Ever since Iran has established its covert operations in Venezuela, Hezbollah has come along, as its proxy. Venezuela is submerged in crime and corruption. The Venezuelan government has been infiltrated by transnational organized crime for more than a decade. The convergence of corruption, crime, violence and terrorism in Venezuela was enabled by a set of conditions and circumstances that basically surfaced after Chávez was elected president in 1998. From that time onwards, Venezuela became a crucial source of political, financial and logistical support for Hezbollah. Their relationship impacts the neighboring countries, particularly Brazil.

Female Fighters and Militants During the Lebanese Civil War: Individual Profiles, Pathways, and Motivations

This article offers an analysis of women’s profiles, pathways, and motivations to join the Lebanese civil war (1975 to 1990), with a particular focus on female fighters militants involved with Harakat Amal, Kataeb, the Progressive Socialist Party, Lebanese Communist Party, Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The article contributes to existing debates on women’s motivations to join nonstate armed groups by examining both militias that included female fighters and those that did not. It is the first study so far that analyses the profiles and motivations of female fighters and militants within all major militias during the Lebanese civil war.

Pieces of Us

Abstract This article uses a multigenerational lens to address the tangible and intangible embodiments of the US-Saudi oil empire in the lives of the three sister authors. This multisited intimate geography of empire challenges national categories and recognizes that mixing and migrations, forced or desired, shape and define all families. It explores the look, feel, and sounds of lifeworlds in the US imperial outpost of Aramco using an immense archive of family photographs and Fadia Basrawi’s memoir, Brownies and Kalashnikovs: A Saudi Woman’s Memoir of American Arabia and Wartime Beirut (2009). It considers the geopolitics of oil and the worlds it produced in the intimate relations and domestic quarters of the Aramco oil camp in the 1950s and 1960s, in the authors’ childhoods in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, which also involved US imperialism, and as embodied in their lives at present.

War Narratives Through The Eyes/I´S of Women in Iman Humaydan Younes’ B As In Beirut

Lebanese author and journalist Iman Humaydan Younes published her debut novel B as in Beirut in Arabic in 1997 while the English translation didn’t appear until 2007. The novel is divided into four narratives told by Lillian, Warda, Camilia, and Maha who live in the same apartment building in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war that extended from 1975 till 1990. Younes chooses to present personal narratives that reflect the emotional states of these women rather than describe the violent occurrences of the actual war. In this sense she tells of the repercussions of the war on her female narrators, and the coping mechanisms that each adopts away from the violence, destruction and absurdity that have been the main foci of most Lebanese war novels. My paper affects a close reading of these interlocked narratives and investigates the female voices behind them: who they are, what they are going through, and what they do in order to survive the state of inertia and loss during the civil war. My contention is that Younes’s novel is one of the very few that succeeds in conveying the female experience during the civil war and paves the way for a Feminist attitude towards gender roles in a war- torn nation, and towards an understanding of the place of the woman in an overly maleoriented and maneuvered dominion.

Foreign Policy Effects on Malaysian Medical Volunteers in Lebanon in the 1980s

On 8 July 1987, the first team of Malaysian volunteers under the Malaysian Medical Volunteers left for war torn Beirut to volunteer in emergency medical service in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. It was the most intense and dangerous phase of the bloody 15-year long Lebanese civil war. The Malaysian Medical Volunteers (MMV) is the earliest known example of Malaysians being involved in international volunteering services especially in conflict zone in the Middle East. The example of the MMV has been a role model for other international groups such as the Medical Relief Society (MERCY). While is it known that altruism and religious affinity underpinned the motivations of Malaysians in their decision to volunteer, it is not known whether foreign policy effects their decision to volunteer their services abroad. This article seeks to shed light into this question by tracing the evolution of the MMV and the experience of the volunteers in Lebanon from 1987-1988.

The Black Saturday Massacre of 1975: the discomfort of assembling the Lebanese civil war narrative

ABSTRACTThe Black Saturday massacre that took place on 6 December 1975 in Beirut, Lebanon, marked the first large-scale targeting of Lebanese civilians during the Lebanese civil war. The magnitude of the violence committed on that day set the precedent to outbursts of violence between December 1975 and June 1976, namely the Battle of the Hotels, and the Karantina and Damour massacres which were retaliatory in nature. The circumstances surrounding the massacre remain tied to one individual in particular, Joseph Sa`adeh, who initiated the massacre upon learning of the death of his son. Considering that the construction of the Lebanese civil war narrative remains one of the most politically contested and sensitive processes in Lebanon to date, this article examines where personal motivations, grievances and convictions fit in historiographical practices, which are often centred on actions themselves, and are dismissive of the vast personal negotiations that build up to them. The article therefore offers a deeper examination of Lebanese civil war historiography, by stitching together the voices of both fighters and civilians. In doing so, the article also challenges the linear trajectories of war narratives in Lebanon that lend themselves easily to epistemological labels of sectarianism, and often ignore the arbitrariness of people's behaviour in times of extreme stress.

Oriented Speech in Maalouf’s The Disoriented (Les Désorientés)

The ultimate goal of literary discourse is not necessarily for readers to simply accept what the story tells. Literary discourse tries to convey a message to the reader by telling a story. Ruth Amossy distinguishes among two types of argument discourses: argumentative dimension and argumentative aiming discourses. Using Amossy’s interpretation, this paper will attempt to answer the question: “Are there some literary discourses in general and novels in particular that have more argumentative goals than others?” In our attempt to answer this question, our present work will be based on Amin Maalouf’s novel The Disoriented (Les Desorientes). This novel tells the story of Adam, who returns to his native country after 25 years of exile. Adam is also the narrator of the novel. It is the story of a group of friends, inseparable 25 years ago, but nowadays scattered to the four corners of the world after the civil war in Lebanon. To answer the first cited question, we will first analyze the enunciative, discursive, and narrative processes the narrator uses to stage his semi literary and at the same time argumentative speeches; then we will discuss the question of ethos or author posture the author gives to the reader through his novel.

Growth politics from the top down

A quarter century after the final days of the Lebanese civil war (1975–1990), a property frenzy spurred by billions of petro-dollars channeled into the built environment has reconfigured Beirut's physical and socio-economic fabrics far beyond anything required by post-war reconstruction. To better understand this puzzle—property attractiveness and vitality in an environment as financially and politically unstable as Lebanon's—this paper analyzes the local property market as an institutionally-grounded social construct that pegs urbanization to the stability of the country's rentier and finance-driven capitalism. In doing so, this paper unpacks the financialization of property, the key role of the Lebanese state in growth politics, and the multidimensional character of power in the making of conflict-affected cities.