War Memory, Confessional Imaginaries, and Political Contestation in Postwar Lebanon

Abstract

How does sectarianism intersect with war memories to subvert the political balance of power in postwar Lebanon? This article examines this complex dynamic along two levels. On one level, it demonstrates how war memory is deployed selectively from above by members of the political elite to sabotage the national war memory sanctioned officially and corresponding to a particular postwar confessional balance of power. At another level is the confessional or sectarian use of memory to resist this postwar political balance of power perceived as unjustly tipped against the subnational community. The argument advances in two steps. I first examine how war memory is invoked during crucial political battles that impact the postwar confessional balance of power. I take the debate around the promulgation of a new electoral law, and the 2018 parliamentary elections, in the context of the regional repercussions of the explosion of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the spillover effects of the Syrian war on Lebanon, as a case study of how different elites not only invoke war memories to contest or defend the postwar confessional balance of power but also to advance intra-sectarian political prerogatives. I then consider political memory as part of a complex and variegated confessional imaginary that survives at the private level in the form of resistance by substantial sectors of the Christian community to the postwar political balance of power and to the official national narrative of the war, one that refuses to revisit some of its most sordid moments, namely, its massacres. The article closes by underscoring the importance of reconciling dissonant memories of the war as a prerequisite for achieving genuine justice, peace, and reconciliation in postwar Lebanon.

Key Words:

• Civil war
• Imaginaries
• Lebanon
• Massacres
• Memory
• Reconciliation
• Sectarianism

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers for Middle East Critique, Sara Salem and Roberto Roccu for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. He also acknowledges a generous travel grant from the Lebanese American University (LAU) that allowed the presentation of an earlier draft at the 2018 British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) conference.

Notes

1 See Al-Akhbar (2017) Yazan Halwani Yuhareb al-Ta’ifiya bil … Graffiti [Yazan Halwani Fights Confessionalism with … Graffiti], October 24.

2 See Sami Hermez (2017) War is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), p. 153. See also Najib Hourani (2008) The Militiaman Icon: Cinema, Memory, and the Lebanese Civil Wars, CR: The New Centennial Review, 8(2), p. 287.

3 Hiba Bou Akar (2018) For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut’s Frontiers (California: Stanford University Press).

4 For a discussion, see Sune Haugbølle (2010) War and Memory in Lebanon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 71.

5 Covering all crimes committed before March 1991 except those pertaining to religious and political figures.

6 See Hermez, War is Coming; Haugbølle, War and Memory. See also, for example, Oren Barak (2007) ‘Don’t Mention the War?’ The Politics of Remembrance and Forgetfulness in Postwar Lebanon, Middle East Journal, 61(1), pp. 49–70; Kamal S. Salibi (2003) A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (Berkeley: University of California Press); and Thomas Richard (2014) Mémoire de guerre et de résistancedans les films Libanais [Memory of war and resistance in Lebanese cinema], Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 18(5), pp. 505–513.

7 Elsa Abou Assi (2011) Collective Memory and Management of the Past: The Entrepreneurs of Civil War Memory in Post-War Lebanon, International Social Science Journal, 61(202), pp. 399–409.

8 Craig Larkin (2012) Memory and Conflict in Lebanon: Remembering and Forgetting the Past (London: Routledge); and Hala Kawsarani (2006) al-Usbou al-Akhir [The last week] (Beirut: Dar al-Saqi).

9 See Sune Haugbølle (2005) Public and Private Memory of the Lebanese Civil War, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 25(1), pp. 191–203.

10 Ibid, p. 202.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Hermez, War is Coming, p. 169. See also Lucia Volk (2010) Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).

14 See Sune Haugbølle, War and Memory in Lebanon; and Eduardo Wassim Aboultaif (2019) Ethnurgy, Mobilisation, Memory and Trauma in Consociational Systems, Nations and Nationalism, 25(2), pp. 564–586.

15 I borrow directly from Charles Taylor (2004) Modern Social Imaginaries (London: Duke University), p. 23.

16 Raymond Williams (1978) Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 128–135. See also Edward W. Said (1994) Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books).

17 See Bassil’s May 2013 comments, eLNASHRA, May 13, 2013. Available at: https://www.elnashra.com/news/show/616341/, accessed July 11, 2018.

18 Maronites occupy 34 seats (compared to 27 for the Sunnis and another 27 for the Shi‘a), or 26.5 percent of parliamentary seats while constituting only 21.8 percent of total registered voters and 19.31 percent of the population See Democracy Reporting International (2008) Assessment of the Election Framework: Election Law of 2008, Democracy Reporting International. Available at: http://www.democracy-reporting.org/files/report_lebanon_0902.pdf, accessed August 16, 2015.

19 See Bassel F. Salloukh & Renko A. Verheij (2017) Transforming Power Sharing: From Corporate to Hybrid Consociation in Postwar Lebanon, Middle East Law and Governance, 9(2), pp. 147–173.

20 John Nagle (2016) Between Entrenchment, Reform and Transformation: Ethnicity and Lebanon’s Consociational Democracy, Democratization, 23(7), pp. 1144–1161.

21 See al-Nahar (2013) Bassil: Al-Munasafa Tutabaq bil-Orthodoxi [Bassil: Parity is applied by the Orthodox law] May 23; and al-Akhbar (2013) Bassil: Al-Mukhtalat Harb Jabal Siyasiya [Bassil: The mixed law is a new mountain war], May 24.

22 The first iteration of this type of mixed electoral law had been tried in 2006 when a nominally independent commission proposed a law with 60 percent (or 77 out of a total of 128) of parliamentary seats elected by voters at the governorate level using the simple plurality electoral system, and the balance of 40 percent (or 51 out of a total of 128) seats elected by voters at the larger provincial levels using PR voting. The proposal was unceremoniously shelved by then Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, given its impact on the Sunni Future Movement’s electoral prospects.

23 Jean Aziz (2014) Qanun Berri Jadi, Famaza Ya‘ni Bel ’arqam? [Berri’s law is serious, so what does it mean numerically?], al-Akhbar, November 20.

24 Walid Husseini (2016) Jawla ‘ala Qawanin al-Intikhabat, Almodon [A Survey of Electoral Laws]. Available at: http://www.almodon.com/politics/2016/5/26, accessed December 1, 2016.

25 See Bassil: Al-Munasafa Tutabaq bil-Orthodoxi.

26 See Bassil: Al-Munasafa Tutabaq bil-Orthodoxi, and Bassil: Al-Mukhtalat Harb Jabal Siyasiya.

27 For a riveting account of this period see Alain Ménargues (2005) Asrar Harb Lubnan: Min Mazabeh Sabra wa Shatila hata Rihlat Amin al-Gemayel ila Dimashq [The secrets of Lebanon’s war: From the Sabra and Shatila massacres to Amine Gemayel’s trip to Damascus] (Beirut: Librairie Internationale).

28 See Albert Mansour (1994) Mawt Jumhuriya (Beirut: Dar al-Jadid), pp. 323–341.

29 See Al-Joumhouria (2017) Nasrallah: Al-Qanun al-Lazi Yuhaqeq Awsa‘‘Adala Huwa al-Nisbiya al-Kamila [Nasrallah: Full proportionality is the law that achieves the greatest justice], March 18.

30 The FPM originally accepted Hizbullah’s proposal in the hope that the Future Movement would reject it. When the latter accepted it on a tactical basis, the FPM backtracked and rejected Hizbullah’s proposal.

31 Muhammad Choqair (2017) Al-Masihiyun Yarfudun al-Nisbiya al-Kamila: Hiya al-Wajh al-Akhar lil-Dimuqratiya al-‘Adadiya [Christians reject complete proportional representation: It is the other face of majoritarian democracy], al-Hayat, March 23.

32 See Bassel F. Salloukh, Rabie Barakat, Jinan S. Al-Habbal, Lara W. Khattab & Shoghig Mikaelian (2015) The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon (London: Pluto Press), p. 14; and Census and Sensibility (2016) The Economist. Available at: http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21709535-new-data-reveal-looming-crisis-lebanons-ruling-elite-exposing-fiction, accessed January 5, 2017.

33 See Al-Quwatiyun Ba‘ada Geagea… ‘Daq al-Khatar’! [The Lebanese Forces after Geagea… The danger is at the door] (2017) IMLebanon. Available at: https://www.imlebanon.org/2017/03/30/lebanese-forces-supporters-react-to-geagea-tweet/, accessed July 10, 2018.

34 See the lyrics of the song available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQW8ndo89GE, accessed July 10, 2018.

35 See Ibrahim al-Amin (2018) Bassil wal-Intikhabat wa Huquq al-Masihiyun: Al-Haqiqa bil-Maqlub [Bassil and the elections and Christian rights: The truth upside down], al-Akhbar, April 30, 2018.

36 See Bassel F. Salloukh (2017) The Syrian War: Spillover Effects on Lebanon, Middle East Policy, 24(1), pp. 62–78.

37 Al-Nahar (2017) Bassil Yo’aked ana al-Musalaha lam Tatum wa Yas’al ‘An al-Idham … wa Jumblatt Yastanjed bil-Batarika’[Bassil confirms that reconciliation is not complete and enquires about the bones… and Jumblatt seeks help from the patriarchs], October 15.

38 See Wade R. Goria (1985) Sovereignty and Leadership in Lebanon 1943–1976 (London: Ithaca Press).

39 See al-Mustaqbal (2018) Jumblatt Jala fi al-Shuf al-A‘la: al-Sulta al-Jadida Turid Tatwiq al-Jabal wa Isqat al-Mukhtara [Jumblatt toured the upper Shuf: The new regime wants to beseige the mountain and overthrow the Mukhtara], May 3.

40 See Makram Rabah (2018) Bayn Jubran Bassil wa Matiyat Tanyous Shahin: Istihdar al-Madi wa Nabsh al-Qubur [Between Gebran Bassil and instrumentalizing Tanyous Shahin: Invoking the past and digging up the graves], Raseef 22. Available at: https://raseef22.com/politics/2018/05/04/, accessed August 1, 2018.

41 See al-Amin, Bassil wal-Intikhabat wa Huquq al-Masihiyun: Al-Haqiqa bil-Maqlub.

42 See Nqoula Nasif (2018) ‘Endama Khasir Bassil Hulafa’eh wa Rabiha Khosumeh [When Bassil lost his allies and won his adversaries], al-Akhbar, May 8.

43 Tayyar.org (2018) Bassil min al-Junub: Al-Fasad la Ya‘ish ma‘ al-Tahrir wal-Muqawama [Bassil from the south: Corruption cannot coexist with liberation and resistance] Available at: https://www.tayyar.org/News/Lebanon/213787/, accessed July 18, 2018.

44 See Hiyam Qusaifi (2018) Al-Quwat al-Lubnaniya Rabihat … fil-Jabal wal-Atraf [The Lebanese forces won in the mountain and its environs], al-Akhbar, May 8.

45 See Daily Star (2018) Interior Ministry Releases Numbers of Votes for new MPs, May 9.

46 Paul Preston (2013) The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain (London: W. W. Norton & Company).

47 Clovis al-Shwayfati (2014) Harb al-Druze wa-l-Mawarina fi-l-Jabal [The Druze and Maronites war in the mountain] (Beirut: n.p.).

48 See Mahmoud Ahmadiye (2014) Mashrou‘ Fitna fi-l-Jabal [The Mountain War collection is a sedition project in the mountain], al-Anba Online. Available at: https://anbaaonline.com/?p=235914, accessed August 1, 2018.

49 See, respectively, Paul Andary (1999) Al-Jabal: Haqiqa la Tarham [The Mountain: An unforgiving truth] (Beirut: n.p.); and Sharif Fayyad (2016) Nar Fawqa Rawabi al-Jabal [Fire over the mountain’s hills] (Beirut: Al-Dar al-Taqadomiya).

50 Mary al-Qusayfi (2014) Lil-Jabal ‘Indana Khamsat Fusoul [Our mountain has five seasons] (Beirut: Dar Sa’er al-Mashriqlil-Nashrwal-Tawzi‘).

51 For a sample see Jean al-Hashem (2014) Mary al-Qusayfi fi Riwayat al-Insihaq wal-Amal‘ [Mary al-Qusayfi in a novel of wretchedness and hope], al-Hayat, July 11; and Joseph Bassil (2014) Al-Mu‘taqadat Ul‘ouba Bashariya Taj‘al al-Muwajaha bayn al-Jami‘ wa la Khalas [Beliefs are a human play that lead to a confrontation between all without any hope], al-Nahar, September 15.

52 See Josiane Volkmar-André (1996) Bread and Salt: The History of Medair (Vaud: Medair).

53 She passes away before completing the manuscript of her novel, and her cousin, May al-Rihani, continued the novel.

54 al-Qusayfi, Lil-Jabal ‘Indana Khamsat Fusoul, pp. 67–68.

55 Ibid, p. 86.

56 There is a parallel here to another internal displacement and its consequent agonies, but one that often passes unnoticed: that of the Shi‘a from their villages in South Lebanon to Beirut’s suburbs.

57 al-Qusayfi, Lil-Jabal ‘Indana Khamsat Fusoul, pp. 300–301.

58 Ibid, p. 187.

59 Ibid, p. 277. The symbolism of the corpses for postwar reconciliations is discussed in D. de Clerck (2013) Le ‘Retour des morts’: La ‘place’ des morts de guerre chez les chrétiens du Sud du Mont-Liban [The return of the dead: The place of the war dead among the Christians of southern Mt. Lebanon], in R. Branche, N. Picaudou, & P. Vermeren (eds) Autour des morts de guerre, pp. 171–194 (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne). Interestingly, LBCI’s 2018 ‘Habibi al-Ladud’ [Bitter Lover] is one of the first popular TV series that hints at this war memory in some of its episodes, but only tangentially.

60 Ibid, p. 295.

61 Ibid, p. 175.

62 Ibid, p. 249.

63 See Leila Tarazi Fawaz (1994) An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (Berkeley: University of California Press). Among Christian militias, the 1983 mountain war was imagined as a continuation of the 1860 one. See D. de Clerck (2010) La mémoire transmise et restituée des massacres de ‘1860’ chez les combattants chrétiens originaires du sud du Mont-Liban [The transmittd and reconstituted memory of 1860 among the original Christian fighters of southern Mt. Lebanon], in: F. Mermier & C. Varin (eds) Mémoires de guerres au Liban (1975–1990), pp. 47–71 (Arles-Beirut: Sindbad-Actes Sud-IFPO).

64 See text of Bassil’s speech in al-Nahar, March 23, 2019.

65 A Buried Past: NGOs in Lebanon Want to Dig up Mass Graves from the Civil War, Economist, July 5, 2018. Available at: https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/07/05/ngos-in-lebanon-want-to-dig-up-mass-graves-from-the-civil-war, accessed August 1, 2018.

66 Leela Jacinto (2018) Life Imitates Art as an Oscar Entry Exposes Lebanon’s Buried History, France 24. Available at: http://www.france24.com/en/20180117-lebanon-film-oscars-insult-history-life-art, accessed August 10, 2018.

67 See Joseph Fahim (2018) An Interview with Ziad Doueiri, Director of The Insult, Middle East Institute. Available at: https://www.mei.edu/publications/interview-ziad-doueiri-director-insult, accessed April 21, 2019.

68 See Robert Fisk, Lebanon’s Dispossessed Come Home, The Independent, May 16, 1993.

69 He calls his daughter—who was due on September 22, an early reference in the film to the Damour massacre—Sethrida, after Geagea’s wife.

70 See Ussama Makdisi (1996) Reconstructing the Nation-State: The Modernity of Sectarianism in Lebanon, Middle East Report, No. 200, pp. 23–26 and 30; and Hermez, War is Coming, pp. 153–154.

71 See Nour El Bejjani Noureddine (2017) The War As I See It: Youth Perceptions and Knowledge of the Lebanese Civil War (Beirut: International Center for Transitional Justice). Available at: https://www.ictj.org/publication/youth-perceptions-lebanon-civil-war, accessed April 1, 2018.

72 For a philosophical approach to reconciling different demands for recognition, see James Tully (1995) Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

73 In ‘Shu Sar’ Eid returns to his village in Akkar, the site of a massacre on December 9, 1980 in which his father, mother, and sister were killed, and confronts one of the perpetrators, accusing him of killing his mother. The docudrama is a direct and personal response to the 1991 amnesty law and concomitant monolithic and selective ‘form of remembrance’ sanctioned by the political elite. Hermez, War is Coming, p. 151. By contrast, ‘Shu Sar’ insists on remembering the massacres of the war to move beyond them. See the episode of Kharej al-Nass on Al-Jazeera, February 5, 2017. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ1eUqJidH0, accessed August 1, 2018. Mitri’s ‘Li Qoboron fi Hazihi al-Ard’ examines how the forced displacements and massacres committed during the war are reproduced in the postwar period in the form of sectarian reciprocal fears and real estate wars. The film is based on the premise that without truth-telling about these wartime crimes there cannot be any postwar reconciliation. See Mitri’s interview in Legal Agenda, January 30, 2016. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFXRK7pBgj8, accessed August 1, 2018.

74 See the full documentary on Al Jazeera documentary, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKo368x355I, accessed January 2, 2019.

75 See the interviews with Zena El Khalil and Lamia Joreige in Hala Kawsarani, Nabad Beirut, Vogue Arabia, September 2018; India Stoughton, Explosive Art in Beirut Explores Power of Cultural Identity, al-Monitor, March 16, 2018. Available at: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/03/lebanon-artist-explores-deadly-identities.html, accessed August 15, 2018; and Iain Akerman (2018) Yazan Halwani Unveils ‘The Memory Tree,’ Commemorating Lebanon’s Great Famine, Arab News. Available at: http://www.arabnews.com/node/1350886/art-culture, accessed August 15, 2018.

76 Economist (2017) A Museum of Memory in Beirut gets off to a Troubled Start, August 10. Available at: https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2017/08/10/a-museum-of-memory-in-beirut-gets-off-to-a-troubled-start, accessed June 1, 2018.

77 See India Stoughton (2017) Zena El Khalil on How Her Exhibition at Lebanon’s First Museum Will Lead to Forgiveness, Compassion and Love, The National, September 20. Available at: https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/art/zena-el-khalil-on-how-her-exhibition-at-lebanon-s-first-museum-will-lead-to-forgiveness-compassion-and-love-1.630195, accessed June 18, 2018.

78 Author interview with Zena El Khalil, Beirut, July 19, 2018.

79 Charles Taylor (1993) Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press).

80 On the latter theme see Hermez, War is Coming, pp. 193–202.