Public and private memory of the Lebanese civil war

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Volumn 25, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 191-203

  Haugbolle, Sune ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN   (Denmark)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CIVIL WAR; MEMORY; WAR;

EID: 25444515119     PISSN: 1089201X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/1089201X-25-1-191     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. In 1982 a resurrection of the Muslim Brotherhood with its center in Hama was defeated by the Baathist regime. An estimated twenty thousand people were killed and most of the old city of Hama destroyed.
2. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992);
3. Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire (The Places of Memory), 7 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1983-94).
4. Jocelyne Dakhlia, Forgetting History: The Motifs and Contents of Collective Memory in Tunisia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002);
5. Andrew Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
6. Elizabeth Picard and Bernard Rougier, eds., "Le Liban dix ans après la guerre" ("Lebanon Ten Years after the War"), special issue, Monde Arabe Maghreb Machrek, no. 169 (July-September 2000).
7. The name for a wide array of companies, TV, radio, and newspapers owned by Prime Minister (1992-98 and 2000-the present) Rafiq Hariri. The name al-mustaqbal signals a new Lebanon focused on progress and optimism.
8. Judith Palmer Harik, "Democracy (Again) Derailed: Lebanon's Ta'if Paradox," in Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World, vol. 2, Comparative Experiences, ed. Rex Brynen, Bahgat Korany, and Paul Noble (London: Rienner, 1995), 130.
9. Carole Dagher, Bring Down the Walls: Lebanon's Post-war Challenge (New York: St. Martin's, 2000), 58.
10. Samir Khalaf, Beirut Reclaimed: Reflections on Urban Design and the Restoration of Civility (Beirut: Dar an-Nahar, 1993).
11. Michel Aoun was former general of the Lebanese army and was ousted in 1990 after refusing to accept the Ta'if agreement; Samir Ja'ja' was the leader of the Lebanese Forces who has been imprisoned since 1994. The Lebanese civil war consisted of a series of more or less connected internal and regional conflicts. One way to divide the war into periods is the distinction between a "Palestinian" phase of the war, from 1975 to 1982, and a "Syrian" phase, 1982-90, made by Samir Kassir in his book La guerre du Liban: De la dissension nationale au conflit régional (1975-1982) (The War of Lebanon: From National Split to Regional Conflict [1975-1982]) (Paris: Cermoc, 1994).
12. Elie Hobeiqa was leader of the Christian militia, the Lebanese Forces, from 1985 to 1986 and after the civil war was several times minister; Nabih Berri has been leader of the Shiite militia and party Amal (see note 51) since 1979, and since 1990 has served as Speaker of the parliament; Walid Jumblatt has been leader of the Druze militia and the Popular Socialist Party since the death of his father, Kamal Jumblatt, in 1977.
13. Nizar Saghieh, "Dhakirat al-harb fil-nizam al-qanuni al-lubnani," in Mémoire pour l'avenir, Dhakira lil-ghad, Memory for the Future: Actes du colloque tenu a la maison des nations unies, ESCWA (Beyrouth), ed. Amal Makarem (Beirut: Dar an-Nahar, 2002), 225.
14. Elizabeth Picard: The Demobilization of the Lebanese Militias, Prospects for Lebanon 9 (Oxford: Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1999).
15. Samir Khalaf, Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon: A History of the Internationalization of Communal Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 150.
16. Samir Kassir, "Ahwal al-dhakirah fi lubnan" ("The Situation of Memory in Lebanon"), in Makarem, Mémoire pour l'avenir, 195-200.
17. See www.hrw.org/reports/1997/lebanon.
18. It is thus remarkable that the first documentary on the civil war to be shown in Lebanon was not a Lebanese production (although much of the production team was Lebanese), but a production of the Qatari satellite channel Al-Jazeera. The series Harb Lubnan (Lebanon's War), televised in the spring of 2001, was widely seen and discussed by the Lebanese, although the transmission did not trigger any debate in the written media. The popularity of the subsequent DVD version of Harb Lubnan also attests to the vivid interest in the war and the potential for public discussion.
19. Lucia Volk, "D'une identité d'après-guerre parmi la jeunesse bourgeoise de Beyrouth: Grandir à la croisée des espaces culturels" ("On Postwar Identity among Bourgeois Youth in Beirut: Growing Up in the Crossing of Cultural Spaces"), Monde Arabe Maghreb Machrek, nos. 171-72 (2001): 68.
20. Kamal Salibi, quoted in William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain (London: Flamingo, 1997), 209.
21. Khalaf, Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon, 253-58.
22. Aleida Assmann, "Three Memory Anchors," in Crisis and Memory in Islamic Societies, ed. Angelika Neuwirth and Andreas Pflitsch (Würzberg: Ergon, 2001).
23. The Lebanese state has made 18 April a national day of remembrance. In a remarkable contrast to the silence on 13 April, the day is marked by gatherings, TV spots, posters, and exhibitions. The national unison experienced by defining Israel as a common enemy thus allows for a constructive remembrance as opposed to the fragmented remembrance of the civil war, which is seen as unconstructive. See Elise Salem, Constructing Lebanon: A Century of Literary Narratives (Gainesville: University Press of Florida), 182.
24. Miriam Cooke, War's Other Voices: Women Writers in the Lebanese Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
25. See, for example, Elias Khoury, The Kingdom of Strangers (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1997);
26. Tony Hanania, Homesick (London: Bloomsbury, 1997).
27. Salem, Constructing Lebanon, 209-38.
28. See, for example, the Internet group 111101, which "regroups Lebanese artists and writers, of all disciplines, living in Lebanon and abroad, who work on memory, through its different aspects: a space to search for traces of memory, a medium for archiving, and search for the structure of memory" (www.111101.com). Another example is a group of relatives of the kidnapped and disappeared during the war, whose fates have still not been accounted for by the government. The group, under the name Tandhakir ma tan'ad (remember so you do not return), has been advocating for making 13 April a national day of remembrance and has tried to raise awareness of the fate of the disappeared and kidnapped.
29. See Makarem, Mémoire pour l'avenir.
30. The organization was planning more events for 2003 and 2004. See www.memoryforthefuture.com.
31. Makarem, Mémoire pour l'avenir, 40.
32. Ibid., 42.
33. Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (London: Rider, 1999), 31.
34. Salibi, quoted in Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain, 211.
35. Khoury and al-Khazen, interviewed in the Washington Post, 20 December 1999.
36. Interview with Chamoun in the Daily Star of Lebanon, 16 November 2000.
37. "How to Prevent Civil War: Remember the Last One," Daily Star of Lebanon, 12 April 2003.
38. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
39. Adrian Forty, ed., The Art of Forgetting (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
40. Jocelyne Dakhlia, "New Approaches in the History of Memory? A French Model," in Neuwirth and Pflitsch, Crisis and Memory in Islamic Societies, 72.
41. Khalaf, Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon, 306-9.
42. Caroline Nagel, "Ethnic Conflict and Urban Redevelopment in Downtown Beirut," Growth and Change 3 (2000): 211-33;
43. Saree Makdisi, "Reconstructing History in Central Beirut," Middle East Report, no. 203 (1997): 23-25, 30;
44. Jade Tabet, "Des pierres dans la mémoire" ("Stones in the Memory"), in Beyrouth: La brulûre des rêves (Beirut: The Burning of Dreams), ed. Jade Tabet (Paris: Autrement, 2002).
45. Jens-Peter Hanssen and Daniel Genberg, "Beirut in Memoriam," in Neuwirth and Pflitsch, Crisis and Memory in Islamic Societies, 259.
46. Ghassan Tueni, Une guerre pour les autres (Paris: Lattes, 1985).
47. Among scholarly works that support the "guerre des autres" are the inventor of the term, Ghassan Tueni, Une guerre pour les autres;
48. and Farid al-Khazen, Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967-1976 (London: Tauris, 2000).
49. Makarem, Mémoire pour l'avenir, 43.
50. Leader of the Christian militia Lebanese Forces and president-elect before his assassination in September 1982.
51. Ussama Makdisi, "Reconstructing the Nation-State: The Modernity of Sectarianism in Lebanon," Middle East Report, no. 200 (1996): 23-26, 30.
52. Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State (New York: Routledge, 1997), 12.
53. The posters and graffiti referred to in the following were collected by the author between April and September 2003 as part of the European Union-funded research project "Mediterranean Voices." The results can be viewed at www.med-voices.org. The public space being as ephemeral as it is, the survey should only be taken as a snapshot and not as representative of the whole post-Ta'if period. The author is extremely thankful for the help and suggestions of Suzanne Abu-Ghaida and Mona Harb, and for the workspace and facilities provided from September 2002 to September 2003 by director for the Center for Behavioral Research at the American University of Beirut, Professor Samir Khalaf.
54. Samir Kassir, Histoire de Beyrouth (Paris: Fayard, 2003), 351-58.
55. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
56. Kata'ib Lubnaniyah (also known as the Phalanges Party) is a Lebanese party with a mainly Christian Maronite following, founded in 1936 by Pierre Jumayil. During the civil war the militia of Kata'ib was a central force on the Christian side and became associated with the umbrella militia Lebanese Forces, which was led by Pierre's youngest son, Bashir, until the latter's death in 1982. After 1982, the party's influence in Lebanese politics has been weakened in the absence of a strong leader.
57. Amal (Afwaj al-muqawamah al-lubnaniyah, legions of the Lebanese resistance) is a Lebanese social movement with roots in the Shiite suburbs of Beirut, which later became a political party established by Musa as-Sadr in 1975. During the war the militia of Amal fought in several alliances. In 1982 a fundamentalist section of the party broke off and started Hizbullah in protest against the secular profile of the party under the new leader Nabih Berri, who leads the party to this day.
58. Nabil Beyhum, "Les démarcations au Liban d'hier à aujourdhui" ("Demarcations in Lebanon from Yesterday to Today"), in Le Liban d'aujourdhui, ed. Fadia Kiwan (Paris/ Beirut: CNRS Éditions/Cermoc, 1994), 291.
59. Mona Harb, "Public Spheres and Spaces of Contestation in Post-War Beirut" (paper presented at the Fourth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, Florence and Montecatini Terme, 19-23 March 2003, organized by the Mediterranean Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute).
60. Khalaf, Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon, 315-19.
61. The rise and fall of Beirut as a haven for intellectual freedom in the Arab world has been particularly well documented by Samir Khalaf ( Lebanon's Predicament [New York: Columbia University Press, 1987];
62. Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon). For the Paradise Lost of the prewar Beirut of the Arab poets,
63. see also As'ad Khairallah, "Besieged Beirut: Arab Creativity between Poetry and Ashes," in Neuwirth and Pflitsch, Crisis and Memory in Islamic Societies, 509-26;
64. and Fouad Ajami, The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation's odyssey (New York: Pantheon, 1998).
65. Leader of the mainly Christian Maronite National Liberal Party; he was killed along with his family in the Syrian invasion of East Beirut in 1990.
66. The phrase has been used by the regime to symbolize what it sees as the fundamental tolerance of religious and cultural difference inherent in the political system of Lebanon.
67. Elias Khoury, "On Beirut," in Religion between Violence and Reconciliation, ed. T. Scheffler (Beirut: Ergon Verlag Würzburg, 2002), 176-77.