It has been less than a week since the 45th anniversary of the Lebanese Civil War, which went on, in different forms, for a decade and a half. Some have studied this war as an ideal case of the intertwinement of the sectarian and the regional. Some saw in it the opening of a new series of civil wars in the Arab world and parts of the “third world”. The late French researcher Michelle Sora, for example, saw that this war managed to shake the old and ingrained social analysis frameworks which some intellectuals had not thought of questioning. Some saw it as a burial ground that had been dug up early for ambitious political projects, the ambitions of which are not compatible with their societies’ divisions and the limitations.
Many supporters of the October 17 Revolution, in their remarks on the anniversary, said that the war came to its conclusion with the revolution’s outbreak. They saw a final rupture with it, and it was, in this sense, a therapeutic and purifying rupture. The Taef Agreement (1989) dealt with some of its consequences while leaving the warlords to manage the future. As for the October Revolution, it dealt with its roots and issued a negative ruling of those patrons. Its main slogan said: “all of them means all of them”. The rhetoric of the revolutionary environment on the rise of the revolution’s generation took up a large chunk of its discourse. It is the generation that did not experience the war, although it was affected by it.
This assessment is both right and wrong.
It is right in the sense that the Lebanese of the revolution emerged as a national non-sectarian force. The declared opponent was no longer another sect; rather it was the political and economic regime and its derivatives. The values they defended were not those of sectarian sub-cultures; they were those of a youth globalized mood. The occasions in which these sentiments were expressed were numerous, peaking on Independence Day, November 22, which was more like a re-founding of the nation. This new generation, its young men and women, declared that it would manage the future by its own hands.
What happened was indeed a revolution, not in the sense demonstrated by the French Revolution of 1789 or the Russian Revolution of 1917. Here, in Lebanon, it did not involve violence, nor did it remove a social class and replace it with another. It was a revolution in the sense of those seen in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989-1990, which led to the collapse of around ten regimes and the soviet camp as a whole along with it, or in the sense attributed to the May 68 French Revolution which blasted the old value system. It resembled also the Arab revolutions in their first phase, 2012, when they sought freedom, bread, and dignity.
The event was big enough to launch the beginning of a rupture, just the beginning, with Lebanon’s sectarian history and the civil conflicts that ensued from it.
With that, this beginning missed one of its necessary components: for one who wishes to get rid of 1975 must also want to get rid of the resistance which was, at the time, among the reasons for 1975 (and not its only reason) and which is still in place today, though the headlines have changed, and is one of the reasons for the ongoing decline (and not the only reason). This was not possible. What had ensued in the beginning was stopped in its tracks because of the legitimate fear of arms.
However, the mistakenness of those who gave the optimistic response is found elsewhere: The revolution was defeated and the beginning itself became the end. So long as coronavirus played the central role in this, that end was marked with some phenomena that the revolution revolted against, namely, the acute awakening of sects, regions, and tribal solidarities in all forms. Some of the worst aspects of human beings, Lebanese and otherwise, came to the fore boorishly. This is a bit of what is done by pandemics, and they have done a lot throughout history.
In Lebanon especially, many of these actions and positions surfaced, like blaming “the others” and holding “them” responsible, refusing to treat “them” in “our” areas or restricting ''our'' aid to ''our'' communities. This approach fed on the weakness of the state apparatus, which is corrupt before being impoverished. “Social distancing”, which curtailed the potential for solidarity and limited debate over what is happening, played another role. In this environment, sectarian politicians found an opportunity to bring back, through windows, what left through doors. The quibbles over their ''shares'' of the new appointments were an ideal illustration.
And so, as soon as the 45th anniversary of the 1975 war came around, we realized that the war’s sectarian interpreters are still busy interpreting it and that the divergence of their interpretations stems from sectarian division. They still have a desire to reignite the war. We could even venture to say that the October 17 Revolution invigorated this desire in sectarian milieus and elevated it into a need or a necessity. We will most likely witness a prolonged back and forth between a revolution that had been set back and had its wings broken and a regime that says it is invincible: some of its figures and symbols may be put aside and replaced but remains confident that alternatives are not on the horizon nevertheless.
It could be said, that, until further notice, the causes of war are still alive and well, confronting a generation that has chosen to end all wars.
