Why Lebanon hasn't slipped into civil war

Rival factions have worked hard to defuse points of conflict.

By Helena Cobban

from the February 22, 2008 edition

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Washington - Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, was killed by a huge explosion near downtown Beirut in February 2005. Since then, the country has seen – in addition to the Israeli bombardments of summer 2006 – more than a dozen other mysterious assassinations. Nearly all those killed were, like Mr. Hariri, outspoken critics of the strong role that Syria plays inside Lebanon.

Ever since 2005, analysts have speculated that Lebanon might be headed back into the civil war from which it extricated itself, with much difficulty in 1989.

But this has not happened. Why?

My main point of comparison is April 1975. I had been in Lebanon for just a few months by then, at the beginning of my journalism career. That month, Falangist Party militiamen in a Beirut suburb caught a bus full of "hated" Palestinians in an ambush and shot 27 men dead. The whole country was a tinderbox, home to six or seven armed factions: some Palestinian, some Lebanese.

The April ambush proved to be the "trigger" that tipped Lebanon into all-out civil war. During the years that followed, it was my sad task to report on the many grisly turns the war took. I investigated massacres. I dodged bullets, mortars, and artillery. I interviewed political leaders from all sides, the survivors of atrocities, and families trying to survive in basement shelters. I saw the country fall apart.

In 1981 I left. But the war continued until 1989, when the efforts of Saudi and other diplomats and the war weariness of most Lebanese produced the Taef Accord, an agreement that finally allowed calm to be restored and rebuilding to start.

When I was in Beirut this January, I found the atmosphere in most – but not quite all – of the city noticeably calmer and more relaxed than it was in April 1975. Restaurants were booming. Cafés and cinemas stayed open late.

I asked Lebanese friends whether they feared the civil war might reignite. Most shrugged, saying they felt disaffected from all the political parties. The passion with which Lebanon's people engaged in national politics back in the 1970s seemed largely absent.

In only two sectors were political feelings running high: among the country's semiprofessional politicians, across the political spectrum, and among both the leaders and the public in the Shiite Muslim community, the country's largest.

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