The Lebanese Civil War

Karim Salam

Dr. Robert B. Packer

PL SC 467 Middle East Conflicts

Friday, November 18, 2016

Essay Assignment 2

        The Lebanese Civil War was a regional conflict as much as it was an internal Lebanese affair. It revolved around issues that dominated regional politics in the Middle East including the Arab-Israeli conflict, Cold War competition, Arab nationalism, and political Islam. Conflicts over these issues intersected with longstanding divides within the Lebanese political elite and parts of the population over the sectarian division of power, national identity, social justice, and Lebanon’s strategic alliances. The Lebanese system enjoyed relative stability and peace in a region that had been embroiled with the rivalries of the Arab-Israeli conflict for decades. During this period, the state benefited economically from its financial and commercial roles as an intermediary between the Arab hinterland and the international market. The opulence of the country which was then dubbed The Switzerland of the Middle East was short-lasted as domestic and international rivalries began to develop and fracture the sectarian-based government. The resurgence of the PLO, this time in Lebanon, led to the collapse of the country’s consociational system as tensions between Christians and Muslims flared into violence. The increased political and ideological stratification of the Lebanese people was fueled by inter-Arab rivalries that led to the formation of constantly shifting alliances between domestic and foreign powers. As such, the sudden collapse and failure of the Lebanese system from a once-prosperous country highlights the fragile and delicate nature of Arab states and how swiftly governmental authority can break down in the face of ideological and sectarian unrest.

        The nation-state is not a familiar concept in the Middle East and specifically Lebanon. Owing to a history spanning thousands of years of conquests and ethnic transitions, the country contained 18 different sects operating under a single consociational government which divided political power between Christians and Muslims and assigned a dominant role to the Maronite Christian sect. The application of the fifty-fifty formula to the distribution of public posts between Christians and Muslims only reinforced the sectarian nature of the political system (Hassan Krayem 2001). By the 1960s, the growing population of Muslims- largely because of the Palestinian exodus into Lebanon in 1948- and the political overrepresentation of Christians in the country began to create internal divisions on whether or not the system of power sharing in place since the 1943 National Pact was sustainable or due for radical reform, and whether Lebanon should orient its international alliances towards the Arab world and the Soviet Union or towards the West and its local allies (Haugbolle Sune 2011).