MER Article "No Forum for the Lebanese People" Forty years of history and the issues appear to be remarkably the same: national identity, the confessional system, electoral reform, the viability of the state, economic reconstruction and ideological realignment. What is Lebanon? Does it exist? Can it survive? The questions are not new. More than irene gendzier • 9 min read
MER Article 'Akkar Before the Civil War The plain and mountains of the ‘Akkar are the northernmost part of the Lebanon, beyond Tripoli and the Koura region to its south and east. Partly because of the insistence of some influential Maronites, and with misgivings on the part of only a few French critics at the time, it was included in le G Michael Gilsenan • 8 min read
MER Article Class Formation in a Civil War The state is the cohesive factor in a social formation. But what happens to the social formation where the state disintegrates? This is not a mere polemical question if we consider the Lebanese experience. Nazih Richani • 12 min read
MER Article Primer: Lebanon's 15-Year War, 1975-1990 Lebanon’s people have paid a tremendous price for 15 years of invasion and civil war -- an estimated 150,000 killed, tens of thousands wounded, and hundreds of thousands displaced and left destitute. Lebanon is the only developing country in which, despite high birth rates, population growth has sta Martha Wenger • 8 min read
MER Article It Was Beirut, All Over Again It was Beirut, all over again, it was Beirut on the radio El Salvador on TV it was Sabra & Shatila in the memory it was Usulutan in the heart It was Beirut, again, when we thought Beirut went to rest, but Beirut will not sleep until El Salvador sleeps and San Francisco will not eat until Eritrea ea Etel Adnan • 2 min read
MER Article War in the City Nothing stays new for long in the torpor of Beirut, where everything is worn out by so much violence. If the word “ruin” suggests a comparison with the remains of ancient Tyre or Pompeii, it shouldn’t be used to describe Beirut, not even the blasted remains of the central city. The age and monumenta Ahmad Beydoun • 11 min read
MER Article "Everyone Misunderstood the Depth of the Movement Identifying with Aoun" Mansour Raad is the pen name of an Arab journalist who recently left Beirut and has followed the Lebanese war closely. Joe Stork spoke with him in Europe in late November 1989. Who is Gen. Aoun and what does his “war of liberation” represent? Joe Stork • 11 min read
MER Article Confessional Lines Gen. Michel Aoun’s “war of liberation,” and the Syrian army’s obliging response, has left another thousand killed, thousands more injured, a third of the population transformed into refugees and the worst destruction and damage the country has suffered since 1975. Aoun tried to “convince” his Muslim Fawwaz Traboulsi • 6 min read
MER Article The Militia Phenomenon Even after 15 years, the Lebanese conflict has never taken the form of mass communal violence, of ethnic riots and massacres. There are no cases where the population of one neighborhood raided another, looting and killing. Exactly the reverse: Groups have found shelter from the fighting among other Salim Nasr • 1 min read
MER Article Lebanon's War Most of the already very large literature on the Lebanese conflict has focused on the etiology of Lebanon’s civil strife: its roots, causes, origins, antecedents and facilitating factors; its inherent or contingent characteristics. And, as one might expect, many conflicting readings and interpretati Salim Nasr • 13 min read
MER Article From the Editors The government of Israel fiercely maintains its rejectionist stance toward any political accommodation with the Palestine Liberation Organization. This is not merely a diplomatic posture, but undergirds the ideological structure of its policies of dispossession and occupation. Ha’aretz reported last The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Editor's Bookshelf Dipesh Chakrabarty’s well-documented, theoretically informed, innovative history of the jute mill workers of Bengal, Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), poses this central question: “Can…third-world countries like India…build democratic, Joel Beinin • 4 min read
