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 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 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 Iran and Lebanon What are current relations between Iran and Lebanon? What has been the import of Iran’s revolution on Lebanon’s Shi‘i community? These were the questions we put to Ahmad Baydoun, poet, man of letters and professor of history at the Lebanese University, in Boston in late October. irene gendzier • 3 min read
MER Article Books on Lebanon Wade R. Goria, Sovereignty and Leadership in Lebanon 1943-1976, (London: Ithaca Press, 1986). Helena Cobban, The Making of Modern Lebanon, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985). Carolyn L. Gates • 2 min read
MER Article Ajami, The Vanished Imam Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam: Musa al-Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986). As'ad AbuKhalil • 5 min read
MER Article CERMOC, Mouvements Communautaires et Espaces Urbains au Machreq Mouvements communautaires et Espaces urbains au Machreq (Beirut: Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain, 1985). One of the tragic ironies of the protracted Lebanese crisis is the fate of CERMOC and of Michel Seurat, one of the authors represented in this volume. Suerat wa (Author not identified) • 2 min read
Syria and Lebanon, 1943-1975 In their final years under French rule, Syria and Lebanon entered into an unprecedented cooperation in order to free themselves from France. The liberal nationalist regimes in Damascus and Beirut reinforced one another’s demands for complete political independence without first having to sign treati Philip Khoury • 2 min read
Syria in Lebanon Preeminent influence in Lebanon, both on the central government and between the various factions, is critical for Syria from defensive and offensive strategic perspectives, whatever one considers Syria’s role to be in the pan-Arab arena or in the Arab-Israeli conflict. From the defensive perspectiv William Harris • 15 min read
