ABSTRACT
In the Middle East, indeed throughout the entire Arab-Muslim region stretching eastward from Morocco to the Gulf and from Caucasia down to Sudan, few countries offer a better example of political violence than Lebanon. Not even Algeria which has suffered a large number of deaths in recent years. The only exception, it could be argued, is Iran. But the political violence in Iran, under Islamic rule since 1979, is quite specifically state-sponsored violence; whereas in Lebanon the example of the Shi’i community lends itself better to a theoretical model of political violence. The Lebanese case seems to correspond even more precisely to such a model than a country such as Libya, with its role not only in the internal conflicts of neighboring countries but in international terrorism as well. It seems to correspond to a model of political violence more precisely than Egypt or Syria, too.1 […]
Attempts to address political violence in the geo-politically important region of the Middle East have tended to approach the question from either a political economy perspective (though not strictly class-based) or a cultural perspective.2 […]
Irrespective of theoretical approach (political economy or culturalist), cultural origin, political beliefs, or personal distance to the Lebanese Shi’a, there is the unanimously held view that the violence committed within the Shi’ia community itself, or outside the community, is mainly a reactive form of violence. The birth and acceleration of this violence can be explained by demographic, sociological, economic, legal and constitutional, as well as strategic and military, variables. Three phenomena in particular are especially significant. First, the Lebanese Shi’ia, as a group, was transformed in the space of forty years from an under-developed and submissive group to a community capable of rapid economic mobility and social mobilization. Second, because the Lebanese communitarian system is governed by a set of rigid rules, there was no continuity in the Shi’i transition from social mobilization to political mobilization. Consequently, the Shi’a saw their identity reinforced, their borders established, and their mobilization as a ‘community’ strengthened. Third, by using to their own advantage the failure of a new consensus within the Shi’i community and the impossibility of expanded political participation, outside forces-not only armed but ‘arming’—intervened and propelled the discourse and practices of the Shi’ah [sic] towards conflict and violence.3 […]
At the outset of the 1970s, the Shi’a showed all the signs of readiness for social mobilization. Their contact with other, more prosperous segments of Lebanese society made their unfavorable situation, and their lack of social mobility, all the more painfully obvious. Indeed, it did not result in a process of assimilation, but on the contrary, one of rejection.4 […]
One of the paradoxes of Lebanon’s civil violence during the 1970s and 1980s was that the discourse of all the Lebanese groups squarely laid the blame for internal dissension on foreign elements: either the ajnab-the West, and particularly Israel-or the gharib, those who do not share Lebanese bloodlines. Not only was the notion of gharib instrumental at de-emphasizing the internal cleavages in Lebanese society, but it also stirred up local passions against non-Lebanese and protracted the life of an indecisive political system that was mainly threatened by its own internal divisions. The belief in a foreign ‘plot’ (American, Syrian, Saudi, etc.) thus allowed the Lebanese to forge some semblance of a ‘national’ consensus. Seeking to avoid mutual accusations and selfcriticism, they preferred to deny the existence of an internal dimension to the violence in
their country. But in doing so, they are rendered incapable of understanding the real causes and the function of this violence-which of course meant that they could not heal its causes.
