Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East (14 page)

The rift between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims dates back to 632
A.D
., when the Prophet Muhammad died without any direct offspring. The Sunnis believed that Muhammad’s successor could be chosen through consensus, but the Shi’a argued that the only path of succession was through the direct descendants of the Prophet. Today, the vast majority of the world’s Muslims are Sunni, with Shi’a Muslims representing only about 20 percent of the world’s total Islamic population.

In Lebanon, however, the Shi’a constitute the majority of the Muslim population. Lebanese Shi’a have been deeply influenced by the region’s sole Shi’a power, the Islamic Republic of Iran. Further radicalized by the civil war and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Lebanese Shi’a youth of today are, if anything, more religious and ideologically rigid than Shi’a living in Iran.

Yet it is the Sunni, though a minority of the Muslim population in Lebanon, who play the most influential role in politics. Many of the wealthiest and most influential families in Lebanon are Sunni; guaranteed the office of prime minister, the Sunni control the most powerful position in the Lebanese government. The Lebanese Sunni have always been wary of the more populous and more religious Lebanese Shi’a, who they believe are interested in taking control of the Lebanese government. Unique among their Sunni brethren across the world, Lebanese Sunni favor a secularist approach to government; most are bitter opponents of the religious Shi’a of Hezbollah.

Lebanon is also home to a small but important Druze population. Typically associated with Muslims, the Druze are actually practitioners of a distinct and secretive religion that originated in Egypt in the tenth century. Much of the Druze faith is based on the Hikma (Book of Wisdom), which is only provided to those who have proven themselves to be devout Druze. These informed initiates, known as the
uqqal
, shave their heads, grow long and curled mustaches, and wear neatly wrapped white turbans. A copy of the Hikma was stolen and published during the civil war, but much of the religion remains a mystery. Viewing themselves as the original inhabitants of Lebanon, the Druze are a very proud people and bristle when they are lumped with Lebanon’s Muslim population.

Lebanon is also unique among its neighbors in that it has a substantial Christian population that once outnumbered the Muslim population. Most of Lebanon’s large Christian population is Maronite, a sect that split from the Roman Catholic Church in the fifth century. While some have Assyrian and Semitic roots, most Maronites are Phoenicians who converted to Christianity during the early part of the first millennium when St. Maron and his disciples came from northern Syria to Mount Lebanon and converted the local inhabitants. Today, the Maronites are one of Lebanon’s primary groups.

When Muslim invaders entered Lebanon in the seventh century, the Maronites managed to find sanctuary in the mountainous northern region. Like many Jews, Maronites remain purposefully aware that they were forced to practice their religion in isolation and hiding. It was important to my Maronite friends that I understood the historic perseverance of their people: They wanted me to see how Maronite churches were hidden in the cliffs of the Cedar Mountains and how their ancestors had carved crucifixes and symbols of Jesus on the backs of trees or into the rocks of the mountains. During a tour of churches in the Cedar Mountains, one friend told me, “You see these churches? You see these forests? You see these cliffs? This is our story of survival.”

Following the Muslim invasion of Lebanon, the Byzantine Empire came to the aid of the Maronites, making it possible for the group to practice their religion under military protection. Through the assistance of the Byzantines, the Maronites actually became such a strong military force that they were eventually paid tribute by the Umayyad caliph in exchange for assurances that they would not challenge the Sunni caliphate.

When the Crusaders came to Lebanon in the twelfth century, the Maronites reunited politically with the Catholic Church by assisting in their military expenditures against the Muslims. While the alliance with the Crusaders proved beneficial for the Maronites in the short run, it led to great feelings of resentment among Muslim communities in the region. Further, the emergence of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century saw a growing Muslim influence over the region. Throughout the duration of Ottoman rule, the French government, however, vowed to protect all Christians living in the Ottoman Empire, and the Maronites were able to flourish and continue solidifying their community. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed during the First World War, the Maronites began to make a push for self-rule, which was eventually granted by the French Mandate in 1920. While the Maronites enjoyed self-rule, Lebanon’s Muslim and Druze populations became discontented, loathing perceived treatment as second-class citizens.

The 1943 National Pact, then, materialized in the context of dual fears harbored by both Christians and Muslims. On the one hand, Christians feared losing control to the demographic reality of a Muslim majority and a union with Syria; on the other hand, Muslims feared the close relationship between Maronite Christians and imperial governments, in particular France. After several rounds of negotiations between Maronites and Muslims—mostly Sunnis, as the Shi’a still had very little power—the National Pact stated that the government’s top posts would be distributed along religious lines and the Lebanese parliament would be comprised of Christians and Muslims in a ratio of 6:5. This governmental design, also called a confessional system, was meant to be a short-term solution that would eventually evolve into something more democratic. Instead, the confessional system only exacerbated already heightened tensions and provided the structural factors that would lead to the Lebanese Civil War.

The growing discontent coincided with shifting demographics. The 1932 census stated that Christians outnumbered Muslims, but it had become obvious since then that the demographic makeup of Lebanon had been moving in the opposite direction. In the years following the establishment of the State of Israel, Lebanon also became home to hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians, who, while living as refugees, were mostly Muslim.

Tensions in Lebanon increased dramatically following a 1970 crisis in Jordan in which King Hussein nearly lost control of his country to a Palestinian insurrection. After successfully restoring order using the Jordanian Air Force and the threat of American intervention, King Hussein expelled thousands of Palestinians from Jordan. Many of these Palestinians were relocated to Lebanon, where they joined the growing community of Palestinian refugees from previous Arab-Israeli wars. Many of these newcomers had taken part in the fighting against King Hussein and found a logical union with the recently created Palestine Liberation Organization, which was then based in southern Lebanon.

Prior to 1975, tensions in Lebanon were high, but most of the violence consisted of isolated incidents between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces, and a handful of clashes between the Lebanese army and the Palestian Liberation Organization in 1969 and 1973. Everything changed on April 13, 1975, when a group of Palestinian gunmen, in an attempt to assassinate Christian leader Pierre Gemayel, killed four members of the right-wing Christian Phalangist Party, including the son of prominent Phalangi leader Joseph Saadi. Responding immediately, vengeful Phalangists attacked a bus in the Beirut suburb of Ain al-Rummaneh, killing twenty-seven Palestinian passengers. A cycle of reprisals and counterattacks began and lasted until 1976. In one such set of reprisal killings, known as Black Saturday, Christian Phalangists erected roadblocks around Beirut and slit the throats of anyone carrying a Muslim identity card. Muslim parties followed with their own set of attacks, and by the end of the day three hundred Christians and Muslims were dead. These incidents were no longer isolated; instead, they were the links in a chain of events that would lead to civil war.

One month later, Christian Phalangists seized the Palestinian camps of Qarantina and Tell al-Zaatar, massacring Palestinians inside. Palestinians from Syria now came to Lebanon to aid in the struggle. Joining together with the predominantly Druze Lebanese National Movement and its leader, Kamal Jumblat, they raided the town of Damour just south of Beirut and cleansed it of Christians. This Palestinian-Druze Union successfully pushed the Maronite Christians back to East Beirut and Mount Lebanon and led to the division of the city between the Christian East and the Muslim West along what became known as the green line.

In 1976, a concerned Syrian president Hafez al-Assad worried that the engagement of Syrian Palestinians in the Lebanese conflict might actually compromise his authority over his own population. Al-Assad, conscious of his status as one of the dominant leaders in the region, did not want to see Lebanon fall to Palestinian control. While he had supported the PLO activities since the late 1960s, the fast growth of the organization precipitated fears in Syria that the Palestinians could threaten the status quo. As a result, he sought to mediate an end to the conflict by proposing an adjustment to the National Pact that would shift the ratio of Christians to Muslims in parliament from 6:5 to 1:1. These efforts were fruitless, as Druze Kamal Jumblat and his influential Lebanese National Movement pushed for a complete eradication of the confessional system, from which the Druze were largely excluded.

With talks breaking down, the fighting persisted. By January 1976, the Lebanese army of nineteen thousand men had collapsed; its soldiers took their weapons and either went home or joined one of an array of belligerent groups. In the absence of a national army, the Palestinian militias became the dominant military force in Lebanon. It seemed that while the Lebanese Christians, Muslims, and Druze were plagued with factionalism and rivalry, the Palestinians might seize the moment and actually take control of Lebanon. Hafez al-Assad grew increasingly concerned and decided to intervene to aid the Maronite Christians and avoid a complete collapse of the Lebanese state and the spread of violence into Syria; the last thing al-Assad wanted was to face the same Palestinian military challenge that his rival King Hussein had experienced in 1970. In May 1977, Syria sent twenty-two thousand troops to Lebanon, and by November of that year, the Syrian army entered West Beirut and put a temporary end to the two years of fighting. While his initial objective was to stabilize the immediate region, al-Assad’s ultimate goal—which was eventually achieved—was to establish a pro-Syrian government and transform Lebanon into a Syrian satellite state.

The warring parties, however, would not allow Syria to move into southern Lebanon, where Palestinian and Israeli fighting led Israel to undertake a push into Lebanon in 1978 that saw its forces reach the outskirts of Beirut. With the Israelis fighting the Palestinians in Beirut, Phalangists fighting Muslims in Beirut, and the Syrians fighting everybody, the city turned into a bloodbath. In just a matter of months, eighteen thousand people lay dead on the streets of Beirut, and in the two years of fighting from 1975 to 1976 it is estimated that more than seventy thousand Lebanese were killed. The Israeli raid was short-lived and Israel eventually withdrew on the condition that it would be replaced by a United Nations force. Syria, however, remained.

Everything changed once again in 1982 when the Israeli military, responding to continuing border conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, launched a full invasion into southern Lebanon with the objective of removing the Palestinian Liberation Organization from the country and standing up Maronite leader Bashir Gemayel as president of Lebanon. Not only did the Israelis fail to root out the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), but in the midst of this invasion, Palestinian militants allegedly assassinated the new Christian president, Gemayel. In an act of revenge, Phalangist militias entered the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps and undertook a horrific massacre that is to this day used against both Christians in Lebanon and the Israelis who condoned the action. The Israeli military again reached as far north as Beirut, eventually occupying all of southern Lebanon.

In August 1982, a multinational force led by the United States entered Lebanon. Their responsibility was to oversee the evacuation of all foreign troops and the PLO from Beirut, but the force did more harm than good. The American presence inflamed hostilities, and 1982 saw the birth of Hezbollah, the rise of its Shi’ite rival Amal, and several militant Palestinian groups. Terrorist attacks on the United States Embassy and the United States Marine barracks led to the collapse of the multinational force and the withdrawal of the United States from Lebanon.

Fighting persisted throughout the 1980s, with little movement toward mediation. The already unstable Lebanese government had failed to oversee the election of a successor to President Amine Gemayel—the brother of the slain Bashir—whose term expired in 1988. As a result, Lebanon had no government, with dozens of paramilitary and militia groups each vying for power.

In 1989, the Arab League oversaw the Taif Agreement, which officially ended the Lebanese Civil War. The Taif Agreement modified but did not abolish the confessional system. Under the terms of the agreement, Lebanon would have a Maronite president, a Sunni prime minister, and a Shi’a speaker of parliament. The parliament, which had previously represented Christians as the majority, was now to be divided 50/50 between Christian and Muslim deputies.

By the time the Taif Agreement had been reached, the war had lasted almost fifteen years. Initially a war between Muslims and Christians, it had spiraled into an orgy of violence that saw not only Christians and Muslims killing each other, but Christians killing Christians and Muslims killing Muslims. By the end of the civil war, as many as a hundred fifty thousand to two hundred thousand people had been killed, an additional three hundred thousand had been wounded, hundreds of thousands had been displaced, and millions had been traumatized, and the economic damage exceeded 20 billion dollars.