Amnesia in Post-War Lebanon: a recipe for violence & instability

Abstract

Lebanon is a country characterized by a history of mass human rights violations and recurrent cycles of sectarian conflict. The most defining of these conflicts was the Lebanese Civil War, which spanned from 1975 to 1990, leaving countless dead, wounded, displaced, or disappeared. The war formally ended in 1990 – more than 30 years ago - when the country’s political elite signed the Document of National Accord. In the aftermath of the war, the country needed to institute a comprehensive transitional process to steer the country toward peace and stability. However, until today, Lebanon has failed to shed its conflict-prone past and continues to witness periodic outbreaks of instability and violence. In this study, I argue that the recurrent cycles of instability that the country has witnessed in the post-war era stem from the post-war strategy that the state adopted. What ensued in the post-war era was a flawed transition process based on state-sponsored amnesia characterized by amnesty laws, minimal truth-seeking, and limited memorialization of the war. This created a culture of forgetfulness, in which communities have been left with competing war narratives and victims without answers regarding what happened during the war, allowing tensions between communities to build and grievances to accumulate. This study illustrates how the state-sponsored amnesia has contributed to the ongoing instability in Lebanon today. It also sheds light on why this strategy was adopted, and how an alternative transition process based on truth and memorialization would have aided national reconciliation.