A series of commemorative events have begun taking place across Lebanon, as the country marks the 50th anniversary since the start of its lengthy civil war.
April 13th, 1975 was the beginning of a 15-year conflict that would kill about 150,000 people and leave some 17,000 missing.
Half a century later, many Lebanese people are making efforts to ensure this will not happen again.
“If I can change, anyone can change,” said Walid Saab (61), once a fighter in the Chouf region. Saab became involved with the NGO Fighters for Peace in 2017.
He was speaking in advance of giving his testimony as part of a “human library” on Sunday in Beit Beirut. The museum and urban cultural centre is situated on what was once the Green Line, a demarcation line that stretched down the capital city.
“I witnessed the war, I was a fighter and saw the real harm wars can do,” Saab said. “I realised war is not the solution ... It’s counterproductive.”
Christina Foerch Saab, a co-founder of Fighters for Peace, said previously in Lebanon there seemed to be no political will to engage with the past, “but I think now civil society has done a lot – also research institutions, universities, activists, artists, film-makers.”
She said this work is always “in regard to hopefully never again repeating such atrocities. And I think that remains important.”
Lebanon formed a new government in February, following more than two years of a political stalemate. Foerch Saab said this has given people hope that the future will be brighter but the past will be addressed in a better way too.
“We’re still in a situation of negative peace in Lebanon and not of positive peace ... The wounds haven’t closed, not everybody has healed from the experiences of the civil war.”
She said Fighters for Peace had been involved in a lot of events, including travelling to southern Lebanon to meet people affected by war between Hizbullah and Israel – a conflict that raised concerns that civil war could break out again too.
On Friday, at the opening of an exhibition at Beirut’s national library, prime minister Nawaf Salam called for this anniversary to be “a turning point, and not just a moment of remembrance”. A national minute of silence was held at noon on Sunday.
Samira Ezzo (28), who leads weekly Green Line walking tours through her project Layers of Lebanon, said it is still challenging to find objective narratives about the civil war. “Not even the name of the war we agree on. Some say the Lebanese war, some people call it the Lebanese civil war, some say the war of others on Lebanese lands.”
She said school curriculums only teach Lebanese history until 1943, when Lebanon got independence from the French mandate.
“You can’t move on without healing wounds,” Ezzo said. “If you don’t understand your past, you can’t understand your present or your future.”
Myriam Sfeir, executive director of the Arab Institute for Women at the Lebanese American University, and part of the organising committee for Sunday’s commemoration events at Beit Beirut, said narratives of women, in particular, are often overlooked.
“Lebanese women were very instrumental in weaving the tattered make-up of the country. They kept their families alive. They basically worked on reconciliation. They worked on peace activism. They led demonstrations.”
Funding for commemorative projects and related efforts is shrinking “for all sorts of reasons”, including UN member states “investing more in their defence budgets ... specifically in Europe, North America,” said Jumanah Zabaneh, a programme management specialist with UN Women.
When there is funding, it gets directed towards dealing with Lebanon’s humanitarian situation and “less on long-term reforms and peace-building in a country that needs to heal and move forward”.
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However, “dealing with the past is a core component of working in countries like Lebanon”, she added, saying that included work focused on the “prevention of another war, with the younger generation”.
