Remembering war to reach "reconciliation" between Lebanese Christian groups
The meeting between Aoun and Geagea does not erase the mistakes of the past nor the memory of Lebanon’s bloody conflict. Its history is that of a country in an almost permanent state of instability. To go from phoney to real civil peace, memory must be “purified” in the interests of peace, justice and truth.
Beirut (AsiaNews) – The spectacular rapprochement between former Army Commander Michel Aoun and Lebanese Forces party leader Samir Geagea raises again the issue of how to remember war.
This rapprochement offers, some say, one type of reconciliation for former enemies who fought each other bitterly in what came be known as the ‘Elimination War’ in 1989-1990, a conflict that paved the way for Syria’s “protection”. But of kind of "reconciliation" is it? What guarantees do we have that it is not only tactical and political, and that the unmentionable latent hostility between the two sides, because of their past of abuses, will not flare up again some day?
The History Department at the Université St-Joseph (USJ) in Beirut and the Lebanese chapter of the International Centre for Transitional Justice held a symposium last November to debate Lebanon’s case. What they discussed can help us find an answer to such questions.
What is Transitional Justice? Broadly speaking, it is a set of judicial and non-judicial step designed to address past massive human rights violations committed in situations of conflict and/or state repression. These steps include prosecution, reparations, various institutional reforms and the establishment of truth and reconciliation commissions.
In the aforementioned meeting, Carmen Abou Jaoude, then head of the International Centre for Transitional Justice - Lebanon, said, "At the end of the war, justice and truth were sacrificed, thinking that we could obtain peace. Now, forty years later, we have neither peace nor justice nor truth. "
For his part, Joseph Maïla, a professor at the École Supérieur des Sciences Économiques et Commerciales (ESSEC) in Paris, and a visiting professor at the USJ’s History Department, said about the Taif Accord that "the temporality of the conflict has never really ended the Lebanon.” Instead, one can speak of a" continuum "in which" peace mixes with violence."
According to the political scientist, the situation of a badly terminated war in which we find ourselves, or this state of unfinished peace, can be explained by the way the crisis ended in Lebanon. This continuum has four characteristics. The first one is the extraneous nature of the solution: i.e. the solution came from the outside. Secondly, peace was reached within the inner circle of the "notables cartel,” i.e. the same people responsible for both war and peace. The third reason for the continuum is the fact that Lebanon itself has been in a "state of transition" since its inception.
Indeed, Lebanon’s contemporary history is that of a country in almost permanent instability, which felt the shockwave generated by the Palestinian ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe) of 1947-48, then that of the rise of Arab nationalism, followed by that of the 1967 debacle, then that of the rise of Palestinian organisations, Syria’s “protection”, three or four Israeli attacks and invasions, and now Iran’s hegemony and Iranian-Saudi rivalry, as well Salafi terrorism.
This a lot to do for a very heterogeneous country, with evolving and poorly integrated components, in little more than 60 years of existence, and with barely time to catch its breath between one crisis and the next. Obviously, a judgment about the whole does not exclude particular judgments about this or that community.
Finally, the fourth and final reason for our phoney civil peace, said Joseph Maïla, is the amnesty law passed by the Lebanese Parliament in 1991, which blocked any quest or search for real justice, opting instead for "amnesia" and immunity for militia leaders who accepted the ‘Pax Syriana’ rather than the truth.
All this leads to believe that Aoun and Geagea have faithfully replicated the model of superficial peace discussed by the symposium participants. A case in point is the fact no one at the ‘reconciliation’ ceremony suggested observing a minute of silence out of respect for those who gave their lives for either cause.
Neither leader gave it a thought, or expressed a word of regret for the victims of the conflict. This is all the more surprising since the talks between the two teams did not start yesterday, and yet no one gave it a thought. Nothing. Instead, a sometimes obscene performance took place, with cake and champagne. Whatever it was, it was totally insensitive.
Such a view does not mean that the rapprochement between the two men and their parties is worthless. However, its value falls well below what is needed to truly mend social ties destroyed by the war, and heal deep wounds that have left in some indelible marks, like death, disfigurement, disappearance, torture, physical or psychological disability. Injuries that call for reparation.
Fortunately, there was someone who did just that. Samy Gemayel, who leads Kataeb, a party that traditionally represents the Christian electorate, two days after the meeting of "reconciliation", called on the other two leaders to go beyond a superficial deal, and genuinely engage in “memory purification”.
This cannot be done without what Carmen Abu Jaoude calls "a holistic approach", one with global reach, which inevitably involves recognition of human rights violations. This should humble the militias and groups who claimed to be fighting in the name of Lebanon, but whose cause slid into criminality along the way, groups which, from self-defence and tools of security, morphed into instruments of power and oppression.
To cite one of the conclusions presented at the symposium, "Traditional justice seeks to remember enough in order not to start again, and forget enough in order to continue to live. In Lebanon, it seems that nothing is forgotten, nor anything learnt."
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