Is Iraq the next Lebanon?

Fawaz Gerges is one of our senior analysts and is the Christian Johnson Chair in Middle East and International Affairs at Sarah Lawrence College. Last night on World News Tonight, Dan Harris asked me if the current sectarian violence in Iraq resembles that of the Lebanese civil war in its first phase. Dan did not know that I lived through the Lebanon war’s early days – 1975-1978.  In 1975, Lebanon descended into full-scale sectarian strife that would last for fifteen more years and bleed the country dry. The civil war in Lebanon polarized a generation of Muslim and Christians, many of whom had been raised in tolerant conditions. Yet in 1975 little did we know that Lebanon stood on the brink of all-out civil war that would cause over 100,000 deaths and displace a million people, a quarter of the country’s population. I fear that Iraq could also sink into the brink of the abyss like Lebanon. For fifteen years, 1975-1990, Lebanon became the killing fields of the Middle East. No family—Christian, Muslim or Druze—escaped unscathed. I lost dozens of schoolmates and several family members, including my younger brother Bassam, then 29 years old. Quid-pro-quo sectarian killings and communal massacres terrorized the population and opened a gulf between the country’s sects and religious communities. One day a right-wing Christian militia would kidnap and execute a dozen Muslims. The following day a Muslim-led militia would retaliate by shooting a dozen Christians. Roaming bands of militiamen prowled the neighborhoods, snatching victims –laborers, shoppers and teachers– from their cars or as they were walking on a sidewalk. Some of the men were lined up against the wall and shot. They were the lucky ones. Others were tortured and stabbed to death; their mutilated corpses told of the horror of their ordeal. Some “disappeared”; some were dumped in dirt lots off the side of the road. The recent sectarian killings in Iraq seem eerily reminiscent. From 1975 until 1990, 30,000 people were kidnapped in Lebanon. Most did not return. The families of those who “disappeared” still have not come to terms with their losses. I have an aunt, now in her eighties, whose son disappeared in 1983, near Beirut’s airport. To this day, every time I visit, she tells me that she knows that her son is still alive and struggling to escape from his kidnappers. Like my aunt, many Iraqi families still believe their loved ones who have “disappeared” are still alive. (At left, a 2005 photo of a woman holding photographs of her four sons who she says went missing after being taken away by Lebanese militiamen in 1982.) As the Lebanese conflict heated-up at the end of 1975, both Christian and Muslim hardliners intensified their ethnic and religious cleansing throughout the country, expelling entire communities from their homes and neighborhoods. While the majority of the country’s population neither participated in the atrocities, nor supported civil strife, war still came. My sincere hope is that Iraqi leaders will not allow the hardliners in their midst to suspend their humanity, rationality, and religious tolerance. To read more about Gerges’ personal experience in the Lebanese civil war, see his forthcoming book, Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy.