Lebanon: “Instability Is the Only Constant You Ever Know”

“In 1974, Beirut ranked among the greatest metropolises of the Near East. With a population of only slightly more than a million, its demographic weight was modest by comparison with Cairo, even with Damascus; and as the capital of one of the smallest Arab states, it could scarcely claim to be a major international center of decision making or diplomacy, even if the welcome Beirut granted to the leadership of the Palestinian resistance placed it at the heart of a political dynamic that transcended regional boundaries. No matter. And yet since the early 1960s it had incontestably been one of the premier poles of cultural and economic attraction in the Arab world. Among all the cities of this world, it yielded perhaps only to Cairo - and even then, not in every domain. As a university seat and medical center, as the capital of Arab publishing and journalism, as a transit port and airline hub, and as a market and clearinghouse for every kind of commercial and banking transaction, from the most ordinary to the most dubious, Beirut fulfilled a great many functions that went beyond the frontiers of the Republic of Lebanon. In exchange for these services it was paid in the form of currency--every currency in the world. Though it was not a wealthy city, it gave every appearance of being one; and because money begets more money, it exhibited the same insouciance one finds in wealthy cities everywhere, serenely confident that its sources of revenue would never dry up.” Thus wrote the late Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir - who would be killed by car bomb in June 2005 - about Lebanon’s capital in the era that immediately preceded that nation’s 1975 to 1990 civil war. In the years since the official end of the civil war, Lebanon has nonetheless endured tumult and conflict as few other countries have. A Syrian occupation that lasted from 1976 until 2005. An Israeli occupation of South Lebanon from 1982 until 2000. The 2005 assassination of Rafic Hariri, who served as prime minister of Lebanon from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2000 to 2004, and whose death gave rise to the so-called Cedar Revolution that succeeded in forcing Syrian troops to withdraw from the country. A series of 2015–2016 protests about the sanitation crisis. Protests beginning in October 2019 against corrupt political elites and a devastating 2020 explosion in the port of Beirut. Amid all of this were a pair of highly destructive wars between the Iran-backed political party and militia Hezbollah and Israel in 2006 and again beginning in 2023 To decode some of the complexities of Lebanon’s past and present, we are joined on Notes From the World today by three guests: Ronnie Chatah, who hosts The Beirut Banyan podcast and is the founder of WalkBeirut, a walking tour through the streets of the Lebanese capital that teaches visitors learn about Lebanon’s cultural heritage and history; Stephanie Bechara, a reporter with L’Orient-Le Jour, a French-language daily newspaper in Lebanon; and Karim Safieddine, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Sociology where his areas of inquiry focus on understanding the ways in which social movements in late 20th and 21st century Lebanon and the historical and contemporary development of the “Lebanese Left.” Image: “Lebanon” by Eugene Kaspersky, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0