LEGACY OF CIVIL WAR STILL DIVIDES MUCH OF BEIRUT BY SECT
By Rym Ghazal
Daily Star – Lebanon,
Oct 19 2007
Even as Lebanese struggle to erase memories of old divisions, fears
of new ones emerge
BEIRUT: While 17 years have passed since the end of the bloody
Civil War in Lebanon that gave rise to the infamous "Green Line"
that divided the capital into East and West Beirut, the line appears
to have survived in people’s minds, with fears emerging that new
divisions are being formed in the fragile country.
Hiba Tabbara, a student, said she recently flagged a cab to take her
from Hamra to Achrafieh, and things were going smoothly until she
asked to be dropped at a church.
According to her, the driver then barked: "If I’d known you were
Christian, I would have never picked you up."
Tabbara said she now asks to be dropped off at "neutral" locations
to avoid revealing her religion to taxi drivers.
"I just couldn’t believe this kind of mentality still exists," she
said. "I thought it died with the end of the war."
Other people interviewed expressed similar sentiments, particularly
the older generation that still remembers the wrath of war and its
aftermath.
"I still see Beirut as East vs. West, and especially during
the religious holidays we feel this division," said housewife Siham
Sukar, who lives in the Salim Salaam area. "I don’t think the Green
Line will ever go away."
The Green Line along the main Damascus road was a front line from the
1970s until 1990, separating warring Christian and Muslim militias
in Beirut. The stretch of road became a dangerous war zone in which
buildings were destroyed and people’s lives were at risk.
But that was then. Today, many of the buildings have been rebuilt and
people’s lives are at the mercy of unruly traffic along the same road,
rather than militia fighters.
"It is still around in people’s psyche, as the Green Line was around
for 20 years, and people need 20 years at least to
recover from it," political analyst Simon Haddad told The Daily Star.
"This country is full of lines and most of them are in people’s heads,
which makes the lines dangerous," he added.
The recent political deadlock has exacerbated a sense of division
among members of Lebanon’s diverse religious communities, who tend
to reside in separate geographical areas.
"A quick drive to the South or to the southern suburbs [of Beirut]
is all that one needs to do to enter another world," said Haddad,
referring to areas predominantly inhabited by Shiites.
The South, the northern Bekaa Valley, and the southern suburbs are
visible strongholds of Hizbullah, and the launch of a Hizbullah-led
opposition sit-in last December in the heart of the capital reignited
what many thought were long-buried territorial debates.
"Some viewed the sit-in as ‘them,’ Hizbullah, coming to ‘us,’ and
that shook an already fragile sense of identity in this country,"
said Haddad.
But Beirut’s predominantly Shiite southern suburbs are not the only
religiously homogenous areas, with much of Greater Beirut largely
divided along sectarian lines: Shiite (including Hay al-Sellom,
Shiyyah, Haret Hreik, Jnah, Ouzai); Druze (starting from Khaldeh,
Shweifat, and onward to the Chouf), Armenian (north of Achrafieh),
and Christian (Achrafieh, Kfarshima, Hadath, Ain al-Rummaneh, Dekwaneh
and Sin al-Fil).
During the Civil War, sectarian militias seized control of swathes
of territory, sometimes increasing the homogeneity of their areas by
forcing members of other confessions to leave their neighborhoods.
The religious divisions then gave rise to territorial ones, such as
the Green Line.
Although the battle lines are a part of the past, many of the divisions
that the Green Line represented remain.
"It is strongly engraved in people’s minds," said Haddad, "and it
will take time and a more unified nation for it to be erased."