Lebanese Civil War: Encyclopedia II - Lebanese Civil War - Background to the war

Lebanese Civil War - Background to the war

Lebanese Civil War - Colonial roots

Lebanon in its modern borders was established in 1920, as a French mandate granted by the League of Nations after the Conference of San Remo. It had been carved out of the Ottoman Empire, but there existed a unique history of Christian-dominated autonomy in the Mount Lebanon area ("Little Lebanon") under Ottoman government, partly as a result of French pressures on behalf of the Maronites. During its mandate, France added several districts to the mutasarrifiya of Mount Lebanon to form "Greater Lebanon". These districts included heavily Sunni and Shi'a Muslim areas, which diluted the previous Maronite and Druze majority of Mount Lebanon. When independence was gained from France in 1943, an unwritten power-sharing agreement (known as the National Pact) was forged among the three major ethnic and religious groups: Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Shi'a Muslims. The balance was heavily tilted towards the Christian side, who although only about half of the population, was guaranteed the powerful Presidency and a permanent Parliamentary majority.

Lebanese Civil War - After independence

Soon after the nation's birth, it saw the arrival of about 100,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. Most were settled into refugee camps in southern Lebanon and excluded from mainstream society. This was because the Palestinian presence was strongly resented by most Christian sects, who believed an influx of the mainly Sunni Muslim Palestinians would dilute their claim to power.

As the Palestinians were prevented from returning to what was now Israel, tensions grew, and the anti-Palestinian sentiment of many Christians became conflated with the Christian-Muslim tension underlying the republic's power structure. Needless to say, a number of non-religious power struggles within the government added to the already complex web of political conflict; and the pull of much more powerful neighbouring states, as well as of the Cold War, strained Lebanon near the breaking point.

These tensions dominated Lebanese politics under the surface, and occasionally exploded in brief bursts of conflict and violence. The most serious disruption came in the Lebanon Crisis of 1958, with months of open rebellion by a Muslim-leftist coalition aided by the United Arab Republic (UAR, a temporary Pan-Arab union of Syria and Egypt). The fighting was eventually ended in favor of the Christian-dominated Chamoun government by U.S. intervention. The 1958 disturbances are now often referred to as a "practice round" for the civil war.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Background to the war", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki