Since the August 4th explosion in Beirut, I have been unable to write. Honestly, I have been incapable of communicating much beyond anger and sorrow for my friends and colleagues affected. Then when protests began on August 8th, I started to muster some hope for the opening of a “political opportunity,” and along with it, a desire to write. But still, I never think of myself as well-placed to provide contemporary analysis. To be frank and transparent, I am a white, male, N. American Orientalist, even if a critical and well-meaning one. I strongly believe there are people on the ground and from afar that are better placed for analysis on Lebanon than I and I see it as my job to amplify their voices. But what I do feel I can add to the unfolding discussion and commentary in the aftermath of August 4th is historical context and comparison.

Immediately following the blast, reference and comparison was made to the fifteen-year war and the warzone that sustained it. However, the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990 was a slow moving object—long, of course, but sometimes hot and others cold. The recent explosion was not a war; it was a quick, confusing, and intense disaster. I argue disasters like this, whether the product negligence or a bevy of other factors yet to be seen, must also be put in conversation with disasters of the past that have befallen the people of Lebanon.

The 2019 forest fires provide a good fit—both were the product of corruption and a spark for mass political mobilization—but the analysis would suffer from a lack of distance. To my knowledge, one of the worst disasters in the history of modern Lebanon between the 1915 locust plague and the 2020 explosion was the 1956 earthquake. On March 16, 1956, two 5.0 Mw earthquakes hit the Chouf district the hardest within 13 minutes of each other. They caused the death of 136, injured hundreds more, destroyed 6,000 homes, and damaged over 17,000 in 400 villages across the southern half of the country.[1] I briefly take up the relief efforts following this earthquake in my forthcoming book, Winning Lebanon: Youth Politics, Populism, and the Production of Sectarian Violence, 1920-1958 (Cambridge University Press, 2020). I include an excerpt below in hopes that others see and study the echoes from 1956, whether regarding the politics of humanitarian aid, relief mobilization, or the legacy of past disasters in the present moment.

The death and destruction between 2020 and 1956 may not be wholly comparable, but the terms of the response are similar. In 1956, non-state actors were at front lines of disaster recovery. Individual volunteers, scout movements, international and local charities—including the Lebanese Red Cross—families at home and abroad, and youth movements turned political parties where mobilized across the Chouf, surveying destruction, collecting donations, and organizing relief. These groups were filling the gaps left by the state, and in turn, affected peoples criticized the state for negligence and inaction. An earthquake may generate different types of condemnation (i.e., our building codes were lax, we were not warned by authorities), but in 2020, we can see an continuity: actors and groups that do not directly represent the state (political parties rarely did in the mid-1950s, even if they used parliament as a space to boost their institutional, political capital) are the first to respond, critique, and offer immediate and long-term solutions. This does not mean that there was/is no state, whether in 1956 or 2020–epitomized in the phrase, Wayn al-Dawla? or “Where is the state?” Rather, the state has often been uninterested or unwilling to respond to crises and appears more than willing to let others take center stage.

The discontinuities between the two events are telling too. In 1956, most primed to help those in need were newly established political parties, and specifically the youth within them. Young men and women in multiple parties had been groomed by their middle class leaders and were empowered to step up for the people. In fact, I argue their response in the 1956 earthquake was the product of their mobilization efforts, as these groups incorporated new types of youth (not just urban, middle class males, but women, working and rural class youth, and the diaspora) into their ranks in the 1940s-1950s and expanded mass politics. Today whether these parties are inside the government or not, they are now seen as part the problem. Focused on the politics of sect allocation, new campaigns and NGOs from home/abroad (thinking of efforts in the diaspora to work with Baytna Baytak to raise funds) are coming to the rescue. Like in 1956, families in the diaspora give to their brethren in this extreme time of need, but no longer are they directing funds to individual politicians or communal leaders. Again, this does not mean parties within the state umbrella do not matter. It means that since the 1950s, they have transformed and been transformed; they appear only willing to reproduce the system that ensures their power and position and are unable or, again, unwilling, to respond to collective trauma.

Time will only tell how contradictions that I bring up for 1956 in the excerpt below will play out in 2020 and beyond. Will these new actors of recovery be agents of not only relief, but political and social change? What hierarchies will be built into these efforts? Will the state and its stakeholders strike back? I for one think, and hope, that the circumstances of the disaster, the scale of damage, the lack of a systemic response, and sustained public outcry will change the game.

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By way of investigating their cultural production, I find that they [youth movements-cum-political parties] incorporated new groups of youth into politics, ranging from poor men to expat women, all in the name of capacity building and forging a new Lebanon with young people at the center. In this way, they first expanded conceptions of who could be considered youth – even if there were still hierarchies along class, gender, or regional lines – and who had access to futuwwa [youthfulness] under the group. Accordingly, popular organizations played a significant role in ushering in an era of mass youth politics in Lebanon and the Middle East. They were also the benefactors of this, as reflected in their rising membership numbers and roles in official politics by the 1950s .

But as they empowered, they also entrenched the demographic and ideological patterns that were central to a group’s identity. Stated differently, by way of their discourses, visions, cultures, and distinction making, all embedded within Lebanese political culture, they not only contributed to cosmopolitanism, but sectarianism. How these trends work in tandem may be most clear when investigating how popular organizations acted during a particular event: the 1956 earthquake. Following one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the Eastern Mediterranean, popular organizations were at the forefront of relief efforts, just like they were at the forefront of popular politics.[142]

The Kataʾib was on the ground almost immediately after the “disaster” that hit the Chouf District the hardest (see picture above).[143] The male and female shabab of the Kataʾib, some from nearby branches like Bdadoun, surveyed at least ten affected villages across this district.[144] As they took notes and conducted interviews with “disturbed people on the road,” they heard from these villagers that the “responsibly parties,” or local and state officials, were to blame for the destruction in their villages.[145] These same villagers, who received money, clothes, food, and youthful energy from the Kataʾib, praised the group for their “service of the affected.”[146]

Najjadeh affiliates, like the Muslim Scouts in Tripoli, perhaps were not physically mobilized in the Chouf like the Kataʾib, but they were there in spirit. In a regionally focused column titled “News on Tripoli and the North,” Bayrut reported on how the scouts collected donations, money, clothing, food, and ensured that all of the aid reached those in need.[147] Lastly, members and leaders of the Progressive Socialist Party organized donations. Twenty-three members of the Hasan family in the village of Ain al-Tineh, for example, donated 65,400 lira (or almost 20,000 USD) to those affected in the sister village of Sharton, some 80 kilometers away.[148] Since the “first hour,” Jumblatt and the People’s Committee of the party mediated these donations, as the former submitted a plan to parliament on how to rebuild from this disaster.[149] In the meantime, donations would go straight to Jumblatt, who would then use organizational infrastructure to disseminate aid relief.

This response was in part the culmination of these groups’ expansion efforts since the 1930s. In this moment, young men, women, and branches united to help those from rural backgrounds affected by the earthquake. Although not mentioned in these reports, it is more than likely that donations poured in from abroad too. Due to the effective mobilization of these new categories of people by 1956, popular organizations were gaining ground at the expense of traditional power sources. They were filling the gaps that the state and notables could not, positioning themselves as integral to both elite and grassroots politics. Lastly, they set their sights on gaining more advocates and changing hearts and minds. According to the memoir of Antoun Jarji Jamhuri, a Kataʾib member central to the relief effort (see picture above), doctors and charity organizations were reluctant to coordinate with the Kataʾib at first. But after seeing their strength and effort, even a Sunni Muslim doctor could not resist. She said the following to Jamhuri and his team: “I am Muslim and all the Islamic youth organizations [the Muslim Scouts and Najjadeh] have kept [you] away from me and for now [you, Jamhuri] will be responsible for all teams of the Red Cross.”[150]

At its surface, this response is quite inspiring; a Christian youth had convinced a superior Sunni Muslim that they would benefit from working together. Nevertheless, this moment of cross-sect coordination, like all other categories of incorporation investigated in this chapter, did not unfold without contradiction. For one, the first picture of destruction that the Kataʾib’s al-ʿAmal printed was not a Muslim’s home, but a church.[151] Moreover, the Kataʾib worked closest with a French Christian charity in its surveying and providing of aid.[152] Finally, in all Kataʾib reporting, the affected peoples are framed as victims, not active Kataʾib members. Beyond the politics of humanitarian aid, it is worth asking why Jamhuri felt the need to mention this story on the Sunni Muslim doctor and that she preferred them over the “Islamic youth organizations.” It was the same reason the Muslim Scouts in Tripoli felt the need to mention that even if their people in the north were neglected by the nation in the past, including during a 1955 flood, “Today we are called to help our brothers.”[153]

Indeed, these groups were playing the game of winning Lebanon, and this game was played in, beyond, and for Lebanon. Popular organizations, and the individuals who told and retold their stories, could not fully escape the classism, misogyny, regionalism, and sectarian discourse that prevailed across the country. Rather, they leveraged this context and expanded it. This is the case in both sect-based action, such as the Talaʾiʿ working exclusively with Shi’i communities abroad, or in anti- sectarian discourse, like the case of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party’s women’s branches chastising other groups. This is not to dismiss the contributions of these groups to mass, youth politics and mobilization or to criticize pluralist measures as in bad faith. At the same time, sect affiliation, sect system, and anti-sect discourse all play a role in what we call sectarianism. These fields of language and practice are critical to understanding how the same groups that were central to cosmopolitan- ism through the 1950s were at the center of the production of sectarian violence in 1958.

Picture at top:

Kataʾib male and female youth surveying a destroyed building after the 1956 earthquake. Antoun Jarji Jamhuri (discussed in the excerpt) is third from the right. Courtesy of Kataʾib Museum Collection. Haret Sakher, Lebanon.

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[1] Rutlage J. Brazee and William K. Cloud, “United States Earthquakes, 1956” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1956), 50 and see Martin R .Degg, “A Database of Historical Earthquake Activity in the Middle East,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 15, no. 3 (1990): 294–307.

[142] For more information on the 1956 earthquake, in relation to others, see Martin R. Degg, “A Database of Historical Earthquake Activity in the Middle East,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 15, no. 3 (1990): 294–307.

[143] Al-ʿAmal, March 20, 1956.

[144] Ibid., and March 28, 1956.

[145] Ibid., March 20, 1956.

[146] Ibid., March 20, 28, 30, and 31, 1956.

[147] Bayrut, March 22, 1956.

[148] Progressive Socialist Party, Donations from Ain al-Tineh(1956?).Progressive Socialist Party Collection, Dar al-Taqaddumiyya, Moukhtara, Lebanon, and Central Directorate of Statistics, Al-Nashra al-Ihsaʾiyya Rubʿ al-Sanawiyya, 1958 [Quarterly Statistical Bulletin, 1958] (Beirut: Ministry of Planning, 1958), 42.

[149] Al-Anbaʾ, March 23 and 30, 1956.

[150] Antoun Jarji Jamhuri, Thikrayat: Thikrayat al-Mafud fi al-Quwwa al-Nithamiyya al- Kataʾibiyya, Ahdath 1958 [Memoirs: Memoirs of Commissionership in the Kataʾib Organizational Force, Events of 1958] (Beirut: Manshurat Dar al-ʿAmal, 201?), 8.

[151] Al-ʿAmal, March 18, 1956.

[152] Ibid., March 31, 1956.

[153] Bayrut, March 22, 1956 (emphasis added).