Lebanon’s present descent into ever deepening crises is ultimately traceable to the Lebanese’s excessive loyalty to sectarian community and leadership over and against the common national good. This sectarianism both facilitated the bloody inter-communal violence of Lebanon’s Civil War (1975-1990) as well as the subsequent decades of cartel-like rule by the sectarian militia leaders who have become the country’s political class. These leaders granted themselves amnesty after the war and imposed a general amnesia on the country that has prevented Lebanese communities from dealing with their past and seeking reconciliation with each other. Instead, each community today tells its own sectarian version of the past, thereby justifying its allegiance to sectarian leadership, and ultimately perpetuating the highly destructive status-quo into cycles of violence and an uncertain future.
Dealing with the past is therefore central to the philosophy of the “Truth and Reconciliation for Lebanon” project. However, rather than seeking to harmonize and synthesize the various communities’ perspectives on the past – arguably an impossibility – we hold that the explorative process itself, maintaining multiple and competing narratives in tension, can serve a cathartic purpose that leads to peacebuilding, reconciliation, and the common good. By legitimizing the “collective memory” of each segment of the Lebanese population in a community-based process of catharsis and listening, a new sense of empathy may be fostered, and mutual fears alleviated.
In this context, we recently completed a pilot for the first “Truth and Reconciliation for Lebanon” module, dealing with the events of Black Saturday of 5 and 6 December 1975. We reconstructed two distinct narratival perspectives on these events based on archival research, published memoirs and monographs, and interviews with surviving witnesses and protagonists. Current “gatekeepers” of the narratives (political leaders, party loyalists, …, etc.) were then consulted to confirm the “legitimacy” of each narrative to ensure they represent the dominant perspective on each side. These narratives were then published online in English and Arabic on a website facilitating the creative exploration of the different perspectives. This website is meant to become a growing archive, as we add more modules and multimedia materials based on the narratives.