By Ryan Saadeh

When the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) released its long-awaited judgement on August 18, 2020, many Lebanese were disappointed.[1] The tribunal, tasked with prosecuting the 2005 bombing in Beirut that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and twenty-one others, had been working for over a decade and cost approximately one billion dollars, half of which came from the bankrupt Lebanese government.[2] The verdict found just one of four defendants guilty, due in part to the tribunal’s limited mandate to investigate only the bombing and related assassinations. The STL was the most established and well-funded accountability mechanism following the Lebanese Civil War to date, and it served “justice” on a highly individualized and politically narrow basis. But in a society that had yet to undergo any post-conflict justice processes, the STL failed to disrupt the system of impunity that has pervaded Lebanese politics since the end of the war in the early 1990s.

This essay argues that Lebanon’s system of impunity stems from the General Amnesty of 1991, which, in its attempt to promote disarmament and immediate reconciliation, undermined possibilities for future justice and accountability, thus perpetuating conflict into the future. The amnesty limited most prosecutable crimes to those committed against politicians and religious leaders, while also closing the door for survivors to seek restitution. The amnesty also failed to provide avenues to address the unresolved causes of the conflict, which incentivized conflicting memorialization by sectarian communities. This helped transform former warlords both into “victims” and into leaders with a vested interest in, and power to maintain, the status quo. As a result, activists still face formidable obstacles to achieve accountability in a system designed to protect impunity.

 

Background: The End of the Lebanese Civil War

From 1975 to 1990, Lebanon endured a series of brutal battles and international wars that have since come to be defined as one continuous war, most commonly known as the “Lebanese Civil War.”[3] Throughout the late 1960s and early 70s, the political and social establishment proved unable to address growing disparities in access to socio-political privileges, opportunities, and power, thereby fuelling polarization in Lebanon. Meanwhile, the elite pacts of the country’s post-independence confessional politics began to unravel.[4] These internal frictions, coupled with the presence of the Palestinian Liberation Organization within Lebanon and the tensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict, all contributed to the collapse of the Lebanese political system and the onset of the civil war.[5]

The war was characterized by violence both between sectarian militias and between the militias and the government itself.[6] These clashes did not break down cleanly along sectarian lines; by the end of the war, “nearly every faction had fought nearly every other faction and fighting had also broken out within every major faction, [and] all sides had committed atrocities.”[7] The country has also experienced multiple occupations by neighboring states (Israel and Syria), and endured sporadic resurgence of violence in the capital and borderlands until the present day.

The war ended with the signing of the Ta’if Agreement in 1989, negotiated by the surviving members of the pre-war parliament and brokered by regional states. At the time, it was not immediately evident that the agreement would succeed, as it was preceded by a series of many other failed negotiations and it was not welcomed by all parties.[8] By 1991, however, the agreement had been implemented enough for most observers to deem the war to have ended.[9] The agreement, which ostensibly set out to address national reconciliation and reform and to disband all militias (with the exception of Hezbollah), in effect reproduced the same sectarian system whose failings in part led to the civil war.[10] While there were modifications to the allocation of political representation along confessional lines, the further institutionalization of sectarian political systems in the post-war context ensured that the wartime antagonisms would continue indefinitely.

After Ta’if, the transitional process was dominated by Syrian hegemonic influence, riddled with corruption and clientelism, and unable to address the communal, economic, or political tensions which had produced the conflict. It lacked any mechanisms for accountability and proceeded with no roadmap out of the “transitional” period.[11] Most significantly, the agreement provided no framework for justice: there would be no truth and reconciliation commissions, no public tribunals, and no opportunities for survivors of atrocities to confront the perpetrators and beneficiaries of the war.[12]

 

“No Victor, No Vanquished”: Amnesty and Amnesia

The Ta’if Agreement’s unpopularity sparked a new round of fighting. Michel Aoun, a Lebanese Army general who would later become president, refused to accept the agreement amid his “war of liberation” against Syrian forces. Both to facilitate disarmament and to clear the way for the exiled Aoun to leave the country, Parliament introduced a general amnesty in 1991 (law 84/91) to provide amnesty for all crimes committed between 1975-1990 with select few exceptions, notably that of political assassinations.[13] The resulting amnesty forgave political parties and leaders for wartime practices and absolved individual and group militia members for sexual violence, murder, torture, and forced disappearance.[14]

 Not all amnesties necessarily create a culture of impunity. When conditionally introduced in good faith and implemented alongside programs designed to support reconciliation and restorative justice, amnesties can serve as a “functional precondition for establishing conditions conducive to transitional justice” that may engender good governance.[15] For example, amnesties in South Africa, Uganda, and Timor-Leste managed to incorporate elements of restorative justice, such as inclusive stakeholder participation, truth-telling, and reparations.[16] On the other hand, blanket amnesties do not impose conditions upon benefactors and tend to lack alternative accountability mechanisms, allowing elite perpetrators to shield themselves from persecution.[17]

Lebanon’s amnesty can therefore be considered a denial of justice, with no conditions for vetting and an absence of complementary accountability mechanisms.[18] In this case, the near-blanket amnesty thus allowed warlords to rebrand themselves as politicians and militias to remodel themselves as political parties, a reconciliation among elites that also allowed the effective beneficiaries of the war to include themselves in the category of victims, without holding truth commissions or encouraging apologies to other victims.[19]

Though the amnesty has come to be seen by many as a form of “state-sponsored amnesia” to sustain the pre-existing social system, Lebanon’s policy of post-war silence may be better understood as a “discursive approach to the past among competing and conflicting historical narratives” rather than in terms of “forgetting.”[20] In the absence of constructive processes for building a positive peace, the amnesty did not make society “forget.” Instead, it intensified memory production and contributed to a permeating discourse of accountability in unofficial public spheres.[21] In lacking formal accountability mechanisms and forums for nation-wide truth-telling, confessional communities are incentivized to “project their communal memory onto the memory of the nation as a whole.”[22] This war of memories further stokes divisions and marginalizes the memory of “other” confessional groups, so as to establish a hegemony of memory within each community.[23]

What has been written as tension of public and private memory has in fact been a power struggle between different players in society over how to interpret the war and the politics of history-making.[24] In a country whose political system is premised on coexistence between communities, thus requiring well-defined sectarian communities, such discursive “othering” and conflictual narratives hold significant potential to lead to civil unrest and future violence.[25]

 

“Corruption, with no one corrupt”: Accountability and Impunity

In early stages of conflict termination, decision makers may put off the issues of accountability and justice where they believe that the costs of a “truth and reconciliation” process outweigh the potential benefits.[26] Peace agreements that are essential for disarmament, such as Ta’if, can also be in tension—both in material cost and differences in ideological priority—with adopting accountability mechanisms for past abuses.[27] But the legacy of an unfinished transition and the absence of a positive peace, coupled with a corrupt judiciary and lack of rule of law, have contributed to a political culture of impunity that has foreclosed future accountability processes in Lebanon.[28]

Derived from this legacy of “amnesty” is what Sami Hermez labels a “politics of protracted conflict,” in which justice that served as elite reconciliation only burdens the rest of society. The society is asked to “reconcile with continuing inequality as a morally acceptable alternative in the aftermath of violence.”[29] That is, the lack of accountability for present economic corruption is tied to the lack of accountability for participation in the civil war.[30] Since elites fear that distributive justice will lead to retribution, “redistributive claims in the name of victims are indefinitely deferred” just as the Ta’if Agreement’s implementation remains unfinished with no resolution in sight.[31]

Another impediment to justice is that Lebanese civil society has been stuck in the unfortunate position of advocating for accountability and justice within a statist framework itself dominated by the perpetrators of atrocities, crimes, and corruption. The beneficiaries-of-war-cum-politicians are willing to accommodate “transitional justice,” until the point that their interests are threatened. This is while they insist that maintaining the sectarian status quo from which they benefit is the only way to keep the ever-unsteady peace.[32]

With its long history of impunity for crimes that have left Lebanon “perpetually crisis-ridden” and in financial ruin, the saying “no victor, no vanquished”—generally meaning that there was neither a “winner” nor a “loser” in the civil war, and that all were equally guilty and thus should agree to move on—has taken on a sarcastic twist: “corruption, but with no one corrupt.”[33] Though it is widely acknowledged and documented that the Lebanese government is rife with corruption, few have been held accountable.[34] The damage of the failed post-war transition entrenched impunity such that the large-scale and institutionalized recourse to corruption in the post-war period, through which political elites consolidated their power, remains unanswered for by those who benefited from the war economy and from continued inequality.

 

Conclusion

When Lebanese took to the streets en masse in October 2019, calling for a range of reforms (including a change of cabinet, new electoral laws, recovery of stolen public funds, an independent judiciary, and other protections), it seemed the country might actualize the justice and accountability it was long denied.[35] A 2019 survey from the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies estimated that the largest share of protesters' demands were related to some form of accountability.[36] One of the most-heard slogans of the revolution was “all of them means all of them,” turning politicians’ broad deflection of responsibility for perpetuating the system on its head. The message to the Lebanese government: you are all implicated.

But despite the best efforts of the activists who propelled the mass movement, and while some political change was achieved, the underlying impunity and corruption within the Lebanese government remain unresolved.[37] Moreover, the STL judgment arrived at a moment when Lebanese demands for accountability were at a high, coming in the wake of the 2019-2020 October Uprisings, the consecutive economic collapse, and then the devastating blast on August 4, 2020 that left much of Beirut in shambles. Over a year after the explosion, the Lebanese public has little confidence in the investigation, as the underlying systems of corruption, inequity, and poor governance persist. Judge Fadi Sawan, the initial lead investigator of the case, was removed after charging top-level officials with negligence rather than limiting the search to only low- and mid-level employees as was initially expected.[38] His replacement, Judge Tarek Bitar, has faced similar challenges in prosecuting officials, some of whom have refused to appear for questioning and have filed legal requests to dismiss Bitar from his post. [39] A Human Rights Watch investigation noted that the domestic investigation is “incapable of credibly delivering justice,” due to ministers’ de jure (but contested) immunity from prosecution, violations of due process, a lack of fair trial safeguards and independence of the judiciary.[40]

Thus, the public continues to interpret the devastating explosion at the Beirut port not as an anomaly or an isolated tragedy, but an escalation in criminal negligence of the Lebanese government.[41] One prominent photograph circulated days after the explosion depicts graffiti on a wall, the annihilated port in the background: My government did this.[42]

Hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic, financial collapse, and related shortages the popular protest movement has lost momentum. Yet Lebanon today still suffers from the failure to implement disarmament, transitional justice, and transformative economic and social justice as part of the recovery project.[43]

Foreign donors, international organizations, and aid agencies have traditionally promoted technical and managerial changes to reform Lebanon’s government and political system.[44] However necessary, this approach still leaves intact the underlying clientelism and patronage networks that make widespread corruption possible and political gridlock pervasive.[45] With the possibility of an International Monetary Fund bailout on the horizon—contingent upon economic-financial reform—there is further risk that such a rescue package might serve as a lifeline to the political class that oversaw the country’s downfall to begin with.[46] To counterbalance these challenges, reform-oriented initiatives should approach these efforts with a willingness to face the political and historical underpinnings of the present quagmire. Such initiatives must incorporate concrete steps aimed at strengthening rule of law, ensuring judicial independence such that corruption may be properly investigated, and developing long overdue accountability and truth-telling mechanisms.

While many donors and non-governmental actors avoid engagement with the government and the political class, which are justifiably considered corrupt and culpable for the current situation, bypassing the state altogether does not offer promising prospects for long-term recovery.[47] As the Beirut Urban Lab suggests, even small attempts to “salvage any pieces of the state so it is functional” are worth undertaking, such that these efforts may contribute to the development of bottom-up, inclusive, and justice-oriented state building processes that have been long delayed.[48] Lebanon needs to bring transformative justice to its systems and institutions. Without such a reckoning, widespread structural and systematic violence will continue, uninhibited, into the indefinite future.

About the Author

Ryan Saadeh is a Marshall Scholar and a candidate for the MA in Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies at King’s College London. He recently finished his MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development from SOAS University of London and holds a BA in Middle East Studies and Political Science from Brown University. Ryan’s research focuses on conflict and development dynamics in divided societies, political violence, and post-conflict recovery.

Endnotes

1. Houshig Kaymakamian, “Lebanese Surprised, Disappointed by STL Verdict,” The Daily Star, August 18, 2020, https://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2020/Aug-18/510495-lebanese-surprised-disappointed-by-stl-verdict.ashx.

2. Tjitske Lingsma, “Special Tribunal for Lebanon: Billion Dollar Trial,” JusticeInfo.Net (blog), July 7, 2020, https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/44825-special-tribunal-for-lebanon-billion-dollar-trial.html.

3. Sami Hermez, War Is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon, Ethnography of Political Violence (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15646.html, 22-23. 

4. Confessionalism refers to a system of governance in which political power is allocated among sectarian (confessional) communities. See: Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (London: Pluto Press, 2012); 157-189.

5. Rola El-Husseini, Pax Syriana Elite Politics in Postwar Lebanon, 2012, 10-12.

6. Chandra Lekha Sriram, “Unfinished Business: Peacebuilding, Accountability, and Rule of Law in Lebanon,” SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, 2010), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1701891

7. Ora Szekely, “The Costs of Avoiding Transitional Justice: Lessons from Lebanon,” in Transitional Justice and the Arab Spring, 1st ed. (London, 2015), https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203431146-6, 96.

8. Szekely, “The Costs of Avoiding Transitional Justice,” 97.

9. Ibid.

10. Chandra Lekha Sriram, Olga Martin-Ortega, and Johanna Herman, “Justice Delayed? Internationalised Criminal Tribunals and Peace-Building in Lebanon, Bosnia and Cambodia,” Conflict, Security & Development 11, no. 3 (July 1, 2011): 335–56, https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2011.593811, 340; Traboulsi, History of Modern Lebanon, 250.

11. Szekely, “Lessons from Lebanon,” 98.

12. Ibid.

13. “Amnesty to Allow Rebel General to Flee Lebanon (Published 1991),” The New York Times, August 18, 1991, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/18/world/amnesty-to-allow-rebel-general-to-flee-lebanon.html.

14. Maya Mikdashi, “The Magic of Mutual Coexistence in Lebanon: The Taif Accord at Thirty,” Jadaliyya - جدلية, October 23, 2019, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/40134; Sriram, “Unfinished Business,” 126.

15. Mark Freeman, Necessary Evils: Amnesties and the Search for Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 19; 31.

16. Louise Mallinder, “Amnesties in the Pursuit of Reconciliation, Peacebuilding, and Restorative Justice,” in Restorative Justice, Reconciliation, and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press), accessed February 21, 2021, https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199364862.001.0001/acprof-9780199364862-chapter-6.

17. Louise Mallinder, Amnesty, Human Rights and Political Transitions: Bridging the Peace and Justice Divide (Oxford; Portland, Or: Hart Publishing, 2008), 6.

18. Mallinder, Amnesties in the Pursuit of Reconciliation, Peacebuilding, and Restorative Justice, 21.

19. Sami Hermez, War Is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon, Ethnography of Political Violence (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 183.

20. Haugbolle, “Public and Private Memory,” 193; Craig Larkin, “Beyond the War? The Lebanese Postmemory Experience,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42, no. 4 (2010): 618.

21. Hermez, War is Coming, 175.

22. Eduardo Wassim Aboultaif and Paul Tabar, “National versus Communal Memory in Lebanon,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 25, no. 1 (2019) https://doi.org/10.1080/13537113.2019.1565183: 98.

23. Aboultaif & Tabar, “National Versus Communal Memory in Lebanon,” 98.

24. Hermez, War is Coming,192.

25. Mikdashi, “Magic of Mutual Coexistence”; Aboultaif & Tabar, “National Versus Communal Memory in Lebanon,” 109-110.

26. Haugbolle, “Public and Private Memory,” 193.

27. Sriram et. al, “Justice Delayed,” 338-9.

28. Ibid., 341.

29. Hermez, War is Coming, 23.

30. Mikdashi, “Magic of Mutual Coexistence.”

31. Hermez, War is Coming, 23; Mikdashi, “Magic of Mutual Coexistence.” 

32. Ibid., 8.

33. Haugbolle, “Public and Private Memory,” 193; Timour Azhari, “Fadi Sawan: The Man Leading the Beirut Explosion Investigation,” Al Jazeera, August 21, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/8/21/fadi-sawan-the-man-leading-the-beirut-explosion-investigation.

34. El-Husseini, Pax Syriana, 87-121; Reinoud Leenders, Spoils of Truce: Corruption and State-Building in Postwar Lebanon, 1st ed. (Cornell University Press, 2012), https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.cttq438h.

35. “Demands Raised by Certain Groups Who Participated in the October 2019 Uprising,” American University of Beirut, November 12, 2019, http://www.aub.edu.lb:80/ifi/news/Pages/20191112-demands-raised-by-certain-groups-who-participated-in-the-october-2019-uprising.aspx.

36. LCPS Lebanon, “LCPS Surveyed Protesters in Riad Al-Solh and Martyrs’ Square on Oct. 23-26 to See What Their Main Demands Are. Here Is What We Found: 2/3 of the Demands Are Political, and 1/3 Are Socio-Economic and for Better Public Services #Lebanon #LebanonProtest #لبنان_ينتفض Https://T.Co/NGD1Hbqw7P,” Tweet, @lcpslebanon, November 9, 2019, https://twitter.com/lcpslebanon/status/1193175351641432065.

37. LCPS Lebanon, “Has the October 17 Revolution Accomplished Anything At All?” October 17, 2020, http://lcps-lebanon.org/agendaArticle.php?id=197.

38. Sarah Dadouch and Nader Durgham, “Six Months after Massive Beirut Explosion, Official Investigation Has Been Upended,” Washington Post, accessed February 21, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/beirut-explosion-blast-investigation/2021/02/20/632f75a6-72ba-11eb-8651-6d3091eac63f_story.html.

39. Kareem Chehayeb, “Lebanese Ex-Minister Files Complaint to Remove Beirut Blast Judge,” Reuters, September 22, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/22/beirut-blast-ex-minister-files-complaint-to-remove-judge.

40. Human Rights Watch, “‘They Killed Us from the Inside’: An Investigation into the August 4 Beirut Blast” (Human Rights Watch, August 3, 2021), https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/08/03/they-killed-us-inside/investigation-august-4-beirut-blast.

41. Mohamad Bazzi, “The Corrupt Political Class That Broke Lebanon,” Foreign Affairs, August 18, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/lebanon/2020-08-14/corrupt-political-class-broke-lebanon.

42. “Pictures of the Day: 11th August 2020,” The Telegraph, August 11, 2020, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/11/pictures-day-11th-august-2020/government-did-seen-written-wall-site-massive-beirut-port-explosion/.

43. Rama Mani, “Dilemmas of Expanding Transitional Justice, or Forging the Nexus between Transitional Justice and Development,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2, no. 3 (December 2008), 253.

44. Reinoud Leenders, “Timebomb at the Port: How Institutional Failure, Political Squabbling and Greed Set the Stage for Blowing up Beirut,” Arab Reform Initiative, September 16, 2020, https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/timebomb-at-the-port-how-institutional-failure-political-squabbling-and-greed-set-the-stage-for-blowing-up-beirut/.

45. Karam, Patricia. “Can Lebanon Rebuild Not Just Beirut, but Its Broken Political System?” World Politics Review (blog), August 28, 202. https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/29024/in-lebanon-corruption-has-broken-the-political-system-can-it-be-rebuilt.

46. Georgieva, Kristalina. “Statement by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on the International Conference on Support to Beirut and the Lebanese People.” IMF, August 9, 2020. https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/08/09/pr20278-statement-by-imf-md-kristalina-georgieva-int-conference-support-beirut-lebanese-people.; Bazzi, Zahra, and Nizar Hassan. “An IMF Bailout for Lebanon Can Make Things Worse.” Bretton Woods Project (blog), October 6, 2020 https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2020/10/an-imf-bailout-for-lebanon-can-make-things-worse/; Laila Bassam, “EXCLUSIVE Lebanon to Resume IMF Talks, Begin Reforms, Draft Policy Statement Says,” Reuters, September 15, 2021, sec. Middle East, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/exclusive-lebanon-resume-imf-talks-begin-reforms-draft-policy-statement-says-2021-09-15/.

47. Mona Fawaz and Mona Harb, “Is Lebanon Becoming Another ‘Republic of the NGOs’?,” Beirut Urban Lab (blog), October 13, 2020, https://www.beiruturbanlab.com/en/Details/697.

48. Fawaz and Harb, “Is Lebanon Becoming Another ‘Republic of the NGOs’?”