Review, Lebanon: Fire and Embers (Dilip Hiro)

(Disclaimer: the author of this review has no professional experience in Lebanon. This is not an authoritative commentary on Lebanese history or the Lebanese Civil War [LCW]. It is only a review of a book. This review was originally posted at the Amazon website, which has since disabled access to references.)

After reading many books about Lebanese history and the Civil War in particular, I believe this is the best. There are several advantages this book has over alternatives.

The first is that Hiro is not plugged into the customary ideological debates. He feels neither the defensiveness nor the regret that plagues much Western historical writing on Southwest Asia.¹ On the one hand, he has some strong ideological convictions (I disagree with these), but spells out what they are). On the other hand, he is oddly unconcerned about revealing facts that undermine those convictions; perhaps his big advantage is that he's too naive to mislead the reader for long. After the introduction, he sets aside his opinions.

The second point is that Hiro spells out critical events that ensured the war would last. Not just the Americans and Israelis, but the Soviets and Syrians (and Iraqis, Libyans, and Saudis) intervened in erratic ways. The Syrian government of Hafiz al-Assad initially sided with a coalition of Muslims that included the PSP, the PLO, and the Nasserists (the LNM).² The PLA and LNM initially hounded Christians out of the Bekaa Valley, but the Syrian-controlled PLA abruptly switched sides after Damascus cut a deal with East Beirut (i.e., the seat of the Phalangist-controlled state). There is really no way to present this sequence of events in a matter that's friendly to any side. Assad's hagiographer, Patrick Seale, glosses over the PLA role in war crimes and treachery towards the LNM or the Palestinian cause; Winslow plays down the initial phase of war-crimes against Christians. Hiro shares Marshall's loathing of the Lebanese Forces (Phalange),³ but he makes no effort to play down or ignore the extreme compulsion of Christians by their Syrian and Palestinian opponents in the war. After the period April 1975-June 1976, the wave of Syrian-abetted massacres and "ethnic cleansing" of Christians (and Israeli-American backed Christian massacres of Muslims) had severely divided Lebanon along sectarian lines. But the deadly feuds within each faction ensured that this was never going to be a war between Christians and Muslims. The constant sequence of ceasefires and disengagement agreements resulted in growing numbers of fighting groups serving as surrogates, and surrogates of the surrogates; after the rampages of 1982, all of these fighting groups settled in as going concerns. They were able to blackmail or extort incomes from foreign patrons, shake down ordinary citizens, and control smuggling routes for heroin.

Hiro surpasses even Charles Winslow in his patience and professionalism as he carefully documents the agonizing twists of the war. He addresses the high politics (diplomacy and geostrategy), but also the feuds among the rival factions (like the Franjieh-Gemayel conflict, or Aoun v. Hoss), and critically, the economics of the war.

I disagree with some of Hiro's conclusions, but my disagreements aren't even worth mentioning because he gamely provides all the information needed to make a reasonable inference. No one else I've seen makes such a determined, methodical examination of the entire LCW from start to finish, without ever slacking off. Some readers will be frustrated because they "need" to plough through a staggering number of twists and turns, without ever finding a clear villain. Such is the nature of truth.

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NOTES:

1. For the purposes of SW Asia, 1949-1990, the political "left" favored immediate unification of the Arab states for the purpose of military destruction of Israel. Conservatives, in Arab parlance of this time, were more interested in economic development. Conservative Lebanese in particular favored the continued survival of Lebanon as a separate, sovereign state--distinct from Syria and detached from the Palestinian conflict.
   
   On p.20, out of nowhere, Hiro claims that Kissinger used the CIA to push Lebanon into civil war because King Faisal of Saudi Arabia had just been assassinated and some distraction was needed. In my opinion, this is absurd, and he does not pursue the matter. After following up on this, I established that he was referring to the fact that the CIA secretly funded the Lebanese Phalange (Kata'ib) and had direct contact with its leader, Bashir Gemayel. This is not a terribly shocking revelation, since continued Maronite hegemony over Lebanon was obviously to the advantage of the USA and Israel.



2. The Muslims of Lebanon are a heterogeneous group, including Twelver Shi'a (the largest single grouping), Sunni, and Druse (a variant of Sevener Shi'ism peculiar to Lebanon and Syria). The political arm of the Druse was the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), led by the ancient Jumblatt clan of Qaysi chieftains; the Sunnis of Lebanon had the Murabitun (also known as the Independent Nasserists). The Sunnis (and Christians) of Palestine had the PLO, which was non-sectarian. These three groups together formed the Lebanese National Movement (LNM), an early force opposing the Maronites.
   
   The Syrians controlled several militia, including the Palestinian Liberation Army (PLA), which was often at odds with the more-famous PLO, and by extension, the LNM.



3. The Christians of Lebanon are also heterogeneous, both theologically and politically. The Maronites accounted for about two thirds of all Christians in Lebanon, while the other third included Melchites (also Catholic-uniate), Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and others.
   
   Jonathan Marshall has written extensively about the connection of the pre-LCW Lebanese elites to drug trafficking; he's the one writer I could find who described the Winslow Peck "revelations."
   
   The Maronites had several parties and militia, including the massive Phalange of Pierre and Bashir Gemayel; the Marada (led by ex-President Suleiman Franjieh and his son, Tony); and the Tigers of ex-President Camille Chamoun. At various times these clashed violently and with great cruelty. The Lebanese Forces was a coalition of these militia (1976-1982), which suffered constant splits and internal conflicts.