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Iraq may echo Lebanon's civil war |
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Survivors of 15-year conflict see parallels in nations' rival ethnicities
By Sam F. Ghattas, Associated Press, 04/13/2006
(Condensed by zFacts.)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — It started gradually — an assassination, a bus ambush, then gunmen took to the streets, and tit-for-tat kidnappings, and the "liquidations" and the car bombs.
For many months starting in the spring of 1975, the citizens of Beirut did not know for sure if they were living through a civil war or just something that was awful but would — they hoped — end soon. Then the government split, the army disintegrated, businesses were looted and hotels sacked. Armed militias took over.
In the end, Lebanon's civil war lasted 15 years. When the fighting between Muslims and Christians and among those groups finally ended in 1990, the toll was colossal: 150,000 people killed, about half a million wounded. One quarter of the population, or about 900,000 people, had left the tiny Arab country.
Albert Soueidi likens what is happening in Iraq today to what he — and Lebanon — went through. "I say it already started," he said of Iraq. "Civil war is not one that is declared — there is no need for it to be declared. This is what happened to us: Every time the shooting stopped, we said, It's over.' Then it started again."
If there is a lesson the Iraqis should learn from Lebanon, it is that civil war is a futile effort, many here say.
"Nothing can be solved through violence," Albert Soueidi says with a conviction born of firsthand experience. "Violence begets violence."
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Sam F. Ghattas, the Associated Press' correspondent in Beirut, covered Lebanon's civil war. Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue, who reports regularly from Iraq, contributed to this report.
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http://zfacts.com/p/329.html | 01/18/12 07:26 GMT
Modified: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 22:12:14 GMT
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