Precarious peacebuilding: Post-war Lebanon, 1990-2005

Abstract

This paper analyses Lebanon’s post-war period (1990–2005) from the perspective of peacebuilding and argues that the country’s precarious attempts at implementing a peacebuilding agenda must be sought internally in the country’s inability to confront its war-time past, regionally in its subservience to Syria and internationally in its strategic irrelevance in the post-cold war period. The start of the Lebanese post-war period coincided with the launching of “peacebuilding” as an international agenda for peace in 1992. However, there was never an international peacebuilding strategy for Lebanon and the country was left to fend for itself having lost its pre-war strategic importance. This partly explains why Lebanon’s post-war period violates many of the criteria for ending violent conflict and rebuilding war-thorn countries. It also explains the international community’s tacit acceptance of the Syrian tutelage of Lebanon for most of the post-war period and why the fragile peace is under pressure from many of the same forces that are believed to have triggered the war in the first place: poverty, sectarianism and political confessionalism