Beyond Rivalry

I listened to this article -- "Maronite Christians Thrive in Lebanon" by Peter Kenyon -- on NPR earlier this week and wanted to record two astute quotes from it:

"Like much of the Middle East, Lebanon was fabricated by foreigners. It might be called an accident of history -- if the rapacious manoeuvers of European colonial powers could be called accidents." (Kenyon proceeds to detail some of these manoeuvers.)

Samir Khalaf, author of Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon: History of the Internationalization of Communal Conflict (2002),  says: "'What I argue is that as long as the Lebanese were fighting over the visible issues, they don't care. But when these are deflected into [invisible] issues -- autonomy, identity, whom am I, where is my home -- it is then that the fighting begins to be uncivil.' At no time was the violence more uncivil than during the 15-year Civil War that began in 1975."