Lebanon: The Fractured Country

By David Gilmour. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983. 209 pp. $19.95.

Reviewed by John P. Entelis

David Gilmour, British scholar and journalist, attempts to fill a vacuum in an otherwise abundant literature on the causes and consequences of Lebanon's disintegration since the outbreak of civil war in early 1975. There have been many interpretations put forth as to why this once lovely oasis of civilized existence should have so quickly degenerated into an abyss of blindless rage and senseless violence, but the focus on the Lebanese themselves as a principal causal agent has often been neglected. Gilmour's account provides a healthy corrective in refocusing our attention on the internal dimensions of the Lebanese dilemma, although he does not exclude the aggravating impact of regional and extra regional interference.

Collective Indifference

The better part of this book concentrates on the historical forces that molded Lebanon's early development and set the stage for its suicidal destruction. The "religious antagonisms, the cultural divide, and the weakness of government" are all identified in turn as creating an environment of extreme individualism, excessive laissez faire ism, and collective indifference to the society. From his derivative yet accurate historical narrative, Gilmour rightly concludes that Lebanon emerged in the modern period as a "country with no unity, a country without a sense of nationhood, a country whose citizens were loyal not to the state but to their religious communities." The author then proceeds with a relatively standard account of Lebanon's structural configurations, including the massive disjuncture between economic growth and social retardation, modernization and political underdevelopment. Lebanon's notorious system of boss or za'im rule is described in critical fashion as is the system of confessional distribution of political and administrative positions in the state, based on sectarian size derived from a so called census conducted by the French in 1932.

Gilmour is equally merciless about what he regards as Lebanon's fraudulent democracy controlled by big money, mob intimidation, and feudal privilege. Although some villains are attacked more strongly than others (Gilmour cannot disguise his extreme irritation with American Middle East policy, his intense dislike of the Maronites, especially Chamoun, Frangieh and all of the Gemayels, and his hostility towards Israel and Zionism), there are few players who remain unscathed save, possibly, former President Fouad Chehab. The cesspool for all these small men and smaller minds is Beirut "the dynamic, tolerant and lawless city with its vulgarity and sham Western culture."

Part Two of the book concentrates on the competing interpretations of Lebanese nationhood as they have been presented by Arab nationalists and Lebanese Christians over the years. In such comparisons Maronites fare much worse than their Muslim counterparts. This is followed by a discussion of the Palestinians, whose presence is treated in justifiably sympathetic terms given the miserable treatment they have been accorded these many years at the hands of the Lebanese well to do. The Maronite overreaction to the PLO's expanded presence in Lebanon concludes this part of the book, which on balance presents a fairly accurate picture of a community in panic fearful of losing the power and privilege that it had built up, often at the expense of many of the Muslim and even Christian underclass. That a besieged and chauvinistic, indeed fanatical, mind set should emerge among many of the Maronites becomes understandable-given the powerful and alien forces which are perceived as on the verge of submerging them in a "Muslim sea." It is, thus, not surprising that within such a volatile environment the massacre of two dozen Palestinian guerrillas by Phalangist forces a relatively "minor" event by Lebanese standards should have so quickly degenerated into an all out conflict.

Venting His Outrage

The last part of the book concentrates on the civil war, the Syrian intervention, the breakup of the Lebanese polity into numerous antagonistic political-military forces, and the invasion by Israel in 1982 with all its long term human as well as political and geo-strategic consequences. In all of this Gilmour makes an unsuccessful effort at containing his outrage, which comes through repeatedly as one dastardly act follows another in a senseless procession of horror and devastation. Gilmour is simply too involved to provide an objective assessment which may be an asset in this instance. At another level, however, the book falls short, for much of the author's material, for example, is derivative. For old Lebanese hands there is nothing new in any of the lengthy historical accounts presented. In the section covering more recent events the material unfolds as if directly derived from newspaper reports: blow by blow accounts, rapid-fire descriptions, unrelated minutiae. In combination this proves dull and dulling, undermining an otherwise compelling case that Gilmour makes regarding the culpability of the Lebanese for their own disastrous fate.

John P. Entelis is chairman of the political science department and co director of the Middle East Studies Program at Fordham University.