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A MARTYR FOR LEBANON !Solidere’s Discourse of Memory and the Death of Rafiq Hariri !Duncan Wane (1470940) 2015

This dissertation is submitted as part of an MSc degree in Cities at King’s College London.

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KING’S COLLEGE LONDON UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY

MA/MSc DISSERTATION

I, ………………………………………………………………

hereby declare (a) that this Dissertation is my own original

work and that all source material used is acknowledged therein;

(b) that it has been specially prepared for a degree of the

University of London; and (c) that it does not contain any

material that has been or will be submitted to the Examiners of

this or any other university, or any material that has been or

will be submitted for any other examination.

This Dissertation is ……………………………………words.

Signed: …………………………………………...…………….

Date: …………………...……………………………………….

Abstract of Study

!Solidere is the reconstruction company responsible for central Beirut in the aftermath of the

Lebanese Civil War. This study examines documents produced by Solidere, together with the

memorials it has constructed, to examine how the company’s historical discourse and

deployment of memory changed in the wake of the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, its founder

and former Lebanese Prime Minister. The analysis suggests that Solidere’s idolised depiction

of Hariri as the engineer of post-war sectarian harmony is rooted in an understanding of

Lebanese history which focusses on Christian-Muslim tensions rather than the country’s

present political divisions. Additionally, this partisan narrative conflicts with Solidere’s

primary discourse, one which argues that Lebanon’s financial advancement is the key to

avoiding sectarianism. The co-existence of these narratives could be the subject of future

study.

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Contents

! List of Figures 5

Terminology and Transliteration 6

Acknowledgements 7

Introduction 8

Chapter 1: Background 9

Chapter 2: Literature Review 12

Section 2.1 Solidere’s Formation 12

Section 2.2 Solidere in the Literature 13

Section 2.3 Beirut and Memory 15

Chapter 3: Methodology 19

Section 3.1 Discourse Analysis 19

Section 3.2 The Documents 21

Section 3.3 The City as Text 22

Section 3.4 Limitations 24

Chapter 4: Solidere’s Discourse 26

Section 4.1 Development and Progress 26

Section 4.2 War Amnesia 28

Section 4.3 Other Political Events 29

Section 4.4 Rafiq Hariri 30

Chapter 5: The Central Business District 34

Section 5.1 Martyrs’ Square 34

Section 5.2 Statues 35

Section 5.3 The Garden of Forgiveness 38

Conclusion 41

Appendix A – Forms 43

Appendix B – List of Files 46

Appendix C – Parties of the March 14th Bloc 47

Appendix D – Parties of the March 8th Bloc 47

Works Cited 48

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List of Figures !Figure 2.1: Image from Loheac-Ammoun’s History of Lebanon (1982) 16

Figure 4.1: Covers of Solidere Annual Reports, 2002-05. 31

Figure 4.2: The Martyrs’ Memorial. 32

Figure 5.1: The location of memorials in relation to the major road entrances to the 36

Central District.

Figure 5.2: Sectarian unity in Samir Kassir Square. 37

Figure 5.3: Poster of Gebran Tueni on the offices of al-Nahar. 37

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Terminology and Transliteration

!The Beirut Central Business District goes by many names. In this paper I shall refer to it

either by its full title, by the abbreviated form ‘CBD’, or as ‘the Central District’. This area is

also commonly referred to simply as ‘Solidere’, after the company which rebuilt it, and which

is the focus of this study; I will refrain from this for the sake of clarity.

!Transliterations of Arabic in this study use the guidelines developed by the International

Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES). Full details are available from the IJMES website

(ijmes.chass.ncsu.edu). In accordance with the guidelines, words and names which have

accepted English-language equivalents are not transliterated: hence Beirut and not Bayrūt,

Rafiq Hariri and not Rafīq al-Ḥarīrī. Spellings in the source documents which vary from this

standard are preserved when cited.

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Acknowledgements

!I wish to offer my greatest thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Ruth Craggs, whose support has been

crucial throughout the project, especially during the early stages of refining the topic of my

study.

!I would also like to thank my various other academic contacts whose encouragement and

advocacy across the year has kept me focussed, particularly Dr. Mona Harb, of the American

University of Beirut, and Dr. Craig Larkin, who will be my PhD supervisor come October.

!Finally, I would like to thank my family, without whose support, in its numerous forms, I

would not have been able to undertake this Masters course in the first place, and Richard, who

(eventually) persuaded me to remove some of the more sarcastic comments from Chapter 2.

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Introduction

!In May 1994, four years after the end of the Lebanese Civil War, the Lebanese Company for

Development and Reconstruction, better known by its French abbreviation Solidere, was

incorporated. The company was overseen by Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri

(although officially he had only very slight connections to it) and its aim was the wholesale

reconstruction of Beirut’s Central District, formerly the city’s commercial hub but now largely

destroyed. In truth, the incorporation only formalised a situation which pre-dated the end of

the war: Hariri’s previous company, OGER Liban, had begun demolishing buildings it

deemed unsafe even while the fighting continued. Within a few years, effective opposition

had subsided in the face of the project’s continual progress. By 2004, with Hariri at the helm

of both the company and the country, the Central District was in the process of becoming a

centre for international capital, the model village of Beirut’s reconstruction.

!Today, Solidere languishes. Rafiq Hariri, to whom it now unabashedly refers to as its

‘godfather’, was assassinated in 2005, sparking a minor revolution and a decade of festering

political unease. His son, the company’s greatest political ally, has gone into self-imposed

exile, although the pro-Hariri March 14th group remains a formidable parliamentary force. In

the Central District, a huge portion of the plan for Beirut remains unbuilt, with only five years

remaining until the designated completion date. Key projects have been postponed for over a

decade. The finished zones suffer from a lack of visitors due, in part, to the uncertainty caused

by the Syrian Civil War. Increasingly, the company looks elsewhere for profit, with housing

and redevelopment projects active in Egypt and throughout the Arab Gulf states. Solidere’s

political fall from grace has not been easy.

!In this paper, I attempt to understand Solidere’s perspective on these events by examining its

historical discourse: how it talks about the war, about its own history, and about Hariri’s

death. Every political group in Lebanon has a historical discourse which explains why,

throughout the civil war and the frustrating years since, they have been the only ones to act

truly in the nation’s interest. What distinguishes Solidere, and makes it worth studying, is that

it has had a unique opportunity to put its discourse into practice, and to enact its historical

understanding not just with banners and flags but through concrete urban structures.

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Chapter 1: Background

!The issues over which the Lebanese Civil War was fought stretch back as far as Lebanon’s

creation as a sovereign state. The mandate territory given to the French in 1918 after the

collapse of the Ottoman Empire consisted of what is now Syria and Lebanon. It was, and

remains today, a religiously mixed area, and the French elected to separate the territory into

religiously-defined zones where possible. In this endeavour they found a partner in a group of

Maronite Christians who advocated the creation of a ‘Greater Lebanon’ encompassing Beirut

and the port cities to the south, as well as the mountainous hinterland. Within this territory,

which was substantially larger than the original Ottoman province of Beirut, Maronite

Christians would be a majority. Despite numerous attempts in Maronite histories to trace the

Lebanese identity all the way back to the Phoenicians (1200 BCE.), “[t]here was no recent

historical precedent for such a state.” (Haugbølle 2010, p. 35).

!A predictable backlash ensued among the non-Maronite Lebanese who suddenly found

themselves in a nation-state which had been tailored to the demands of others. Faced with the

prospect of decolonisation and withdrawal in the midst of the Second World War, the French

decided to engineer a shared confessional system of government. This system aimed to

balance the aspirations of Lebanon’s many religious groups, but in particular the two which

were viewed as the most mutually antagonistic, the Maronites and the Sunni Muslims. Both

agreed to ‘turn away from the world’ in order to help Lebanon prosper: the Maronites were to

abandon their vision of a Lebanon united with the West and accept the nation’s Arab identity;

in exchange the Sunnis agreed not to seek unification with Syria (Salloukh 2008). In addition,

important government posts were distributed to the major religious groups: the President

should be a Maronite, the Prime Minister a Sunni, the Speaker of Parliament a Shi’a, and the

Head of the Armed Forces a Druze. Membership of Parliament was regulated in order to

correspond with the sectarian makeup of the territory according to the 1932 census (Sawalha

2010).

!This was the arrangement under which Lebanon became an independent nation in 1943, only

twenty years since its creation as a separate territory. The majority of these provisions remain

in force today, with some alterations. From the beginning, therefore, the idea of sect “became

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a fundamental part of the governmentality of the future nation-state of Lebanon” (Fregonese

2012a, p. 321). The Christians maintained their inbuilt permanent majority, but that would

not be unjust as long as Lebanon’s religious makeup was not radically altered by some outside

event.

!The arrival of around 100,000 Palestinian refugees, the majority of them Sunnis, in the wake

of the creation of the State of Israel proved to be just such an event (Yassin 2012). Less than a

decade after its creation, the consociational basis of the Lebanese government was thrown

permanently off balance (Haugbølle 2010). In the following years, several phenomena

combined to aggravate the problem: regional pan-Arab sentiments, mass migration of rural

Shi’ites from the South, and large numbers of Maronite Christians leaving to settle in Europe.

Finally, in 1970, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) arrived in Beirut, having been

expelled from Jordan in the wake of the Black September massacre, and began organising

military operations against Israel from Lebanon.

!The Lebanese Civil War began in 1975 with a series of assassinations and bombings in Beirut

which targeted members of various sectarian groups, and expanded in scope to draw in many

neighbouring countries. The central issues were Maronite domination, the presence of the

Palestinians and the PLO, and the role of Syria in Lebanese political life. The tortuous

sequence of events during the conflict would take too long to narrate here (for a full history

see Hirst 2010, or the immense but thorough Fisk 2001), but for the purposes of this paper the

effects of the war on urban space were largely twofold.

!Firstly Lebanon, but especially Beirut, became geographically polarised according to religion.

Although parts of the city had been divided into religious districts before 1975, this was

nothing compared to the mass sectarian sifting which took place during the war. From 1976

onwards, the Green Line separated Beirut into the Muslim West and Christian East. No up-to-

date census data for Lebanon exists (the French 1932 census is still the most recent), but it is

estimated that West Beiruti Christians and East Beiruti Muslims make up less than 5% of the

population of their half of the city (Yassin 2012). The urban legacy of the war is thus one of

segregation (Davie 1991; Ababsa 2002; Yassin 2012).

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Secondly, on the level of physical urban space, huge areas of the city were entirely flattened.

The Central District, site of Solidere’s eventual reconstruction, was especially hard-hit

(Makdisi 1990). Even today, damaged and gutted buildings are a prominent feature of the

Beiruti landscape. Since 1958, Beirut has been subjected to a number of urban plans, the

majority of them French in origin, none of which came to fruition (Verdeil 2013). The

widespread destruction thus finally afforded construction companies the opportunity to

behave as if they were working from a blank slate, transforming Beirut into a laissez-faire

experiment. Any discussion of urban space in post-war Lebanon must take into account this

context of unchecked neoliberalism (Nagel 2002; Schmid 2006). Without it, the

reconstruction project which is the subject of this paper would have been impossible.

!In 1989, a series of negotiations in Ṭā’if, Saudi Arabia, led to the drafting of a National

Accord. The aim of this document was to end the war by redrawing the sectarian balance of

the country’s governing institutions to bring them in line with the many demographic shifts

which have struck the country since the 1932 census. Although none of the sectarian

allocations of important government positions was changed, the parliamentary ratio between

Christians and Muslims was evened, and the power of the (Maronite) President was reduced,

transforming Lebanon into a parliamentary system (Salloukh 2008). This negotiated end to

the conflict was deeply inconclusive, and contributed to the problems in establishing a

collective national memory (see Section 2.3).

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Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.1. Solidere’s Formation

!Rafiq Hariri’s role in the Lebanese civil war began in 1983 when his company, OGER Liban

(later Solidere), became involved in plans for the reconstruction of Beirut which were being

drawn up in one of the periodic lulls in fighting (Battah 2014). On this occasion, there was no

time for the plans to develop, but Hariri maintained his interest in reconstruction. When the

war ended, he and his business interests returned to Lebanon and, building on their existing

work, began to reshape the city centre. Notably, this involved large-scale demolition of

‘damaged’ buildings, including many which had been intact; Makdisi (1997) estimates that as

many as 85% of the buildings destroyed in the central district were demolished after the war,

and some of Solidere’s defenders accept this figure (Sarkis 2005). As OGER Liban continued

its operations, it grew closer to the Lebanese government, which granted retroactive

legalisation of the company’s remit in the form of the infamous Law 117 of 1991. At the same

time, the director of OGER Liban was appointed as the new head of the Council for

Development and Reconstruction, a supposedly impartial body, which became one of Hariri’s

key instruments of power (Owen 2006). In 1992, Hariri became Prime Minister, solidifying

the capture of public institutions by private ones. By this point, the business and institutional

framework which became Solidere in 1994 was already in place (Battah 2014).

!Hariri left office in 1998 amid a power struggle with the newly-appointed pro-Syrian

president Émile Lahoud, but was reappointed in 2000. He continued to be a fierce critic of the

Syrian Army’s presence in Lebanon, demanding its withdrawal. Late in 2004, Hariri resigned

from his post as Prime Minister for the second time. A few months later, on 14th February

2005, he was assassinated by a car bomb. Although formal responsibility for this act has never

been established, it is commonly supposed to have been the work of the Syrian government.

In the wake of this event, the combination of international opprobrium and internal political

pressure forced the Syrian government to withdraw its military forces from Lebanon for the

first time since 1976.

!Hariri’s assassination is commonly marked as the end point of Lebanon’s post-war period, and

the beginning of something far messier. His death provided the easy Manichaean split which

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the inconclusive civil war had denied Lebanon. In the month following Hariri’s death, pro-

and anti-Syrian coalitions mobilised their supporters in rival demonstrations, after which the

subsequent political blocs have been named: March 14th for the anti-Syrian, March 8th for the

pro-Syrian. This development formalised the change in the central political divide from a

sectarian conflict between Christians and Muslims to a battle over Syria’s proper role in

Lebanon in which each side contains representatives of most of Lebanon’s recognised

sectarian groups (Haugbølle 2010).

!2.2 Solidere in the Literature

!Due to its status as a flagship project and its hegemonic control over the city centre, Solidere’s

programme for the reconstruction of the Beirut Central District has been the focus of

scholarly literature concerning post-war development in the city. The response is

overwhelmingly negative, with a few vociferous supporters on the other side and precious

little in between. Most academic critiques of Solidere build upon the seminal work of Makdisi

(1997), who criticises the company for its ‘ahistorical’ conception of the city, characterising

the project as an attempt to eradicate the Civil War era from Beirut’s history altogether. He

proposes that the plan should be thought of as ‘construction’ rather than ‘reconstruction’, and

documents some of the legal manoeuvres which allowed the company to present itself as a fait

accompli, squashing any opposition (see Section 2.1 above). From the perspective of urban

space, the architect Jad Tabet has been one of the fiercest critics of Solidere and Hariri in both

the academic and political spheres: his father designed the St. Georges Hotel, whose owners

are involved in a long-running land expropriation dispute with Solidere, and the Hotel has

displayed a large ‘Stop Solidere’ banner since the company’s formation. Writing on the as-yet

unrealised plans in 1993, Tabet describes the prospect of “the death of public space” (1993, p.

98), suggesting an alternative reconstructive plan based on an understanding of the way that

public use of the city had been shaped by the war. Tabet argues that any plan which does not

take spatial practice into account is doomed to fail (p. 82).

!Recent non-Lebanese commentary, such as Schmid (2006), integrates Makdisi’s discussion of

the company’s capture of the Lebanese state with the urban concepts of Lefebvre and Harvey,

describing the struggle over central Beirut in terms of a conflict between public and private

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interests. Similarly, Fregonese (2012a, 2012b) argues that Solidere’s cosmopolitanism

combines aspects of the closed and open city, in which the centre is open to transnational

capital flows but closed to Beirut’s inhabitants. Fregonese sees urban space as “constitutive of

sovereignty rather than simply a background to it” (2012b, p. 294), a theory which she terms

‘hybrid sovereignty’. This relates to previous work on control of urban space as a means of

asserting sovereignty (for example, M. Harb 2010; Fawaz 2014), which is usually applied to

militia groups challenging the central state’s control, such as Hezbollah, but could equally

apply to Solidere. Rodolphe al-Khoury notes the existence of “a covert warfare in the project

of architecture” (1998, p. 186).

!Khalaf (2005) is probably the most academically rigorous of Solidere’s defenders, yet he sees

no contradiction between the critical discussion of memory and urban space in the early

chapters of his book (which merits separate attention, see Section 2.3) and his description of

Solidere in its own terms further on. Khalaf states that “Solidere has become a byword for

high-quality restoration and reconstruction” (p. 140), praising it for the affordability and

diversity of its shops. He also appears to view the use of public space by the public as an

affront to Solidere’s design, condemning the use of public space for outside seating at shisha

bars because it makes “upper-class and prosperous groups…uneasy” (p. 145).

!Other less critical voices to defend the project tend to take Solidere’s plans at face value,

stressing the importance of international business and urban planning in forming a ‘neutral’

space (Gavin & Maluf 1996; Gavin 1998; Kabbani 1998). Kabbani in particular seems

determined to believe that the city is simply a sum of its physical parts, and seems to regard

public opposition to the reconstruction plan as rooted in an inability to comprehend its

‘monumentality’ (Kabbani 1998). Sarkis & Rowe, the editors of a collection in which many of

these articles appear, concur with this attitude, claiming that although criticism of the

reconstruction on the grounds of social blight or financial waste might be ‘well justified’,

“very little significance [is] attached to its design attributes” (Sarkis & Rowe 1998, p. 275).

Such wholehearted defence of Solidere has since become much rarer.

!Despite this attention, in recent years scholarship has moved away from Solidere in favour of

more current topics such as Hezbollah’s reconstruction of Dahiyeh after the 2006 war or the

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impact of Syrian refugees. Although the broadening of scholarship on Beirut is to be

encouraged, there is a danger of treating Solidere as if it has been fully academically explored.

This is certainly not the case: surprisingly little has been written about Solidere’s discourse

and the way it integrates memory into the Central District. The most notable exceptions are

Saree Makdisi (1997) and Ussama Makdisi (1996), who both focus on Solidere’s discourse

during the 1990s, when it produced dozens of pamphlets in reaction to popular opposition.

They criticise Solidere’s nostalgic obsession with a fictitious pre-war past, the “never-never

land that has only ever existed in Solidere’s booklets” (Makdisi 1997, p. 687), as well as the

slogan ‘the Ancient city of the Future’, as representing Solidere’s denial of Beirut’s present

and recent past. Makdisi (1996) contests Solidere’s dichotomy between national progress and

sectarianism, and Hariri’s depiction of it as “a struggle between good and evil” (cited on p.

23). Makdisi (1997) coins the term ‘Harirism’ to describe the economic discourse surrounding

Solidere’s capture of state institutions, but once the capture had been effected, that discourse

faded from view. The transformation wrought on Lebanon’s collective memory by Hariri’s

assassination and the resulting political re-polarisation has been explored in several of the

works cited above (particularly Haugbølle 2010, Larkin 2010a and 2010b), but again

Solidere’s position in that shift has not received attention. This paper aims to address this gap.

!2.3 Beirut and Memory

!Post-war Lebanon has been a fascinating case for scholars of memory politics. There are

several reasons for this: partly due to the inconclusive way in which the conflict ended, and

partly because there has never been any state-sanctioned attempt to come to terms with it.

This inconclusiveness has lead to a specific sort of war amnesia, established by the general

amnesty law of 1993 which enshrined the notion of lā ghālib lā maghlūb: ‘no victor, no

vanquished’ (Makarem 2012). The ability to conceive of a collective narrative of the past has

been identified as one of the foundations of a modern social order (Halbwachs 1941), raising

the question of how well Lebanon can survive without it. The lack of a national war memorial

has been prominent in this discussion, supported by Michel de Certeau’s assertion that

memory is not localizable and will lose its power if fixed to a particular location (1984). In

this view, the absence of any meaningful or deliberate collective attempt at national

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commemoration is intimately connected with the power which memories of the war still wield

over Lebanese society.

!The role of political élites in engineering this attitude to the war forms the starting point for

most discussions of memory narratives in Beirut. Scholarship on memory in Lebanon often

encourages the idea that a specifically élite discourse of the war exists, either by criticising it

or by claiming to explore it. One of the principal narratives associated with this élite is the so-

called ‘War of Others’, popularised in French by the writer Ghassan Tueni as ‘la guerre pour

les autres’ (1985). This discourse describes the conflict as driven predominantly by external

actors who stoked sectarian sentiment within Lebanon in order to achieve wider geopolitical

aims (see Figure 2.1), and is often described as a state-sanctioned ideology (Haugbølle 2010).

Its popularity stems from the fact that it absolves the Lebanese from responsibility, and

implicitly distances the concept of ‘Lebanon’ from anybody on the opposing side: no true

Lebanese would fight his countrymen. The need for national reconciliation is thus not only

postponed but actively denied.

Figure 2.1: Image from Loheac-Ammoun’s History of Lebanon (1982), a children’s book,

illustrating the ‘War of Others’ discourse. !

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Khalaf (2005) and Haugbølle (2010) have established that during the 1990s there was indeed

a general government narrative structured around Tueni’s ideas, although they differ on its

specifics. While both agree on the existence of two social camps, pro- and anti-memory,

Khalaf believes that the élite itself is split along these lines, and that ‘the War of Others’ is

simply the view of part of the élite. For him, the ultimate question is which group will run the

country, and he states clearly that neither narrative is likely to lead to a healthy post-war

society if it is allowed to pursue power unchecked. Haugbølle, on the other hand, categorises

all élite memory discourses as anti-memory, suggesting that a genuine narrative of the war

must consist of events which cannot be encompassed by an official history (2010). However,

he proposes that other segments of Lebanese society have little difficulty maintaining war

memories which include these events; these subversive narratives, which he terms ‘memory

cultures’, are the focus of his research. Despite identifying this division, Haugbølle remains

deeply critical of nostalgia in any form, and argues that the pro-memory camp, by ignoring

the perpetrators of violence, is just as guilty (133).

!However, the separation of élite from non-élite memories, and of ‘pro-‘ and ‘anti-memory’

camps as totalities, while somewhat accurate during the 1990s, is deeply problematic as a

description of the present situation. Since 2005, the idea of ‘élite’ memory discourse has had

little relevance to the situation in Lebanon, in which there are several sets of élites, each with

their own historical discourse. There is no longer any single dominant discourse in Lebanon.

The mass protests and polarisation of society which followed Hariri’s assassination have

sparked the re-entry of what might have been thought of the ‘non-élite’ population into

political awareness, if not activity. Larkin’s work on ‘post-memory’ among the post-war

generation (2010a) establishes that the ‘War of Others’ doctrine is still widely believed,

dispelling the idea of a particular élite narrative. Far from being afraid of discussing it,

politicians are now more than willing to mention certain memories of the war – incidents of

victimisation or acts of self-defence – in the service of present political agendas. Haugbølle

covers in some detail the proliferation of sectarian posters and propaganda referencing the

events of the war which still appear around Beirut. Every political party has its own martyrs,

its own sites of importance, and its own narrative of the war.

!

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Solidere’s role in this transformation is difficult to ascertain, as the literature of Lebanese

memory after 2005 tends to omit it. In the 1990s, while the man who founded it was Prime

Minister, it was difficult to distinguish Solidere’s historical discourse from the one which

Khalaf and Haugbølle refer to as ‘élite’. Nagel (2002) argues that Solidere’s war amnesia is

no different from that advocated by other political actors. However, the company’s political

star does not shine as brightly as it once did, and with the March 14th Movement out of power

for years and Hariri’s son in exile, the company has become just another purveyor of memory

narratives.

!So why is its discourse more notable than that of any of Lebanon’s dozens of political parties?

There are three reasons. Firstly, Solidere is a company, not a political party, and as such it can

claim neutrality for its views in a way that political parties cannot. Secondly, Hariri and

Solidere appeared on the scene after the end of the Civil War, and have therefore been forced

to create a narrative of Lebanese history in which the war does not play a prominent role.

Finally, Solidere is uniquely able to realise its own discourse through alterations of Beirut’s

urban fabric; where political parties put up posters, Solidere can build an entire district from

scratch. Given the events of the past decade and declining academic interest in Solidere, it is

vital to re-examine the company’s role in creating memory narratives in central Beirut.

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Chapter 3: Methodology

!This research employs a qualitative approach because it is concerned with describing and

interpreting discourse, or “the fixation of meaning within a particular domain” (Jørgensen &

Phillips 2002, p. 26). This is not to deny that quantitative methods can be applied in analysing

discourses; however such an approach tends to reduce the discursive sample to a mere

sequence of ‘facts’, and would be far better suited to a Saussurean analysis which the

linguistic ties between words are the principal object of interest. For a critical discourse

analysis in the Foucauldian tradition, approaching an example of discourse on its own terms, a

qualitative approach provides the researcher with more opportunities for interpretive depth.

!3.1 Discourse Analysis

!The analysis of discourse derives from the structuralist Saussurean method by which the

underlying linguistic structure, langue, is extracted from an individual utterance, parole

(Saussure 1960). With the Marxist broadening of the term ‘discourse’ to encompass a system

of meaning composed of signs, its relationship to society becomes dialectical: discourse is

constructed by social practice, but it also constrains and shapes society. As a result of this

theoretical change, the aims of discourse analysis become correspondingly greater. The

analyst’s work is now to isolate from the text the ideology of its authors, stripping this away

to reveal the true, usually economic, structure of reality underneath it (Althusser 1971). Post-

structuralist thinkers, however, came to criticise the Marxist view of what discourse analysis

could achieve, arguing that the economic determinism underlying Marxism was just another

ideology perpetuated through discourse. The role of discourse and ideology as articulated by

Foucault (1972) is radically different. He argues that an understanding of the true nature of

events free from the influence of ideology is impossible, and that the most productive avenue

of research is to understand a discourse on its own terms rather than attempting to evaluate

how ‘true’ it is. Meaning, under this theory, is inherently unstable and open to challenge: no

discourse can remain dominant forever.

!Two modes of analysis have sprung from this post-structuralist concept of discourse

(Jørgensen & Phillips 2002; Wooffitt 2008). The first, advocated most prominently by

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Fairclough (1989), focusses on individual linguistic characteristics of a text in order to

understand the discourse(s) motivating it. Like Saussure, this method discusses textual

features such as passive verbs and repetition of terminology; however, it also integrates

aspects of Foucauldian discursive theory. Importantly, Fairclough views discourse as a purely

linguistic phenomenon, which relates to but does not encompass other forms of social

interaction or production.

!The other form of discourse analysis which has emerged from Foucault’s ideas is that

developed by Laclau and Mouffe (1985), which has a far more theoretical focus and is

somewhat distanced from the purely textual aspect of discourse analysis. The basic terms of

discussion of this mode of analysis are semiotic: the discourse is structured around nodes, the

key concepts and ideas which make it internally logical. The primary battleground between

discourses concerns the meaning of so-called 'floating signifiers’, terms which exist in

multiple discourses and have connections within each. For example, the term ‘development’ is

a crucial one within the discourse produced by Solidere, and is connected to notions of

business, progress, and political pluralism. However, development as defined by NGOs might

connect to more populist ideas of education, hunger, infrastructure, and so on. ‘Development’

is therefore a floating signifier, as its meaning is contested.

!The defining feature of Laclau and Mouffe’s theory, in contrast to Fairclough’s, is that its

definition of ‘discourse’ is far broader than merely linguistic utterances. Terry Eagleton,

another proponent of this method, says that a purely textual analysis “defines for itself a

special object, literature, while existing as a set of discursive techniques which have no reason

to stop short at that object at all” (2008, p. 176). Under Laclau and Mouffe, any product of

social interaction can be a discourse: urban space and architectural design, a painting, or a

birthday party. Discourse becomes an extension of social phenomena rather than something

related to them. In order to analyse not only written materials but also Beirut’s urban form,

this is the form of discourse analysis I will employ. Laclau and Mouffe do not provide

guidance on how to conduct analysis in line with their theories; therefore, I have relied on the

practice outlined by Jørgensen and Phillips (2002). The key aspect of this method is the

identification of signifiers and their relationship to each other within the text.

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Finally, within this research, I am not attempting in any sense to ‘expose’ Solidere by

demonstrating where its statements do not match what I understand to be the facts (although

see Section 3.4 below). Instead, I seek to address gaps in the literature raised in the previous

chapter by answering the following questions:

(1) How does Solidere narrate Lebanese history?

(2) How does this discourse frame the memorials which are allowed in the Beirut Central

District?

!3.2 The Documents

!In order to answer the first question, discourse analysis was undertaken using materials

produced by Solidere which fulfilled two important criteria: (1) the documents must be

published after 2005, in order to take into account Hariri’s assassination and its political

consequences, and (2) they must be publicly available, thus forming part of Solidere’s

memory discourse as it wishes to been seen from the outside. In the early 1990s, Solidere

produced a great amount of material, including pamphlets, books, and magazines, much of it

in Arabic, in an ultimately successful effort to counter growing opposition to the project. Now

that the company is firmly established, production of these pamphlets has ceased and, apart

from occasional coffee table book, the Annual Reports to shareholders are the only public

material the company publishes. In a reflection of its more international focus since 2006,

none of this is available in Arabic or in French; even Solidere’s own website is entirely in

English.

!In the first instance, the documents consist of a series of Annual Reports, published by

Solidere and distributed to shareholders at the close of each year from 2002 to 2012. In

addition, the Biannual Report concerning the period between January and June 2013 is

included; however, there have been no further publicly-accessible reports published by

Solidere since June 2013. The reports dated 2002-04 are included in the set in order to gauge

the effect of Hariri’s assassination. The set also encompasses reports and presentations made

by Solidere to conferences or investors gatherings, together with descriptions and articles

published by Solidere about specific memorials. An undated report entitled Beirut City Centre

is included, as its photographs of the Beirut Souks are clearly from the post-2005 period.

!Page ! of !21 55

Finally, as the Garden of Forgiveness has been the object of particular attention and

discussion, a few articles by its creator, Alexandra Asseily, as well as a recording of an

interview with her, have been incorporated as well. A full list of documents used, including

publication dates and methods of access, can be found in Appendix B. Not all of these are

cited in the text.

!Macdonald (2001) emphasises that all documents are potentially fallible, as there can be

unappreciated motives behind their collection, preservation, or distortion. This is true, and

part of the motivation behind discourse analysis is to show that no discourse can be innocent

or neutral. However, there are also wider implications. In the present research, for instance,

suppose that Solidere’s Annual Reports were drafted by a sector of the organisation whose

attitude towards memorialisation in urban space was particularly pronounced in one direction

or another. Focussing solely on these documents would yield an unrepresentative view of

Solidere’s memory discourse. This raises the importance of triangulation, namely, of

approaching the question from another angle in order to achieve a different but

complementary perspective (Denzin 1970; Seale 1999). Therefore, after examining the

discourse of historical memory in Solidere’s written materials, I will attempt to reinforce my

findings by examining the urban space of the Central District itself, in order to discover how

Solidere’s memory discourse has influenced the city’s design, which is crucial for addressing

the second research question presented in Section 3.1 above.

!3.3 The City As Text

!The broader definition of discourse used in this study becomes important when discussing

how to apply critical discourse analysis to urban space. From the beginning, Laclau and

Mouffe recognise that discourses are material, thus they are made real through practice (1985,

p. 108). One of the fullest articulations of urban space as discourse comes from Duncan

(1990), and revolves around the central question of “how landscapes encode information” (p.

4). Duncan asserts that the key features of discourse analysis map well to discussions of urban

space both in terms of its physical form and the way in which people use it. One of the

primary goals of an ideology is to make itself appear fixed and naturalised (what Marcuse

(1964) has called ‘sedimented ideology’), and the ability to influence a built environment is a

!Page ! of !22 55

key part of that process. With regard to the specific concerns of my second research question,

Cohen’s (1989) study of the geographic symbolism of statues in 19th-century Paris

demonstrates how an ideological discourse is integrated into the urban not only through

statues but also through their interaction with a re-developed urban fabric. Given my interest

in the role of memory in reconstruction, Cohen’s study supports this type of analysis.

!Reluctance to read urban space as a text can lead to misinterpretations. Hall (2013), for

example, in a Derridean analysis of the Garden of Forgiveness, states that because it makes no

explicit reference to events it effectively has no meaning. It is true that without examining the

urban area in which the Garden will be placed one could come away with the idea that it is

conceptually vague. However, seen in its geographic context the question of which acts are to

be forgiven, and by whom, can be addressed with more clarity (and will be considered in

Chapter 5).

!Finally, we must establish what our object of study is when we talk about reading discourses

from the urban environment. The principal way in which the city can be understood as a text

derives from Michel de Certeau’s practice (1984) of walking in urban space as a way of

‘creating’ the city. This concept, articulated by Stevenson (2003), has roots in the activities of

the nineteenth-century flâneur, conceived of as a man (and it was invariably a man) of art and

culture who strolled the city streets, uncovering their social secrets. Therefore, the exploration

of the urban environment is something which happens at street level, through the investigation

of spatial practice. However, this method is of limited use with reference to the Beirut Central

District, as it is not the way in which most of its visitors experience it. Much of Solidere’s

planned construction, including the highly symbolic Garden of Forgiveness, has not been

built, and may never be. Several areas are cordoned off or guarded by soldiers. Furthermore,

the boundary-crossing work of flânerie no longer matters to the Central District, as a majority

of its visitors drive to it without deviation on a purpose-built highway leading from the

airport, and rarely see any other part of either Beirut or Lebanon. The CBD’s urban space,

which was specifically designed to have no social secrets, no longer functions as a palimpsest

of historical layers awaiting discovery. Instead, it is a holistic, pre-packaged vision of

Lebanon itself, divorced from any historical or spatial context. To explore Solidere’s urban

!Page ! of !23 55

vision as a discursive text, it is necessary to view the urban as Solidere does: not at street

level, as a flâneur, but planned from above.

!3.4 Limitations

!Despite the limitations of flânerie outlined in Section 3.3 above, personal experience of urban

space is a powerful analytic tool, and this study is limited by not having incorporated these

methods into the overall research strategy. However, I have visited the city on four previous

occasions, between 2007-10, and spent a considerable amount of time in and around the area

Solidere has redeveloped. As construction has for the time being stalled, with a few small

exceptions, I do not believe that the urban environment has changed significantly enough for

my impressions to no longer be valid. In any case, at least one of the projects I discuss here

(the Garden of Forgiveness) exists only on Solidere’s drawing board.

!Another issue is the English-language focus of the research. As mentioned before, Solidere

now only produces material in English, as part of its new identity as a global company. It has,

however, a number of political and journalistic allies who publish in both French and Arabic,

and the coincidence between the discourse used by these sources and that of Solidere could

perhaps be a topic of future research. The examination of the Central District as a text is

partly intended to mitigate this issue, as the discourses it embodies may be readily understood

by any Lebanese person, regardless of their native language. It must also be emphasised that

the multilingual nature of Lebanese society means that English materials are not as

inaccessible as they would be in Egypt or even the Gulf; this is particularly true of Beirut (C.

Harb 2010).

!Finally, there is the issue of political neutrality. Solidere’s connections to the March 14th Bloc

and Hariri’s legacy render its critics liable to accusations of political sympathy with opposing

parties. Feminist researchers Stanley and Wise (1990) have stressed that rigorous qualitative

research must have ‘experiential validity’ as well as ‘analytic validity’. Declaring personal

interests towards the research is a key component of this process. I have no relationship with

Solidere, any of its employees, or any Lebanese political party. I do not support Solidere’s

(re)construction plans for the Central Business District in Beirut, based on my understanding

!Page ! of !24 55

of the academic literature on Beirut and on urban geography more broadly, and also on my

own experiences visiting Beirut on several occasions. On the other hand, while I do criticise

Solidere’s discourses, I am not attempting in any sense to ‘expose’ Solidere by demonstrating

where its statements do not match what I understand to be the facts. My primary aim in this

research is to understand how the company’s historical narrative functions, what its main

features are, and how these are manifested in written and constructed texts.

!Page ! of !25 55

Chapter 4: Solidere’s Discourse

!Before delving into the memory discourse underlying Solidere’s written materials, we must

first of all acknowledge White’s view that “the form of the text is where it does its

ideologically significant work” (1982, p. 300), and examine the form of the documents.

Almost without exception, Solidere’s material is designed specifically to dissuade the sort of

close textual analysis we are doing: large, colourful, and attractive photographs of the Central

District abound in both its printed and online documents. In the Annual Reports, particularly,

one receives the impression that the dozens of pages preceding the financial chapters are

largely for show. The text is minimal and, in later years, often quite hard to read. The design

and style change frequently, while entire paragraphs are reproduced verbatim year on year.

This technique allows the company to effectively disguise its real progress, or lack of it:

beneath an enormous mock-up photograph of a project sits the sentence clarifying that

construction has not yet begun. Solidere’s text is where it hides its secrets. This strategy only

alters in 2011 when, confronted with poor economic performance, the Report becomes a

collection of photographs.

!4.1 Development and Progress

!Perhaps the most comprehensive semiotic unit around which Solidere’s discourse in the

Annual Reports is structured is that of development and progress. As mentioned above (see

Section 3.1), ‘development’ functions as a floating signifier, as its meaning is contested: for

Solidere, development happens in the financial sector, and it is something concrete and

measurable. Such a focus should not surprise us, as the inevitability of progress is a regular

feature of corporate narratives, particularly where economic performance and growth are

concerned, as progress in those fields can be shown in numbers. Solidere takes the notion

further by linking the company’s development to the economic and social progress of Beirut,

and thereby of Lebanon. But this discourse encounters complications when it comes to the

question of how to frame historical memory, and particularly how to describe the war.

!It is important to consider that this is not an inevitable problem. The discourse of

unidirectional development with which Solidere describes itself is entirely capable of

!Page ! of !26 55

encompassing the civil war’s role in creating the conditions for the company’s existence. In

that understanding, the civil war would function as the climax of a chaotic era of Lebanese

history, stretching back decades, to which Solidere has decisively put an end. The company

looks ahead to a glorious internationalised future in which Beirut is connected to international

capital flows and has escaped the bounds of its past, and the war would be of little

consequence. But Solidere does not do this: instead, the company’s discourse lays down a

trickier path to follow, one which integrates the country’s past while at the same time doing all

it can to forget the war years. Solidere sees the development and progress of which it is a part

not as a recent phenomenon with the aim of building Lebanon up after the war, but as a

predestined historical trajectory, in which their plans for the Central Business District are

merely the latest stage in a process which dates since the time of the Phoenicians.

!Evidence of this discourse abounds in Solidere’s materials: the standard introduction to Beirut

and the context around Solidere, repeated practically verbatim at the beginning of each

Annual Report, contains references to the numerous civilisations which have influenced

Beirut, a city “continuously inhabited for more than 5,000 years” (Solidere 2002, p. 10, and

subsequent). That the Central Business District area should be the hub of economic and

political activity in Lebanon is depicted as a matter of inevitability, its inundation with

shopping malls simply a reflection of the area’s “natural assets” (ibid.). The Central District’s

“inherent assets” (Solidere, undated, p. 3) do not just encompass geographical features such as

proximity to the Mediterranean but also easy access to the airport (via a specially-constructed

highway) or a liberal political environment.

!The company narrates the story of its own formation in a similarly agentless way. The 1991

law retroactively legalising Solidere’s existence is always described as “regulat[ing] the

establishment of Lebanese real estate companies aiming at the reconstruction of war-damaged

areas” (Solidere 2002, p. 3, and subsequent), masking the fact that Solidere is the only such

company in Lebanon. The introduction to Beirut City Center, a Solidere-published coffee

table book of photographs documenting the reconstruction, states that “Solidere was formed

in 1994 with Rafic Hariri as its guiding light and in agreement with the Government of

Lebanon” (MacPherson 2006, p. 9), ignoring the fact that the Prime Minister at the time was

Rafic Hariri. Many of the redevelopment plans and projects are referred to in the passive, such

!Page ! of !27 55

as this description of the construction of Saifi Village which seems to regard the project as a

force of nature rather than something which was deliberately constructed: “a traditional

neighborhood with a preserved urban fabric has emerged” (Solidere 2002, p. 30). When

talking about both specific sites and the plan in general, Solidere seems to regard itself as a

tool of historical inevitability. Even the decision to expand abroad in 2007 is described as a

situation which confronted the company “all of a sudden”, as if they had no part in it (Solidere

2007, p. 6).

!4.2 War Amnesia

!In this grand march towards progress, the Civil War plays as minor a role as possible because

it lies outside the narrative. The war is a blip in the course of inevitable development, but its

effects have been settled. When it is mentioned, it is in a purely economic light: “At the onset

of hostilities in 1975, growth was replaced by widespread destruction” (Solidere 2002, p. 10,

and subsequent). The conflict features so little in any of Solidere’s materials that one could

easily confuse the project with some other regeneration programme in cities across the world.

A presentation given at the EFG Hermes Conference (Solidere 2014), for example, makes no

mention of the history of Lebanon or Solidere. It can therefore be difficult to locate the

absence of the Civil War from Solidere’s discourse, as the company makes a great effort to not

discuss topics in which its omission would be noticeable. Occasionally, however, the choice

of words can reveal Solidere’s attitude. For example, anything predating 1990 is described as

‘prewar’. This includes not only the traffic system (Solidere 2002, p. 14) but also the city’s

coastline, the extent of which, before Solidere’s land reclamation project, is marked on the

Master Plan as “prewar shoreline” (Solidere 2004, pre-contents, and subsequent).

!The result of this attitude is that, before Hariri’s death in 2005, Solidere conceives of the

reconstruction programme not as a process of healing the wounds of conflict, but as a

restoration of the pre-war years. This narrative accounts for one of the principal features of

Solidere’s discourse: the dominance of the prefix ‘re-’, which is stressed throughout the

Annual Reports. The words used to describe the process vary considerably, ranging from

ordinary terms such as ‘reconstruction’, ‘redevelopment’, or ‘restoration’, without which the

documents could scarcely be written, to more unusual words such as ‘rejuvenation’,

!Page ! of !28 55

‘rehabilitation’, and ‘recuperation’. There is an urge to construct the Beirut of 1975 without

ever explaining why that Beirut no longer exists.

!4.3 Other Political Events

!I have already mentioned that, in the rare cases in which Solidere is forced to refer to the war

years (such as the passage about the collapse of ‘growth’ cited in Section 4.2 above), they are

framed in an exclusively economic context. This lens also applies to other Lebanese political

events which the company mentions. The publicly-available reports cover the years

2002-2013, a period which saw tremendous political upheaval in Lebanon, yet this is largely

invisible (with the exception of Hariri’s death, discussed in Section 4.4). If these events are

discussed, the same financial language is used. Thus, the War with Israel in 2006, during

which Beirut itself was bombed, is referred to as “the July 2006 war and its

aftermath” (Solidere 2007, p. 76) and deployed as an excuse for the company’s poor financial

performance. In following years, the results are attributed to the “political

stalemate” (Solidere 2007, p. 6), “war and invasion, followed by political problems” (Solidere

2008, p. 14), and “unfavorable political or economic circumstances” (Solidere 2009, p. 10).

Similarly, there has been no reference whatsoever to the Syrian civil war, its destabilising

effects on Lebanon, or the vast influx of refugees. Events outside Solidere are therefore only

relayed inasmuch as they effect or interrupt its march towards progress. Naturally, the

connection between Solidere and its political allies is not alluded to, which allows the

company to talk about ‘political problems’ as an outside phenomenon rather than one in

which it is intimately involved. But the claim to non-partisanship has deeper roots in the

company’s central historical discourse.

!Solidere and its political allies see the Lebanese Civil War as having been fundamentally

based on a conflict between Lebanon’s Christian and Muslim population (Makdisi 1996): the

pre-war years were a time of nostalgic societal harmony, and the post-war years are founded

on the search for a similar co-existence. It is of tremendous symbolic importance within this

discourse that the March 14th Bloc supporting Hariri consists of both Muslim and Christian

parties, despite the fact that the same is true of its opponents (see Appendices C and D for a

breakdown of the parties within each Bloc). This allows the argument that March 14th is

!Page ! of !29 55

working for progress and co-existence, and that its political rivals are the enemies of both, a

narrative which is later brought into relief by the company’s reaction to Hariri’s death. The

potent differences within sectarian groups, which often stem from the last decade of the War,

are replaced with a narrative of co-existence. Thus, Solidere can with perfect honesty applaud

the variety of religious buildings within the Central District as a symbol of Christian-Muslim

harmony, while dismissing the fact that the particular sects of Christianity and Islam

represented by those churches and mosques are all associated with political allies of Hariri.

Solidere thus exacerbates existing social tensions by insisting that they truly lie elsewhere.

!It is this historical discourse which leads Solidere to forget the existence of Martyrs’ Square.

Martyrs’ Square is so named because it used to contain a metal statue commemorating the

leaders of an uprising against the French in the 1920s, who were subsequently executed. From

independence until 1975, the area around the Square was the economic and social centre of

Beirut, but it was devastated in the war and the statue was removed for safekeeping. It was

replaced in the 1990s and the absence of any other commemoration, together with its evident

gunfire damage, have transformed it into a de facto memorial to the Civil War (Khalaf 2006).

Mentioning this monument in the reports is unavoidable, as it lends its name to one of the

main areas of the reconstruction plan, yet its role as a reminder of the war conflicts with the

narrative to which Solidere subscribes. Martyrs’ Square is therefore mentioned only in the

phrase “the Martyrs’ Square axis” (Solidere 2002, p. 11), or as a directional indicator

describing other features of the project (‘north of Martyrs’ Square’). The Square becomes a

theoretical idea guiding the urban plan, rather than a concrete location with its own meaning,

and the statue itself vanishes.

!4.4 Rafiq Hariri

!The key to this entire discursive structure is Rafiq Hariri. Despite his pre-eminence, Hariri is

totally absent from the early Reports, and indeed from other Solidere materials, in keeping

with the distance he theoretically maintained from the company as Prime Minister. This

silence is shattered by his assassination in 2005. Posthumously, the company acknowledges

his role as architect of both Solidere and the political project of modernisation in Lebanon.

The assassination is mentioned first in the 2004 Report (which includes February 2005), but is

!Page ! of !30 55

given full coverage in the 2005 report. That something unusual and grim will be included

within is presaged immediately by the report’s cover: unlike previous and subsequent issues,

which feature multicoloured, somewhat abstract photographs meant to put the reader in mind

of an indeterminate idea of technological progress, the cover of the 2005 report is entirely

blood-red (see Figure 4.1).

!

!

Figure 4.1: Covers of Solidere Annual Reports, 2002-05.

!These issues mark the only occasion when Chairman Nasser Chamaa breaks his political

silence, and the introduction is unusually partisan: Hariri’s death is “a great and irreparable

loss”, the man himself “a martyr for Lebanon and the Arab countries” (Solidere 2004, p. 6).

Chamaa also urges the Lebanese people (the ones who read Solidere’s Reports, at least) to

“abide by [Hariri’s] national ideals in order to pursue the reconstruction efforts” (ibid.). This

intrusion of the outside political situation is quite unprecedented in any Reports before or

since. But although explicit political neutrality returns after 2005, the Company’s discourse

does not return to its status quo. Hariri’s assassination is an event of unique magnitude,

marking the point for Solidere at which Lebanese history restarts after 1975, and as such the

discourse alters significantly. On a minor level this is noticeable through the introduction of

new terminology. The 2004 Report debuts two words which are repeated in every subsequent

issue: Hariri is the ‘godfather’ of the reconstruction project which aims at the ‘rebirth’ of

Beirut (ibid., p. 4), transforming his previous invisibility into a quasi-religious role. The

greatest discursive effect of Hariri’s assassination, however, is undoubtedly the re-

introduction of memory.

!Until 2005, Solidere’s discourse forbids memorials as indicators of a conflicted past which

deserved to be forgotten. With Hariri’s death, however, Solidere gains an event which it can

commemorate without compromise, and a number of previously omitted sites appear for the

!Page ! of !31 55

first time. Among them is the Muhammad al-Amin Mosque, which was ignored throughout

the period of its construction because Hariri sponsored the project in order to spite his

political rival, President Émile Lahoud (Vloeberghs 2012). After Hariri’s death, however, we

are told that the mosque “took on a profound meaning” when Hariri was buried next to it

(Solidere 2004, p. 37, and subsequent). Finally, the Martyrs’ Memorial site, which also lies

directly next to Hariri’s mausoleum, is permitted an existence outside the bonds of its ‘axis’.

Page 17 of the 2004 Report depicts a photograph (Figure 4.2) of the monument itself, the only

time it has appeared in the Annual Reports. Subsequent reports devote space to discussing the

latest construction developments in this symbolic area, attention which is even more

remarkable considering that since 2005 no work has been done on any of these sites, and that

the paragraph outlining the promised forthcoming developments is repeated verbatim year

after year. Nonetheless, this repetition is itself significant, as it illustrates the importance

which Solidere has placed on memory since 2005, on the condition that those memories are

relatable to Hariri.

!

���

Figure 4.2: The Martyrs’ Memorial (Solidere 2004, p. 17).

!A brief side note in the 2006 report reveals the new hierarchy of historical memory under

which Solidere’s reconstruction operates. Among a list of amendments made to the master

plan, the following item appears:

!Page ! of !32 55

!“…amendments to the Master Plan include the removal of the police station initially planned

on lot 1085 Saifi, site of the former Ottoman police station. Its ownership… is to be

transferred through sale to house the Rafic Hariri library.” (Solidere 2006, p. 26)

!The initial plan to institute a police station on the site because there had been one during the

late Ottoman period fits with Solidere’s modus operandi more broadly. However, the decision

to alter the plan in the light of Hariri’s assassination highlights the importance of that event in

Solidere’s conception of history, and the fact that the drive for authenticity has been

supplanted by it.

!The year 2005 was a turning-point for Solidere and its discourse. As a result of Hariri’s

assassination, the primary historical narrative of unrelenting progress, which reduced the civil

war to a historical parenthesis, was complemented by a second, more openly partisan one.

This new narrative explained Lebanon’s post-war development as a result of the sectarian

harmony which had enveloped it since 1990. Hariri, and the multi-faith movement that his

death created, were lionised as modernisers. Those opposing the March 14th Bloc, the Hariris,

or Solidere all became economic reactionaries who longed for a return to open conflict. As

references to historical memory became part of Solidere’s discourse, the company’s self-

restraint from building memorials was discarded. Therefore, in the next chapter we turn to the

question of how memory discourse has been embedded in the urban space of the Central

Business District.

!Page ! of !33 55

Chapter 5: The Central Business District

!As has already been mentioned (see Section 4.2), one of the principal features of Solidere’s

discourse is the choice not to acknowledge the events of the Civil War out of a belief that to

do so would be divisive. This aspect of the discourse is manifested in the Central District by

the total absence of memorials to the war, something which distinguishes Solidere from many

groups exercising control over parts of Beirut. Statues and posters of figures important to a

particular sectarian history of the conflict (usually former political leaders or martyred

fighters) are a common feature of the urban landscape in many parts of the city. However, in

the Beirut Central District, as a result of the discourse examined in the previous chapter, the

situation is rather different. In this chapter I will discuss three features of the Beirut Central

District which are of particular symbolic interest to Solidere’s discourse: Martyrs’ Square, the

use of statues, and the Garden of Forgiveness.

!5.1 Martyrs’ Square

!The Martyrs’ Monument is perhaps the closest the Central District comes to having a war

memorial (see Section 4.3). This statue, which officially commemorates Lebanese resistance

to French occupation in the 1920s, functions as an unofficial monument to the war by virtue

of the absence of any alternative, as well as its location in what used to be the city’s bustling

hub. The statue sits physically and metaphorically in the liminal space connecting the CBD

with East Beirut, and is related symbolically to both of them. Solidere finds its war-time

associations problematic, and has attempted to disrupt them through the proximity of the

cluster of sites connected to Hariri: the Mausoleum, the Garden of Forgiveness, and the

Muhammad al-Amin Mosque. The mass protests which took place in the Square in the

aftermath of Hariri’s assassination (dubbed the ‘Cedar Revolution’) temporarily reinforced

this link, but counter-protests on the same site in subsequent years once again muddled the

square’s symbolic meaning. Solidere is thus unable to incorporate the Square into its plan for

fear of acknowledging these rival historical and political narratives, yet the Memorial’s

proximity to Hariri’s grave renders it impossible to ignore. The Square has thus been left

undeveloped, and Solidere mentions the Memorial infrequently, when this can be associated

with Hariri.

!Page ! of !34 55

5.2 Statues

!The idolisation of Hariri and others who are classed as martyrs in the cause of ‘development’

in Solidere’s discourse also finds expression in the Central District’s urban space, through the

construction of statues and other commemorative monuments. Haugbølle, speaking about

other areas of the city, notes that “Public consecration of dead leaders [is] a general feature of

postwar Lebanon’s sectarian politics” (2010, p. 184). However, the memory discourse in

which Solidere’s urban space engages distinguishes it from the rest of Beirut by its continued

omission of the Civil War and its focus on post-2005 events.

!Hariri is the most commemorated figure, and his three monuments each stand in strategic

locations around the city centre (see Figure 5.1, next page). Firstly, a statue stands on the

raised green space overlooking the site of his assassination (A), on a road which has been re-

named in his honour. Secondly, the redeveloped area behind the Prime Minister’s offices has

been re-named National Unity Square (B), and features another statue of Hariri. Finally, the

cluster of sites (C) surrounding the Hariri Mausoleum, including the Muhammad al-Amin

Mosque, and the Garden of Forgiveness, invests each of these places with political

symbolism. Initially a two-room tent containing the tombs of Hariri and his guards, the

Mausoleum is now set to be expanded into a permanent marble structure. These three sites

effectively guard the major entrances to the Central District by car, including both south roads

from the airport and the coastal road entering from the west. Due to the open nature of

Martyrs’ Square, the Mausoleum is visible to anyone coming in from the city’s east. It is

therefore nearly impossible to drive into the CBD without passing a commemoration of

Hariri.

!Despite his pre-eminence, Hariri is not the only ‘martyr’ memorialised in the Central District.

There are two other memorials to victims of assassination. The first is Gebran Tueni, former

editor of the newspaper An Nahar, which supports Hariri’s March 14th Bloc (Melki et. al.

2012, p. 21), and son of Ghassan Tueni, originator of the ‘War of Others’ theory about the

Civil War (see Section 2.3). The other is a statue of Samir Kassir, founder of the March 14th-

allied Democratic Left Movement. Both of these men were assassinated late in 2005

following Hariri’s death in February. Both were Orthodox Christians, and their

!Page ! of !35 55

commemoration is clearly meant to suggest the sectarian harmony for which Solidere believes

Hariri is responsible. In order to stress this point, page 69 of the 2011 Report features a

photograph (Figure 5.2, next page) of two women with headscarves posing with the statue of

Samir Kassir. These two memorials (D and E on Figure 5.1 above) also form part of the

protective memorial ring around the Central District, as does the office of an-Nahar opposite

them, which displays a permanent banner honouring Tueni (Figure 5.3, page 37).

!

%

Figure 5.1: The location of memorials (in yellow, A-E) in relation to the major road entrances

(in red) to the Central District (outlined in black) [Map from Google Earth].

!The distinguishing feature of these memorials lies in Solidere’s power and ability to shape the

Central District’s urban environment. Although any political party can mount similar posters

of past and current leaders at the entrances to the zones it controls, only Solidere is both

financially and legally able to build statues. Posters can be removed, defaced, or covered with

rival posters, but the construction of a statue, particularly when sited at the centre of a Square

bearing the name of the person who is remembered there, lends the force of official sanction

to the memory. This permanence matters: in February 2015, a unified government agreement

!Page ! of !36 55

mandated the removal of all political posters in the Beirut municipality (Holmes 2015).

Images of Hezbollah’s secretary general came down; so did posters of Hariri’s son Saad. But

Hariri’s statues and mausoleum remained, a demonstration of discourse made material

through practice.

!

!

Figure 5.2: Sectarian unity in Samir Kassir Square (Solidere 2011, p. 69).

%

Figure 5.3: Poster of Gebran Tueni on the offices of al-Nahar [Image from flickr.com].

!! !

Page ! of !37 55

5.3 The Garden of Forgiveness

!The Garden of Forgiveness, which is listed on Solidere’s website as “On hold” and may never

be built, is planned to encompass the open archaeological site which lies between Najmeh

Square and Hariri’s Mausoleum on the edge of Martyrs’ Square. The plan calls for a strolling

park on the site for public visits and contemplation, containing nothing more than trees,

benches, and walkways. Should it reach fruition, the Garden of Forgiveness will be a curious

memorial because, as Hall indicates, it “will not refer to anything; it will not name people or

events that are forgiven or to be forgiven” (Hall 2013, 53). The Garden lies semiotically

somewhere in between the discourse of historical amnesia and Solidere’s commemoration of

itself. Taken in isolation, its status as a somewhat vague war memorial seems unquestionable,

but its geographic location tells a different tale.

!The way in which Solidere describes the Garden of Forgiveness matches its narrative of the

Lebanese Civil War, as a failure of sectarian togetherness. Much is made of its location in the

city centre, surrounded by religious buildings, suggestive of a site of compromise and equality

between religions. The plan calls for a multilayered system of walkways, integrating pre-

existing Roman ruins discovered on the site during post-war excavation into the modern city

and transforming the Garden into a physical representation of Solidere’s slogan, ‘the ancient

city of the future’. However, the minimal description of the Garden in the Annual Reports

states that “the garden’s location among several places of worship… destine it to be a place of

calm reflection” (Solidere 2004, p. 18). Some official descriptions are even less specific, such

as Solidere’s webpage on the project, which merely says that “the design symbolizes unity, as

it brings together terraces of fruit and olives” (Solidere 2015).

!This narrative is expounded on by the Garden’s designer, the British psychotherapist

Alexandra Asseily. Asseily, who describes the idea behind the Garden as the result of a

spiritual vision sent to her in 1997, discusses its purpose in the language of a shared human

nature: “why do we do such dreadful things, as human beings?” (Ismail 2010). Indeed, her

advocacy of forgiveness seems based to a great extent on the health benefits she claims

medical research has unearthed. Asseily’s forgiveness is a deeply individual notion, and the

Garden, with its lack of commemoration or memorials, seems to reflect this. Her

!Page ! of !38 55

understanding of forgiveness as a way of letting go of ancestral evils (Asseily 2007) is could

even be likened to Solidere’s determination to modernise Lebanon by ridding it of

sectarianism (Makdisi 1996).

!In a similar vein, the Garden has received much attention from international groups for this

message of peace and humanism. Asseily was interviewed for the film The Power of

Forgiveness, funded by The Campaign for Love and Forgiveness, and a group of families of

9/11 victims travelled to Lebanon in 2005 in order to plant an olive tree on the site. In 2009,

an initiative from Sheikh Muhammad Nokkari created a joint Christian-Muslim holiday on

the day of the Feast of the Annunciation; this was celebrated in the Garden of Forgiveness

(AsiaNews 2009). In addition, many spiritual websites praise the project as an example of the

best of humanity, emphasising its global applicability: “I have been told [by the angels] that

[the Garden] will help people all around the world” (Byrne 2012). There are few attempts to

introduce context into the discussion, and the authors seem willing to accept that conflict

between Christians and Muslims is Lebanon’s greatest problem. Some writers even seem

unaware that the Garden does not yet exist.

!This external discourse ignores the Garden’s political and geographical environment, both of

which suggest that it is intended as another commemoration to Hariri. For a start, it is directly

adjacent to buildings connected to his memory, including the Mausoleum and the Muhammad

al-Amin Mosque (see Section 4.4). There is a strong belief among Hariri’s supporters that he

visited the site just prior to his assassination, and that his final steps were taken in the Garden

(Daily Star 2012), although evidence of this is difficult to obtain. Furthermore, the indication

that the Garden symbolises unity through its proximity to various religious buildings has

another side to it. There are indeed three mosques and three churches within a few hundred

metres of the site; however, all of the sects represented in those six places of worship are

associated with political parties which are members of Hariri’s March 14th Movement.

!The name of the memorial also has significant overtones. Forgiveness is not the same as

reconciliation: reconciliation is a mutual process which involves recognition of errors

committed by both parties as well as against them. Hence, the purpose of a Truth and

Reconciliation Commission is specifically to avoid apportioning blame to a specific group.

!Page ! of !39 55

Forgiveness, on the other hand, is a strictly transitive process: there is a party who forgives,

and a party who is forgiven. The former is magnanimous; the latter, humbled. This connection

is stronger still in Arabic, where the chosen word for forgiveness (samāḥ) also carries

meanings of ‘magnanimity’ and ‘indulgence’, implying a sense of a tolerant lord pardoning

his wayward subjects (Wehr 1993). This would be a curious message for a memorial to a civil

war in which all sides committed atrocities. It seems more likely, given the Garden’s

surroundings, that it is intended as a memorial to Rafiq Hariri as well as, if not actually

instead of, the Civil War.

!Alone among the political actors in Lebanon, Solidere has the legal and financial means to

shape Beirut’s urban environment in accordance with its own ideology, forging for itself a

concrete and incontestable base in the heart of the city. The effects of Solidere’s memory

discourse do not therefore limit themselves to written materials or political strategy. All major

strands of the historical narrative outlined in Chapter 4, including the omission of the war

years, the focus on Muslim-Christian harmony as Lebanon’s central political struggle, and the

company’s commemoration of Hariri, have been incorporated permanently into Beirut’s urban

fabric.

!Page ! of !40 55

Conclusion

!Within this paper, I have applied a discourse analysis in the tradition of Laclau and Mouffe to

the written materials and urban plans produced by the Solidere company. I have done this in

order to examine the company’s narrative of historical memory, and of recent political events,

which are both sensitive topics within Lebanon. From these sources of analysis, two distinct

strands of discourse are evident.

!The first, with a neutral, business-like focus on development and progress, depicts Solidere as

the agent of Beirut’s future prosperity. The civil war was a blip in a millennia-long tradition of

advancement, and by refusing to entertain lingering notions of sectarianism the country will

soon forget it. This discourse can be seen in Solidere’s materials through its reluctance to

mention the war except when it must, and the emphasis on the Central District’s history and

on the 13 previous civilisations which lived there. Enacted in the urban environment, the

discourse renders the idea of a war memorial unacceptable to Solidere, and complicates the

company’s attitude towards Martyrs’ Square to the extent that neither building on it nor

ignoring it is a viable course of action. Solidere’s slogan, “The Ancient City of the Future”, is

a perfect encapsulation of this historical discourse, in which Solidere’s memory stops in 1975.

!The second discourse restarts Solidere’s memory in 2005 with Hariri’s assassination.

Although everything between those years is forgotten, the turmoil which follows must be

commemorated. In many ways this is a continuation of the first discourse, and the focus on

economic progress as an engine of Christian-Muslim sectarian harmony remains. But rather

than standing above the political sphere, Solidere now descends into the fray to fight for the

legacy of its chosen figure: Hariri. This second discourse therefore represents a fundamental

betrayal of the first. The nostalgic, ‘timeless’ landscape of the Central District gradually

becomes festooned with memorials to Hariri and other victims of assassination. The Annual

Report steps outside its financial remit to report this “tragedy” in detail to its readers (a

courtesy not extended two years later upon Lebanon’s invasion), and begins to refer to him as

“a martyr for Lebanon” (Solidere 2004, p. 6).

!

!Page ! of !41 55

Since the conclusion of the period covered by this research (mid-2012), there have been

several political developments which may have affected Solidere’s position, namely the

appointment of a non-partisan Prime Minister, the subsequent re-identification of the CBD not

with Hariri’s bloc but with ‘the government’ as an institution, and the move into exile of

Hariri’s son Saad. These changes, and Solidere’s responses to them, warrant further research.

!To control the discourse by which the past is constructed and represented is to control

memory, and usually such control is simply exerted over speech and writing. However, in

gaining the opportunity to rebuild central Beirut with little outside scrutiny, the company has

succeeded in going beyond that mundane goal. Solidere’s aim seems to be to realise, within

the CBD, the appearance of the Beirut (and the Lebanon) which Rafiq Hariri was unable to

achieve in government: a vision of a country in which history passes directly from 1975 to

2005, and in which the political alliance of Christians and Muslims forged by Hariri genuinely

represents national unity. Although a national Lebanese memory of the war will probably

never be reached, Solidere has been able to literally build its own bespoke vision of Beirut’s

history.

!

!Page ! of !42 55

Appendix A: Ethics and Risk Forms

!

!Page ! of !43 55

!

!!!!

KCL Department of Geography: Risk Assessment form (Individual Research and Fieldwork) Page ! of !1 21

Geography Individual Research and Fieldwork (This form is available electronically via http://www.kcl.ac.uk/geography → “For Current Students” → “Student Forms” →

“Universal Forms”) !1 COMPLETING THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY RISK ASSESSMENT FORM !This process is now a digital process. These forms do not need to be printed and signed. The new procedure is as follows.

• STUDENTS: Read and complete this form carefully and email to your research supervisor as a word document (if you are unsure about any of the questions discuss them first with your supervisor). Save the document using the filename RiskAssessmentForm_YourName_KCLStudentCard#.docx replacing YourName and KCLStudentCard# with the appropriate details. Also submit the web-based TRAVEL NOTIFICATION AND INSURANCE FORM (at http://bit.ly/kclgeotravel). Your typed name and student number and the sending of this from your email account is accepted as your signature.

• STAFF: Read and check this assessment carefully. If you consider the student has identified, understands and is managing the key risks and that this work will be safe, “sign” the signature page and forward the received email message from the student (and attach this signed document) to katharine.silk@kcl.ac.uk with a cc to the student who completed it (they will need your signed off copy to attach as an appendix to their dissertation) . Your typed name and staff number and the forwarding of this from your email account is accepted as your signature. Responsibility for assessing whether this assessment is appropriate lies with you, as supervisor. Until the risk assessment has been accepted by the supervisor, the research activity is not permitted.

• PROCESS: This form will be further reviewed departmentally. In the rare cases that risks are deemed to be unacceptable, despite supervisor sign-off, the form will be returned by e-mail to the student (cc to supervisor) with feedback on any further clarification needed. If you do not hear from Katharine within a few working days of submission you may assume that there are no issues arising.. !

WHY DO I NEED TO DO THIS?

!!2 GENERAL GUIDANCE ON RISK ASSESSMENT: MANAGING HEALTH AND SAFETY !In most countries, national legislation provides the legal framework for health and safety management. For example, in the UK, universities abide by the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (http://www.hse.gov.uk/legislation/hswa.htm) and associated regulations. The Act places a duty upon employers to take steps to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health and safety of their employees and any other people affected by their activities including, in the case of universities, all students and members of the public. Additional guidelines may also exist at the local or national scale. For example, there is a British standard concerning Specification for the provision of visits, fieldwork, expeditions, and adventurous activities, outside the UK (BS8848). These laws and guidelines typically require that ‘risk assessments’ are undertaken to identify what should be done in order to manage safety. Assessments of risk are usually focused around ‘risk’ and ‘hazard’. Put simply:

• Hazards result from working in potentially dangerous environments and refer to environmental conditions, agents (including strangers) or substances that can cause harm.

• Risk is the chance that a person (you or someone else) might be harmed by the hazard. During individual research (e.g., fieldwork), hazards and risks can change rapidly, for example, as a result of changing weather conditions or political actions, and should be continually reassessed. A risk assessment should be completed for:

• All individual research and fieldwork taking place OUTSIDE the Department of Geography conducted as part of your degree,

• All laboratory work INSIDE the College premises • All student dissertation work, whether human or physical, and whether undergraduate, postgraduate

taught or postgraduate research. The extent of your involvement in actually assessing the risks will vary according to the way in which the individual research and fieldwork is organised, but you have a responsibility to follow any precautions or safety measures laid down in the risk assessment.

You are ultimately responsible for your own safety and that of those working for you but the Department of Geography has a duty of care to ensure that you have thought carefully about the risks involved in the field or laboratory work, and that you have done the utmost to manage and reduce them. We will not sanction fieldwork that we consider to be unsafe. Fortunately serious accidents and deaths in the field are rare but they do happen. Think through the risks and how you will manage them and ensure you have outlined a plan of action in case something does go wrong.

!Page ! of !44 55

!

!

!!

KCL Department of Geography: Risk Assessment form (Individual Research and Fieldwork) Page 2 of 21!3 RISK ASSESSMENT FORM AND ASSOCIATED DOCUMENTATION

After reading through ALL risk categories, please select RISK TYPE A or B below. !RISK TYPE A You are only eligible for RISK TYPE A if all of the following are true:

• Your work takes place within: college premises or home or within organizations/premises that have their own clear risk assessment in place.

• Your work involves ONLY library/archival data or existing on-line/other data. • Your work WILL NOT expose you to risks greater than in everyday life. !

DECLARATION: I have considered ALL categories in this form (see page 4 onwards) and I declare that I am undertaking a student project/dissertation where: a) NONE of my research will be outside of college premises or home or organizations/premises that have their own clear risk assessment in place; and b) it does not involve ANY of the risks identified in ANY of the categories of this risk assessment form. Should my research project change, such that there are now risks involved, then it is my responsibility to resubmit this form after completing an assessment for Risk Type B. !

!!RISK TYPE B Fill out THIS PAGE and ALL OTHER PAGES in this form. !DECLARATION: I have considered ALL categories in this form and have indicated which risks apply to me that are greater than in everyday life and normal activities (writing yes/no for every section). Where I have answered ‘yes’ then I have also indicated the degree of risk from 1–5 (1=low, 5=high) and, where appropriate, added notes or comments relating to the level of risk. I have identified and added any additional risks not explicitly covered by this form in the final section. !

SIGNATURES OF PERSON FILLING IN A RISK ASSESSMENT AND COUNTERSIGNATURE.

A. Person filling in this risk assessment

Signature (TYPE YOUR NAME AND STAFF OR STUDENT ID IN PLACE OF A SIGNATURE): !DUNCAN WANE 1470940

Date: 29.6.2015

B. Countersignature and date. I sign to indicate that I have read this and consider it an appropriate assessment. (Students – Research Supervisor; Research Staff – Project Leader; Academic Staff – Head of Department)

Date: 29.6.2015

Signature (TYPE YOUR NAME AND STAFF OR STUDENT ID IN PLACE OF A SIGNATURE):

!

SIGNATURES OF PERSON FILLING IN A RISK ASSESSMENT AND COUNTERSIGNATURE.

A. Person filling in this risk assessment

Signature (TYPE YOUR NAME AND STAFF OR STUDENT ID IN PLACE OF A SIGNATURE):

Date:

B. Countersignature and date. I sign to indicate that I have read this and consider it an appropriate assessment. (Students – Research Supervisor; Research Staff – Project Leader; Academic Staff – Head of Department)

!Page ! of !45 55

Appendix B: List of Primary Documents

Title Date Access

Annual Report 2002 2003 solidere.com/corporate/publications/annual-reports

Annual Report 2003 2004 solidere.com/corporate/publications/annual-reports

Annual Report 2004 2005 solidere.com/corporate/publications/annual-reports

Annual Report 2005 2006 solidere.com/corporate/publications/annual-reports

Beirut City Center (book) 2006 McPherson, L.E. (2006); see Works Cited

Annual Report 2006 2007 solidere.com/corporate/publications/annual-reports

Breaking the Cycles of Violence in Lebanon – and Beyond 2007 Asseily, A. (2007); see Works Cited

Annual Report 2007 2008 solidere.com/corporate/publications/annual-reports

Annual Report 2008 2009 solidere.com/corporate/publications/annual-reports

Annual Report 2009 2010 solidere.com/corporate/publications/annual-reports

Interview with Alexandra Asseily 2010 youtube.com/watch?v=9xqjGoZ7wPQ

Annual Report 2010 2011 solidere.com/corporate/publications/annual-reports

Annual Report 2011 2012 solidere.com/corporate/publications/annual-reports

Annual Report 2012 2013 solidere.com/corporate/publications/annual-reports

Biannual January-June 2013 2013 solidere.com/corporate/publications/annual-reports

Solidere: Places for Life, Presentation to the 4th EFG Hermes London MENA Conference

2014solidere.com/corporate/investor-relations/ir-presentations-and-reports

Garden of Forgiveness – Solidere (website) 2015 solidere.com/city-center/solidere-developments/open-spaces/garden-forgiveness

Gebran Tueiny Memorial – Solidere (website) 2015 solidere.com/city-center/solidere-developments/

open-spaces/gebran-tueiny-memorial

Martyrs’ Square – Solidere (website) 2015 solidere.com/city-center/urban-overview/districts-main-axes/martyrs-square

National Unity Square – Solidere (website) 2015 solidere.com/city-center/solidere-developments/open-spaces/national-unity-square

Samir Kassir Garden – Solidere (website) 2015 solidere.com/city-center/solidere-developments/open-spaces/samir-kassir-garden

Beirut City Center: Developing the finest city center in the Middle East (Solidere brochure)

undated solidere.com/sites/default/files/attached/cr-brochure.pdf

!Page ! of !46 55

Appendix C: Parties of the March 14th Bloc

(pro-Hariri, anti-Syria)

[Source: 14march.org/parties.php]

!Appendix D: Parties of the March 8th Bloc

(anti-Hariri, pro-Syria)

[Source: 8march.org/]

Party Parliamentary Seats Religious Base Prominent Figures

Future Movement 35 Sunni Muslim Hariri family

Lebanese Forces 8 Maronite Christian Samir Geagea

The Phalange (Kata’ib Party] 5 Maronite Christian Gemayel family

Social Democrat Hunchakian Party 2 Armenian Orthodox Hagop Dikranian

Murr Bloc 1 Greek Orthodox Michel Murr

Armenian Democratic Liberal Party (Ramgavar) 1 Armenian Orthodox

National Liberal Party 1 Maronite Christian Chamoun family

Democratic Left Movement 1 non-sectarian Samir Kassir

Islamic Group 1 Sunni Muslim

Party Parliamentary Seats Religious Base Prominent Figures

Free Patriotic Movement 20 Maronite Christian Michel Aoun

Amal Movement 13 Shi’a Muslim Nabih Berri; Imam Sadr

Hezbollah 13 Shi’a Muslim Hassan Nasrallah

Lebanese Democratic Party 4 Druze Arslan family

Marada Movement 3 Maronite Christian Suleiman Franjieh

Glory Movement 2 Sunni Muslim Najib Miqati

Armenian Revolutionary Federation 2 Armenian Orthodox

Syrian Social Nationalist Party 2 non-sectarian

Arab Socialist Ba’th Party 2 non-sectarian Bashar al-Asad [President of Syria]

Solidarity Party 1 Maronite Christian

!Page ! of !47 55

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