City, War and Geopolitics: the Relations Between Militia Political Violence

City, war and geopolitics: the relations between militia political violence and the built environment of Beirut in the early phases of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1976) Sara Fregonese NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ---------- ----------------- 207 32628 4 ---------------------------- Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology Newcastle University May 2008 IMAGING SERVICES NORTH Boston Spa, Wetherby West Yorkshire, LS23 7BQ www.bl.uk ORIGINAL COpy TIGHTLY BOUND IMAGING SERVICES NORTH Boston Spa, Wetherby West Yorkshire, LS23 7BQ www.bl.uk . PAGE NUMBERING AS ORIGINAL IMAGING SERVICES NORTH Boston Spa, Wetherby West Yorkshire, LS23 7BQ www.bl,uk NO CD/DVD ATIACHED PLEASE APPLY TO THE UNIVERSITY Thesis abstract The thesis deals with the relationships between political violence and the built environment of Beirut during the early phases of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1976). It investigates how the daily practices of urban warfare and the urban built fabric impacted on each other, and specifically how the violent targeting of the built fabric relates to contested discourses of power and identity enacted by the urban militias. The study is the result of residential fieldwork in Beirut, where I held in-depth interviews with former militia combatants, media representatives, academics and practitioners in urban studies and architecture, as well as conducting archival search into bibliographical, visual and microfilm sources in Arabic, English and French. Official geopolitical discourses in international diplomacy about the civil war between 1975 and 1976 focused on nation-state territoriality, and overlooked a number of complex specifications of a predominantly urban conflict. This led occasionally to an oversimplification of the war and of Beirut as chaos. Reading the official discourses side by side with unofficial militia accounts, I argue instead that state and non-state narratives coexisted in the urban warfare, and their intermingling produced geographical specifications that were particularly visible in the built environment. Both official and unofficial accounts were permeated of colonial references to the sectarian structure of the Lebanese society. In the thesis, I adopt a discursive and post-colonial approach to these references. Beirut's built fabric became a contested site where the militias enacted different visions of the same territorial discourse: the nation state of Lebanon. This enactment took place through the occupation, division and destruction of portions of the city. Beirut's built environment played a central role in actively shaping and giving materiality to contested ideas of territory, identity, and security. Therefore, the thesis offers a resourceful and critical approach to the study of the impact of conflict on everyday city life. To Beirut II Acknowledgments I would like to thank my parents, who always trusted and empowered me to pursue my goals. I am grateful to Claudio Minca, my supervisor and mentor since the Venice days. He taught me how to think geographically. Without him and his trust in 'natural born geographers', I would not have had embarked on my UK academic adventure. Claudio and Luiza Bialasiewicz also helped to make Newcastle a home away from home. Alex Jeffrey and Alison Stenning supervised me in Newcastle through different stages of my work. I am grateful to them for their insights to the contents of the research, and also for their patient attention to my language fluency. The School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University has been a welcoming work environment for more than three years. I found in its postgraduate community some of my best friends. My colleague and friend Mauro Cannone has been there through the ups and downs of PhD life. He also read and commented on various drafts at different stages. This work ended when an unexpectedly violent round of street-to-street fighting began in Beirut on 7 May 2008, in those same neighbourhoods where I lived during my research fieldwork. During four months in 2005, I benefited of a series of Beirut-based social networks which facilitated my research. I would like to thank the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies and the personnel of the lafet Library at the American University of Beirut. I would also like to thank all anonymous participants, interviewees, and all the friends and neighbours of Ras el Naba in Beirut who contributed directly and indirectly to my work. Throughout the writing process, Stefan White - despite his own research commitments - read and constructively criticised this work draft after draft. The conversations we had also contributed to inspire several ideas in this thesis. To this precious companion go my continuous gratitude and a profound respect for the way he thinks. III Table Of Contents Thesis abstract Acknowledgments III Tahle Of Contents IV Tahle Of Figures VI Intellectual Property And Confidentiality Statement VIII Note for the transliteration of Arabic words IX INTRODUCTION. POWER, REPRESENTATION, AND THE SPACE OF FOREIGN POLICY IN THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR 1 Background And Research Questions The "Lie Of The Land": Representing Place And Difference In Foreign Policy 5 Anti-Geopolitical Eyes And Subjugated Knowledges In The Lebanese Civil War 9 Spatial Definitions Of The Lebanese Civil War 12 Structure Of The Work 15 CHAPTER 1. THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHIES OF URBICIDE 20 1.1 Introduction: architectures of enmity. 20 I.~ Cities In The Contemporary Architectures Of Enmity: Conflict. Terror And Urban Places. 21 1.3 The City As Battlespace: Geopolitical Novelty, Or Urban Destiny? 25 1.3.1 Urhicide as novelty. 27 1.3.~ Urhicide as destiny. 34 1.4 Neither Novelty Nor Destiny: Just Geography. The Built Environment As A Terrain Of Geo- Graphical Struggle. 45 1.5 Conclusion. 50 CHAPTER 2. URBAN GEOPOLITICS OF THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR: A GENEALOGICAL READING 52 2.1 Introduction 52 2.2 De-Suhjugating The Geopolitics Of Urbicide In Beirut 54 23 Representing the Geographies OfContlict In Beirut: Violence, Memory, And Legitimacy 59 2.3.1 The banality of violence: everyday fieldwork practices in Beirut 60 23.2 The spaces of memory in Lebanon 61 233 Remnants of the civil war: the participants as witnesses 65 23.4 Situating dismissal: cross-cultural research and the legitimacy of the researcher 67 IV 2.4 Conclusion 69 CHAPTER 3. A SPATIAL HISTORY OF SECTARIANISM IN MODERN LEBANON (1830-1975) 73 3.1 Introduction 73 3.1.1 The refuge and the battleground: the sect and modern taxonomy 75 3.2 The Sect: A Laboratory Of Modernity (1830-1920) 78 3.2.1 The sect in the imaginative geographies of the Orient 79 3.2.2 From genealogies of loyalty to cartographies of the sect 81 3.3 The Sect and Modern Territory (1830-1920) 85 3.3.1 Containing the sect: the double Kaymakam ( 1839-1860) 86 3.3.2 Unifying the sect: the Mutasarrifiyya or "smaller Lebanon" (1860-1920) 90 3.3.3 Normalizing the sect: the French mandate or "greater Lebanon" (1920-1943) 93 3.3.4 Negotiating the sect: the Republic of Lebanon (1943-1975) 98 3.4 Conclusion 104 CHAPTER 4. THE URBAN GEOPOLITICS OF THE ESCALATION TOWARDS THE CIVIL WAR 107 4.1 Introduction 107 4.2 The Escalation To The War 108 4.3 The Two Years' War 117 4.4 Conclusion 122 CHAPTER 5. OFFICIAL GEOPOLITICS AND THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR BETWEEN 1975 AND 1976: TERRITORIALITY, ORIENTALlSM, AND SECTARIAN DETERMINISM 124 5.1 Introduction 124 5.2 The Territorial Script: Justifying Non-Intervention 127 5.3 The Orientalist Script: The Return Of The Refuge 134 5.4 The Sectarian Script: The assumption Of The Historical Sect 137 5.5 Conclusion 139 CHAPTER 6. URBAN GEOPOLITICS OF THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR 142 6.1 Introduction 142 6.2 The Reciprocal Shaping Of Official And Unofficial Geopolitical Knowledges 143 6.3.1 Between materiality and meaning: the battle of the Holiday Inn. 156 6.3.2 The everyday built environment as weapon 166 6.4 The Modern Spaces OfUrbicide And Lebanon's Colonial Past 171 6.5 Conclusion 177 v CONCLUSIONS. BEING GEOPOLITICAL IN BEIRUT 179 The Official and Unofficial Geopolitics of Beirut 180 Urbicide: The Material and Discursive Reworking Of Urban Space Through Violence 185 Decolonizing Lebanon's Political Space And The Certainty Of The Sect 189 BIBLIOGRAPHY 193 VI Table Of Figures Figure 1. Kata'ib youth during public demonstrations on Martyrs' Square 64 Figure 2. Map of the Levant at the time of the double lieutenancy. 88 Figure 3. The Mutasarrifiyya of Mount Lebanon 91 Figure 4. Approximate location of modern Lebanon borders with respects to the Mutasarrifiyya. 95 Figure 5. Map showing the formation of the green line along the fighting in 1975 and 1976. 119 Figure 6. AI-Mourabitoun propaganda poster. 148 Figure 7. Lebanese Forces propaganda poster. 150 Figure 8. The Barakat building in the context of the Green Line 154 Figure 9. The Holiday Inn hotel as it appears today. 157 Figure 10. Arab Socialist Union in Lebanon propaganda poster. 162 Figure 11 AI-Murabitun propaganda poster. 164 Figure 12. AI-Murabitun propaganda poster. 164 Figure 13. The Murr Tower 170 Figure 14. National Movement propaganda poster. 176 Figure 15 and 16. Spontaneous sit-in at the Barakat building 187 VI Intellectual Property And Confidentiality Statement All photographs are taken by the author, except for figure 9 (by Claudio Minca). Written permission (in possession of the author) has been obtained for Figure 6, 7 and 10-14. Although some of them would not object to disclosing their names, I chose to respect the confidentiality of all my research participants in order to avoid the possibility of tracking down some of the informants who belong to the same local network. Tapes of the interviews are in possession of the author, filed with encryption. Faces of individuals are blurred in the photographs of public demonstrations in Beirut.

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