After the war · From the books
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dates 1–60 of 92 next
January 2001
Tuesday, 30 January 2001
February 2001
February 2001: day not established
After the war · From the books
Patriarch Sfeir informally led this anti-Syrian Christian gathering of the centre-right, whose members ranged from ex-president Amine Gemayel to Samir Frangieh, formerly of the National Movement.
Sources differ: February 2001 (Haugbolle) or April 2001 (Picard).
March 2001
March 2001: day not established
After the war · From the books
April 2001
April 2001: day not established
After the war · From the books
Amal Makarem convened it at the UN building in Beirut: Lebanese journalists, academics and lawyers met transitional-justice specialists from Germany, Rwanda and South Africa. Several organisers later set up the Association Mémoire pour l'Avenir.
Sources differ: April 2001 (Haugbolle) or March 2001 (title cited by Reder).
- testimony Haugbolle's notes cite the 111101.net artist page and 111101.com: the artist Naji Zahar, he writes, started a war-memory discussion group in the late 1990s and later created 111101, an award-winning online memory database.
After the war · From the books
Haugbolle notes that in April 2001 several newspapers wondered whether war could return: they reported ex-militiamen stirring in both East and West Beirut after rival rallies, some against Syria, some for the government.
May 2001
Thursday, 24 May 2001
After the war · From the books
Sources differ: Abirached dates the anniversary 24 May; de Clerck and Malsagne date the withdrawal itself to 25 May (see the withdrawal entry).
June 2001
June 2001: day not established
After the war · From the books
In June 2001, a year after Bashar al-Assad took power, some Syrian units moved from Beirut and its eastern suburbs to the north and east, while the bulk of the army stayed. Reported troop numbers: 25,000 after 2000, 21,000 in 2001, 17,000 in 2004.
August 2001
Saturday, 4 August 2001
After the war · From the books
Patriarch Sfeir toured the Chouf and called on Walid Jumblatt, eighteen years after the Mountain war; thousands of villagers applauded. Yet most displaced Christians still did not return.
August 2001: day not established
After the war · From the books
Reacting to the Maronite–Druze reconciliation, the security services detained anti-Syrian activists for allegedly plotting against the state, and plainclothes police forcibly broke up a protest outside Beirut's Palace of Justice. The cabinet and parliament approved the crackdown.
Sources differ: Hundreds (Picard) or 200 (Quéméner).
October 2001
Monday, 22 October 2001
After the war · From the books
2001
late 2001 (after 11 September): day not established
After the war · From the books
Washington asked Lebanon to freeze Hezbollah's assets and disarm it; the government refused, citing the unfinished Israeli withdrawal.
January 2002
January 2002: day not established
After the war · From the books
The former Lebanese Forces intelligence chief, widely held responsible for Sabra and Shatila and a minister after the war, died shortly before he was to testify in the Belgian case against Ariel Sharon.
February 2002
Thursday, 14 February 2002
After the war · From the books range
In three interviews with Hazim al-Amin, Hobeika's former aide described his militia years, including orders to execute captives, and called for the truth to be told so that the next generation might forgive.
March 2002
Sunday, 31 March 2002
After the war · From the books
On 14 April, two weeks after that threat, Ariel Sharon charged Syria and Iran with supporting Hezbollah's attacks.
April 2002
Wednesday, 3 April 2002
After the war · From the books
The move was presented as an application of the Taif Agreement.
Friday, 12 April 2002
After the war · From the books
May 2002
Saturday, 25 May 2002
After the war · From the books
August 2002
August 2002: day not established
After the war · From the books
A war over the Council of the South's plan to supply some fifty villages from the Wazzani, a Hasbani tributary, was averted by American, Russian and European mediation.
November 2002
November 2002: day not established
After the war · From the books
Haugbolle calls the book version, 'Beirut's Memory', propaganda: a Solidere-linked bank published it in the name of Hariri's photographer Ayman Traoui. On site, paired 1990 and 2002 views ringed the clock tower.
December 2002
December 2002: day not established
After the war · From the books
Kanaan had ruled from Anjar since 1982, vetting candidates and shaping the 2000 electoral map; his recall signalled Bashar al-Assad's tighter grip on Lebanon. Ghazaleh, his replacement, was implicated in Al-Madina bank's 2003 collapse.
Sources differ: Farewell ceremony 9 October 2002 versus replacement in December 2002.
2002
summer 2002: day not established
After the war · From the books
Posters ('Le Liban vit'), full-page press advertisements and television spots hailed the completion, with no reference to the war.
February 2003
Friday, 28 February 2003
After the war · From the books
April 2003
Sunday, 13 April 2003
After the war · From the books
In al-Safir leading politicians openly backed remembering the war for the first time. On 13 April hundreds gathered in Martyrs' Square, handing out flowers and collecting signatures for a national memory day and a memorial; earlier, the Association Mémoire pour l'Avenir and the families' Committee had screened war documentaries unseen in Lebanon at Masrah al-Medina.
- place Architect Mona El-Hallak came upon the Barakat building, above the old demarcation line at Sodeco, in 1996, and from 1997 led APSAD's campaign to save it. In 2003 the municipality expropriated it for $3 million for Beit Beirut.
- film Films Haugbolle cites on postwar amnesia include Ghassan Salhab's Beyrouth Fantôme (1999) and Terra Incognita (2002); the novel Ya Salam (1999) by Najwa Barakat follows former militiamen in peacetime.
Other date in the books: Tuesday, 8 April 2003
April 2003: day not established
After the war · From the books
Hassan Saouli deliberately kept graphic images out: to mark 28 years since 13 April, he parked a bus of the 1975 model on a central Beirut street, with videos and texts on guilt and forgiveness inside.
May 2003
Tuesday, 27 May 2003
After the war · From the books
In al-Nahar Ghassan Tueni addressed Bashar al-Assad as an equal, protesting at threats against the Lebanese by General Bahjat Sleiman, Syria's intelligence chief.
June 2003
June 2003: day not established
After the war · From the books
Sahnaoui set readers' memories of prewar downtown on 360 newspaper stacks, leaving a few stacks bare for what had been erased.
Sources differ: Opening in June 2003 (p. 132); the photograph is dated July 2003.
- artwork Nada Sahnaoui's earlier work 'Statistics' listed war casualty figures from the press; Haugbolle's note points to 111101's Artworks section.
After the war · From the books
A 1986 site for local fighters, it had lost its point once many of their families left in 1989-90, the mukhtar said.
September 2003
September 2003: day not established
After the war · From the books
In Jiba, Hezbollah members objected to Amal's pictures of Imam Musa Sadr; in the ensuing brawl the army fired on Hezbollah, a first in over ten years: one dead, two wounded.
After the war · From the books
In Jummayza's September 2003 by-election, posters of Aoun's Hikmat Dib, the jailed Geagea and Bashir Gemayel were torn or mocked daily: Christian memory, divided.
October 2003
Monday, 27 October 2003
After the war · From the books
November 2003
November 2003: day not established
After the war · From the books
Two women broke into the Association Mémoire pour l'Avenir's hearing for students and war witnesses: one abused Samir Kassir for attacking Syria; a mother blamed a former Kataeb editor for her son's killing.
December 2003
December 2003: day not established
After the war · From the books
It demanded a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and allowed for sanctions, partly applied from spring 2004.
Sources differ: Passed in November (Haugbolle) or December 2003 (Picard, 33 jours); sanctions from April (Picard) or May 2004 (33 jours).
January 2004
Saturday, 31 January 2004
After the war · From the books
Hezbollah ran the welcome alone and barred leftist parties, though thirty of the fifty men who came home were leftists; the left replied by recalling its role in the resistance from 1982.
February 2004
Friday, 6 February 2004
After the war · From the books
Its founding al-Nahar statement urged the left to reform and unite against the Syrian-backed order, calling it a duty to learn from past mistakes. Members included Elias Khoury, Samir Kassir, Ziad Majed, George Hawi and Elias Atallah.
March 2004
Wednesday, 10 March 2004
After the war · From the books
Monday, 22 March 2004
After the war · From the books
April 2004
Friday, 16 April 2004
After the war · From the books
Al-Nahar marked the April 2004 anniversary with interviews of ex-militiamen and a feature on the young: most said they knew only bits of the war, and that parents blamed 'the others'.
August 2004
Thursday, 26 August 2004
After the war · From the books
Hariri had come to plead against prolonging Lahoud's term. Walid Jumblatt, interviewed by Nicholas Blanford in 2005, related that Assad told Hariri that Lahoud and Assad were one and the same.
September 2004
Thursday, 2 September 2004
After the war · From the books
The Franco-American resolution, passed by nine votes with six abstentions, required every foreign force to leave, every militia to disarm and the presidential election to proceed free of outside interference. Walid Jumblatt sided with the opposition, most of it Christian.
Friday, 3 September 2004
After the war · From the books
Under Syrian pressure the constitutional amendment passed by 96 votes to 29; Jumblatt's deputies voted against.
Saturday, 4 September 2004
After the war · From the books
Tuesday, 7 September 2004
After the war · From the books
Sources differ: Hamadeh is called economy minister (Abirached) or health minister (Khayat).
Thursday, 9 September 2004
After the war · From the books
September 2004: day not established
After the war · From the books
Rioting broke out in the Sunni Bekaa town the day after a presumed al-Qaeda-linked Islamist leader was detained in Beirut.
October 2004
Friday, 1 October 2004
After the war · From the books
The car bomb that wounded Marwan Hamadeh, a Jumblatt adviser who had resigned from the cabinet, opened a series of attacks on opponents of Syria (Picard); the Special Tribunal for Lebanon later took on his case as legally linked to Hariri's. Kofi Annan's report on Resolution 1559 came out that day.
Sources differ: Picard (2016) places the attack 'a few days' after 3 September; the others give 1 October.
Sunday, 3 October 2004
After the war · From the books
Hariri took the 1 October attack that wounded Marwan Hamadeh as a breach of the assurances he had been given, and resigned two days later. Lahoud waited more than two weeks before accepting.
Sources differ: See 20 October: Abirached dates the resignation then.
Tuesday, 5 October 2004
After the war · From the books
Saturday, 9 October 2004
After the war · From the books
Assad asked Lebanon's Christians, and Resolution 1559's sponsors, the US and France, where they were when Lebanese were massacred. Haugbolle reads him as calling the war internal and Syria its rescuer.
Sunday, 17 October 2004
After the war · From the books
By December it had joined Christian and Druze parties in signing the Bristol Declaration.
Sources differ: Picard dates a 'Gauche démocratique' to 1997, possibly an earlier group or a slip.
Wednesday, 20 October 2004
After the war · From the books
He then moved openly towards the anti-Syrian opposition.
Sources differ: Presented 3 October (Khayat), effective 20 October (Abirached).
Thursday, 21 October 2004
After the war · From the books
In protest at Lahoud's extended term, one deputy in four stayed away from the consultations.
December 2004
Wednesday, 1 December 2004
After the war · From the books
Sources differ: The book chronology extracted to JSON reads this as 'December' only; the PDF shows 1 December.
Wednesday, 15 December 2004
After the war · From the books
The Bristol Hotel declaration of Christian and Druze parties, Hariri loyalists and leftists demanded independence and democracy, accepted a Lebanese share in the war, and blamed the postwar crisis on a corrupt state ruling by fear.
Sources differ: 15 December (Haugbolle's text) or 12 December (his own note): the declaration may have been published before the formal meeting, or one date is a slip.
December 2004: day not established
After the war · From the books
Civic protest against Syrian tutelage grew, and reprisals followed.
2004
2004: day not established
After the war · From the books
Issam Khairallah, who restored the statue at Kaslik's Holy Spirit University, kept almost half its bullet and shrapnel marks and left the young man's arm missing. It was put back about a hundred metres north, nearer the sea.
After the war · From the books
Founded by Lokman Slim and Monika Borgmann in Haret Hreik, it built an archive of war memories; their film 'Massaker', interviewing six men who took part in Sabra and Shatila, was shot between 2001 and 2004.
Sources differ: Founded 2004 (Ismail-Allouche) or active since 2002 (Haugbolle).
January 2005
Monday, 17 January 2005
After the war · From the books
February 2005
Monday, 14 February 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Shortly after midday a huge bomb struck Rafic Hariri's convoy outside the Saint-Georges hotel on the Beirut seafront, killing him and others travelling with him. Lebanese politics then divided into two blocs, which took their names from the rallies of 8 and 14 March.
Sources differ: Death toll differs: 22 dead (de Clerck & Malsagne, p. 461 and p. 577); Hariri 'and eight companions' (Abirached, p. 243, although the same chronology's 7 April entry speaks of Hariri 'and twenty-two other persons'); 18 dead (Quéméner). The counts may cover different groups (convoy only, or all victims, including those who died later).
- book Sune Haugbolle's War and Memory in Lebanon begins with the Hariri bombing of 14 February 2005, which he takes as the end of postwar Lebanon and which brought the war back to many Lebanese minds.
Tuesday, 15 February 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Quéméner's calendar has the Security Council demanding Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon on 15 February 2005, the day after Hariri's killing.
Wednesday, 16 February 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Hariri was buried on 16 February in central Beirut, beside his unfinished mosque. His family had refused a state funeral and barred President Émile Lahoud. Crowds swelled the cortege; for days people visited the tent over the grave, where a roadside cloth gathered signatures for 'the truth'.
- place Hariri's grave in the city centre became a place of pilgrimage, and the 'freedom fence' beside it, along his mosque, gathered layer upon layer of graffiti in Arabic, French and English; in November 2006 the site was sealed off with barbed wire.
Monday, 21 February 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Mass rallies followed every Monday in February and March. On 21 February, a week after the attack, a large, orderly crowd met near the Saint-Georges hotel with national flags only. Young activists camped on Martyrs' Square below Hariri's grave.
Friday, 25 February 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Irish police officer Peter Fitzgerald arrived in Beirut with a UN fact-finding team, whose job was to give a first account of how Hariri was killed.
Monday, 28 February 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Omar Karami's government resigned as demonstrations grew in downtown Beirut.
Sources differ: Two contributors to the same volume differ: Abirached's chronology dates Karami's resignation to 28 February, Khayat's chapter to 27 February. Abirached's dated chronology is the more precise of the two.
March 2005
Saturday, 5 March 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Under pressure from abroad, including from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Bashar al-Assad told the Syrian parliament that his troops would leave Lebanon; Syria, he insisted, was not abandoning its responsibilities towards its 'brothers and friends'.
dates 1–60 of 92 next