After the war · From the books
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all by dates · all chronologies83 entries on 77 dates · the books disagree on 19
dates 1–60 of 77 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 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'.
Tuesday, 8 March 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Hezbollah and Amal brought a huge crowd into central Beirut to thank Syria and to reject Western interference. Addressing it, Hassan Nasrallah credited Syria with keeping Lebanon stable and warned against foreign meddling. The pro-Syrian '8 March' camp took its name from the day.
Sources differ: Crowd size: about 800,000 (Abirached; Khayat) against 400,000 (Quéméner). De Clerck & Malsagne call it the first mass demonstration, whereas Khayat places it the day after the opposition's third Monday rally.
Thursday, 10 March 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Ten days after his resignation, Omar Karami was again designated to form a government.
Monday, 14 March 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
The opposition answered with a still larger rally of nearly a million people; Sunnis came out in force beside Christians and Druze, waving Lebanese flags. They demanded the truth about Hariri's assassination, an end to the joint Syrian-Lebanese security apparatus and Syria's withdrawal. The '14 March' coalition is named after the day.
- photograph Al-Nahar showed Wissam Moussa's photograph of the 14 March 2005 marchers next to Hariri's grave for two months that spring: placards of dead leaders, each said to have been killed by Syria.
Friday, 25 March 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Peter Fitzgerald's UN team delivered its findings on the Hariri assassination in New York.
late March 2005: day not established
Since 2005 · From the books
Bombs started going off in Christian areas shortly after the 14 March rally. The first did only material damage, but the attacks escalated until they were aimed at killing people in the anti-Syrian camp.
March 2005: day not established
Since 2005 · From the books
After Hariri's killing, sporadic attacks by Lebanese, which a Daily Star report cited by Picard says left several dozen victims, drove unskilled Syrian farm and building workers out. Syrian unemployment, already 20 per cent officially, rose sharply as they went home.
April 2005
Sunday, 3 April 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Syrian troops were to be out of Lebanon by 30 April at the latest under a deal Bashar al-Assad struck with the UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen.
Since 2005 · From the books range
Bahia Hariri drove Unity Week, which filled central Beirut with events from 3 to 13 April as the war reached its thirtieth anniversary; war-wounded wheelchair users joined some forty thousand others in its unity marathon. Haugbolle notes that it left out Amal, Hezbollah and smaller pro-Syrian groups, and had a commercial streak.
Thursday, 7 April 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Detlev Mehlis, a German magistrate, was appointed to chair the new UN International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC), which Resolution 1595 set up to investigate the 14 February killing of Hariri and twenty-two others.
Wednesday, 13 April 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
On the evening of 13 April a procession walked the old Green Line from the National Museum to Martyrs' Square. At the Museum, a banner apologising for all that was done in the war hung for people to sign. Unity Week press advertisements set a grey, crossed-out 1975 beside a brightly graffitied 2005.
- artwork Al-Nahar's Unity Week advertisements of 13 April 2005 set a struck-through grey 1975 beside a bright 2005 ('History did not repeat itself'), marking for Haugbolle the passage from war to new unity.
- testimony Haugbolle cites a conversation with Naji Zahar, the artist behind 111101, held in Beirut on 14 April 2005, the day after the anniversary; Haugbolle's book also discusses Zahar's memory meetings and online database (printed p. 101).
Friday, 15 April 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Najib Mikati was appointed prime minister at the head of a more neutral team charged with running the May–June elections; Omar Karami had been unable to form a cabinet.
Since 2005 · From the books
Away from Unity Week, UMAM Documentation and Research showed Jocelyne Saab's 1975 film on Lebanese society as war was about to break out.
- film Lokman Slim and Monika Borgmann, UMAM's founders, filmed Massaker (2005) from 2001 to 2004 out of interviews with ex-militiamen who had joined in the Sabra and Shatila killings; Haugbolle spoke with the pair in Beirut on 30 April 2005.
Monday, 25 April 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
On 25 April Jamil al-Sayyed stepped down as director general of General Security.
Tuesday, 26 April 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Syria's remaining troops and intelligence personnel left Lebanon, ending twenty-nine years of Syrian military presence. By Picard's count, some 14,000 soldiers went home peacefully before the end of April.
May 2005
Saturday, 7 May 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Back in Beirut, the Free Patriotic Movement leader told supporters on Freedom Square that his fellow opposition leaders were sectarian. He later came to terms with Hezbollah and joined forces with one-time pro-Syrian politicians.
Sources differ: 7 May (Quéméner) or 8 May (Abirached). Each date has one source; the others give only 'May' or 'a few days after' the withdrawal.
Since 2005 · From the books
With no agreement on a new law, Parliament kept the 2000 electoral law, devised by Syria's Ghazi Kanaan according to Picard, for the late-May elections. Picard sees the elite dropping the protest movement once the Syrians had left, to secure its own re-election.
Sunday, 29 May 2005
Since 2005 · From the books range
Saad Hariri's anti-Syrian coalition won 72 of 128 seats and Michel Aoun's movement much of Mount Lebanon; with each region returning its own local leaders, the vote showed a country more divided by sect than ever.
Sources differ: The two chapters of the same book disagree on when voting ended: 12 June in Abirached's chronology, 19 June in Khayat's chapter. Picard dates the elections simply to May 2005.
June 2005
Thursday, 2 June 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Samir Kassir, academic, columnist and a leading voice against Syrian control, died when a bomb went off in his car. Haugbolle treats the killing as the moment post-Syrian Lebanon's disarray grew plain.
Sources differ: 2 June in four sources (de Clerck & Malsagne, Abirached, Quéméner, Khayat) against 1 June in Haugbolle. 2 June has the most support.
- book De Clerck and Malsagne call Samir Kassir's 1994 study, which ends in 1982, a reference work; Kassir himself noted that no academic research yet covered the conflict in its full complexity.
Tuesday, 21 June 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
George Hawi, former secretary general of the Lebanese Communist Party and close to the anti-Syrian opposition, was killed by a car bomb in Beirut.
Sunday, 26 June 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
The Amal leader kept the speakership with 90 votes out of 128.
Thursday, 30 June 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
A parliament dominated by the 14 March parties chose Fouad Siniora, Rafic Hariri's trusted associate, as prime minister. Israel had retaliated, on a limited scale, for a major Hezbollah attack in the Shebaa Farms launched a few hours before the nomination.
Sources differ: Abirached's chronology has Siniora forming the government on 30 June; Khayat says only that he was designated at the end of June. For the government itself, de Clerck & Malsagne (Confluences) give 19 July (see the following entry).
July 2005
Tuesday, 12 July 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Former Defence Minister Elias Murr survived an assassination attempt, a case the Special Tribunal later treated as linked to Hariri's murder.
Tuesday, 19 July 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Hezbollah ministers sat in a Lebanese cabinet for the first time, beside a majority from the former opposition. Siniora went on to head governments until November 2009.
Sources differ: Most sources say July (Confluences 19 July, Picard July); Abirached's chronology has 30 June, perhaps Siniora's designation, which the same book's narrative puts at the end of June.
Monday, 25 July 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Quoted in al-Nahar, Siniora tied Hezbollah's arms to the occupation, backing the 'national' resistance yet endorsing UN calls to disarm all non-state forces.
Tuesday, 26 July 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Released under an amnesty, the former militia leader officially re-founded the Lebanese Forces as a party; his wife told reporters the civil war was over.
Sources differ: 26 July (Abirached) and 'end of July' (Khayat) against 'June 2005' (de Clerck & Malsagne, p. 451-452). Haugbolle's source for the wife's words is al-Nahar of 18 July 2005, which may refer to the amnesty vote rather than the release.
summer 2005: day not established
Since 2005 · From the books
Syria answered Lebanese and UN efforts to restore legality on the border with a retaliatory blockade in summer 2005, a sign of its exasperation.
dates 1–60 of 77 next