After the war · From the books
Search the chronologies
all by dates · all chronologies54 entries on 51 dates · the books disagree on 11
January 2005
Monday, 17 January 2005
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.
August 2005
Monday, 8 August 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
The commission was asked to prepare a new law after the 2005 elections were held under the 2000 law.
September 2005
Thursday, 1 September 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Mustafa Hamdan of the Presidential Guard and the three men who had headed the security services when Hariri was killed were arrested at the instance of the UN commission, aided by the Lebanese judiciary. Picard records that the four were held without evidence until April 2009.
Sources differ: 1 September (Abirached) against end of August (Khayat; Picard gives August). Two sources favour late August.
Monday, 26 September 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
The LBC television journalist, a fierce critic of Syria, was seriously wounded in a car-bomb attempt on her life.
October 2005
Friday, 21 October 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Lebanese and Syrian intelligence services, judge Detlev Mehlis told the Security Council as he presented the UN commission's first report, were linked to Hariri's assassination by 'converging evidence'. Picard adds that the report implicated the Syrian president's brother and brother-in-law.
Monday, 31 October 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
Under Chapter VII, the Council threatened Syria with sanctions unless it cooperated fully with the UN inquiry commission.
Sources differ: Picard has 31 October, Abirached 1 November; a late New York vote on the 31st would fall on the 1st in Beirut, but this is unchecked.
November 2005
Thursday, 10 November 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
At Damascus University Bashar al-Assad branded Resolution 1636 a threat and accused Beirut's government of conspiracy, though he agreed to cooperate with the inquiry. Picard sees the hard line as meant to rally Syrians humiliated by their defeat in Lebanon.
late November 2005: day not established
Since 2005 · From the books
In Ghajar, beside the Shebaa Farms zone, Hezbollah made an unsuccessful bid to capture Israeli soldiers, putting its military strength to use.
December 2005
Monday, 12 December 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
A car bomb killed Gebran Tueni, MP and chief executive of al-Nahar, a vocal critic of the Syrian presence recently back from France. Prime Minister Siniora demanded an international tribunal, and the Shiite ministers started staying away from cabinet meetings.
Thursday, 15 December 2005
Since 2005 · From the books
One of the series of Security Council resolutions on Lebanon between 2004 and 2007.
February 2012
February 2012: day not established
Since 2005 · From the books
From February to December, Tripoli's pro-regime Alawite quarter of Jabal Mohsen and its Sunni quarter of Bab al-Tebbaneh, which backed the Syrian opposition, clashed.
June 2012
Monday, 11 June 2012
Since 2005 · From the books
The declaration, agreed at President Sleiman's National Dialogue, pledged 'dissociation' from regional conflicts and border control, mainly towards Syria; Picard considers the promise empty from the outset.
October 2012
Friday, 19 October 2012
Since 2005 · From the books
Seven people died along with Wissam al-Hassan, head of ISF intelligence and an investigator of Hariri's assassination, in a Beirut car bombing.
2012
2012: day not established
Since 2005 · From the books
Picard treats the arrest as evidence that Syrian-paid agents took part in the unrest after the 2005 withdrawal.
March 2016
Saturday, 19 March 2016
Since 2005 · From the books
Quéméner notes that one of the two new landfills had been sited too near Beirut's international airport.
April 2016
April 2016: day not established
Since 2005 · From the books
In April 2016 Labour Minister Sejaan Azzi, citing 25 per cent unemployment and 1.5 million Syrians, asked the US ambassador to take the refugee burden off Lebanon. Visiting Beirut that month, François Hollande announced 50 million euros a year in refugee aid for 2016-2018.
May 2016
Sunday, 8 May 2016
Since 2005 · From the books
Saad Hariri's list won Beirut's council over Beirut Madinati ('Beirut, my city'), a civil-society slate that proposed deliberative urban planning and fielded engineers, architects, artists and researchers; Reder links it to the 2015 'You Stink' protests. Some 80 per cent of voters abstained.
- artwork A 111101 project presents the 2016 Beirut municipal vote interactively, from the results and the electoral rolls (/Projects/Municipalities/results-beirut.php and voters-beirut.php).
July 2016
Tuesday, 5 July 2016
Since 2005 · From the books
A small Syrian refugee camp in Akkar, a poor Sunni region, was set on fire on the night of 5-6 July.
summer 2016: day not established
Since 2005 · From the books
The municipality inaugurated Beit Beirut, the old snipers' building on the demarcation line, but kept it shut; its 2008-2016 restoration saw repeated quarrels among the municipality, architect and scientific committee. Paris's mayor visited in September.
- memorial Beit Beirut, the old Barakat building on the demarcation line, was the municipality's planned museum of the city's memory. Reder finds that in 2016-2019 artists and NGOs, not the municipality, kept it alive.
October 2016
Monday, 31 October 2016
Since 2005 · From the books
Aoun, 81, ended a vacancy of over two years. A surplus envelope voided the last two of three rounds held before his election, Quéméner notes.
November 2016
Thursday, 3 November 2016
Since 2005 · From the books
Hariri was named three days after Aoun's election.