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Lebanon
Education
Lebanon
(Arabic Lubnan), republic in southwestern Asia, bounded on the north and
east by Syria, on the southeast and south by Israel, and on the west by
the Mediterranean Sea. The area is 10,400 sq km (4015 sq mi). The
capital and leading port is Bayrut.
Land and Resources
Lebanon is about 217 km (about 135 mi) long and 40 to 80 km (25 to 50
mi) wide. A very narrow coastal plain extends along the Mediterranean
Sea. Inland the terrain is dominated by two major mountain ranges, which
are separated by the fertile Bekaa (al-Biqa) Valley. The Lebanon range
rises abruptly from the coastal plain; it is cut by numerous deep gorges
and in the north contains the country's highest peak, Qurnat as-Sawda
(3083 m/10,115 ft). The other major range, the Anti-Lebanon, lies along
the Syrian border in the east. Lebanon's major, and only navigable,
river, the Litani, is in the Bekaa Valley. Many of the other rivers flow
only during the rainy winter season.
Climate
The climate varies from a Mediterranean-type subtropical climate along
the coast and in the Bekaa Valley to a generally cool one in the upper
mountains. Summers are hot and dry; winters are mild and humid. Frost is
rare at lower elevations. The mean temperature in the lowlands is 26.7°
C (80° F) in summer and 10° C (50° F) in winter. The mountainous region
is somewhat cooler. Annual precipitation, occurring mainly in winter, is
889 mm (35 in) along the coast, 635 mm (25 in) or less in the Bekaa
Valley, and more than 1270 mm (more than 50 in) in the mountains.
Plants and Animals
Most of Lebanon has been deforested. Stands of oak, pine, cypress, and
cedar of Lebanon are found in the higher mountains. A Mediterranean
brush vegetation, with some trees, is found in most other areas. A few
species of wild animals survive, including jackal and wolf, wild ass,
and gazelle.
Soils
Much of Lebanon is of the reddish-brown soil called terra rossa. Richer
alluvial soils occur along the coast and in the Bekaa Valley and the
northeast. Erosion is common, however, and the upper mountains are rocky
and barren.
Natural Resources
With the exception of some fertile soils and the remaining forests, the
natural resources of Lebanon are negligible. Iron ore exists, but is
difficult to mine. Other minerals found in small quantities are coal,
copper, asphalt, and phosphates.
Waterpower
In the late 1980s hydroelectric power generated was 246 million
kilowatt-hours annually, which constituted about 30 percent of the total
power produced. The Litani River hydroelectric project in the Bekaa
Valley is the largest in the country.
Population
The Lebanese are descended from many ethnic strains, mainly Semitic, and
may be traced to the ancient Phoenicians, Hebrews, Philistines,
Assyrians, and Arabs. Among relative newcomers are an Armenian minority
of about 6 percent and a large number of Palestinian Arabs, many of whom
are confined to refugee camps.
Population Characteristics
According to a 1993 estimate, the population of Lebanon was 3,552,369;
the overall density was about 341 people per sq km (about 884 per sq
mi). About 81 percent of the people lived in urban areas. No census has
been taken since 1932.
Principal Cities
The capital and leading port is Bayrut, with a population of 1,500,000
(1988 estimate). Tripoli (Tarabulus), with 160,000 inhabitants, and
Sidon (Sayda), with a population of 38,000. Both cities are important
ports and oil pipeline terminuses in Lebanon.
Religion
The principal denominations of Christians, who make up about 25 percent
of the population, are the Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and
Protestant. Most of the remaining Lebanese are Muslims, with Shiites
predominating; Druses make up about 7 percent.
Language
Arabic is the official language of Lebanon. French and English have wide
official and commercial use, and Armenian is spoken by that minority
group.
Education
Primary education is free but not compulsory in Lebanon. The literacy
rate, higher than 75 percent, is among the highest in the Arab world. In
the mid-1980s about 329,300 pupils attended some 2100 primary schools
and approximately 230,900 students were enrolled in 1400 secondary
schools. The government operates a number of trade, agricultural, and
other specialized schools.
Bayrut is the location of five Lebanese universities: the
government-supported Lebanese University (1951), the American University
of Bayrut (1866), the Jesuit-affiliated Saint Joseph University (1881),
Bayrut Arab University (1960), and a university operated by the Lebanese
Maronite Order. Their total annual enrollment in the late 1980s was
about 63,600. The country also has a variety of specialized schools and
several teacher-training colleges.
Culture
Blending traditional Arabic and recent Western influences, mainly French
and U.S., Lebanon reached a high level of cultural achievement,
exemplified in the works of the poet-painter Kahlil Gibran. In recent
decades, however, that cosmopolitan spirit has broken down, and separate
ethnic and religious groups have become violently competitive.
The National Library, in Bayrut, is a depository for United Nations
documents. The library of the Saint John monastery in Khinsharah (Khonchara)
dates from 1696 and has on display one of the first printing presses
(with Arabic and Greek fonts) of the Middle East. The American
University Museum and the National Museum, in Bayrut, house regional
antiquities and artifacts.
Economy
Lebanon has an economy dominated by banking and other commercial
services. Before the civil war of the 1970s, Bayrut was the leading
financial capital of the Middle East. The combined legacies of the war,
the Israeli invasion of 1982, and the factional fighting since that time
have been rising unemployment, rampant inflation, the collapse of
foreign investment and tourism, and the destruction of many factories
and businesses. In the late 1980s annual budget estimates showed about
$117 million in revenue and about $259 million in expenditure.
Agriculture
About 29 percent of the Lebanese land area is arable. The intensively
cultivated coastal plain, scarcely 6 km (4 mi) wide, produces tobacco
and fruit, including oranges, bananas, grapes, figs, and melons. Cereals
and vegetables are grown in the Bekaa Valley, portions of which are
irrigated. Apples, cherries, plums, potatoes, wheat, and barley are
produced in cooler areas. Sheep, goats, and cattle are grazed in the
uplands, contributing to soil erosion and the nearly total destruction
of the forests, once renowned for their cedars.
Manufacturing
Oil refining, the only heavy industry in Lebanon, was crippled by the
conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s. Important products of light industries
include silk, cotton textiles, footwear, matches, and soap.
Currency and Banking
The unit of currency in Lebanon is the Lebanese pound, divided into 100
piasters (1640 pounds equal U.S.$1; 1994). The Bank of Lebanon (1964)
functions as central bank and sole bank of issue.
Commerce and Foreign Trade
Commerce is of major importance to the economy. Before the mid-1970s,
many foreign firms had branches in Bayrut. The climate, scenery, and
historical remains attracted tourists, with consequent benefits to the
economy. Both commerce and the tourist industry suffered from the civil
warfare of the 1970s and 1980s. In the late 1980s, annual imports were
valued at about $1.9 billion and exports at some $591 million. Lebanon's
chief trading partners are other Middle Eastern nations, as well as
France, Germany, and the United States.
Transportation
Lebanon has some 7370 km (about 4580 mi) of roads, which were used by
more than 470,000 motor vehicles registered in the early 1980s. The
country also has about 415 km (about 260 mi) of railroads, but both rail
and air service have been crippled by civil war. Many foreign shipping
lines formerly used port facilities at Bayrut and Tripoli. Lebanon has
about 200 merchant ships with a total deadweight tonnage of 634,500.
Communications
Radios in the late 1980s numbered about 2.2 million, and television
receivers about 838,000. Two commercial television stations were
operating. The telegraph system is privately owned. The country had
nearly 40 daily newspapers, all published in Bayrut. Most of them were
in Arabic, but newspapers in Armenian and French were also published.
Labor
In the mid-1980s Lebanon's wage earners totaled about 694,000, of whom
about half worked in service industries and approximately 19 percent in
agriculture. By the late 1980s the unemployment rate was at least 33
percent.
Government
Lebanon is a republic governed under a constitution promulgated in 1926,
as amended. The constitution was substantially revised in 1990.
Executive
The president of Lebanon is elected by the legislature for six years and
may not serve two successive terms. In consultation with the National
Assembly, the president designates the prime minister and other cabinet
ministers. The president must be a Maronite Christian, and the prime
minister must be a Sunni Muslim. Nearly all executive decisions require
the signature of both the president, who is head of state, and the prime
minister, who heads the government.
Legislature
Under the revised constitution, the unicameral National Assembly has 128
members elected by universal suffrage. The speaker of the assembly is
always a Shiite Muslim. Legislative seats are divided equally between
Christians and Muslims. This system, strengthened by a tradition of
rallying around strong leaders rather than platforms, has inhibited
development of Western-style political parties. During August and
September 1992, Lebanon held its first legislative elections in 20
years.
Judiciary
Lebanon has no single supreme court. Under the constitution of the
country, a council of state hears administrative cases, and a
five-member special court of justice deals with matters of state
security. The judicial system also includes single-judge courts of first
instance, three-judge courts of appeal, and courts of cassation.
Religious courts have jurisdiction over personal matters such as
marriages, deaths, and inheritances.
Local Government
In theory, Lebanon is divided into five governorates, each administered
by a governor, who represents the central government. In practice,
political and religious militias exercise most local government
functions in the regions they control, and the central government has
little influence. Throughout the late 1980s much of Bayrut was under the
control of Syrian armed forces. In many villages, local elders and clan
members wield considerable influence.
Health and Welfare
During the late 1960s and early 1970s a comprehensive social security
code was introduced, under which the bulk of the payments were to be
made by employers and the government. It provided for sickness,
accident, and disability insurance, maternity pay, extra allowances for
large families, and severance pay. The weakening of central government
authority during the 1970s and 1980s left to the militias and to private
voluntary agencies the task of providing health and welfare services. In
the mid-1980s Lebanon had some 3500 physicians and 160 hospitals and
health centers.
Defense
In the late 1980s, Lebanese government forces had about 21,800 men;
Christian militias, 6000; Shiite militias, 8500; and the Druse militia,
5000. Also present in Lebanon during the same period were Syrian troops
and the United Nations (UN) Interim Force in Lebanon, which had a
peacekeeping role.
History
The mountains that have given Lebanon its name—sometimes referred to as
Mount Lebanon, or the Mountain—have also shaped its history. The
inaccessibility of its highlands has not only provided a refuge for
dissident religious groups over the centuries, but has also hampered
unity among the region's distinctive populations.
Roman-Byzantine Rule
In 64 BC Pompey the Great conquered Phoenicia, which comprised the
territory of modern Lebanon; he annexed it to the Roman Empire and
administered it as part of the province of Syria. Aramaic, the dominant
language of the East, began to replace Phoenician, marking the cultural
integration of the territory with its neighbors. From the 4th century AD
on, the Christianization of the Roman Empire and the subsequent
emergence of a doctrinally intolerant orthodoxy in the Eastern, or
Byzantine, part caused religious tension in Syria as a whole. By the 7th
century, Maronites, a sect espousing the belief that Christ had both
human and divine natures but only one will, sought refuge from
persecution in the northern districts of Mount Lebanon.
Early Muslim Rule
In the 630s Arabs, inspired by a new religion, Islam, had conquered most
of Syria, and Mount Lebanon was integrated into the Arab military
district of Damascus. The conquerors allowed the indigenous Christian
and Jewish populations to retain their religion—subject, however, to
discriminatory taxes and regulations. In 759 and 760 Christian peasants
revolted, but the rebellion faltered, surviving only in local legend.
Enduring through the entire Islamic period, however, were the rivalries
between the different Arab tribal groupings—the Qays (North) and Kalb,
or Yemen (South)—who had settled in the area after the conquest.
The decline of the united caliphate and the rise of local dynasties
formed the unsettling background to the next stage in the region's
history. Early in the 11th century the Druses, an extremist Shiite
Muslim sect, established themselves in southern Mount Lebanon, becoming
sometimes partners and sometimes rivals of the heretofore dominant
Maronites. In 1099 Crusaders from Christian Europe occupied the country
and remained until the 13th century. Up until then the Maronites had
been carrying on an increasingly lonely resistance to the processes of
Islamization and Arabization. The Crusaders helped to ensure their
religious and cultural survival by giving them ties to their
coreligionists in the West.
The Ottomans
In 1516 the Ottoman Turks conquered the entire eastern Mediterranean
coast. Two local dynasties successively came to dominate the Mountain
under Ottoman rule: the Maans (1516-1697) and the Shihabs (1697-1842).
The most ambitious of these rulers was Fakhr al-Din II, who forged an
alliance with the Italian duchy of Tuscany. Although of Druse origin, he
ruled tolerantly, attracting Maronite peasants to his southern
districts. With the end of the Maan line, local notables chose the
Shihabs to be emirs (princes). After 1711, because of the defeat and
expulsion of one Druse faction, the Maronites came to predominate.
Reflecting this shift of power, members of the Shihab family converted
to Christianity. In 1770 a Maronite Shihab became the emir. His
successor, Bashir II, who reigned from 1788 to 1840, subdued the Druses
and emerged as master of Lebanon and a power in the Levant. Gaining
support from the Ottomans, the European powers, and discontented
Maronite peasants, the Druses ended Shihab rule in 1842.
The Later Ottoman Period
The turmoil of these years finished the Maronite-Druse cooperation upon
which Lebanon's autonomy rested. The Ottomans now played a more direct
role, but their administrative reforms proved unworkable. In 1858 the
political, religious, social, and economic tensions between Druse and
Maronite, Muslim and Christian, and landlord and peasant burst into a
civil war that ended in 1860 after considerable bloodshed and an
apparent Druse triumph. The Ottomans and the European powers, however,
sent forces to restore order and to punish those Muslims they considered
at fault in the war. In 1861 they established a new administration for
Lebanon that lasted until World War I (1914-1918). The new regulations
provided that the country be governed by a non-Lebanese Ottoman
Christian, counseled by local notables but directly responsible to
Istanbul. The World War I years brought famine and devastation,
increasing the flow of Christian immigrants to the Americas.
French Rule
Strictly speaking, the history of Lebanon within its current borders and
with its distinctive mix of Muslim and Christian populations begins only
in 1920, when the French, who had gained control through secret wartime
agreements, combined the largely Muslim-inhabited coast and plain with
the Christian-dominated Mountain to create the state of Greater Lebanon
under their mandate. For practically all of the preceding two millennia
this territory had been part of larger provinces within
continent-spanning empires. Although Lebanon had rarely formed a
distinct political entity, Maronites had developed a belief in Mount
Lebanon as a country with a history and a character of its own. Because
the French fostered this belief, their rule was supported by the
Maronites, who gained economically and politically from it. In 1926 the
French established the Lebanese Republic, but complete independence was
not achieved for Lebanon until 1946, when the last French troops were
evacuated.
Independence
French gerrymandering of Lebanon's frontiers created an economically
viable state with politically explosive religious conflicts. In 1943 the
predominant Maronites worked out a power-sharing arrangement, the
National Pact (see “Government,” above), with the Sunni Muslims and
smaller groups. Real power, however, rested not with elected leaders but
with an increasingly wealthy elite and a class of almost feudal
warlords, defended by their own armies. The presidents have often been
at the mercy of forces and groups beyond their control, although both
Camille Chamoun and Fuad Chehab, or Shihab, presidents of the 1950s and
early 1960s who pursued opposing policies, were strong, effective
leaders. Financiers and property speculators flourished, government
policies encouraged business, and the amenities and climate attracted
vacationers and investors from abroad. Little of this prosperity,
however, touched the mass of the population—increasingly Shiite—and
their discontent exploded in demonstrations, riots, and, after 1975,
civil war.
Foreign Relations
Lebanon has followed a delicately balanced policy with its neighbors and
the major powers. Maronites prefer close relations with the West and
distance from the Arab world; many Muslims, on the other hand, advocate
neutrality and Arab unity. Lebanon was practically nonbelligerent in the
Arab-Israeli conflicts, but Palestinian refugees from Israel, despite
attempts to segregate them in society, acquired influence in the country
and caused problems by raiding Israel from Lebanese bases. Movements for
Syrian and Arab unity also disrupted the country. In 1949 and 1961 coups
were launched to promote union with Syria. In 1958 pro-Nasser Arabs led
an insurrection that was ended by U.S. intervention and President
Chamoun's retreat from anti-Arabist policies. Subsequent governments
paid at least lip service to Arab unity.
The Lebanese Civil War
In 1975 fighting broke out between Lebanese Muslims and the Maronite-dominated
Phalange faction. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) joined the
Muslim side in early 1976, and Syria intervened against the PLO. In June
the Arab League imposed a truce, creating a Syrian-led Arab force to
keep the peace. Violence continued nonetheless, and in 1978 Israel
invaded southern Lebanon in an attempt to eliminate Palestinian bases.
Israeli troops were replaced by a UN force, but Israel continued to aid
the Maronites and to strike at PLO targets in Lebanon. In June 1982
Israel invaded again, overrunning the PLO. By mid-August, after U.S.
mediation, the PLO fighters agreed to leave Bayrut, and many were
evacuated to other countries. Later that month, with Israeli troops
surrounding Bayrut, the Lebanese parliament elected the Christian
militia leader Bashir Gemayel as president; after Bashir was
assassinated in September, his brother Amin Gemayel was elected to
replace him. Subsequently, the Israelis withdrew to southern Lebanon,
and an international peacekeeping force was stationed in Bayrut; after
more than 300 U.S. and French troops were killed in terrorist bombings
on October 23, 1983, the Western forces pulled out completely by
February 1984. In the resultant power vacuum, factional strife
persisted, and Westerners in Bayrut became the targets of radical Shiite
Muslim kidnappers, apparently loyal to Iran. The Israelis continued to
raid PLO installations in the south, and deteriorating conditions in
Bayrut led Syrian troops to occupy its Muslim sector in 1987.
When Gemayel's presidential term expired in September 1988, he named the
army commander General Michel Aoun, a Christian, to head an interim
government. With Lebanese leaders unable to concur on a new president,
rival Christian and Muslim factions then established their own
administrations. In October 1989, Lebanese negotiators, meeting in Saudi
Arabia, agreed on a new constitution providing increased power for the
Muslims; the accord was rejected by Aoun. On November 5, legislators
ratified the charter and elected René Moawad as president. He was
assassinated 17 days later, and Parliament chose another Maronite, Elias
Hrawi, to succeed him. In October 1990, Syrian troops clamped down on
east Bayrut, defeating forces loyal to Aoun. Subsequently the Lebanese
army, with Syrian backing, regained control over much of the country and
ousted the PLO from strongholds in southern Lebanon. Nearly all the
Western hostages in Lebanon were released in 1991. Voting for a new
National Assembly in 1992 represented the nation's first legislative
elections in 20 years. In July 1993 Israeli air attacks against
Iranian-backed Hizballah guerrillas caused 200,000 people to leave
southern Lebanon and move north for safety. The attacks were in
retribution for Hizballah rocket attacks on Israel.
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