Oren Barak, author of The Lebanese Army, recently wrote about his new book for Middle East Strategy at Harvard. MESH "invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve." Oren's piece begins:The puzzle that my book grapples with might be familiar to those who have seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a movie that came out in 1975, the same year that Lebanon’s civil war broke out:
Cart Master: Bring out yer dead.[A customer puts a body on the cart]
Customer: Here’s one.
Cart Master: That’ll be ninepence.
Dead Person: I’m not dead.
Cart Master: What?
Customer: Nothing. There’s your ninepence.
Dead Person: I’m not dead.
Cart Master: ‘Ere, he says he’s not dead.
Customer: Yes he is.
Dead Person: I’m not.
Cart Master: He isn’t.
Customer: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill.
Dead Person: I’m getting better.
Customer: No you’re not, you’ll be stone dead in a moment…
The “Dead Person” is Lebanon and the puzzle is how did this state, which so many observers had referred to as a “non-state state” (or a “failed state,” to use a more up-to-date term), manage to endure despite the long and devastating conflict (1975–90) and be resuscitated in its aftermath. The book suggests that the Lebanese Army has played a significant role in Lebanon’s survival.
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