Ethnic Cleansing as Military Strategy: Lessons From Lebanon, 1975-1990

Abstract

The Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990 is widely viewed as a canonical example of ethnic cleansing where violence separated a previously intermixed country into Christian and Muslim enclaves. In contrast, I introduce new data which shows that displacement was much less comprehensive than is commonly appreciated. Why did militants use violence against non-coethnics in some villages or urban neighborhoods but not others? And why did violence take the form of selective assassinations in some places but ethnic cleansing elsewhere? I argue that militias were systematically breaking down political and armed opposition in areas they controlled, but that sectarian identity was not a consistently reliable predictor of political sympathies and often intersected with other loyalties based on secular ideology or material interests. Compared to armed organizations in other civil wars, the Lebanese militias commanded remarkably sophisticated intelligence capabilities.