Foreign Intervention and Internal Displacement I

Hezbollah, the armed actor in control of the southern suburbs at the end of the war, was allied with Syria, the enforcer of the postwar peace in Lebanon. [...] In the southern suburbs, the infamous massacres at the Sabra and Shatila camps took place in 1982.46 Violence spiked in both suburbs in both the ªrst two and the last two years of the war.47 This comparable level of violence is important because other research suggests that the level of wartime disruption is an important factor in understanding the postwar inºu- ence of traditional notable familie. [...] In fact, in both the southern and eastern suburbs, Hezbollah and the Aounist faction of the Lebanese Army, respectively, consolidated con- trol in 1988 and staked their local popularity and legitimacy on being a disci- plined and principled antidote to the excesses of sectarian militias such as Amal and the Lebanese Forces.50 In the postwar era, these once small villages have become congested, pol. [...] Despite their prewar and wartime similarities, the southern and eastern sub- urbs were affected differently by this study’s critical intervening variable that mediates the effect of the war on the postwar political order: the foreign inter- vention that determined the outcome of the war, and by extension, the post- war fate of the armed actors that controlled the suburbs on the eve of the war’s se. [...] The new residents of the eastern suburbs are more likely to be sup- porters of or sympathetic to the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), the party as- sociated with General Aoun and the faction of the Lebanese Army controlling the eastern suburbs in the last phase of the war.77 One respondent from the southern suburbs estimates that 60 to 65 percent of the Christian registered res- idents who were disp.