The Strange Battle of Souk al-Gharb: From Combat Experience to Civil War Memory in the Lebanese Army

In September 1983, in the town of Souk al-Gharb, the Lebanese army went through its first real combat experience since the beginning of the civil war in Lebanon, eight years before. This performance came as a surprise at the time and was immediately used by the state authorities to present themselves as the national champion against foreign aggressions. Yet the battle of Souk al-Gharb has sunk into oblivion today, while its protagonists happen to fight over its memory. Through the lens of this unprecedented engagement, the article reconsiders how the Lebanese army kept functioning in the midst of the civil war. Based on an extensive oral survey among the veterans, it sheds new light on the cohesion of combat units, not least by moving away from the sectarian interpretation that is often used to account for the military’s trajectories during the conflict. The battle of Souk al-Gharb, therefore, opens up the Lebanese Civil War to the new military history, which remains all too often confined to Western warfare. It also makes us reflect on the memory of the war, both in the institution and among its personnel. The various narratives of the battle, as much as their absence, tell us about the current divisions the Lebanese society and its troubled relationship to the past.