Lebanon

Lebanon is small country.It is a part of Arabic World and it is located in the heart of the Middle East. It is surrounded by Jordan, Syria, Cyprus, Turkey and Israel. The bible called it “The land of milk and honey”. Beirut is the capital of Lebanon and it is called “Paris of the East”. It is people came from amazing mixture of backgrounds and religious groups.

Any country that has a mixture of religious and backgrounds of course there will be a lot of tensions and that exactly what happened between 1943 to 1948 between Muslims and Christians. In 1943 after independence, Christians held the balance of power and Lebanese Muslims had little say in running of their country. This was one of many reasons that made tensions between Lebanese. The second reason was 100000 of Palestinians (Sunni) Muslims who get out of Palestine and poured into Lebanon, but the tensions reached a peak in 1975 when a radical Christian group “The Phalange” attacked and killed a bus full of Palestinians in downtown Beirut. Then revenge killing followed and became out of control.

As a result of civil war the army of Syria entered Lebanon and Beirut was divided in to two parts Muslims group retreated into western half of the city while Christians occupied east Beirut. In 1982 the Israeli army invaded Beirut with the aim of removing the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The peace deal reached Lebanon in 1989. In that civil war, between 150000 to 200000 people died and 300000 were wounded. Quarter of population left the country and for many years Beirut’s economy was paralyzed.

After all that disadvantages of war, the Social and Economic recovery has happened in Beirut and there were four signs of that recovery. The first sign was the businessman in the Gulf States started pouring Money into Lebanon in a way of investment. Second, government’s invitation to foreigners to invest in the rebuilding of Beirut. Also, all groups started living in Beirut without any problems. The last sign, many investments done by rich country have been done in Beirut.

These days and after about twenty years of peace, the problems have returned back to this small country because of the old main reason which is a mixture of backgrounds and religious groups. There are two groups now and they have a lot of different thoughts. Until now those two groups can’t choose their president. Lebanon at these moment is without president and all signs on this country lead to one truth only which is “The Civil War is going to return back again”.