The war also affected the extensive network of AGBU schools and associations in Lebanon. Neighborhoods in West Beirut with heavy Armenian populations found themselves in the combat zone. Moreover, when the Israeli army invaded Lebanon in 1982, the situation of those living in these neighborhoods deteriorated still further. Many families fled the Lebanese capital, besieged and bombarded by the Israelis, for areas east of the city. Young AGBU members stood guard over the Alex Manoogian Cultural and Athletic Center, in West Beirut’s Wat-Wat neighborhood, defending it against the threat of occupation by local militias. Throughout the fighting, the Center offered a safe haven to Armenian war victims from neighborhoods nearby. Under these new conditions, the AGBU, too, shifted its priorities, gradually closing down its institutions in West Beirut. Besides taking part in joint humanitarian actions, the District Committee of Lebanon organized, from the beginning of the conflict to the end, distributions of food, clothing, and medicine from which thousands of Armenian war victims benefited.
The Lebanese Civil War ended in 1990. It was followed by a long process of recovery and several major reconstruction projects. But it proved impossible to heal, in a few short years, all the wounds inflicted in a decade and a half of de¬vastating warfare. Human casualties aside, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese left the country to settle permanently elsewhere. This emigration affected the Ar¬menian community as well, which, at war’s end, was a picture of desolation, especially in comparison with what it had once been: its demographic weight in the country had diminished, many of its community institutions had been closed, and intellectual and community life were in decline. Yet Lebanon continues to offer Armenians a unique setting in which they benefit from significant advantages conducive to the development of community life. What is more, in a country whose democratic structures have, generally speaking, remained intact, an Ar¬menian renaissance remains a real possibility.
A few years after the outbreak of the war in Lebanon, another Middle Eastern country, Iran, underwent profound political upheaval. In 1979, under intense pres¬¬sure from the broad masses of Iranians, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi had to abdicate and go into exile in Egypt. Although the Iranian revolution was incarnated by Ayatollah Khomeini, the most popular figure in the anti-Shah opposition, it was the result of a vast popular movement encompassing left-wing parties, liberals, and religious elements, ... Read all
The Middle East in Crisis