50 Years Later, Lebanese Women Look for Those Who Disappeared During the Civil War
The lack of authorities' interest in finding the 17,425 missing stems from a general amnesty agreement protecting all sides at the end of the war.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the start of Lebanon’s civil war, and much of civil society is seizing the moment to revive struggles that have stalled for nearly half a century. Chief among them is the fight to uncover the fate of more than 17,000 people who disappeared during the 15-year conflict. This cause has been led mostly by women — wives, sisters, daughters and mothers who lost loved ones decades ago.
Despite some legislative advances, official efforts to locate the missing or even investigate what happened to them have been hampered by a general amnesty law signed at the war’s end which shielded all parties from accountability. After the fall of Bashar Assad in Syria, some families hoped to find their missing relatives in Syrian prisons. A few did — after 40 years — but they were the exception.
Recently, a group of these women published a book collecting their personal accounts to create a national memory. In Lebanon, there is no shared narrative of the war; history textbooks stop at the 1940s.
“It is a tool for preserving memory, and also a push, a call to action,” said Nawal Badawi, whose husband was forcibly disappeared during the civil war.
A half-century has passed; we don’t want their children and grandchildren to grow up still waiting
“Beyond contributing to collective memory, the importance of this book also lies in the fact that it represents a sample, a slice of something much larger: the oral history of the people who lived through the war and were directly affected by it through personal losses,” Badawi explained. “A half-century has passed; we don’t want their children and grandchildren to grow up still waiting,” she added.
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The war didn’t end for us
Three decades on, Farrah Yusuf is still searching for her uncle. “The war didn’t end for us,” she said. Although the guns fell silent, these women have endured years of suffering, ignored by the political class that was supposed to protect them, just as it failed to protect their missing loved ones.
Years of advocacy have not been in vain. In 2018, after nearly four decades of struggle, the Lebanese parliament passed Law 105 on the forcibly disappeared. The law established families’ right to know what happened to their loved ones and, two years later, led to the creation of the National Commission on the Disappeared and Forcibly Disappeared. But this past July, the commission’s mandate expired with few results. Its 10 members faced a long list of obstacles, from limited resources to a minuscule budget.
The 50-year commemoration of the civil war’s outbreak has pushed the cause back into public view. On April 13, 1975, Phalangist fighters attacked a bus carrying Palestinians to a refugee camp outside Beirut, after an assassination attempt on party leader Pierre Gemayel. The killing of 30 Palestinians that day altered the country’s trajectory.
During the 15 years of war, most of the 17,425 still-missing individuals either disappeared or were forcibly abducted. The conflict pitted Lebanese of different religious sects, political ideologies and nationalities against one another: Christians against Muslims, Communists against Phalangists, Palestinians against Israelis and Syrians. The missing span all these communities. Farrah’s uncle, a vegetable seller in the south, had no political affiliation.
My uncle had no political affiliation or anything, and he just disappeared; we still don’t know anything about him. There’s a lack of expressions we can use to refer to them.
“My uncle had no political affiliation or anything, and he just disappeared; we still don’t know anything about him,” she said. “There’s a lack of expressions we can use to refer to them: we say the person is ‘kidnapped’ but he’s different, he’s disappeared. Before, people used to offer their condolences to us, as if it were done, like he died, but for us, as a family, we couldn’t accept those words: they are for the dead, but, for us, he’s missing.”
Despite the passage of time, many families remain hopeful, particularly under Lebanon’s newly appointed leadership. President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam have stirred fresh optimism. In their inaugural speeches, following nearly three years of political gridlock, both mentioned the issue of the disappeared “The president said that he acknowledged the actual suffering in Lebanon, including the issue of the missing, and then we felt some relief,” Nawaf said.
We were hopeful. We had some optimism, but so far, we haven’t seen major change or a qualitative shift
“We were hopeful. We had some optimism, but so far, we haven’t seen major change or a qualitative shift,” she added. Still, the women continue their fight. “We didn’t just stay at home and cry,” she said of their decades-long struggle.
They marched, organized and pressured. And now, they have the support of much of civil society, which believes the time has come for their loved ones to return — at last.
