Seventeen years after the end of Lebanon's civil war, history textbooks in schools still do not tackle the controversial strife which continues to blight political life in a country where the past is ever-present.
Ongoing political disputes in Lebanon, which spilled over into deadly street fighting in January, have revived the spectre of civil war in a country where many of the leading politicians were once militia chiefs.
"I have only a vague idea about what happened" during the devastating 1975-1990 conflict, said 18-year-old Hala, who is studying for her baccalaureate so she can go to university in the autumn.
"All I know about it I got from my parents and the news on television," she told AFP. Mahmud, a 23-year-old undergraduate finance student, said his generation "suffers from amnesia, as part of our collective memory has been erased". The story of the civil war "should be taught in schools so that it is not repeated," he said. But history lessons in school textbooks stop with the withdrawal of French troops from Lebanon in 1946 -- three years after the end of France's 23-year mandate over the country.
A lack of consensus over a common version of the war -- and even previous events widely believed to have led to it, including civil strife in 1958 -- has ensured that these bloody pages are omitted from school textbooks. The Lebanese prefer to use the euphemism "the events" when they mention the civil war that devastated their country, killed more than 150,000 people and left thousands still missing.
History in Lebanon is generally presented as a point of view in which every incident is perceived according to the viewer's religious background. "Usually students learn history in school. But in Lebanon, the student comes to class knowing the history of his country from his parents," teacher Jamal Arafat said.
Another history teacher, Michel Khoury, said: "We avoid talking about it because it is a sensitive subject among students, particularly when they are from different faiths."
"How can you have a unified history book when the Lebanese still don't agree among themselves on which foreign country is a 'friend' or an 'enemy' of their nation?" asked journalist Nasri Sayegh.
Lebanon has been paralysed for months because of the continued wrangling between the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and the opposition led by the pro-Syrian, pro-Iranian Shiite militant party Hezbollah. Even before the outbreak of civil war 32 years ago, Lebanon was torn between Western-backed and pro-Arab forces.
"History is generally written by the victors. But in Lebanon, there were officially no winners or losers" when the civil war ended, Sayegh said. Teacher Antoine Shahin has taken the private initiative of teaching contemporary history to his students "without imposing my opinion" on them.
"The students of today are eager to learn about their country's recent past. They are the ones who ask questions" about the civil war, he said. "I let the student be the judge." Political science professor Antoine Messarra said history books required thorough documentation, backed up by contemporary newspaper coverage in order to present different points of view.
For Amal Makarem, head of the "Memory for the Future" association which works for reconciliation in Lebanon, "admitting responsibilities over the war would be the first step for this page in history to be written. "But everyone in Lebanon has locked memories -- the people want to forget and the leaders want their crimes to be forgotten," she said.
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