On October 8, 2023, Hezbollah decided to open the southern front to support Gaza following the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, which was carried out by Hamas on October 7, one day after the operation, and in response to the call for “unity of the fronts” issued by its official spokesman, Abu Ubaida.
The front remained in its early months restricted within what was known as the “rules of engagement,” but the winds of “support” did not blow as the ships of the “flood” desired. Soon the “rules of engagement” that were adopted by both sides began to unravel and gradually expand, until the day of the great explosion that resulted in the assassination of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and the declaration of total war against Lebanon for a period of 66 days.
Nearly two years have passed since “The Flood” and “The Support,” and Gaza is still drowning in its blood, facing the Israeli machine of brutality alone, in a war that the highest international authorities have described as genocide, to which a war of starvation has been added months ago as well.
As for Lebanon, already exhausted by the financial collapse and the theft of deposits, its economic losses have worsened, in addition to the political situation becoming more critical, despite its success in electing General Joseph Aoun as the new president of the republic after a deadlock that lasted for more than two years, and forming a government headed by Judge Nawaf Salam, because the issue of restricting weapons to the state has reached the level of a rift and a threat of civil war.
The Shiite areas targeted by the Israeli war (the southern suburbs of Beirut, the southern governorates, Nabatieh and Bekaa) are still bleeding and are still vulnerable to repeated Israeli attacks.
In terms of human lives, every day Israeli drones kill more partisans and even innocent civilians, and control the rhythm of life in the southern border areas (about 43 villages), determining who lives there and who does not have the right to live there, and who has freedom of movement there and who does not.
Economically, reconstruction has been significantly delayed due to international complexities and conditions imposed on the Lebanese government, which has been repeatedly informed that no aid for reconstruction and recovery will be forthcoming without resolving the issue of Hezbollah’s weapons. Meanwhile, financial compensation for those displaced from the devastated and damaged areas can be described as meager, and those who lost their livelihoods and businesses have received no compensation at all.
It goes without saying that the Shiite community in Lebanon is paying the highest price for this open war since that fateful date, because it entered into it by a unilateral decision of its leadership, and because its continuation has become an existential threat to it as a human group.
What the Shia regions have witnessed since the “support” war until now fits all the hallmarks of a catastrophe—a catastrophe on the existential, social, economic, and political levels. The unofficial figures circulating about the number of dead and wounded are staggering, as are the numbers of injured and disabled. As for the economic figures, despite their severity, no field survey has yet revealed their true extent. This is in addition to the tearing apart of the social fabric through killing and displacement.
This catastrophe, if it can be called that, is perhaps one of the deepest and most challenging calamities to have befallen the Shia community since the establishment of Greater Lebanon. Never before in their history have the Shia in Lebanon felt such anxieties about uprooting, displacement, or extermination as they do today—not when they were excluded from the initial agreements on the distribution and sharing of power among the sects, nor when their share of the spoils was meager, nor when the Cairo Agreement was imposed upon them, nor even during the repeated Israeli occupations and wars.
Their demands during the founding stage revolved around politics, within their own vision of the newly formed entity, Arab identity, and rejection of the will of the foreign colonizer. Perhaps this is why they paid for their stances with decades of marginalization and deprivation. This is also why they called themselves the “Sect of the Deprived,” although the theory of “Shiite deprivation” seemed somewhat exaggerated, given the existence of other groups and components in other regions across the Lebanese map who suffered and continue to suffer the same reality, where the central state pursues a policy of neglecting the peripheries. Then, political, social, and cultural circumstances, driven by a collective awareness of the right to equality and citizenship, combined with other factors, changed the sect’s course and destiny, and transported those who clung to its leadership from the hell of deprivation to the paradise of power. This led many segments of it to believe in the illusion of power, that it had become a “state within a state,” and thus it became tyrannical and oppressive, ultimately ending up like its predecessors in this experience: facing an existential threat!
The Maronite community has already passed through this tunnel and emerged more deeply connected to Lebanon than its sister communities. Perhaps today it is the Shiite community’s turn to emerge from this tunnel and return to its national embrace. For Lebanon, a simple yet incredibly complex and intricate nation, the ultimate home for all its sons, daughters, communities, and sects, has always possessed the capacity to restructure its relationships with its people and among its people themselves, even if this entails wars, horizontal and vertical divisions, and a complete overhaul.
It is regrettable to say that we should turn this war, with its devastating effects and the tragedies and crises it has caused, into an opportunity; we wish it had never happened. But we must speak frankly, as they say, and loudly: Let this devastation be our starting point for redefining our identity, our national belonging, and our commitment to the terms of the social contract between us and the state, as citizens with duties and rights. Let us begin together, as citizens and as a state, the workshop of reconstruction… reconstruction of what the war destroyed, and reconstruction of what we destroyed of our national structure, our civil values, and our social relations.
Based on the aforementioned reasons and results, the “Our Turn to Speak” initiative was formed, as an attempt to address the “Shia issue” and its relationship to the issue of building a Lebanon free of weapons, but also a Lebanon where its communities feel that a strong and just state is capable of reassuring them, and of rebuilding an identity for the country in which they are at the heart and not on the margins.
Out of a sense of responsibility and our desire to stop the “bleeding”, Daraj, in cooperation with the “Our Role” Association , a local Lebanese association concerned with political empowerment issues, began publishing a series of articles under the comprehensive title “Our Role: We Speak Out”.
Through these articles, we address the “Shia question” from all its aspects: political, economic, and cultural. This is achieved through texts, investigations, and videos written and produced by analysts, researchers, and journalists who have examined the “Shia situation” before, during, and after the war, attempting to arrive at ideas and conclusions regarding the political landscape, citizenship, and reconstruction policies. It is an attempt to formulate what we might call a roadmap for salvaging what remains of our society.