Independence Intifada

The 1990s marked the formal end of the Civil War. The political and economic situation remained febrile and a financial crisis resulted in many – albeit modest in scale – strikes and protests. In 1992, Omar Karami resigned and Rafik Hariri was appointed as Prime Minister. Hariri’s plans for the new post-war Lebanon started to materialize. This involved the reconstruction of the Beirut Central District led by the Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s urban development corporation Solidere and a broader neoliberal transformation of the country’s political economy (Baumann 2017).

Throughout the 1990s, notable strikes occurred in opposition to Hariri’s neoliberal economic policies and around working conditions more broadly (Majed 2020). Social mobilizations do not make up a significant political force in the 1990s and this is a period in which trade unions lost the ability to make independent demands of the political elite (Baumann 2016). In 1993, Rafik Hariri introduced a ban on street demonstrations. The spectre of slipping back into Civil War shadowed the country that still had to contend with the Israeli occupation in the country's south and the continued presence of Syrian troops. Notably, protests in the early 1990s often organized around pro-Palestinian issues and regional politics (Majed 2020).

In the early 2000s, Lebanese began to air their growing resentment over Syrian control in Lebanon. Several small but significant protests erupted in this period calling for Syrian troops to leave the country. In 2005, a seismic political shift occurred and a mass social mobilization transformed the politics of the country resulting in the ejection of Syrian troops in the country.

February 14, 2005, a massive explosion resulted in the murder of Rafik Hariri. In the wake of Hariri’s assassination thousands of people camped in downtown Beirut demanding justice and the withdrawal of Syrian troops. On March 5, Assad announced the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. In response, on March 8, the Shi'i parties of Hezbollah and Amal led the organization of a farewell and thank you party for the Syrian troops, in Riad el-Solh Square in downtown Beirut. Days later, on March 14, centred in Martyrs' Square in downtown Beirut, those associated with Hariri celebrated the departure of the Syrian army. While the core of the protest was driven and organized by political factions close to Hariri the outrage over his assassination resulted in a social mobilization far larger than these groups. Estimates of the number of protesters of March 14 indicate as many as one million people gathered in the heart of Beirut, possibly a quarter of the entire Lebanese population.

In the March 14 protest, a clear nationalist emphasis was evidenced. Lebanese flags dominated the protest bringing together protesters who were otherwise not politically or socially aligned. A protest camp was organized in Martyrs’ Square by the grave of Hariri. The March 14 protest, and the small series of protests that followed, became known as the Intifada al-istiqlal, the Independence Uprising. A central call was to freedom in politics and Independence from Syria. The truth (haqiqa) and the slogan “nurid al-haqiqa” (we demand the truth) – about Hariri but also all the crimes of the past – become central to the protest movement (Haugbolle 2006). Following the assassination, the two squares in downtown Beirut (Riad el-Solh and Martyrs’ Square) became the focus of political life. Sit-ins lasted for months, and political demarcation lines were redrawn through intensified street protests (Majed 2021).