The recent paperback launch of a book on Lebanon published four years ago might seem a strange move given the dramatic changes in the Middle East since 2010. But Michael Young’s The Ghost of Martyrs Square has stood up remarkably well not just as a sharp analysis and gripping narrative of the crucial period of 2005-2010 in Lebanon but as a strikingly topical example of a Middle Eastern country facing sectarian conflict.
Lebanon has often fallen victim to proxy battles between regional powers, especially Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, although the three also underwrote the 1989 Taef agreement that ended the 15-year civil war. The links between the country’s religious sects and these regional powers – or, in the case of Christians, the United States and France – have encouraged many Lebanese to question the country’s sect-based political system, which has developed, as Young points out, over several centuries.
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