Historically bound by an identical land, fellow countrymen were torn apart by sectarian strife throughout Lebanon’s Civil War (1975–1990). Brothers shed each other’s blood in the name of religious beliefs, indoctrinated by baseless ancestral myths that ignite a cycle of hatred and violence. This devastating conflict was not just a war of bullets but a war of ideologies where 17 officially recognized sectarian groups—Maronite Christians, Greek Orthodox, Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, and Druze have split apart the core components of society, leaving the next generation to question the price of such blind allegiance.

The region was divided because of the Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and Britain after the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I. Lebanon was created under French rule on September 1, 1920, when the Beka’a Valley, Beirut, Tripoli, and Sidon regions were incorporated into Mount Lebanon. The French left Lebanon twenty-three years later, in 1943, and Bashir al-Khuri became the country’s first president. In less than ten years, poverty and corruption created the conditions for a peaceful uprising that resulted in the election of Camille Chamoun, one of the richest people in Lebanese history, to the presidency in the 1950s. As Arab oil wealth surged, Lebanon became a financial hub, with more banks than the Soviet Union However, Lebanon’s sectarian differences were made worse by the US and Soviet Union’s competition for dominance in the region, which prepared the way for civil war.

Instability and bloodshed followed the outbreak of the first civil war in 1958. The crisis worsened until the U.S. Sixth Fleet arrived in Beirut and contributed to negotiating a deal between Egyptian Pan-Arabist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower that led to the formation of a new administration in Lebanon. The Cairo........

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