Liban.

This is coolbert:

One of the most vicious wars of contemporary times was the war fought several decades ago now in Lebanon.

Started in the mid-70's and continued on and off for about ten years.

Competing militias vied for power and control over their respective "turf". Each militia was organized along ethnic lines.

You had the Christian militias [competing Christian militias existed], Palestinians, Shiite, Sunni, and Druze, fighting all at once. And the militia situation was exacerbated by the presence of foreign "fighters", primarily Iranian "Revolutionary Guards", and a large presence of Syrian regular army troops as well.

And how did the actual fighting start? Over a rape incident!! It seems that two Christian girls were abducted and raped by some Muslim men. The very next day, a Christian militia stopped a bus, made the passengers disembark, separated the Muslim men, and shot ten of these Muslim men to death. And from that point on it was payback after payback escalating into out and out warfare.

As the fighting grew in size it did so in intensity also.

From small arms, the warring parties began to get their hands on more and sophisticated and sophisticated weaponry. At the end, all sides were using artillery, AAA, and using all these weapons in an indiscriminate manner, causing casualties that went well beyond the combatants.

It is estimated that about 1 million persons died during the ten years of warfare in Lebanon. And this in a country that numbered about 10 million persons at the start of the fighting.

Some indication of how indiscriminant the militias were with their weaponry was demonstrated during the annual bird migrations that occur through this part of the world. Migrating birds traveling through the Lebanese flyway [one of the most important bird migration routes on the planet] were subjected to AAA fire from bored militia gunners, who used birds such as storks, eagles and other large soaring birds as targets, heedless to where their expended ammunition landed!!

After a decade of fighting, a truce was achieved and comparative calm restored to the Liban.

But this was only after the various populations within the country had mostly relocated to contiguous, defensible territories that became fiefdoms for the respective militias. The country is now broken down into a Christian zone, Sunni zone, Shiite zone, Palestinian zone, Druze zone, etc. Whereas prior to the war, the groups had been fairly intermingled. And this truce was only reached when all sides realized that further conflict would not result in further gain for any side. A relative stalemate had been reached!

There is really something really dreadful about the whole Liban situation. Prior to the outbreak of the fighting, Lebanon was held up to the U.S. as being an example of a society where disparate groups could live in peace and relative harmony. Was to be an example for the racial groups in the U.S. to emulate. Well, I sure hope not!!

coolbert.