20th Annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest People
The mother of Ahmad sits on the bed at the tent of the victims of enforced disappearance and the missing, Beirut, 2010

Stolen Lives Between 1975 and 1990, Lebanon witnessed a war that resulted in 150,000 deaths, around 17,000 missing and forcibly disappeared persons, and hundreds of thousands of wounded and displaced. Furthermore, an enormous volume of destruction and material damages was recorded, affecting the country at all levels. Since the end of the war in 1990, the successive Lebanese authorities have failed to grant the affair of the missing and forcibly disappeared persons the right amount of concern in order to solve and conclude it. They have ignored the claims filed by the families of those victims during the years of war, and this is still ongoing to the present time. It is known that the kidnapping and hiding operations were executed by the combatting Lebanese militias, as well as some regional armed forced that were present in the country at that time. It is also known that most of the war leaders and proponents are still alive, living and freely moving among us. They are an integral part of Lebanese society. Each one of them occupies a job and interests varying now from the ones occupied during war. However, each one of them has a great memory. In 2000, the Lebanese state officially acknowledged that bodies had been discarded in different places in the country and some had been buried in mass graves. It specifically mentioned three burial sites and reported that some bodies had been thrown into the sea during the war.

Photo Detail
Date Taken: 10.2010
Date Uploaded: 10.2022
Photo Location: Beirut, Lebanon
Copyright: © Wissam Khoury