A disabled person can be a strong voice for political change, including in times of crisis and war, says Nawaf Kabbara, president of the International Disability Alliance.
The British-Lebanese academic has spent most of his adult life in a wheelchair, after a car accident in his twenties damaged his spinal chord. He is one of Lebanon’s foremost political thinkers, having taught for over 25 years at the University of Balamand in the north of the country.
He believes that with the right levels of access, disabled people can pursue their goals. “The more accessible and inclusive an environment is, the less the disability is there. In fact, a person can live his or her life, as long as accessibility is available,” he tells The National.
Prof Kabbara built his name navigating terrains that are tough even for those with full mobility. He organised a peace march for the disabled at the height of Lebanon’s civil war, moving hundreds of people from the north to the south, in a country that had been divided by warring militias.
He was also involved in the negotiations for the UN Convention for Disabled People, which was adopted in 2006.
He travels frequently for the International Disability Alliance, working with disability organisations around the world, and is trying to arrange access for his organisation to support injured and disabled people in Gaza.
“If I can, I plan to visit Gaza in November, to hold a seminar and conference to make sure disability is a priority in the reconstruction,” he says.
When we meet at a house in the mountains above his home city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon, he is busy turning the space he rented for the summer into a home. He briefs a local gardener on potted flower arrangements for his balcony, one of the simple measures he takes to get past the daily challenges of his condition.
Kabbara knew he would never walk again a few minutes after his car crashed. He was in Saudi Arabia on a 10-month placement in 1979 at Indevco, a Lebanese-owned multinational. He came to and tried to turn down the music blaring from his radio, but realised he couldn't move.
He lost consciousness again and woke up in a hospital bed six hours later. A nurse poked his leg with the sharp end of a nail and asked if he could feel it. “I knew directly,” he says. But the doctors told him he’d been lucky: had the damage to his spine been higher, he would have lost the ability to move his arms and hands.
His bleak horizon brightened when he arrived in the UK for rehabilitation. “I was positively surprised to see that the pavements are accessible. Public places are accessible. Most cinemas are accessible. I can drive a car, take the train, travel,” he said. “I realised that things are not bad.”
That encouraged him to continue his studies. He went on to do a PhD in political science at the University of Los Angeles in California – choosing the city because it was “flat”, without steep hills.
Political impact
Kabbara grew up in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest but most marginalised city. His father, Salem Kabbara, was a prominent lawyer there who served as a member of parliament for eight years.
His own desire to make political change was reinforced in the UK. “The major shift happened when I went to England, and saw how politics is practised there. I was very much impressed by the three, four-party system, by the way government is run, how it is accountable in front of Parliament and the people,” he says. “It is the opposite exactly to what politics is here.”
He soon returned from LA to the UK, to complete his PhD and study under Argentine political theorist and Marxist Ernesto Laclau. He had become increasingly drawn to the postmodern political philosophers who were making waves in Europe at the time: Michel Foucault, who developed theories of social control, and Jacques Derrida, who developed the theory of deconstruction. He was also influenced by the writings of Italian communist Antonio Gramsci.
His thesis centred on the politics of President Fouad Chehab, who is remembered in Lebanon as a reformer who sought to end confessionalism. Chehab attempted to revive Tripoli, which had historically been a prosperous port city but descended into poverty after the carving up of Lebanon's borders cut it off from the major Syrian cities in its hinterland.
In 1984, while working on his thesis, he drove to Paris where his brother was living, with the hope of arranging a meeting with Foucault himself. The next day, June 26, he read of Foucault’s death in the newspapers. That did not stop him from immersing himself in the French capital’s leading philosophy circles, where he met “Derrida and some of the others”.
Disabled march
Meanwhile, the civil war in Lebanon was raging, reeling from an Israeli invasion in 1982 which killed up to 18,000 people, and with militias controlling fragmented parts of the country.
In 1984, university student Iman Khalifa called for a peace march in which all Lebanese would meet at the frontline dividing East and West Beirut. It was intended as an act of defiance against the civil war, which had raged for almost a decade. Her supporters included Nawaf Salam, who now serves as Lebanon’s Prime Minister after sitting as a judge at the International Court of Justice.
Unexpected shelling on the day before the march preventing it from happening. “The militias realised the danger of such a movement,” says Kabbara.
He watched these developments from London, where he lived. He was disappointed by the outcome, but was still motivated by the idea, especially after having watched the 1982 epic Gandhi about the Indian leader’s Salt March defying the British colonial monopoly over salt.
“Then it came to my mind. Why don’t we organise a march by all the Lebanese from north to south against the war?” he said.
He discussed the idea with prominent Lebanese peace activists Bishop Gregoire Haddad and lawyer Laure Moghaizel, with whom he formed a movement for non-violence. Moving thousands of people from north to south might be difficult, they agreed – but what about a smaller, more symbolic group? “What is the symbol of a victim of war? A person with disabilities.” he says.
It would take three years for the march to take place. There were many failed attempts. The group attempted to set up a blood donation bank on the streets of Beirut. Militia men told them to leave.
Then a plan to have disabled people move from East and West Beirut to the dividing line and to hold a three-day hunger strike was foiled, when the Shiite party Amal clashed with the Druze Progressive Socialist party.
“We were in the middle,” he recalls. “We spent three days waiting for the fighting to stop.”
But preparations for the march continued, with Kabbara co-ordinating from the UK.
On October 12, 1987, a group of around 100 people with disabilities gathered with him at the main square of Halba, in the remote province of Akkar, on Lebanon’s northern border.
From there, they began their walk, reaching their first stop in Tripoli by the evening. Youth groups such as the Scouts had been told to wait at the entrance of the congested city to help the marchers through.
Kabbara was surprised by the number of people expecting them, with residents throwing rice from the windows and playing music. Hundreds more joined the march through the city.
They reached Batroun the next day. “Our surprise was the people who were waiting for us there, applauding, crying,” he said. By the time they reached Beirut to cross the dividing line, they were on the front pages of national newspapers, and even mentioned in the Financial Times.
The march ended in the southern city of Tyre. “It was a huge reception, there were 3,000 people,” he said.
The march encouraged others. Less than a month later, the trade unions of Lebanon gathered 300,000 people in downtown Beirut to call for an end to the war. “The march not only succeeded politically, it showed that a person with disabilities can be an active social agent.”
Alliance chairmanship
Kabbara repeated the march in the former Yugoslavia, bringing an international delegation of disabled activists to refugee camps sheltering Bosnians in Croatia.
“Serbia did not give us any visas, but we were able to show again that persons with disabilities are not left alone. There are people who are supporting them. We're visiting these camps. We're seeing how they're living, what's happened to them,” he says. The accounts he heard of the atrocities committed in that war were so intolerable he could not bring himself to repeat them.
Yet he persevered with the high-profile marches and now he is proud of the journey disabled people have made in having their rights recognised, and his own contributions to it. The success of his marches led him to the Arab Organisation for Disabilities in 1998, at a conference at the Arab League. The following year, the Mexican government presented a proposal for an international treaty on disability.
International campaigner
Then in 2000, UN Special Rapporteur on Disability Bengt Lindqvist, who had served as Sweden’s first blind minister, invited Kabbara and regional organisations to Sweden, where they deliberated the drafts of a Convention for Disabled Persons, which would be adopted six years later.
“We started from being totally ignored to becoming a player,” he said. The World Health Organisation now estimates that 16 per cent of people have some form of disability. “We’re talking about a social group worldwide.”
That was when the International Disability Alliance was formed, with the Arab Organisation for Disabilities as one of its main founders.
Now as president of the alliance for a four-year term, his focus is on building connections among different groups globally, but also working out a plan for the war in Gaza. “At the international level, you see what's happening in Gaza, and you see yourself incapable of doing anything while people with disabilities are being killed,” Kabbara says.
He met many disabled politicians and leaders he admired, including Lindqvist, Joshua Malinga – a disability champion for Zimbabwe and former mayor of Bulawayo, and Ron Chandra-Dudley, who pioneered disability services in Singapore.
“Suddenly you find you have a new family worldwide, crossing borders, crossing nations, having the same language, working for the same goals,” he said.
But he faces challenges daily – personally because of the additional care and support that he needs, and politically, as an advocate for disability rights.
Those challenges, he says, start from when he wakes up. “You have to make sure you do not have pressure sores. As you age, things become more difficult. To manage your disability and independently without help, is a challenge.” he says. “At a societal level, culture often works against you, [at] the political level where you're not seen as an important agent.”
Changed horizons
Looking back on all that he’s achieved, does Kabbara regret his car accident? “I ask myself this question all the time. If I did not have an accident, where would I be now?” he says. “The wheelchair has opened a totally new horizon for me, but at the same time it closed others.”
One of these was the political ambitions he held as a student. He campaigned as an independent in elections in 1996, securing 18,000 votes, but believes that perceptions of his disability caused him to lose. Almost 10 years later, in 2005, he was a candidate with a major coalition of parties, more than tripling his share of votes to 64,000. But, he concedes, “ambition changes”.
