Michael Young: Can Mideast Make Peace With the Past?

Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut and author of The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon's Life Struggle.

As Arab revolts began last year, it was inevitable that people would compare them to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

And that comparison suggests that the emancipation of Arab societies will likely stumble on the matter of memory, as did the former communist societies.

A useful keyhole into that recent past is a Pulitzer Prize-winning 1995 book by Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism.Ms Rosenberg focused on three countries; Czechoslovakia (before its break-up into two states), Poland, and the German Democratic Republic. She examined how each came to terms with its oppressive communist legacy, and concluded that the process in each country was wanting, causing discord rather than the desirable closure initially anticipated...