How do oppositions learn in times of disaster? The ambiguities of opposition learning after the 2020 Beirut port explosion

This paper contributes to debates on how opposition actors adapt their strategies when confronting regimes in the MENA region. Specifically, it addresses key analytical questions about the significance of different sources and mechanisms of opposition learning. These questions are explored through a case study of Lebanon’s opposition groups and networks, which emerged as crucial providers of relief and reconstruction following the 2020 Beirut port explosion. The study shows how these reconstruction efforts were subject to multiple narratives, which highlighted, to varying degrees, their relation to broader patterns of learning and adaptation within Lebanon’s opposition and implied different levels of intentionality. Some accounts framed civic responses to the blast as part of a deliberate, broader turn towards constructive modes of resistance. Others interpreted them primarily as crisis-driven or demobilization responses, or as acute disaster interventions that were nonetheless shaped by prior experiences of opposition engagement. This demonstrates that a typology of opposition learning provides a valuable lens for understanding how oppositional actors interpret their development in moments of crisis. Moreover, it shows how such a framework can help reveal broader ontological rifts within fragmented oppositions like the Lebanese.