The phenomenon of the Lebanese diaspora has received its share of attention, its literature generally being designated as ‘modern’ (recent) rather than ‘historical’ (established in antiquity) or ‘incipient’ (in the making) (Sheffer 2003: 75). The ratio of Lebanese abroad to those in Lebanon, about four million, is five or six to one (Cooke 1996: 269). Michael Humphrey asserts that the term ‘diaspora’ moves between the particularity of an historical experience and the existential condition which metaphorises post-modernity in its characteristics of ‘uncertainty, displacement and fragmented identity’ (2004: par. 4). Contemporary use of the phrase ‘Lebanese diaspora’ is therefore the by-product of national disintegration and subsequent resettlement (par. 5). Furthermore, Humphrey contends that homogenising this diaspora as a cultural, political or national community is impossible because these migrants ‘are the product of quite different migrations with their own very distinct relationships’ to contemporary Lebanon (par. 6). Differences in religious denomination, socio-economic status, political ideology, timing and reasons for departure, and the types of host societies into which they integrated prevent them from conceiving of the imagined present or past in the same way (par. 6). Since the significance of the war remains politically unresolved, and since Lebanon is yet to be restructured as promised in the Ta'if Accord that ended the conflict, diasporic identification remains primarily sectarian or communal (par. 44).