Dabbous Guest Editorial: Getting Home in Beirut
My View from our Sunni-Beiruti Neighbourhood
Eugène Richard Sensenig-Dabbous
'For those of you who know Beirut, I drove from my office at the Maronite Catholic Notre Dame University Zouk Mosbeh up the hill from Jounieh) Thursday, via Sassine Square to Sodeco/Damascus Street at the north-western edge of predominantly Eastern Orthodox Achrefieh, on my way home from work. Crossing Bechara El Khoury Avenue (where his statue stands) I wanted to traverse this major metropolitan intersection in order to drive straight towards Basta and ultimately reach Mar Elias Street, which I call home. The police wouldn't allow me to drive forward and they didn't have a clue what a resident should do.
So I did what many say was the worst possible thing, I must have had a guardian angel or God was watching over this lost soul; I turned left down Bechara El Khoury Avenue toward Barbir and then took the first available right turn, hoping to drive to the main road above the Salim Slem highway tunnel, which leads to the Sports Centre and the Rafic Hariri International Airport; and of course to the predominantly Shi'ia, Hizbollah controlled, suburban towns called Dahiyeh.
Burning all bridges
I drove right into street fighting in Barbour & Wata Mossaitbe, hardcore Amal territory. Looking up the streets I crossed, as I drove in the direction of Mar Elias Street and Mossaitbe proper, I could see burning tires at both ends of these streets. In this pocket of Shi'ia minority population, an island in a larger Sunni sea of humanity, people looked as scared as everyone I had seen in my neighbourhood, as they were terrorising us the previous Tuesday. I guess in the end it really doesn't matter "who started it!"
I parked my semi-new, but very dirty Toyota Corolla in front of the Sunni mosque above the Salim Slem highway tunnel; I couldn't drive into Mossaitbe because guys with yellow scarves were blocking the access roads. So I walked home, past the large Baptist School and the inconspicuous Shi'ia Husseinnyah (prayer centre). Dima wasn't home; she was out getting the army and local Sunni vigilantes to find me. These young boys are primitively armed with broom sticks and wooden flag poles, baseball bats haven't caught on yet in this otherwise very trendy country, thank God!
We then gave a young fighter (who turned out to be Shi'ia) my car keys and begged him to go up on his motor scooter and retrieve my car. He came back 10 minutes later, having traversed the various road blocks. As night fell and the curfew was introduced, Dima and I were safe at home and her daughter Farah was at her grandparents, only 5 blocks away, but not within reach because she would have had to cross Mar Elias Street. The Syrian and Palestinian snipers, who many claim have been brought into town by the Ba'ath Party and the Damascus secret service, in order to kill indiscriminately and thus lead us all to another civil war, were shooting at civilians on Mar Elias Street, so you didn't want to be out on foot either.
What is to be done?
It's now Saturday morning and we have had a full day of "normality," i.e. guarded peace or at least no immediate threat of open violence. I have been asking around about what the next step could be, in order that none of the conflicting parties loses face and we can return to our jobs, be with our families and help develop this amazingly thriving country and ensure that it reaches its full potential. Nobody seems to know. Most are still concentrating on the blame game. I guess you can indeed teach young dogs old tricks.
I suggest that those of us who are of good faith and actually care about all the people of this country, concentrate on things that can be dealt with immediately and solved in the foreseeable future. These include 1) a debate on the Draft Election Law of 31 May 2006; 2) a movement to enforce the already existing regulations on quarrying stone, gravel and sand (so closely linked to the re/construction industry); and 3) discussing the social implications of the Paris III agreement for the middle classes and working poor. These three issues are all largely technical and affect the overwhelming majority of the population equally. Let's allow doing hard work and re-establishing cooperation be the litmus test to determine who really cares about Lebanon. '
Greetings from Mossaitbe,
Eugen Dabbous
Professor Eugène Richard Sensenig-Dabbous, MA PhD
sensenig a_t_ cyberia d o t net d o t lb
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/27/2007 08:40:00 AM
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6 Comments:
Eugene writes in part,
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"The Syrian and Palestinian snipers, who many claim have been brought into town by the Ba'ath Party and the Damascus secret service, in order to kill indiscriminately and thus lead us all to another civil war, were shooting at civilians on Mar Elias Street, so you didn't want to be out on foot either."
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In retrospect, does this seem to have been true? Were many shot? Killed? As would seem likely if professional snipers had been brought in to do just that.
Is is appropriate at this point to ask if there is any evidence that might tend to confirm the assertion that "many claim" and which Eugene reports?
Jonathan
I agree with Jonathan. The author seems to be writing from either fear (for which I can't blame him) or an agenda (which is understandable but not worth such individual attention in Informed Comment). I'm fairly certain we were have heard something on the news, or I and others with Lebanese connections would have heard from our friends, about "Syrian" snipers in East Beirut.
Additionally, I'd question the statement of "people looked as scared as everyone I had seen in my neighbourhood, as they were terrorising us the previous Tuesday." (bold added) Although violence unfortunately broke out in Beirut, and undoubtedly people were very afraid and a few even died, the idea that "the Shiites" specifically were terrorizing people rings of the typical anti-Shiite sentiment I noticed when I was recently in Beirut, which also ignores the fact that the opposition is not homogenously Shiite. Yes, there was a protest and, yes, there were clashes. If a protest leads to clashes and it cannot be determined whether or not the protesters started the violence, is it fair to call the protesters terrorizers?
Robert Fisk wrote a very good article about the many different sides engaged against each other. For those who don't know, he's called Beruit home for several decades now. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2183870.ece
An excerpt:
"At least three deaths, 120 wounded and sectarian fighting across a hundred miles of Lebanon, we are now told, was only a "warning to the government". If Christian versus Christian and Sunni versus Shia Muslim is not enough, then, what will be? And how planned is the coming tragedy?
"Planning is what came to mind yesterday among all those who live here. How, we are asking ourselves, did those thousands of violent young men all have near-identical, brand new wooden coshes? How come so many men emerged on to the Beirut streets in near-identical hoods? How come the "general strike" called to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, was switched off in a matter of minutes?
"But there were other, far more disturbing elements to Tuesday's scandalous day of violence. Two of the old civil-war fault lines - on the road north of Beirut and in the suburbs of the city - were reopened. Siniora himself started warning of the dangers of civil war and the United States - as Hizbollah must have hoped - came out in support of the government, claiming, quite falsely, that the violence came from the Hizbollah-led opposition.
"It certainly did come from their Amal militia ally but Sunni Muslim supporters of the government were in gun battles in Tripoli - they continued yesterday - and the "Lebanese Forces" youths of Samir Geagea, an ex-militia murderer who supports the government, were engaged in pitched stoning battles with other Christian Maronites.
"Indeed, the inter-Christian war, in retrospect, was probably the most vicious of the day. Most of the wounded were hurt when Geagea's men tried to stop supporters of the Maronite ex-general Michel Aoun blocking roads outside the capital. Through some odd and tragic tradition of history, the Christian communities in Lebanon have often fought cruel battles with each other. Aoun and Geagea's forces killed each other at the end of the civil war. Even during the Crusades, the Christians of Tyre fought each other when Salahedin was at their gates.
"Of the various foreign powers taking sides in this frightening battle for power in Lebanon - and they include Iran and Syria, of course, as well as the United States - one might well ask if the destruction of the Christian population of Lebanon was not part of their plan. "
Maybe I am just over cynical but Sy Hersh was reported as stating at the conference at Tufts last week that his sources are telling him that the Bush administration is now letting Iraq take care of itself while they plan for the attack on Iran.
This would explain the few moments of sanity we have been seeing over the past few months. The saner hands can take charge because the whack jobs are all too busy planning for the next fiasco.
Earlier I was thinking about the complex tactical considerations that Iran faces. The Bush Administration intends to attack Iran, if Iran does not respond to the deliberate provocations they will use the Tonkin strategy and fabricate a response. The Iranians have to give the Bush administration just enough hope of an attack for the Bush administration to postpone their fabrication long enough for their political capital to have been exhausted.
It occurs to me that there is a similar dynamic within the administration. If the grownups are successful in squelching all hope of an attack on Iran the crazy gang will return to working on Iraq where their input will only worsen the fiasco.
My Lebanese friends are from a very different political place than your correspondent here. They believe current events mark the emergence of a genuine Lebanese nationalism, coupled with the self-assertion of the long excluded Shia population. See their view of the December demonstrations here.
But they share completely your correspondent's fear of snipers. The civil war taught them that. However, aside from this report, which sounds like a Beirut rumor from one side of a a fearful divide, I have not seen reports of snipers.
By the way, my friends would suspect not "Syrian and Palestinians snipers" but Lebanese Forces snipers if they DID hear of such shootings. Unfortunately, Lebanon doesn't need to import murderers.
In his column today Robert Fisk said among much else:
"Beirut's morning newspapers carried graphic pictures of gunmen - Sunni Muslims loyal to the government and Shia supporters of Hizbollah - which proved beyond any doubt that organised, armed men are on the capital's streets. ...
"One widely-used picture showed a businessman firing a pistol at Shia during the fighting around the Lebanese Arab university, another a hooded man with a sniper's rifle on a rooftop. All three dead men were Hizbollah supporters whose funerals in south Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley yesterday were accompanied by calls for revenge and - in one case - by a colour guard of militiamen and farewell shots over his grave. After 29-year old Adnan Shamas's widow and young children were brought to his funeral in Ouzai, there were cries of "blood for blood"."
It would seem that the control that those who are putting "organised, armed men on the capital's streets" has been adequate to make sure that there are few deaths. Perhaps especially notable is the ability of HB to turn the strike on and off without loosing control of the HB activists - e.g. no killings by HB and its allies. This combined with HB's demonstrated skill and discipline and courage in fighting the Israeli invasion seems to constitute one half of the 'message' of the strike. Whether or not one deems wise the other half of the message - i.e. the call for resignation of the government etc. - this half of the message (which might be translated as "to ignore our demands is to risk much") is hard to dispute.
Jonathan
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