Lebanon's DIY War

The Lebanese city of Tripoli offers a brief glimpse of what America’s Wild West in the era of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid might have looked like – only the standard issue Colt six-shooters have all been exchanged for Kalashnikovs. The mounting tensions in the town, edged up close to the Syrian border, are igniting the small arms as Jebel Mohsen’s 50,000 Alawites – the Shi’ite offshoot to which Syria’s ruling Assad family belong – protect their neighbourhood and their identity against local Sunni Islamists across the grubby Abu Ali river in Bab al-Tabanneh. It’s basically a long, brutal hangover from the civil war, when Syria’s Baathist occupiers didn’t look too favourably on the Sunni extremists. 

With Lebanese troops having recently fought the al-Qaida-inspired Fatah al-Islam militant group and with Hezbollah’s now ever-present demonstration of force in Beirut, Tripoli’s feuds have exploded into the streets once again. The Sunnis say they are battling against a Syrian-sponsored war of aggression, while the Alawites, geographically isolated and vastly outnumbered, don’t have much of a choice but to fight for their own survival against what some believe is an extremist sectarian movement. Like most modern Middle Eastern wars, there is some truth to both accusations; the two neighbourhoods, separated by a broad, shop-lined avenue, once did a brisk trade in market goods in better times, but the economy has since shifted its market to high velocity metal and explosives.

Arabi, a prominent Sunni in Tripoli who’s father was killed by the Syrians during the Islamist purges of the 80s, is one such leader who claims to be on the “organisational” side of the current fight. He admits: “When there’s fighting these days, you have to call 15 different commanders in Bab al-Tabanneh to make it stop.” Chief among the motivating factors, Arabi says, is poverty, of which there is plenty in Bab al-Tabanneh. Many families live in the densely populated neighbourhood and have outgrown their apartments, forcing some to sleep in shifts, according to available space. Out-of-work youth, wearing purchased camouflage fatigue-style dress, mill about on street corners, drinking coffee and waiting for any kind of employment or, more usually, any fighting to break out. According to a Lebanese army official, who declined to be identified because he’s not authorised to talk to the media, this boredom “is the single largest source of the violence. And after the events of May, many of [Tripoli’s] Sunnis feel as though they now have a calling, a sectarian axe to grind, in the absence of employment.”

Pulling up to the edge of the main roundabout where Tripoli’s concrete river flows towards the port, it was not uncommon this summer to see men hiding behind corners – taking cover from Alawi snipers, who despite the distance were unloading fairly accurate fire from their concealed positions nearly a kilometre away. After hanging the left, it was a terrifying straight dash of 200 metres in the line of Alawite gun sights until a Tokyo Drift style right brought you directly into the staging area being used by the Sunni gunmen. The mob that had amassed was hardly an organised fighting force: men ranging between 20 and 50 were sitting on curbs casually loading clips. They were using 7.62mm for AK-47s, 5.56 Nato rounds for M-16s, shotgun shells for the family hunting rifle or, in one unfortunate case, a large, very decrepit Soviet era Dushka heavy machine gun that fires the equivalent of a 50 calibre round.

In Lebanon, the level of any fighting group’s discipline can usually be deduced from their willingness to be photographed. Hezbollah, pretty much at the top of the scale, will politely take your camera’s memory card because they know that there is software to recover erased images. The shebab of Bab al-Tabanneh, fitting somewhere around the bottom of the scale, aren’t quite so well-versed in journalistic technology. Initial hostility to the presence of this photographer’s lens soon melted away, much at the urging of the fixer, and then became clamorous requests for group shots with their arms. Eventually, there was no control at all and you could mingle with the men as they fought their Alawite enemies, or as they sat on the curb, behind cover, smoking cigarettes, waxing war-philosophical as they reloaded their clips.

Abu Omar, as he identified himself, was smoking on the steps apart from his compatriots when I sat down to talk to him. I was interested in what this 25-year-old’s politics were. I mentioned Sa’ad Hariri, the son and political heir of slain Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who was now leading his fathers “Future” Movement and very much the base of his support within the Sunni community in Lebanon. “Hariri is a leader,” he told me. “When the people of Bab al-Tabanneh are attacked, he offers to rebuild our houses, he offers to pay for medical expenses.” 

Abu Omar then produced a small cardboard box from one of his jacket pockets, with a small English block-print, opening it up to reveal 20 packaged 7.62mm rounds for his AK-47. “But what we need is weapons! I pay $1 a bullet out of my own pocket for these shells. All the boys from Bab al-Tabanneh do the same.” As Abu Omar speaks, the output of RPGs from the Alawite side of the frontline seems to increase, and a small group of men, both young and old, begin to crowd around the aging Douchka, which is sitting on a picnic table. Without warning, a small flatbed truck, that seems to have previously been used to haul vegetables to market, careens down the street, making the quick right turn to avoid sniper fire. The driver jumps out and men begin to inspect a new mount that seems to have just been added to the flatbed.

“Our Dushka jammed after firing seven bullets, so now we’re trying to fix it,” Abu Omar explains. The group of men had begun to wrestle the heavy machine gun into place on the back of the vegetable truck. The truck – hardly an ideal vehicle – had high rails on the side which would only leave about 45 degrees of rotation for the gun, basically forcing whoever was manning it to fire backwards. Once in position, the men began hammering on the old, rusted steel as excited gunmen cheered them on.

As Lebanon’s elections approach, scheduled for May 2009, tension will almost certainly increase amongst Tripoli’s Sunnis, who fear that the Hezbollah-led opposition is poised to make major gains in the government. The rag-tag appearance and clear lack of fighting skill on the Sunni side may be a blessing for now; it has kept the death toll in the violence this summer to around 30 – tragic still, but based on the amount of ordinance expended, it could have been much worse.

The really frightening element of the sectarian violence lies in the opportunity presented to international individuals or groups with a vested interest in seeing the conflict continue, perhaps toward a Sunni “victory,” or with the intent of further destabilising the north. Conspiracy theories beget conspiracy theories in the larger Middle East, but if history teaches us any lessons, Lebanon has never had a shortage of foreign interests competing for power in the small Mediterranean country; and more often than not, it’s the Lebanese who end up paying the price in their own blood.

For the full story and more pictures from Triploi, see NOX 29