NOX photographer and journalist Bryan Denton was on hand to capture the first stirrings of renewed armed conflict in Lebanon, as his exclusive photo essay proves
It was a lightning offensive that shocked even some of Hezbollah’s supporters in it’s speed and success. On Thursday, May 8, an assortment of allied militias, all coordinated by the Iran-backed group, occupied virtually the entirety of Beirut. The tensions that had been building at key faultlines throughout the Lebanese capital – which NOX documented last month – suddenly spread westwards, and by Friday morning, after a night of heavy gun battles and rocket-propelled grenade exchanges, victorious Hezbollah militants in new uniforms patrolled the shopping boutiques of the usually salubrious Hamra Street.
Understanding the base of their Sunni enemy, they immediately occupied the American University of Beirut and, with insufficient irony, the local Starbucks. They both provided the optimum location for 15 year-old, AK-47-toting members of the Syrian Socialist National Party – key Hezbollah allies – to arrest potential foes at gunpoint.
Hezbollah’s Beirut blitz was initiated in response to the Pro-US government’s decision the previous Tuesday to dismantle the Iranian-backed group’s private telecommunications network. In a televised speech, Hezbollah’s figurehead Hassan Nasrallah waggled his finger at the camera and, with little of his usual articulate flourishes, was unambiguous about his group’s response should the March 14th government not immediately rescind the decision.
In the fiercely pro-Hariri Tariq Jdeidah neighborhood on the southern side of the Corniche al-Mazraa, it was greeted with laughter among the well-armed Sunni gangs, who waited for the battle in stairwells and on balconies. “That Whore”, spat one viewer as he puffed on an argileh. Outside, on the eerily deserted boulevard that separates Tariq Jdeidah from Barbor, an Amal stronghold, men were already running through the streets wearing ski masks, toting RPGs and distributing extra magazines of 7.62mm and 5.56mm ammunition for the anticipated assault. Within an hour, rockets and sniper fire were flying across the normally congested thoroughfare.
The battles, while brief, were instantly significant. While Hezbollah’s rout of it’s Pro-Western foes was not necessarily unexpected, the use of it’s weapons against internal opposition – considered a clear “red line” – changed the political and factional landscape of Lebanon. Following the 1975-1990 civil war, Hezbollah was the only militia allowed to retain its weapons, an acknowledgment that the Shi’ite resistance group had never involved itself in the internal conflict and had restricted its increasing firepower against the occupying Israelis. By Saturday, though, as Tariq Jdeidah began to bury the first martyrs of the conflict, Sunnis in the streets were calling for retribution.
The conflict was being seen as a new “fitna” in Shi’ite-Sunni relations. Hussein al-Haj Obeid, a Sunni from Tripoli who had travelled to Beirut on Thursday to defend the Hariri family residence, was captured by SSNP militants and tortured. He was then forced to watch his cousin’s execution. Hezbollah’s actions, he said, have changed everything. “Our blood is boiling,” Obeid said. His uncle, the local militia commander sitting next to him, had reportedly just executed four pro-opposition members at a makeshift checkpoint two nights before in retaliation for the death of their family member.
Beirut returned to comparative quiet as a panicked government acquiesced to Hezbollah’s demands, with leaders meeting in Doha, Qatar, to try to secure an agreement that will defuse the tinderbox situation. But the Lebanese have been preparing for the worst since the Downtown tent village was established in the autumn of 2006. Already in the aftermath of what many Sunni’s feel was a humiliation of their entire community, Jihadist websites are abuzz with posts on how to get to Lebanon, what to bring, and the best way to successfully engage in Jihad against Hezbollah and it’s allied groups. Not for the first time, we’re encouraged to “watch this space”.
For more revealing pictures, See NOX23
