Aftermath

by Nir Rosen

  One of those attending the prayer that Friday was Samir Jisr, a member of Parliament with the Future Movement, the Saudi-backed political movement clustered around Saad al-Hariri, which he inherited from his father, Rafiq. I met Jisr in his home a few blocks away. He explained to me that just as Sunnis had felt threatened during the Syrian era, so now they felt threatened by Hizballah. “Most people here were with the resistance to Israel,” he said. “People looked at Hizballah as the resistance, but after the Israelis withdrew and they practiced politics and shifted to inside Lebanon, people considered it a threat.” He explained that it was the presence of pro-Hizballah demonstrators “in the heart of the streets . . . the way they threaten to stop the country,” and their possession of weapons, that “scares people.” Jisr had criticized the army publicly for allegedly torturing Lebanese Sunnis suspected of militancy. Now Sunni militants were afraid, he said.

  He blamed poverty and oppression for increasing extremism and complained that after the civil war Beirut had gotten all the attention in the reconstruction while the north was neglected. The Syrians were hated, he said, because of their shelling of Tripoli in the 1980s, which he claimed killed up to 1,200 Sunnis. “It’s a big wound for people in Tripoli,” he said. The war in Iraq had negative effects on Lebanon too: “They are not spreading democracy. It’s obvious that they are trying to divide Iraq and steal its resources. Everybody believes the Americans are responsible for Sunni-Shiite problems. There is a fear among people that what is happening in Iraq will affect Lebanon.”

  Dai al-Islam al-Shahal, Lebanon’s most important Salafi cleric, blamed Shiites and Iran for the civil war in Iraq. Many Salafi clerics like him were obsessed with Shiites; Shahal was rabidly anti-Shiite. “The Sunnis in Iraq are oppressed by Shiites, and Iranians are allying with Americans there,” he told me.

  I met Shahal in his office in Tripoli’s Abu Samra neighborhood, where many Salafis are based. It was August 14, or “Victory Day,” according to Hizballah. As I waited for Shahal to arrive in the morning, his devoted young male secretary assured me that my heart would race when I saw him. Shahal had a white beard and wore a white robe, with a white cap and a white scarf on his head.

  Like most Sunnis, he did not think that the war with Israel had, in fact, ended with a victory—he wished it had not happened. He viewed Hizballah as a threat to the Lebanese government and the entire country. “There is an old Shiite project to control Lebanon,” he told me, mentioning the canard of the “Shiite crescent,” first described by Jordan’s King Abdullah. “Iran is exporting its Islamic Revolution,” he said, and “the project of controlling Lebanon is being implemented. A minority rules Syria, allied with Shiites here and Iranians in Iraq.”

  Although Sunnis were being targeted, “Sunnis are more powerful,” he told me. “If, God forbid, a civil war happens, they know how to defend themselves and are prepared.” Sunnis were engaged with the state, he explained, but in the event of a civil war they would require militias. And while Sunnis in the government were allying with the Americans, “people on the street are totally against the Americans.” Sunni Islamists had allied with the Future Movement and the Lebanese government because they defended Sunnis, he explained, but relations between Sunnis and the government had been damaged by the fighting in Nahr al-Barid.

  Shahal had been one of the key negotiators between Lebanese authorities and Fatah al-Islam. “Fatah al-Islam used Fatah al-Intifada as a passage into Lebanon to set up a movement to fight Israel,” he said. “Most of Fatah al-Islam are not Palestinian.” Fatah al-Islam’s ideology had been close to that of Al Qaeda, he said. Muslims were under attack, he said, explaining that the American administration wanted to strike Islam and was trying to establish bases in Muslim lands to take their resources. “The defense of Muslim lands from America and the West is better than attacking Americans and the West in their countries,” he said. Al Qaeda’s mistake was “moving the battle to Western territory. When Muslims are under attack, it is right to defend themselves but not to move the battle to the West.”

  IF THERE IS A RED LINE separating Sunnis from Shiites in Beirut, it is the Tariq al-Jadida neighborhood, a Sunni bastion close to Dahiyeh, the southern Shiite suburb dominated by Hizballah. Entering the neighborhood, one passes a Saudi flag, a Lebanese flag, and the flag of the Future Movement. Large posters of Saudi King Abdullah hang above the streets. Beginning in early 2007 various local militias began to appear, their names changing often. One was called the Panthers. Every night the streets of Tariq al-Jadida were patrolled by men who did not carry arms in public. They were recruited and paid by the Future Movement. Typically they were young men sitting on street corners, smoking water pipes, eating pistachios, and demanding that passersby present their identification papers. Sometimes they had lists of wanted men. They were supervised by older men, veterans of the Lebanese army, security forces, or militias from the civil war. Just in case, Interior Security Forces sat in armored personnel carriers in the center of the neighborhood. On my first visit, in 2007, I asked some of the young men who they were protecting the neighborhood from. “Zaaran,” said one muscular youth, referring to hoodlums, or thugs. I asked which zaaran. “From Dahiyeh,” he said. “We will chop them up.” During this visit, I was stopped by chubby young men on scooters who zipped over and took me to what they called on their radios Checkpoint One. Fortunately I had befriended a local militiaman named Fadi, a small man who owned a barbershop close to the edge of the neighborhood, who vouched for me. Fadi had a ponytail, wore tight black clothes, and had a huge shiny watch on his wrist. He patrolled his street on behalf of the local Future militia and was paid four hundred dollars a month by the Secure Plus company, which he said was the same as the Future Movement. Fadi had not done his military service, but he had received one month of training in Akkar.

  Tariq al-Jadida, a mostly middle-class Sunni area, was the heart of Sunni power in Beirut. In contrast, Bab al-Tabbaneh, a district in Tripoli, in northern Lebanon, was poor and marginalized; many of its unemployed youth were used by the Sunnis of Beirut as shock troops to intimidate rivals. Unlike poor Shiites, impoverished Sunnis in Tariq al-Jadida—and elsewhere in Lebanon—do not have a powerful movement to provide for them or protect them. Instead, rival politicians compete for popularity by occasionally dispensing favors, usually before elections. Crumbling buildings torn apart by shells and bullet holes, with laundry drying outside the windows and balconies, look down over rows of garages and small workshops for wooden furniture. Black flags with Islamic slogans wave in the sun. Salafis helped clean up Bab al-Tabbaneh from gangs and drugs, improving its reputation. Many former gang members and drug addicts had become Salafis and even jihadists; the only evidence of their past delinquency was their remaining tattoos. In the 1980s, the Syrian army had been stationed in the Jabal Mohsen neighborhood, which towered above Tabbaneh. Thirty thousand Alawites lived there. From there the Syrians punished the recalcitrant Sunnis of Tabbaneh, and the scars had never healed.

  I found a group of men drinking tea outside a shop. Mustafa Zaabi sat with his brothers and friends. “Everything is a lie,” he said. “There is no electricity, so everybody is on the street. If we talk, who will listen to us? What are we, Palestinian refugees? I wish we were Palestinians so we had care from the UN or the government.” They blamed the Palestinians for the fighting in Nahr al-Barid. “The people fighting in the camp are mostly Palestinian, just pretending to be Fatah al-Islam,” said Mustafa’s brother Muhamad. “It’s impossible that they will rebuild the camp,” said Mustafa.

  Mustafa had been an active member of the Future Movement and had voted for the party in the past, but he had stopped giving his support. “They did nothing,” he said. “Many people feel betrayed. Those who said we are sons of Tabbaneh, where are you now? We don’t want the hundred dollars that you paid on election day. If we knew what was waiting for us, we wouldn’t have voted for the entire Hariri list. For three years I didn’t see anything from the house of Hariri.” M
ustafa still had high hopes for Saad al-Hariri. “First because he is the son of Rafiq al-Hariri,” he said. “We saw how Hariri made Beirut. We hoped he would build Tripoli and create work opportunities for youth.”

  Mustafa and his two brothers had all been accused of acts of sabotage against the Syrian military and had been jailed and tortured by the Syrians. Mustafa had belonged to the Murabitun militia in the 1980s. He spent six months training in Libya but had left in disgust because Lebanese weren’t trusted with weapons. Mustafa had been injured in the civil war when a shell landed nearby. His entire body had been burned, and his hand was still maimed. His brother Hussein was paralyzed and in a wheelchair, a result of being beaten on the back of the head with a gun while imprisoned.

  Seated with Mustafa and his friends was a thin nineteen-year-old named Ayman. Like many young men, he was marked with crude tattoos and had scars up his entire arm that he had inflicted on himself. “He learned it in prison,” explained Mustafa. Ayman had spent seven months in prison “for a simple problem,” he said.

  One way sectarian leaders in Lebanon distribute favors is by covering legal fees or helping people get out of prison. Ayman had many friends who had been to prison. “Most guys go to jail because of street fights with blades,” said Mustafa, “not for robberies. There is nothing to steal here.” Another thin young man, also called Mustafa, had similar scars from self-mutilation on his arms, which he had created with razors. I asked him why he had done it. “Depression,” he said. “There is no work—we take it out on ourselves.” The older Mustafa explained that young men like him used drugs and sniffed paint thinner.

  They led me around the neighborhood, down dirt-strewn alleys with electrical cables hanging low and blackened walls ridden with bullets. I saw posters of Saddam on the walls next to posters of Rafiq al-Hariri. “Saddam is considered to be oppressed,” Mustafa told me. “The Americans took him to kill him.” Everybody in the area had been saddened by the news of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death as well, he told me: “He was somebody liberating Muslim land.” A group of young men stood beneath posters of Saddam and Hariri, alongside a picture of Khalil Akkawi, the slain founder of the anti-Syrian Tawhid movement, which was militarily active in the 1980s. After Akkawi’s assassination and the arrest or killing of most of Tawhid’s members, there was no powerful group remaining to fill the vacuum in Bab al-Tabbaneh. I asked the young men why they liked Saddam. “He was a Muslim,” they all agreed, “a hero, a real Arab.” They had all been sad and angry when he was executed.

  I asked them what they thought of Saad al-Hariri. “He is a Sunni Muslim, clean,” they said. I asked about Hizballah. “No! No!” they shouted, waving their hands. “Kish! Kish!” one added, making the sound he would make to shoo a dog away. “Nobody likes the Palestinians,” they told me. “They are pimps. They are the cause of all these problems; they let Fatah al-Islam into the camp. They should go back to Palestine.”

  Several hundred Palestinian refugees had been housed in the Bab al-Tabbaneh Elementary School, and others were in seven other schools in the area of Tripoli. Locals had demanded that one of the school gates facing their neighborhood be kept locked. Blue plastic sheeting had been used to divide halls and create private spaces for families. They stood around or sat on chairs that students would soon need, just waiting. Hosam Ilmir, the principal, worried that the school year might be canceled if alternative housing was not found.

  “Bab al-Tabbaneh has the poorest people in the country,” Ilmir told me. “They are strangers in their country. The basic requirements of life are not here. Most students in school are not concentrating because at home their brother or father is on drugs, drunk, beating their mother. They can’t sleep at home, so they sleep in class. There is sexual abuse of children.” The Future Movement paid poor Sunnis when they were needed for voting, protests, or demonstrations in Beirut, he said. Many people came down from Bab al-Tabbaneh for the Beirut protests over the Danish cartoons in February 2006, he said. The state mufti called for people to come down, the Sunni Endowment provided buses to transport some of the protesters, people were paid for their presence in Beirut, and gasoline prices were also covered for the ride. “One guy is responsible for many other guys,” he said, “and he distributes the money.” This was the case in all the main March 14 and Future Movement demonstrations in Beirut, he said.

  “We Sunnis of Lebanon never had a militia,” Ilmir said. “The Sunni army was the Palestinians. Sunnis were businessmen.” Now Sunnis wanted their own militias, he said. Unlike the Future Movement, which offered only money when it needed manpower, “Hizballah always looks after their people.” The Future Movement had influenced people in Tripoli “to think Hizballah started the war and destroyed the country,” he said. He blamed the Lebanese media outlets associated with the Future Movement and March 14, such as LBC and Future TV, for inciting people. “For Sunnis in Lebanon, Hariri was seen as a Sunni leader, and his killing enraged Sunnis,” he told me. “Going back to the postwar period, the Sunni street was divided in two. Some Sunnis supported anybody who fights Israel, and some Sunnis said Hizballah will turn their guns on Sunnis.” He insisted that Sunnis were being armed under the guise of private security companies set up as legalized militias by the Future Movement. People were also joining Salafi movements, he said, because “people need work. If there is money, people will follow you all the way to China.”

  Ilmir agreed that since the fighting began the heat had been turned up on Salafis. “There is a lot of pressure by security forces,” he said. “People with beards are arrested for no reason, like in the Syrian days. They hold you for a week and give you two hundred thousand liras. Getting tortured by your people is worse than being tortured by strangers. As a Sunni, if anybody comes and throws a stone at Israel from Tanzania, I will kiss his hand. This is not just my view, this is the view of the silent majority of Lebanon.” After I left he ran after me and clasped my hand. “Don’t be surprised from what you heard from me,” he said. “This is the view of all educated Sunnis.”

  It certainly was not the view of several taxi drivers I met. One driver who took me from Bab al-Tabbaneh to downtown Tripoli explained the difference between the March 14 and March 8 coalitions. “The opposition thinks we are agents of America and Israel,” he said, and did not disagree with the notion. “We are with America and Israel, and they are with Iran and Syria.” Abu Ali, a taxi driver who picked me up in Tripoli, complained that politicians were destroying the country. “I have twelve children, and I can’t feed them,” he said, not wondering if perhaps he should have had fewer. “They ask me if I’m with Syria or America. No, sir, I’m with America. They freed us from Syria. I don’t hate Shiites because I’m a Sunni. They destroyed the country. Hizballah is the party of the devil. The Palestinians are pimps. The Palestinians are killing our army.” It seemed to me as though Lebanese Sunnis were becoming the new Maronite Christians, no longer interested in Arab nationalism but only in a narrow Lebanese chauvinism, looking to America for protection and hating the Palestinians to the point of sympathizing with Israel.

  The army, long condemned by March 14 politicians, had become a rallying cry for them—so much so that in Marj, a small Sunni town in the Bekaa Valley, I passed under a banner that declared, “The Army is the solution.” It was a sharp contrast to the rallying cry “Islam is the solution,” which one often heard from various popular Islamist movements in the Middle East, such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Although Marj had once been a bastion of Arab nationalism, it had also produced 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah. Not far from Marj was the town of Majd al-Anjar, from where at least a dozen men had gone to fight in Iraq. Salafism was introduced to Majd al-Anjar by Zuheir Shawish, a Kurd married to a local woman. Sheikh Adnan al-Umama was backed by Saudi funds and increased Salafi education. He was also on the Future payroll.

  Minutes after I drove into town, in early August 2007, the mayor and a local police officer arrived to ask me who I was. I arranged to meet the mukhtar (town headman), w
ho lived across from the Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque.

  Graffiti on a wall by the mosque read, “They say it’s a war on terrorism, but it’s a war on Omar,” referring to the Prophet Muhammad’s companion, an important figure to Sunnis. Mukhtar Shaaban al-Ajami had held his position for nine years. A muscular man with a long red beard, he practiced martial arts and bragged about his strength. At forty-six years old, he was a leonine figure. He lived with his wife and four children and had his own farm. He proudly showed off his deep well, sheep, chickens, geese, vegetables, and fruit.

  His grandfather had been mukhtar for forty years, in the days of Ottomans and the French. There were twenty thousand residents in the all-Sunni town, he told me. It had never had strong political parties, and parties never had more than ten people. There was almost no immigration from the town, and since 1985 it had become very religious, with everybody over fifteen attending one of the six mosques.