by Nir Rosen
Musawi dismissed the notion that Hizballah wanted to impose a Shiite state. “We understand the political reality of Lebanon very well,” he said. “No single group can rule by itself. The Lebanese can’t be governed except by consensus, and we want a democratic and consensual country.”
In recent months a military alliance backed by the United States had been established in the region, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had even explained that American arms shipments to Saudi Arabia were meant “to counter the negative influences of Al Qaeda, Hizballah, Syria, and Iran.” “It’s an illusion,” Musawi said. “Even the countries allied with the U.S. know Bush will not stay long. So these allies are not serious. The Saudis have their own concerns, Egypt and Jordan have their own concerns. If Rice says this, it doesn’t mean the Saudis will do this. They will do what’s in their best interest.” But like other Hizballah leaders, Musawi was concerned about the role of Jordan. Its intelligence agents were said to be in Lebanon, and Sunni militiamen were being trained in Jordan.
He rejected accusations that the demonstrations in downtown Beirut were an “occupation.” “Beirut is a cosmopolitan city in the international sense,” he said, “and a city for all Lebanese and its demographic fabric is proof of this. It’s not true that Beirut has one sectarian identity. It has Orthodox, Maronites, Shiites, etc., and Beirut is our capital. The Shiite presence in Lebanon is an old one. We are not refugees or guests. If they don’t like it, they can go find another place.”
Nothing was unique about Hizballah possessing an armed wing. “All the sectarian militias have weapons,” he said. “The only thing we have that they don’t have is missiles, and these cannot be used in a civil war.” But Musawi conceded that Hizballah might not have succeeded in explaining its position on Syria to the people of the north, who had suffered under the Syrian occupation, but he reminded me that until the mid-1990s the Syrians had supported Hizballah’s rivals. “I won’t defend the military, political, or security performance of the Syrians. We were the first victims of the Syrians.” He also reminded me that most of the so-called anti-Syrian politicians had collaborated closely with the Syrians politically and financially until the Hariri assassination. They had thanked Syria in 2005 for one reason, he said: their support for the resistance. “We are friends or enemies based on the position on Israel, not a struggle for power or sectarian differences.”
Superglue and Sectarianism
As the Americans tried to galvanize Sunnis in the region to view Iran and its allies as a threat, they showed more signs of succeeding in Lebanon than anywhere outside Iraq. Events in Beirut in early 2008 reminded me of Baghdad in 2004, when the civil war was just beginning and every morning we would hear of small sectarian incidents. New militias were being formed, such as the all-Sunni Tripoli Brigades in the north. In Beirut, street fights regularly occurred between members of the Future Movement and the Shiite Amal Movement. Amal’s young men were more thuggish, and the movement was less ideological and disciplined than Hizballah, which normally avoided being drawn into internal conflict.
In December 2007 Brig. Gen. Francois al-Hajj was killed by a car bomb. It was the twelfth political assassination in the past three years but the first targeting an army officer. Hajj was expected to be the next commander of Lebanon’s army, but he had also been in charge of the army’s operations in Nahr al-Barid. He had been the army’s liaison with Hizballah and was not at all close to the March 14 camp, so it seemed unlikely that opposition forces were behind it. On the other hand, it may have been the hand of Fatah al-Islam reaching out for revenge. At an opposition demonstration, the army shot and killed seven Shiites who were protesting extended power cuts, complaining that the pro-opposition area of Dahiyeh had more cuts than progovernment Christian and Sunni areas. Neglect of Shiites was the whole reason Hizballah had created its so-called “state within a state.”
In the first few months of 2008 small clashes between Sunni and Shiite militias occurred regularly. A January roadside bomb targeted an American diplomatic convoy, but it was less newsworthy than the increasing sectarian polarization—which grew worse following the assassination that month of the Sunni Internal Security Forces official who was himself investigating Lebanon’s numerous political assassinations. At his funeral crowds chanted, “The blood of Sunnis is boiling!” The next month Saad al-Hariri seemed to move the country closer to a civil war. “If they are after a confrontation, we are up for the job,” the Future Movement leader announced. Sunni thugs then took to the streets and shot into the air in celebration. One Friday the sheikh of the Dhunurein Mosque, in Beirut’s Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood (formerly a front line between Christians and Muslims, now a front line between Sunnis and Shiites), declared that Beirut was occupied and Sunnis had to defend it. The implication was that Shiites were occupying Beirut and that they were the threat. The following day young men from the Shiite Amal militia vandalized the mosque. Graffiti warned Shiites to beware of Sunni rage and invoked the names of early Islamic leaders whom Shiites revile, such as Omar and Muawiya.
In Tariq al-Jadida’s main shopping street, Afif al-Tibi, there was a huge commotion one Monday morning following weekend clashes. The streets were lined with about two dozen retail and wholesale clothing stores owned by Shiites, who are a minority in this largely Sunni enclave just north of Shiite southern Beirut. At least five of these shops had their locks clogged with superglue by Future members. Earlier anti-Shiite slogans had been spray-painted on the Shiite-owned shops. After the superglue incident some Shiite shop owners felt threatened and left their shops closed, choosing to stay home. That weekend there had been intense clashes in the Ras al-Nabaa district. Members of the Future Movement had attacked an Amal Movement office. Following the fighting Future supporters stood guard at every street corner in the surrounding area. Many carried chains, metal clubs, or M-16 automatic rifles. They included Lebanese Kurds. After one young man concealed his M-16 from a passerby, another shouted at him, “Why are you hiding it? Show it, we don’t care! Let them know that we have guns too!” Shooting could be heard all night, and in Tariq al-Jadida supporters of the Future Movement destroyed the locally famous Ramadan Juice shop, which was owned by a Shiite man from Dahiyeh and had been open in the neighborhood for twenty years. Future members claimed he was a spy for Hizballah. One Future member explained why they were harassing local Shiites. “We don’t want them in Beirut,” he said. “Beirut is only for Sunnis.”
At the time of the superglue incident, the head of the local Future militia on Afif al-Tibi Street was Abu Ahmad. He had prevented hotheaded militiamen from burning down the Shiite-owned shops. He had also previously refused to arm his men or allow them to maintain a weapons depot because he sought to avoid problems with Shiites. He explained that Sunnis had been living side by side with their Shiite neighbors for many years and that they should solve their problems peacefully. He was replaced, however, by a more aggressive man, said to hate Shiites and love weapons, who armed the young men.
Although the Shiites of Tariq al-Jadida were not overtly political, it was becoming clear that they were not trusted or wanted. Militiamen assigned to intelligence duties stood watch on street corners all day long. Young men worked on various shifts, usually at night, getting paid a few hundred dollars a month, with the promise of a bonus if they took part in fighting. Some were posted in other areas, where more bodies were needed to confront the Shiite Amal movement, a less ideological and more sectarian group than Hizballah. Sunni militiamen coordinated with members of the security forces and army. The Future Movement also mobilized Sunnis from Akkar, who were considered more aggressive than Beiruti Sunnis. Other “real Sunnis” were imported from Dinniyeh and the town of Arsal in the Bekaa Valley to defend the Sunnis of Beirut. Numerous apartment and hotel rooms around the city were rented for them. The Future militias were also recruiting retired army and intelligence operatives. There was even a Future security company in Tariq al-Jadida, its office festooned with posters of Rafiq
and Saad al-Hariri. Senior March 14 leader Walid Jumblatt confided to me that Sunnis were joining militias and training in Jordan. He disapproved of this and said they should join the security forces.
Shaqer al-Berjawi was one of the new militia leaders in Tariq al-Jadida. His movement was called the Arab Current. Berjawi had once belonged to the Murabitun militia and fought in west Beirut during the civil war. After Hariri was assassinated, he began forming his new movement (with support from the Future Movement) because Sunnis felt leaderless and weak. He recruited Fatah supporters from the Palestinian camps to fight alongside Sunnis, a growing phenomenon. Hamas members in Beirut blame his people for clashes that occurred between rival Palestinian factions. Berjawi participated in the January 2007 clashes and is rumored to be among the Sunni snipers who were targeting Shiites. He was arrested afterward and accused of weapons smuggling but soon was released.
I met a nineteen-year-old black-market weapons dealer in Tariq al-Jadida who had been selling guns illegally for nearly three years. “Its very profitable,” he told me. “You can double your investment, especially in these times, when all gun prices are getting more expensive lately and everybody is worried about themselves and getting ready for the ‘zero hour.’ People will defend their sect.” He explained that he sold to Sunnis, and occasionally to Christians or Druze, but never to Shiites because “these are the people we want to fight and they have a lot of weapons.” He admitted that until 2005 he had never heard sectarian language. “Now everybody is speaking about sectarian conflict,” he said. “Now even a four-year-old or a six-year-old kid speaks of Sunnis or Shiites.”
Business started getting good for him after the so-called “Tuesday incident,” which is how many Lebanese refer to the January 2007 clashes, and it improved again after the “Thursday incident,” when Amal and Future supporters clashed in 2008. “After those incidents, people demanded guns in a big way,” he told me. The Kalashnikov was in highest demand, with people often opting for a package deal including an ammunition vest and ammunition for eight hundred dollars.
Most of his customers were in Tariq al-Jadida, where he said three-quarters of the people were now armed. The majority of his clients were men between the ages of twenty and thirty, though women were also purchasing small pistols. Almost all of his clients were with the Future Movement.
The young gun dealer, thin and tattooed, also belonged to the local Future militia and worked as a guard. He explained that he had received paramilitary training on a base in Akkar for twenty days along with about sixty-five other young Sunni men. Retired army sergeants had done most of the training, though foreigners, including an Australian of Lebanese descent, had trained them in close protection. The training was conducted under the cover of the Secure Plus security company, one of several owned by Saad al-Hariri. The Interior Ministry was stacked with Sunnis loyal to Hariri, and its Internal Security Forces were viewed by Hizballah as a Sunni militia. Pro-Hariri control of the ministry has eased the way for legalizing these companies-cum-militias.
By the spring of 2008, it seemed as though there were two Lebanons: a Sunni one and a Shiite one, with less important groups just bystanders. The youth, not remembering the violence of the 1980s, seemed eager for another civil war. It was a good time to join Sunni militias, the gun dealer said, because there were several groups recruiting, and this was driving up prices for new recruits. The Murabitun, a civil war-era Sunni militia that had been reactivated, allegedly paid its men nearly three hundred dollars a month. Some Secure Plus recruits guarded installations such as the Saudi embassy. Others wore civilian clothing and monitored Sunni neighborhoods or stood on standby, well armed and uniformed, in case fighting erupted. If recruits proved especially capable, my young interlocutor explained, they were sent to front-line areas such as Ras al-Nabaa, where there were many Shiites. Some were selected for more advanced training in Jordan, which lasted longer. His brother had gone for this training, but graduates were secretive about what they were taught.
I asked him if he wanted to fight Shiites. “Definitely,” he said. “I want to defend my sect. Shiite areas are different. There are no police there, they train kids from an early age and put hatred in their hearts from an early age and teach them that Sunnis killed their leaders. I feel threatened leaving Sunni areas. Iran and Syria have a plan to control Lebanon but so far have not succeeded.” He drank alcohol and was not religious, so I asked him why he was fighting for Sunni Islam. “My identity card says I am a Sunni Muslim,” he said, “and I have to defend my sect. Before I didn’t know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. Shiites made us hate them by their acts.” He expected that there would be a war with Shiites, and he hoped so, not just because it would be good for business. “Sunnis can win only if they are united,” he told me with obvious approval, but he explained that they were not relying merely on the Sunnis of Lebanon but on the help of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni countries. “The Saudis will help. The Saudis are funding all this, not Hariri. Tariq al-Jadida is the castle of Sunnis. If it falls, Lebanon falls.”
The May Events
On May 1 Walid Jumblatt, the most prominent Druze politician in Lebanon and the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, called a press conference and announced the discovery of cameras that were monitoring Beirut International Airport. He implied that Hizballah was planning an operation and that it might fire shoulder-launched rockets at planes on the runway. He also warned that Hizballah had its own communications network. Two days later Jumblatt called for the Iranian ambassador’s expulsion and asked that flights from Iran to Beirut be banned to curtail the delivery of financial and military aid to Hizballah. Jumblatt then attacked the airport’s security chief, Gen. Wafiq Shuqair, accusing him of conspiring with Hizballah to install the secret cameras. Two days later, on May 5, Lebanese judicial authorities announced that they had ordered an investigation into the affair. Coincidentally or not, statements from American military officials were published in the Western media that day accusing Hizballah of training Iraqi Shiite militias.
On May 6 the government reassigned Shuqair. Given Hizballah’s angry reaction to his removal, it appears the charges against him were true. Then the Council of Ministers questioned the legality of Hizballah’s parallel communications network, which was a key element of the group’s military command and control ability. The government called the communications network “an attack on state sovereignty.” It was the first time Hizballah’s military was challenged internally; until then the weapons of the resistance had been off-limits. The government’s moves were conducted in coordination with the Americans and the UN envoy, who warned that Hizballah “maintains a massive paramilitary infrastructure separate from the state,” which “constitutes a threat to regional peace and security.” Nasrallah’s deputy Sheikh Naim Qasim said the network was an integral part of the resistance. It seemed like a culmination of a process beginning in September 2004, when the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1559, which supported Hizballah’s rivals’ call to disarm the resistance.
The General Federation of Labor Unions called for a strike and demonstration on May 7 to demand that the government raise the monthly minimum wage, which had not been changed since 1996. Hizballah and its supporters planned their mobilization for the same day. Early that morning Shiite demonstrators blocked bridges and roads throughout the city, including the important airport road, with burning tires, vehicles, garbage containers, cement blocks, and earthen mounds. The airport suspended flights. Many of the demonstrators were masked; some were armed.
A grenade exploded in the Corniche al-Mazraa neighborhood, wounding several people. As it became clear that the situation was getting out of control, the General Federation of Labor Unions called off the demonstration and strike it had planned for that day. As Sunni and Shiite zaaran clashed, throwing stones at one another, Lebanese soldiers separated the two sides by firing into the air and using tear gas. Upon hearing that the Future Movement’s office in the Nuweiri district
was destroyed, Sunni supporters of Hariri in the north and the Beqaa gathered to come to Beirut and face the opposition. Small armed clashes occurred throughout the city.
I hurried toward Ras al-Nabaa with some local journalists searching for where shots were coming from and spotted Amal fighters hiding behind street corners and Sunni fighters huddled in front of Future offices. As armed men materialized from behind corners on both sides, I suddenly realized things were potentially more lethal than I had thought. I wanted to leave immediately, but Nada Bakri, a fearless stringer for the New York Times, went charging ahead, so I followed her, not wanting to appear to be cowardly. In the end, an armed man with a revolver in front of a Future office told us to go away, which I did with relief. That evening Hizballah supporters fortified barricades to block the road to the airport. Tents were brought in preparation for a long stay.
On May 8 I returned to Corniche al-Mazraa, to the divide between Barbir and Tariq al-Jadida. Hundreds of disorganized Shiite youth, mostly teenagers from other areas, were gathered on the road. Lebanese soldiers prevented them from crossing to the other side. The call to prayer blared from the nearby Sunni Jamal Abdel Nasr Mosque. The Shiite zaaran stood up. “The blood of Shiites is boiling!” they shouted, adding religious slogans. Some were holding stones or chips of cinder blocks; others had knives, clubs, and plastic bottles full of gasoline. They threw their stones and cinder-block chips across the road at the soldiers and the Sunni neighborhood. The soldiers threw the stones back. One of them was filming the Shiite youth. Some soldiers pleaded with the youth to stop, while others loaded and aimed their M-16s. I was surprised by how provocative the Amal supporters were. For them it was just a show of force to intimidate Sunnis. Older men, with serious faces, well-groomed stubble, and shirts buttoned all the way up, herded the boys. Whenever it seemed as though the boys were about to cross to the Sunni side, they were reined in. I felt as though Hizballah had Amal pit bulls who were foaming at the mouth, eager to attack, and that Hizballah was letting them bark and bite a little to show the other side that it was holding the leash and could let go at any time.