Well, it has been a truly thrilling few months, blogging here on the Beirut Notebook, but it’s time for bigger and better things. Or, at least, different and similar things. This blog is moving, to a page on The Faster Times, a brand-new, internet-based newspaper, that launched last week.
Nominally, I will be the Lebanon and Syria correspondent for the site, although for the time being at least, I will continue blogging as usual. Most likely the role will evolve over time. The Faster Times seems like a promising venture — click here to read the mission statement from the publisher and editor-in-chief Sam Apple — although it clearly faces some great challenges in both funding and competing with other online news mediums. As with all new projects, there are some kinks to be worked out (so bear with us), but the site is full of energetic, smart journalists and writers, and I’m honored to be a part of it.
Come check me out over there, change your bookmarks and RSS feeds if you got ‘em, and tell your friends. And thanks for reading!
I have an essay in the latest edition of the Review Section of the Abu Dhabi National:
…In Qassarnaba, Hizbollah was everywhere. (Among supporters it is just called “Hezeb,” or “The Party”.) At the mosque down the street from the house, local Hizbollah officials handed out bright yellow paraphernalia – caps, T-shirts, flags – emblazoned in green with a pacified version of the Party’s logo, a fist without the machine gun, and the words “Resistance with your voice”. One of Karla’s brother-in-laws had recently joined Hizbollah as a fighter (he wasn’t active during the 2006 war). At one point in the afternoon, he left and returned a few hours later with his truck covered in Hizbollah flags and posters. “Do you know who they are?” he asked when he caught me studying the images on the back of his truck. I recognised Nasrallah, but not Abbas al Musawi, the previous head of the Party, who was assassinated by Israel in 1992, and got equal billing….
In this David Letterman interview with Sacha Baron Cohen, the “Bruno” star tells a quite funny story about how his character came to interview a leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, in the West Bank.
But, as you may notice, at about thirty seconds in, he says “Now, it’s not that easy to find an actual terrorist…. There’s no Craigslist in Beirut, for example.” I know: Ignore these throwaway lines, Josh. But if I didn’t find a way to sap all the humor out of every reference to my place of work, then I would just be a failed blogger, wouldn’t I? So, ok, yes, for example, there is Craigslist in Beirut. It’s relatively new, and no one uses it (currently it lists 11 apartments for rent in the Beirut metro area, dating back a month), but it definitely exists. Not sure if terrorists are doing personal ads, but you could check under Casual Encounters. There are a whopping fourteen entries there.
As a resident of Beirut, but aficionado of American news stories, I kind of love the odd links that appear when I type “Lebanon” into my Google News search. But sometimes the stories can be hard to tell apart. Take this quiz to see if you can tell in which Lebanon the following headline occurred (I cheated a tiny bit to make this harder):
1. “Man who struck young bicyclist with four-wheeler in Lebanon charged with OUI”
2. “Detectives eradicate poppy plants near Lebanon”
3. “Lebanon woman almost falls victim to e-mail scam offering cash“
Or at least that’s what this headline says. I keep waiting for the story to develop — another suggestion is that they were “explosive arrows” — but it resists…. Stay tuned.
On a visit to the wonderful, and remarkably well-preserved, Citadel of Raymond de Saint-Gilles, in Tripoli, the other day, I couldn’t help noticing that the facility was presently being used as a makeshift operating base for the Lebanese Army. This didn’t seem to affect the tourist trade there too much — guides still lead visitors up and down the building’s winding hidden staircases, and through dark underground tunnels where horses were once stored, or prisoners — although the occasional passageway had been blocked off by stacks of sandbags, and there was one odd moment when a soldier appeared to be taking a shower with a garden hose in one of the back rooms.
On one level, this makes total sense. The citadel is structurally sound and it towers over Tripoli, making it perfectly positioned to guard the city from both external invaders (from the top of the building you have a clear 360 degree view of all avenues of approach) and (more likely) internal conflict. But using this fortress also brings with it some uncomfortable historical signals. After all, the castle is named after its initial occupier, a crusader commander, and it was later rebuilt and occupied by various Ottoman conquerors.
In “Pity the Nation,” Robert Fisk writes that for most of the 1975-76 civil war, the castle in Tripoli was used by a Sunni Muslim militia that based itself in the building’s dining hall. He goes on:
It has been the fate of the Lebanese militias to inhabit the very ramparts of their own history. Israel’s proxy “South Lebanon Army” militia invested the magnificent crusader Castle of the Sea at Sidon in 1982. The Lebanese national army moved into the Castle of St. Louis in Sidon in 1985…. Along the great escarpments that form the spine of modern-day Lebanon, above the rivers that vein their way across the country, the crusader castles that once formed the outposts of Christendom are still part of a front line, albeit with the roles of their defenders historically reversed.
Meanwhile, I’ve seen piles of new sandbags in some of those destroyed, abandoned buildings — the old snipers’ roosts — along the Green Line in Beirut, seeming to indicate that the Army is prepared to use those positions again, if need be. You could say those historical roles have been returned to their rightful place, now, but it doesn’t make it any less creepy.
A conversation the other night reminded me of something that occurred to me when I was visiting Damascus the other week: is there a cultural Beirut vs. Damascus rivalry?
This has come up mostly in discussions with Western friends who have taken up residence in one city or the other. Those in Beirut often come to see Damascus as a slower, more boring version of their chosen city, if pleasant in small doses. Those in Damascus see Beirut as a brash, unlivable version of their acquired homes, if fun in small doses. The Beirut-livers say their city is more vibrant, and anyway the Damascus-livers are just jealous. The Damascus-livers say their city is more authentic, and anyway Beirutis are assholes. This kind of thing can get quite heated.
What I wondered is: does any of this dichotomy apply to actual, you know, people from Beirut or Damascus?
The other night, a Syrian friend living in Beirut told me that he thought there was something similar going on among born-and-bred Syrians, but maybe on a lower burn, and with more self-awareness. His friends and family back in Syria, he says, do find Beirut too brash, but they will still acknowledge that they look up to it — envy was, I think, the word he used — and the possibilities here. (Plus, as one friend living in Damascus, told me, “You have to remember that until 2005, Beirut was the cultural capital of Syria.”) “It’s ambiguous, to say the least,” he said.
And so maybe for actual Damascenes, at least, who can’t take for granted the liberties and offerings of life in a European or American capital, Beirut – despite the many things that make it seem unpleasant – still represents a sort of ideal, a place where Syrian cultural dreams might come to life. And rivalry is just a Western indulgence.
Lots of interesting visitors coming through Lebanon of late — so much so that the opposition leader Michel Aoun even suggested it’s making cabinet discussions among impossible. Dunno about that: I think it might be the cabinet leaders who are making cabinet discussions impossible, but he does have a point:
US General David Petraeus was here on Monday. He met with President Michel Suleiman, and the Prime Minister-delegate Saad Hariri, at Hariri’s house-mansion-complex, and then spoke to reporters in front of a giant portrait of Rafik Hariri. As far as the public can tell, Petraeus was here to commend the Lebanese for a good election and for having a strong economy, but that seems like a rather silly reason for a visit, doesn’t it? Presumably there was also some talk about reinforcing the Lebanese Army.
Terry Anderson, the AP reporter who was kidnapped and held by Hezbollah for nearly seven years, in the 1980s, was back in town. He gave a speech at the Issam Fares Center for Lebanon, where he spoke about press freedoms in the Middle East. My sources say he didn’t stay in town very long after that. Anderson made his famous return visit to Lebanon in 1996 when, accompanied by myriad security and media people, he met with Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and asked him whether he would disavow kidnapping as a tactic. “I’m not saying whether their methods were good or not, right or wrong,” Nasrallah replied. “These actions were short-term, with short-term objectives, and I hope that they will not happen again.”On a personal note, Anderson was kidnapped right after playing a tennis game at some courts in Ain-el-Mreisseh. I wish I knew which ones they were, because I just played tennis in Ain-el-Mreisseh, at the only outdoor courts I know of. Would be nice to find out.
Gad Elmaleh, the provocative French-Moroccan comedian, CANCELLED a trip to Beirut. He was supposed to perform at the Beittedine Festival, in mid-July, but after an article on the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar website accused him of being a former IDF soldier and unabashed supporter of Israeli power (he is part-Jewish, whatever that means), Elmaleh decided the heat was too high here for him to come. This is a disappointment to his fans — it’s a shame, frankly — and has led to a lot of hand-wringing among liberal Beirut society.The Al-Manar story, by the way, was one of the strangest pieces of propaganda — bordering on threatening — I’ve seen in a while. It cited no sources, and yet quoted Elmaleh’s “biography” as saying that Elmaleh “always” says, “if Israel needs him for any war, he will be ready to serve at anytime.”It also reported not that he would be performing on July 13th, 14th, and 15th, but that he would be arriving in Lebanon on July 12th, which sounds like a threat to me.
Israelmay or may not have popped over the border for a visit a week or so ago. There was some debate among southern leaders and UNIFIL folk about an Israeli flag that was flying over a new observation post, on the wrong side of the Blue Line. It appears to have been taken down.
There was some fighting tonight in Beirut — what they call “clashes,” in that euphemistic way — between supporters of the opposition Shiite Amal Movement and supporters of the majority Sunni Future Movement. One woman, a bystander, was killed in the crossfire.
Amal is led by Nabih Berri, who was recently re-elected as Speaker of the Parliament. Future is headed by Saad Hariri, who was tonight elected Prime Minister. (Some reports suggest this may have begun with something as benign as celebratory gunfire after Hariri’s election.) It’s clear that there was a deal made between the two parties to support the other one’s candidate, although as Ms. Tee points out, the deal was made begrudgingly. And supporters of both parties seem to bear the brunt of the lingering resentment.
All evening people have been saying to me that this is a reminder of how delicate the peace is here, but what’s even more striking to me was the Army’s response. Immediately the shooting, the LAF was in the streets, with tanks and artillery, and essentially declared marshall law: anyone spotted carrying a weapon in the streets, they said, would be shot. An unacceptable burden for a city, I would normally think, except that this is an exceptional place, with an exceptional past; are such measures commonplace?
