Lebanon Power Struggle: Sunni and Shia tensions blow up in Beirut

By: Yasmina Hatem

 
NEW YORK - May 9 2008 (Arabisto.com): Lebanon has been on a standstill for over 18 months --A country with no president since last November. Something was bound to happen. The Sunni/Shia tensions that have been escalating all over the region in the last few years are now catching up in the streets of Beirut. And for the Lebanese, a glimpse of a civil war they thought was over and done with. 

I was there in 2005, when Lebanese Christians and Muslims stood side by side, holding crosses and crescents in the same hand, holding the Cora'n and the Bible in proof that we had come a long way --that Christians and Muslims would never take arms against each other in our country.

What we didn't see coming --at least not then-- was that the new rise of tension would between Muslims themselves. Maybe this isn't confessional, like Hizbollah Secretary General suggests. Maybe this is political. But politically, Sunnis and Shiaas have been increasingly competing, especially since the Iraq war and the Iranian uprise.

The Americans waged a war in Iraq without realizing just how bad this would be for the region. They weakened Iran's biggest enemy, giving the Iranian regime a new hope for power. Syria's regime, the Baath party, a minority in a country where the majority is Sunni, ally themselves with the rising Iranian power. All fund Hizbollah. And as usual, Lebanon takes the fall for every tension created in the Arab world. Lebanon fights the Israeli war. Now Lebanon fights the sunni/shia war. The problem is, we know who is stronger.

Once again, Hassan Nasrallah wanted to show us that he and his party can do whatever they want whenever they want it, whether the rest of the country agrees to it or not. When he wanted to provoke Israel in 2006, he did it, ... [Read More]

The number 2 Al Qaeda leader, Ayman Al Zawahiri said on Tuesday that Lebanon will play a pivotal role in the Islamic fight against "the Crusaders and the Jews."


He was reffering to the UNIFIL forces who have been in Lebanon since the end of the war between Hizbollah and Israel in August 2006.


With Lebanon postponing the presidential election for the 19th time on Tuesday and with the killing of two phalangists ( or the Kataeb Party, a Christian party lead by the Gemayel family) over the weekend, Lebanese people are stuck in a dangerous limbo with no end in sight.


Read this interesting article in Time
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1733996,00.html

Its not unusual to see fistfights outside a Night Club, after hours. What's unusual about Lebanon lately is that we are talking about a whole new level of violence. I've been in Beirut for less than 24 hours --and already heard stories that make me wonder: have we begun to turn on each other?

"A group of guys from Amal (Shiite political party led by parliementary president Nabih Berri) tore a picture of Rafik Hariri (Sunni former prime-minister assassinated in 2005) in a Sunni neighborhood. Fights broke out."  That was the first story I heard, from my own father, as he drove me home from the airport. I didn't think much of it, it happens a lot.

Later that day, friends told me about all the New Year's eve gossip I had missed the night before. Overbooking at a huge party turned into a bloody fistfight. "A friend told me he was going home because he was covered in blood. No one had hit him, he hadn't hit anyone, he was just covered." No one could tell me what happened exactly. It was chaos, that's all they knew.

 

A few days before, the biggest, trendiest club in town, Crystal, was controversially  raided by Security officers who not only stopped the music and ordered everyone to lay on the floor, but also branded their weapons, terrorizing the clientele. Major Lebanese newspaper reported on the incident. Rumor has it that the raid was ordered by the general director of the General Directorate of General Security --because Crystal was too booked to accomodate his son, Ali, with a table. Naharnet, the website of An Nahar newspaper , reported that 2 security officers and 3 servicemen were arrested on tuesday and that Prime Minister Fouad Saniora asked the Judiciary to investigate.

As if all of this weren't enough, my 14-year-old brother and 17-year-old sister tell me stories of a different generation altogether.... [Read More]

Over the last few weeks, random shootings have killed and injured over a dozen people in the U.S. --at the mall in Nebraska; at the church in Colorado; and now at a school in Las Vegas. Isn't it about time that Americans realize that the gun laws are a serious problem?

 

The problem is obviously a national one. This happens everywhere, North-East, West Coast, the Mid-west. Basically anywhere and everywhere. And as long as the gun laws don't change, this new trend is just going to get more and more popular amongst the lonely suicidal minds who want their 15 minutes in the spot-light --even post-mortem.

 

Now six high-school students were injured on tuesday in what would have been a simple fight --but when you have guns within an arm's reach, the simple fight turns bloody.

 

For more on this story please follow the link below:

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1156428420071212

In the United States, when the time comes to elect a president, it takes years of campaigning, elaborate programs and live debates like the one we witnessed last night, to form an opinion about the president one would like to vote for. In Lebanon, when the time comes to elect a president, it takes years of assassinations, a list of names with political descent, and a number of closed meetings, like the ones General Aoun has been having with all the members of the majority.


Today, the General is meeting Saad Hariri in Paris, in what the media has branded "the last chance meeting." It is not only a closed meeting, it was supposed to be a secret meeting, according to the Lebanese daily newspaper l'Orient le Jour. I wonder what makes people think that after months of disagreement, one meeting between two party leaders could potentially lead to a solution.

A little background: Lebanese parliament  members are supposed to elect a new president before November 24th. A few months ago, several Christian Maronites (the only ones allowed to become president in Lebanon) presented their candidacy. The campaign consists of one or two speeches, many closed meetings, and a name which usually descends from a family with a  long history in politics. And as Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nassrallah put it nicely, the name is much more important than the program.

Because in Lebanon, choosing a president is not an election. it's a negotiation.

As I watched the democratic presidential debate last night, I felt passionate about my support for one candidate and my disgust for another.  The debate spurred conversations between my friends and I, sharing opinions and feeling like we were able to think for ourselves. I voted in a poll over who won the debate -the only vote I'll ever get to cast. But at least I felt like I was participating.

In Lebanon, we are just sp... [Read More]

Another Bomb in Lebanon, Another shock 

By: Yasmina Hatem 

 
NEW YORK: Sept. 19 2007, (Arabisto.com)

 
This is how it happened.

 

I was out on the field working on a story about the Khalil Gibran International Academy. I actually thought that is what I was going to blog about today. Then I got the phone call -from my Lebanese roomate who lives in New York as well. "Did you hear?" he asked. "There was a bomb in Beirut. A really huge one."

My heart stopped.

 

Like I said, this is how it always happens because this has happened quite a lot in the last year. But it has the same effect everytime: shock, sadness, and inevitably, worry -for my entire family and all my friends who live there.

 

So I did what I usually do: I went down my list of calls to make, starting with my father and my sister. I dial their numbers but I already know I'm never going to get through. The phone connections are so busy there, they get saturated. I send out text messages hoping I'm going to get replies.

 

Then I start getting bits of information -the bomb was in Sin El Fil, a Christian neighborhood of the capital -I worry a little because that's right where my best friend works. I said "I worry a little" because the truth is, when these car bombs happen, usually 2 or 3 people die, and the chances that someone you know was there are very slim. So I casually sent her a text message, just to make sure and ease my mind.

 

"They killed another parliement member - Antoine Ghanem," my father told me when I finally reached him on the phone. "Ok," I thought.

 

This is terrible. My country is falling to pieces. We're a week from the presidential election, an issue that has us on the edge for mont... [Read More]

 

I remember, just over a year ago, sitting at a table at the opening of a gorgeous rooftop bar in Beirut. It was a typical Beirut Night, with drinks and friends and the whole nine yards.I remember the view: Beirut looked so beautiful. And it was, for one last night.

 

I remember going back home around four in the morning, after our usual stop at the 24hour breakfast place.

 

An hour later, Beirut was at war.

 

 

It was one thing being at war with Israel. But then we turned on each other. A cold war, yes, but a war nonetheless.

 

It was one thing when the United States went to war with Iraq to eliminate Saddam or the "weapons of mass destruction" or whatever polittically correct excuse they used to do it. But then the Iraqis turned on each other -in a not so cold war.

 

It was also one thing when Palestinians were fighting together for their cause. But they turned on each other, too.

 

 

We coud make it simple and see it as a pretty black and white scenario: The anti-western Arabs are fighting the pro-western Arabs. But when is anything simply black and white in the Middle-East? The problem is that no one seems to understand that gray area.

 

 

I sat at that same rooftop bar in Beirut two months ago. It had the same gorgeous view. The people around me were still smiling, looking gorgeous, drinking and dancing and being Lebanese. An hour away from that very place, Lebanese soldiers were fighting Fateh Al Islam. Just an hour away, bullets were flying, people were getting killed. But we were drinking and dancing and being Lebanese. Most would probably say that's a pretty careless attitude -what kind of people would be partying with a war going on an hour away?

 

 

Well, the kind of people who live in the Midd... [Read More]