How Nancy Wished Everything was an April Fool's Joke

According to a friend, Rabih Mroue is as good as it gets when it comes to Lebanese theatre. Although I know nothing about theatre, I enjoyed seeing a play by him when I was in Beirut. It dealt with how ordinary people became caught up in the sectarianism of the civil war - a topic normally avoided in public discourse, so the piece had been subject to censorship.

I don't know where exactly they're planning to take the "Nancy" play, but if it is coming to a location near you it's definitely worth checking out. The article also contains a remarkable incident of the culture minister's personal intervention in order to lift the customary censorship (the play had originally been banned in Lebanon). If it's that easy to change something, why not go for it and change a few of the other problems as well?

Almost there....

For what seems like weeks, the Lebanese army has been saying that they are about to clear out the "remaining Fatah al-Islam" fighters.

This is from today's As-Safir newspaper, translation courtesy of NOW Lebanon:

"The Nahr al-Bared camp witnessed yesterday the heaviest artillery shelling since the clashes started 67 days ago as the army artillery pieces targeted the remaining geographical location that is still under the control of Fatah al-Islam militants (an estimated 40 % of the old camp surface area). Thousands of artillery shells fell on the area from around 4 A.M. yesterday until the evening at a rate of 10 artillery shells per minute, which represents a record since the clashes erupted on May 20."

So 40% of the camp's surface area are what remains of Fatah al-Islam's position. And ten shells per minute averages at one ever six seconds, right? No wonder nothing will be left of the camp.

Meanwhile, many pictures surface of the life of Lebanese army soldiers during the crisis (of course we still don't know much about the life of refugees still inside the camp, or inside Beddawi camp; this information remains confined to blog reporting, such as from Golaniya). This is an example taken from Beirut Spring:

Finally...

...someone (a Lebanese person) is saying something sensible about the situation of Palestinians in the country...

The problem of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is not an Arab or an international problem, it is a Lebanese problem and it is up to us to solve it once and for all. Urgently.

Quote of the Day, if not the next 3 Months, if not the Year

I have always admired people who manage to find quotes by wise/experienced/dead/witty people to express what they want to say. Today one such quote has mysteriously made its way to me, courtesy of the Daily Star newspaper, a Lebanese daily otherwise famous (to me, at least) for its unintentionally funny headlines. Check out these words of wisdom from Abbas Zaki, the official PLO representative in Lebanon:

'Zaki stressed that the situation in Nahr al-Bared should resolve itself as quickly as possible and urged the Fatah al-Islam fighters to lay down their arms and surrender. "The Lebanese judicial system is the fairest in the world," Zaki said.'

It requires no further comment, I believe.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon

Excellent and easy-to-read backgrounder on the situtation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon 1948-present.

Day 17 of the current madness, and counting

"We can't reach people and we can't gain access to where the wounded are," said Igor Ramazzotti, a delegate for the International Committee of the Red Cross. "There's a lot of rubble in the street. That's made it almost impossible to drive into the camp."

Lebanon is burning

Taken from Remarkz

Interesting connections

From the Daily Star, June 1, Lebanon politics section:

Separately, international talks are being held behind closed doors over the possibility of deploying UNIFIL troops along the Lebanese-Syrian border, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Thursday.
"This issue will be a priority after the UN Security Council approved the creation of an international tribunal," the report said. "Due to the current security developments in Lebanon, firm measures need to be implemented to monitor the border in a more efficient way."
Meanwhile, the UN's Lebanon Independent Border Assessment Team started its evaluation of bordermonitoring capacities along the Lebanese-Syrian border. The team's work should be completed in two weeks, the CNA report said. The team arrived on Monday to evaluate reports of arms smuggling across the Syrian border in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. It was dispatched following the council's presidential statement of April 17, in which the council asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to send an independent group to assess security measures along the Lebanese-Syrian border.
The team is led by Lasse Christensen of Denmark and is composed of experts from
Algeria, Germany, Jamaica and Switzerland.

Bad news is back in the news

Well, all of this seems like a re-run of last summer's bad news alerts. But different. On top of the ongoing crisis at the Nahr al Bared camp, where the Lebanese army is still shelling big-time and people are still dying, there are now clashes at Ain al Hilweh camp in Saida (South Lebanon), too. This is really bad news, although it had been expected. A roundup of informed sources includes "Anecdotes from a Banana Republic", which has this video of Nahr al Bared fighting.

(If you put the caption "Lebanese civil war, shelling of Palestinian camps" nobody would notice by the way). And this bit of reporting:

A Swedish woman, a "child safety consultant," according to her business card, briefed us on the latest developments. "We are receiving pictures of the dead-- children, the disabled and elderly. Most of the people who remained are very old; others stayed because they fear not being allowed to return to their homes and being re-located to temporary encampments." "How are you receiving the photos?" I asked. "People are sending them in over their phones. I just received one of a sixty-year old woman, her head blown off. Just now they say a large building near the marketplace, in the densest area of the camp, collapsed from continuous shelling. The situation is bad. Bad. Very bad," she said, and returned to her computer. "Oh and the Lebanese press are denying there are still as many people in the camp," she continued. "There are at least 5,000 who remain inside. They keep reporting that only the Fatah al Islam remain. It's simply not true."

Land and people has more shocking news on the racist fallout of this crisis:

SB was asked for his ID, and when they found out that he is Palestinian, they forced him to lie on the gound for half an hour after which they beat him and kicked him and then told him to go. Just like that, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the busiest district in Beirut. His crime: he is Palestinian.

What's new in the stuff I read - Lebanon crisis, take x

So, I've been trying to follow what is happening in Lebanon these days. Apart from reading the papers, that involves of course checking out what people write on their blogs. And wow, it can get very tiring very fast to try to form a picture of events that way. It seems pretty much everyone loves their conspiracy theories, with a few helpful and/or thoughtful postings that actually have something meaningful to say. That is at least my impression as a consumer of blog posts, while like everyone else I am of the opinion that my posts do have something to say.

Dissatisfied with the reporting in German and English-language media of the most recent outbreak of major violence in Lebanon which started on May 20, I first came across the UN office for humanitarian affairs' news site. That seemed more helpful. Haaretz, the Israeli paper, also carried much more up-to-date info than anything based over here in Europe, at least during the first few days (they must now be content to file this as unimportant, because Lebanon's nowhere to be found on there these past few days. Or maybe it's because so much is happening in Gaza right now..).

Shocked and awed by what had seemed a total impossibility, judging by the conversations I had while in Lebanon - namely, the renewed outbreak of violence between the Lebanese army and an armed group inside Lebanon - I started to read and watch anything I could find. What particularly upset me was the video footage of the first one or two days of shootings, when clashes happened in several places in Tripoli. It's the combination of the sudden outbreak of anarchy, of each person's life and health suddenly being a matter of luck and negotiation, and the abyss of hatred, anxiety and adrenalin visible on the men's faces in these pictures that shocked me. To me, it seemed that they were falling back into old, all-to-familiar patterns of action left over from the civil war, perhaps - just watch the way the shooters (Internal Security Forces?) are interacting among themselves. There is something so everyday about it, underneath all the fear of the moment. Plus, of course, the way many civilians cheer on the army in firing on the Palestinian refugee camp.

This particulary haunted me when I seemed to recognise places in the city that I might have visited myself during the past year.

It seems that I wasn't the only one to make comparisons with the past during these days - as this Comment by apokraphyte from Remarkz shows:

I will relate a personal anecdote. Last summer when I was in Beirut, I recall seeing an exhibit about the famine that resulted from the Ottoman blockade from 1915-1919 (??). It really shook me. I had always tried to understand the civil war according to the political, economic, military and social realities. But these horribly gruesome picture really made me stop and consider where the terrible inhumanity, where the terrible brutality came from. After seeing those photos, I really began to understand how the value of human life can become so degraded that people will trade in it to achieve their political and economic objectives.

The photos still haunt me. Mostly because I think it is almost impossible for me to reconcile the warmth and generosity of most Lebanese I know with this horrible meanness that seems to lurk under the surface of social relations. Maybe I should do a post, but I am fearful of making wild generalizations for no purpose. Dunno.

Although I haven't read much of the sort by Lebanese bloggers. Perhaps an indulgent foreign pastime.

Anyway, as the events continued to unfold, it quickly became clear who was bearing the brunt of violence: Palestinian civilians. Indiscriminate shelling + 40,000 people + 1,5 sqkm in Nahr al Barid refugee camp = anyone can "do the maths", as they say. The few things I could find on what is actually happening (although I have many misgivings about this particular article) inside the camp are haunting. As is the fallout of this crisis for any Palestinian in Lebanon who is now, more than even before, a target for the various Lebanese security agencies. Not to mention that the closest refugee camp, Baddawi, now has to take in all the refugees from Nahr el Bared, putting further strains on the living conditions there.

Help campaigns have sprung up. UNRWA, after initially being fired upon while trying to get supplies into the camp that has now been cut off from water, electricity and of course, food, for 10 days and counting, is now managing to deliver supplies to Baddawi at least.

As to the political narratives of what is happening - they are many! Most people can agree that Fatah al-Islam, the group the army is trying to eradicate by shelling Nahr al Barid camp, is of an "Islamist" persuasion. Backgrounders on the group are everywhere now - just run a Google search. But what do they want, how did they get into the camp, and who sponsors them? Of course the Lebanese government (in Blog posts often known as "the club", "the Welch club", "Hariri, Inc." or "March 14"), and presumably pro-government blogs which I hardly read, think it's the Syrians. As does, interestingly, a portion of the German press (Rainer Herrman, FAZ). And a colleague of mine at work (I work in one of those think tank thingees) would agree. The argument: Syria wants to stop the formation of an international tribunal to try the suspects in the Hariri murder by creating mayhem in Lebanon. It is not entirely clear how the chain of reasoning works in this, but if anything can be counted as initial proof, it would have to be the postponement of the debate on the tribunal in the UN Security Council.

But a lot of people doubt this is the case. Most prominently, Seymour Hersh, the US journalist. He had argued in an article a few weeks back that Fatah al Islam had been funded by the Hariri movement (the strategy: build up a Sunni militia to counterbalance Hizballah). He refutes the argument that Syria supports Fatah al-Islam in a TV interview, but his reasoning seems a bit twisted. To the point of making, as Remarkz once again points out, CNN presenter Hala Gorani appear more together than he is. And that goes a long way of showing how weak his argument must be. And Jamal averts that Hersh's assertion of Hariri funding for Fatah al Islam is based on a single source.

OK, where does that leave us? To be honest, I have no idea and I can only add that I am instintively wary of Syria conspiracy theories. I simply can't see how the current strife is helping Syria in any way - just as I couldn't - and still can't - for the Hariri bombing. So maybe it has all developed its own dynamics which Syria is not controlling, and it is banking on the long-term effect of being needed for overall regional stability. I don't know. We will probably never know - or will we?

And Hizballah - the opposition? They are lying low it seems. It took them a while to come out in support of Palestinian refugees. Everyone is watching which move Walid Jumblatt is going to make next. The US are shipping arms to Lebanon to support the army. Siniora is trying to retain control. As the saga continues... and oh, I forgot to mention the concurrent bombing campaing: bombs set off at night during the past week, in Achrafiyeh (Christian area of Beirut), Verdun (Muslim area of Beirut), Aley (Druze village)...