Hezbollahland
April 15, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Exactly 30 years ago Palestinians attacked a church. Radical Christians retaliated with a massacre on a bus. And so began Lebanon’s plunge into the hell of civil war that pulverized the city center to powder and carved the rest of Beirut (and the rest of the country) into besieged ethnic cantons ruled by militias. The beginning of that war wasn’t being celebrated, exactly. Rather, the anniversary was re-branded and its meaning turned into its opposite. April 13 is now being associated with unity rather than balkanization and war.
The streets of Christian East Beirut and Sunni Muslim West Beirut emptied into Martyr’s Square and the rest of downtown. Groups of families and friends marched into the city center waving Lebanon’s national cedar tree flag. Drivers honked their horns more insistently than they do all the time anyway, if such a thing is even possible. Famous Lebanese musicians performed set pieces for an ecstatic crowd on an enormous stage next to the tent-city.
Thousands of people raised their hands into the air and placed their thumbs and index fingers together into the shape of a cedar tree.
Lebanon’s unity festival was closely associated with the democratic opposition. The pro-Syrian crowd didn’t come down here. But to those who say this is primarily a movement of middle-class Christians: nonsense. My hotel is in the Sunni Muslim quarter of West Beirut. By evening the streets in my neighborhood were empty. Not only were they empty of people. The streets were also empty of parked cars. The neighborhood was abandoned as totally as if it had been forcibly evacuated. It appeared every single last person was downtown doing as much as they could to heal their country.
But Lebanon is still not united, not really. A Hezbollah spokesman said earlier in the week that his group would participate in the festival. I saw no evidence of that whatsoever. They did not appear to come into the city. So I went down to their stronghold in the southern suburbs myself. It is only a five minute drive from downtown.
East and West Beirut are packed from one end to the other with restaurants, bars, nightclubs, casinos, bohemian bookstores, outdoor cafes, and shopping districts that rival the best in the world. Hezbollahland is a world apart. It is like another country down there – a bad country. It is a terrorist-ruled security-state within a state. The Lebanese Armed Forces are not allowed to enter Hezbollah’s territory. Most Christians and Sunni Muslims never dare set foot inside. (Hezbollah is a radical Shiite Muslim militia.) They don’t even know what Hezbollahland looks like. I do, and I took some photos.
Few portraits of Rafik Hariri are on display. Far more prevalent are pictures of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.
Most prevalent, however, are portraits of slain Hezbollah “martyrs.” A new one appears every couple of feet. The streets are ruled by their ghosts as much as they are ruled by the religious fanatics with guns.
Those fanatics with guns are everywhere. Some wear the Hezbollah uniform. Most don’t. I took few photos of these men because I was told, in no uncertain terms, that doing so would be extremely unwise. I did, however, manage to sneak in one snapshot from a long way away. You can see him in the bottom-left corner below.
Buildings are sandbagged. Surveillance and security watchtowers are erected in front of restaurants and stores. A Lebanese-American historian based in West Beirut told me that Hezbollah is better armed and more militarily powerful than the Lebanese army. East and West Beirut are as free-wheeling as Hong Kong, but Hezbollahland is a virtually sovereign fascist police state. It is so near to downtown I can walk to it. Now that I’ve been there and know how close by it is, I can almost feel its breath on my neck.
This cannot continue. Parts of Lebanon are still mobilized for civil war. Peace, democracy, and genuine national unity require not only elections but the disarmament of Lebanon’s terror militia. It can’t happen unless Syria, Hezbollah’s patron, is first thrown out of the country entirely. Even then it will be a long, arduous, delicate, perilous process.
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