Sectarianism 2007

While I was involved in a futile persuit at the Lebanese justice ministry in Adlieh (I won't bore you with the details) I overheard a conversation at a roadside cafe.

A customer (Maronite Christian from the south) was telling the woman at the till that when his father died all his old Shia neighbours—that his family lost contact with during the civil war—made the trip to Beirut to attend the funeral.

The customer said he was very moved that his father's old friends "attended the funeral mass with us".

In the atmosphere where Lebanese are suppose to hate each other, it was a reminder that the "other Lebanon" is surviving the sectarian rhetoric of the country's political leaders.

Hope springs eternal....

Presidential elections

Sami Moubayed gives a good general briefing on the Lebanese presidential elections in Asia Times.

"Lebanese politics is sharply polarized into two camps, which refuse to back down...

"One faction is headed by Saad al-Hariri, the parliamentary-majority leader who rose to fame after the assassination of his father, former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, in 2005.

"It includes heavyweights from the Sunni community, like Prime Minister Fouad al-Siniora, the Christian community, including former warlord Samir Gagegea and ex-president Amin Gemayel, and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.

"Most of this team (with the exception of Gagegea and Gemayel) were once loudly pro-Syrian. They worked with and legitimized the Syrian military presence in Lebanon throughout the 1990s.

"As long as the Syrians continued to support and reward them with government office, they remained pro-Syrian. All of them, including Jumblatt and Siniora, were ministers under Rafik Hariri, during the Syrian heyday in Lebanon."

Photo: Election posters of Free Partiotic Movement leader (and presidential hopeful) Micheal Aoun are defaced by supporters of the right wing Lebanese Forces. Posters of Bashir Gemayel, who was killed by a missive bomb in 1982, are eveywhere in Christian east Beirut. However the pro-resistance FPM still enjoys popular support from a majority of Lebanese (Christian and Muslim).

Nahr al-Bared 2009?

According to a confidential technical report to the Lebanese government on the reconstruction of Nahr el-Bared camp seen by Sursock, the Palestinian camp will be rebuilt on a new model.

Out go the tight alleys and close quarter community housing, and in comes European style housing blocs separated by wide roads.

There are two elements to this “new model camp” that should be noted.

The first is that wide roads provide better entry for armoured patrols and thus leaving the Palestinian less able to defend their areas. The Humvees supplied recently by the US would fulfill this task.

Alongside the new style housing, the announcement that the Lebanese army will be running “security” in the new camp.This takes us back to the 1950s and 1960s when Palestinians lived in fear of the internal security services known as Deuxieme Bureau.

These security forces were driven out of the camps in 1969 during a mass uprising. The deal that allowed Palestinians to run their own affairs was concluded that year in Cairo—known as the Cairo Accords (for more on this see Tripoli 1969).

Over the past few years the US and France have sponsored UN resolutions demanding the Lebanese government “disarm all militias” (apart from government approved militias, of course).

Nahr el-Bared was established in 1949 by the Red Cross to rehouse Palestinian refugees who suffered a terrible winter in the Bekaa Valley and the suburbs of Tripoli.

Lying 16 kilometers north of Tripoli and spread over 20 square kilometers, the camp quickly established itself as an important trading hub on the road to Syria. Over the years mini suburbs of wealthier refugees grew around the old camp (the "new camp").

The word is that Bared was an important post in the smuggling route to Syria, with an extensive black market that supplied the surrounding areas (“Black market” can be read as any business not under the control of one of the major Lebanese families).

The camp derived most of its wealth from its gold market and small workshops. The Bared refugees were among the wealthiest (relative wealth that is) of Palestinians in Lebanon.

All of that is now gone:

The latest tally of damage presents a bleak picture. The total bill comes in at $221 million.

The three month siege destroyed 60 percent of the old camp and 40 percent of the new camp. The repair bill is estimated at between $155 million to $180 million.

6,000 residential and commercial units were damaged or destroyed, with the “structural integrity” of the surviving buildings classified as “a risk”. Included in this is a large number of small workshops an single family artisans (many homes doubled as workshops).

The camp lost 3 hospitals, 4 clinics and 15 primary schools (excluding the ones inside the UN compound).

Also lost were mosques, community centers and the offices of associations.

Infrastructure services like water supplies, electricity and telecoms were also destroyed with extensive gorund water polution. Roads have been ruined by heavy military equipment.

Over $14 million in personal property was lost.

The health and psychological damage is difficult to quantify, however the tally of dead stands at around 400, with over 1,000 seriously injured or disabled as a result of the siege.

The main thrust of the report is a mini “Marshall plan” to revive a very depressed area. Included is massive investment in the north, including job creation. These recommendations are the basic building blocs for economic growth and stability… so no doubt they will be completely ignored by the government.

Who will benefit form these giant contracts? Well the NGOs in the north have been swarming around the Future Current of Saad Hariri like flies round shit.

Plus sa change…

Nahr al-Bared 2007

Picture: Grace Kassab/AP Photo

Nahr al-Bared 2004

The camp had:
31,023 registered refugees;
1598 families of 8627 persons.
One Agency health centre with an average of 494 patients per day;
Ten UNRWA elementary/preparatory schools for 5,686 enrolled pupils in 2003/2004;
One community managed women's programme centre that runs skill-training courses and apprenticeship, organizes awareness raising sessions on health, social, legal, human rights and gender issues and coordinates with local NGOs to respond to community needs. Income generation loans and group guaranteed lending are also provided to women.
Mainstreaming programme run in partnership with CBR and Ghassan Kanafani KG.
One Youth Center.
One kindergarten teaching French for 22 enrolled pupils in 2003-2004;
Two community run rehabilitation centres provide facilities for 64 refugees with disabilities.

Nahr al-Bared 1951

Women walk through the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in Lebanon in 1951. Picture: J. Madvo, UNRWA

Emigration 1960

Air Liban

Beirut Film Festival cancelled

"Political instability in Lebanon has forced the organizers of the Beirut Film Festival to cancel this year's event."

African Maids

All Africa news web is running an exposé of the treatment of black maids in Lebanon.

"Sixteen-year old Elisa is from Ethiopia. Her mother died last year, and six months ago she came to Lebanon to work and send money home to her family. For 100 dollars per month she maintains five houses a day.

"When I started work with this family I was sexually abused all the time by the father of my employer. The kids would beat me everyday and I would try to explain to Madame but she wouldn't do anything.

"Sometimes the father would come to sleep with me and threaten that if I refused he would beat me. So I left the house."

Haifa to Beirut in five hours

Haifa-Beirut Service 1920

Beirut 1900s

Postcard of coffee house. Coffee grew in popularity with the rise in factory work, and wages, in the late 1800s.

In fact

UNDP compilation of facts on Lebanon.

Some to consider:

Urban population in 1975 (% of total) 67.0
Urban population 2002 (% of total) 87.2
Estimated urban population 2015 (% of total) 90.1

Total debt service in 1990 (% of GDP) 3.5
Total debt service in 2002 (% of GDP) 12.7

Public health expenditure 2001 (% of GDP) 3.4
Private health expenditure 2001 (% of GDP) 8.8

Kurds in Lebanon

A history of the Kurdish minority in Lebanon published by the International Journal of Kurdish Studies in 2002.

This thorough and well balanced study shows how waves of Kurdish refugees were caught out by the sectarian system that stigmatised them and kept them in poverty and depravation.

Poverty 1959-60

A UN study of Lebanon in the early 1960s found:

"In addition to the disparities in levels of development between Beirut and the peripheral areas; or between the city and the countryside in general, or even as a function of geographic proximity to Beirut, the IRFED study unveiled huge disparities in income distribution for the interval 1959-1960.

"The richest 4 percent among the Lebanese appropriated 32 percent of the national income, whereas the poor constituted 50 percent of the population, including 9 percent which the study considered as 'wretched'."

Students 1971-72

I discovered a Merip report on the 1972 student movement of Lebanon in the vaults of the British Library. The piece by Samih Farsoun is a concise explanation by one of the leading lights of the Arab left on the movement for change.

I have a few disagreements with aspects of his analysis, especially on the question of the "comprador bourgeoisie" and "feudal class". But notwithstanding these differences, I felt it is a valuable insight into the period.

I include all the original images.

I remember the riots and demonstrations as a young lad— I was in an English school in south Beirut at the time.

The AUB recently reprinted a diary of the student sit-in.

Both pieces are available in full at Shemali .

Qana 2006

An aerial photo released by the Israeli army to justify their attack on Qana shows a rocket launch site in a field outside the village (bottom left).

The Israelis claim that the rockets were being fired from near the house where civilians were sheltering.

Yet the roads that can been seen in the Google map (above), marked (I), are 800 metres to the south of the house targetted by the missile, marked as (J).

Qana was the scene of a previous massacre during Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996. Over 100 civilians were killed as they sought shelter in the UN base, marked as (G).

Other launch sites identified in the aerial evidence are in the fields to the south of the village.

Indiscriminate

The New York based Human Rights Watch has published a new report that accuses Israel of the "indiscriminate airstrikes" agaisnt Lebanese civilians. The rights group found no evidence of Hezbollah’s shielding— as Israel claims— behind civilians.

To quote HRW report:
"In the vast majority of cases documented in this report, Israeli air strikes hit near or on civilian objects, killing numerous civilians in their homes or vehicles. While there were instances in which civilian deaths were “collateral damage” from legitimate attacks on military targets, during the vast majority of the deadly air strikes we investigated, we found no evidence of Hezbollah military presence, weaponry or any other military objective that would have justified the strike.

"Human Rights Watch visits to the graveyards in the villages found that the victims of these strikes were buried as civilians, and not honored as “fighters” or “martyrs” by Hezbollah or other militant groups, despite the pride that Hezbollah takes in these labels. Women and children account for a large majority of the victims of Israeli air strikes that we documented.

"Out of the 499 Lebanese civilian casualties of whom Human Rights Watch was able to confirm the age and gender, 302 were women or children.

"Throughout the conflict, Israeli warplanes targeted civilian vehicles on roads and homes, apparently assuming them to be Hezbollah military movements.

"Among the deadly attacks on civilians trying to flee the conflict are the killing of 23 civilians, including 14 children and seven women, fleeing from Marwahin on July 15; the killing of six and wounding of eight civilians fleeing from `Aitaroun on July 19; the killing of three and wounding of 14 civilians fleeing from al-Tiri on July 23; the killing of 2 and wounding of four civilians fleeing from Mansouri on July 23; the wounding of nine civilians fleeing from Mansouri on July 23; the wounding of six ambulance drivers and three passengers in Qana on July 23; the killing of one civilian on a motorcycle on his way to buy food and medicines on July 24; the killing of seven civilians fleeing from Marja`youn on August 11; and the killing of seven and wounding of six civilians in the Beka` Valley on August 14. In all these cases, there is no evidence of a Hezbollah military presence that would justify the attacks."

The photo caption reads:
QANA, LEBANON - JULY 30: (EDITORS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT) A rescue team member extracts the dead body of one of the victims of the Israeli air strike from the rubble of the building that was hit July 30, 2006 in Qana, Southern Lebanon. Approximately 56 civilians were killed, at least 34 of them children, and dozens trapped under debris, after an Israeli air strike on the village of Qana in southern Lebanon, resulted in the deadliest attack since fighting began. (Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images)

Syria denies the right to travel

The human rights group HRINFO reports that Syrian authorities have this week denied Adnan Hamdan, the human rights activist and the member of the committee to protect democratic freedoms, from traveling to Cairo (31/8/2007) to attend a workshop on "blogging and human rights".

Syrian authorities also denied Ghazi Kadour (know as Abu Omar)—who is a member in the trustee council of the committees— from traveling to Amman on 3 September to attend a workshop on human rights.

The authorities also stopped Khai Deen Murad— the secretary of Azadi, a Kurdish party in Syria— from traveling to Norway to visit his family who are living there.

Last Sunday Syrian authorities detained Bashar al-Ameen (Abu Laurain), a political activist and the member of Azadi party. They took him to a unknown place. The whereabouts of Abdraouf Zino is also still unknown.