New Map of West Beirut

Here is a map of the current geography of power in West Beirut, courtesy of Now Lebanon. This doesn't break the divisions down into which element of the opposition (Hezbollah, Amal, and/or Syrian Social Nationalist Party) is controlling which neighborhood, but it does give you an idea of the extent that the opposition in general now controls. But take note of the heading here: "Beirut under siege" and the choice of color--as if the city is drowning in blood. Although Now Lebanon is not nearly as partisan as some other blogs I've been reading, it is generally a pro-government website.

That said, this article from Now Lebanon gives a good summary of the situation up to now.

The latest news is that Hezbollah is now operating in the Chouf, the area southeast of Beirut, which is predominantly Druze and loyal to March 14th MP, Walid Jumblat.

Two Hezbollah fighters died in Aley, a town in the Chouf, earlier this evening. Officially, thirteen people have died from the current conflict, though given the virtually constant gunfire between 7:00 p.m. yesterday and noon today, I find that number hard to believe.

Beirut has never been quieter than it has been this evening since I arrived last fall . In my neighborhood at least, there is not a car on the street, nor a gunshot in the air. As a friend just remarked, it's like being at the top of Mount Everest.

Quiet Evening in Hamra

Nearly all is quiet in Hamra this evening, with only an occasional shot fired in the distance, which a friend of mine described as "calm shooting." In addition to Hezbollah, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and possibly Amal, are apparently controlling the neighborhood, according to Now Lebanon.

We took a walk around campus at sunset. Everything is quiet; a good number of faculty and a handful of students were strolling through AUB's leafy campus. We walked as far as the medical gate, on the campus's southeast corner and saw a large group of Hezbollah (and presumably, Syrian Social Nationalist Party soldiers) guarding the crossroads between Bliss Street and Rue Clemenceau. Bliss was completely empty until a convoy of tanks rolled through at about 8:00 p.m. So my earlier report that Hezbollah is handing control of neighborhoods over to the military does not seem to be entirely true, at least not here. Instead, it seems that Hezbollah and SSNP militias are rooted in the neighborhood and the Lebanese military accepts their presence.

The fighting, which had been limited to West Beirut and the Bekka, has now apparently emerged in the southern town of Saida and the northern city of Tripoli. I heard from someone with a direct eye on the situation that Hariri's residence in Qoretian is currently under firm control by the Lebanese military and his own Future Movement security.

Renewed Fighting in or near Hamra

After a lull in fighting for most of the late morning and early afternoon, we are hearing bursts of gunfire up the hill in or near Hamra again. I spoke with a friend who has some inside sources and she confirmed that Hezbollah has basically taken over most of West Beirut except for a few pockets of resistance, among them, MP Walid Jumblat's residence in Clemenceau (just to the east of Hamra) and Hariri's residence in Qoreitem (south of Hamra). She also confirmed that once they take over a neighborhood, Hezbollah has been handing control over to the armed forces.

Strangely, Christian East Beirut has been completely silent and uninvolved with these clashes over the past few days. I hope it stays that way but a student of mine said yesterday that he thinks that will be the next step for Hezbollah--to start moving into the Christian neighborhoods. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Christians are split more or less between the governing March 14th coalition and the March 8th opposition. But when the opposition Christian leader, Michel Aoun called for his followers to take to the streets and topple the government two days ago, very few, if anyone heeded his call, suggesting that there is not much impetus among even the opposition Christians to get involved in the current conflict.

Updated Map

Jeha's Nail has been updating his map. Here is the latest version.

Things have been almost completely quiet in the Hamra/Ras Beirut area for the past hour. Damn it. Just as I wrote that, I heard a few shots ring out. More now.

This is the time when I really wish that I had started learning Arabic when I first arrived in Beirut because the Lebanese tv channels (those that haven't been shut down) are wall-to-wall coverage. I've been watching them, just for the video they're showing, but to be honest I haven't been able to tell from the pictures alone where they are showing. But the images are mostly of sunny streets empty of all traffic but military tanks and a handful of male pedestrians milling around. They showed a bunch of barricades that have since been pushed aside, which are painted in light blue with Hariri's face stenciled on them.

The AP is reporting that Hezbollah has seized control of much of West Beirut.

Anyway, we have plenty of food in our apartment and are trying to distract ourselves for the time being by watching High School Musical, just about the absolute perfect antidote to round the clock war coverage.

Friday Morning

This map, put together by Jeha's Nail, gives you some idea of the geography of the fighting so far, though it may be outdated already.

I slept for about three hours last night before I was awoken at 7:15 by heavy gunfire.

To cut to the chase: according to www.nowlebanon.com, Hezbollah now controls Hamra, Verdun, and Ras Beirut. According to www.naharnet.com, there is currently a gun battle going on on Sadat Street, the road that leads from AUB's campus up to Qoreitem, where majority MP, Saad Hariri's residence is.

According to an anonymous source, who lives in the middle of one of the conflicted areas, Hezbollah is winning neighborhood after neighborhood BUT is immediately turning each neighborhood over to the military. This, in my humble opinion, is a good thing. The military, as I said before, is staunchly neutral (some might argue, too neutral) and non-sectarian. By handing control over neighborhoods to the military, Hezbollah is saying that they do not wish to take over the city (as Nasrallah insisted in his speech yesterday) but rather wish to put the city in the hands of the military. A couple other people I've spoken to think that this strategy could end the conflict relatively quickly.

Nonetheless, there are still armed gunman walking and riding on motorcycles through the streets of Hamra (we've heard this from our neighbors who ventured up there earlier this morning). These men could be the neighborhood militia or Hezbollah supporters, but they seem to be operating fairly strategically rather than chaotically and indiscriminately.

In other important, and not so settling news, there are reports on naharnet.com that the building of the pro-government newspaper Al Mustaqbal has been burned down. According to nowlebanon.com, the pro-government Future News tv channel shut down after receiving threats. Control over the channel has been handed over to the military.

A German news agency (DPA - sorry, I don't have a link) is reporting that Iran has offered a deal (presumably to America) to put the reigns on Hezbollah in exchange for some leniency on their nuclear programs. Some might argue that this sort of move reflects the puppet strings that are really controlling this conflict. As it has been throughout much of its history, Lebanon just happens to be in the center of a much larger geopolitical struggle, in this case between Iran and the United States, with supporting roles played by Syria and Saudi Arabia.

A Note on the Geography (and Climatology) of the Conflict

After my last post, a terrificly loud thunderstorm washed over Beirut from the sea, dropping heavy rain on the city for about 45 minutes. Apparently, the militias can handle eight hours of gun battles but as soon as it starts raining, they're on their way home. Granted it's 3:15 in the morning here, but I haven't heard a sound since the rain stopped about a half hour ago.

Yesterday, the clashes were primarily in areas traditionally prone to sectarian conflict--the borders between Sunni and Shia neighborhoods. (I apologize for the map here; it is very hard to find a good map of Beirut--the result of a country with only one geography department in it). Beirut, as you may know, is split into West Beirut and East Beirut, and according to many geographies now, the Southern Suburbs as well. Since the Civil War, the West side has been predominantly Muslim and the East, generally Christian. The Southern Suburbs (and really, much of the southern part of the city) are heavily Shia. But throughout the city, there are exceptions to these designations, at the scales of both the neighborhood and the home.

Hamra, as I said earlier, is in West Beirut and is mostly Sunni, although AUB's presence gives it more of a cosmopolitan flavor. There are churches and mosques in this neighborhood but the main religion in Hamra seems to be university-ism, with a healthy collection of book stores, cafes, and fast food restaurants. There is also an increasing number of high-rise luxury apartment buildings, which look out to the Mediterranean Sea below (I'll write more about them in another post). Although once considered the hinterlands of Beirut, Hamra became a de facto city center during the Civil War, as many of the city's shopping, eating, and entertaining businesses moved here after they were destroyed downtown. When Rafic Hariri rebuilt the actual City Center in the 1990s, Hamra lost a bit of that activity. But since December 2006, when Hezbollah, Amal, and the Christian Free Patriotic Movement erected still-present tent cities downtown, the city center has been a heavily secured ghost town. And, to a large degree in consquence, we are seeing more and more restaurants, cafes, cinemas, and theaters in Hamra, as people no longer go downtown unless they absolutely have to. (Gemayzeh and Ashrafiya, in East Beirut, have also seen a rise in entertainment related business activity and corresponding gentrification.)

Hamra is surrounded by middle and upper class Sunni neighborhoods, although there is a fairly significant Amal (Shia) presence in Zarif, which is a short walk away. But in any case, it was very surprising to hear fighting going on here today. In concordance with my own ears, www.nowlebanon.come reported shortly after we got back to campus that militias from Hezbollah and Future Movement (Hariri's ruling, Sunni, party) were fighting on the streets of Hamra. (An American friend of mine, who has lived here for about five years now, said to that: "Bullshit. Hezbollah does not just send militias to roam the streets of Beirut...They might have been Hezbollah supporters, but they couldn't have been directed by the leadership of the party to go out and pick fights in Hariri's own neighborhood.") There were also reports of fighting in Verdun, a very expensive Sunni neighborhood a bit south of Hamra. Verdun was the location last spring of a bomb thought to be ignited by people loyal to the Fatah-Islam movement but it otherwise is rarely if ever a locus of any sort of sectarian tension. Most of the fighting, according to early news reports was in Msaitbeh, Mazraa, Ras Nabaa, and Beshara Khoury. At one point, while eating dinner at a neighbor's apartment whose balcony overlooks the corniche (the beautiful boulevard and pedestrian walkway along the Sea to the north and west), and just after we had heard seriously loud explosions that seemed to be coming from the west of us, we saw about a dozen army tanks race westward toward Manara and Raoucheh; about an hour later, they came back in the opposite direction.

But in any case, it seems that the journalists at Beirut's English-language media outlets have gone to bed for the evening, as they haven't updated their websites since about 11:00 p.m. We'll have to wait until later in the morning (it's ten to four now) to find out more about where else the fighting was and what exactly happened.

In the meantime, unfortunately, the statements this evening from all the major political players were not encouraging. Saad Hariri offered a proposal to Hezbollah and Amal for a truce but the Shia groups flatly rejected them. Likewise, Nasrallah's earlier requests from the ruling coalition were altogether ignored.

About ten minutes ago (3:45 a.m.), I heard in the relative distance an explosion followed immediately by a short burst of heavy gunfire. I just heard a bit more gunfire but now that's stopped as well.

Earlier in the day (I apologize for the incoherent logic of these posts; I'm just writing this as I remember it), after Nasrallah's speech and immediately before the fighting broke out, we saw helicopters circling Hamra and Manara (to the northwest). We were later told that they may have been looking for snipers on the roofs of buildings.

Oh, another thing I just remembered: I officially held classes today but told my students not to come unless they were already on campus. Three students came to my 12:30 class and one student showed up for my 3:30 class. That one student told me that according to people he knows, the opposition's tent city, which for the past several months has actually been almost entirely empty of people, is now full of people and full of weapons. He also said that bus loads of Hezbollah supporters came to Beirut late last night from all different parts of the country.

I can now hear the 4:00 a.m. call to prayer from the mosque on Bliss Street. That's usually my cue that I've stayed up too late.

I'll write more tomorrow.

Armed Violence in Beirut

It's just after midnight here in Beirut and I can now hear heavy gunfire again for the first time in about an hour. It is very hard to tell exactly where it is coming from, as the sounds echo off different buildings, and as far as the distance is concerned, well, I frankly don't know how loud gunfire should sound when it is very nearby. An enormous sounding bomb just went off within earshot. Across the city today, fighting has broken out between people loyal to the Saudi and American backed governing coalition and those supporting the Iranian and Syrian backed opposition.

I have been living in Beirut since September 2007 and by no stretch of the imagination am an expert of Lebanese politics or history but I want to offer my nut-shell understanding of the situation right now for those of you completely unfamiliar with the context. I realize that some people may disagree with my interpretation of these events, in part out of an (unintended) political bias on my part or an (unfortunate) misunderstanding of the actual historical facts. I welcome anyone and everyone's corrections, comments, and additions to this admittedly incomplete and fairly narrow narrative.

Sporadic fighting started yesterday in the capital, after people loyal to the Shia parties, Hezbollah and Amal, engaged in acts of civil disobedience around the city. Most significantly, at the time, they shut down the main road to the airport with barricades, burning tires, and mounds of dirt. It has been virtually impossible for anyone to get to or from the airport since. There were a handful of flights yesterday and maybe one or two today (we can see the flights coming in from the Sea) but many passengers who did arrive yesterday (including a Lebanese pop star), were stuck in the airport for several hours. Anyway, the civil disobedience was, most immediately, a response to the government's recent decision to shut down Hezbollah's private phone network, an infrastructure that the group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah described today as essential to the Resistance's security. In addition, the government (primarily in the form of Walid Jumblat) announced a few days ago that they had discovered a hidden surveillance camera at the airport, belonging to Hezbollah. The government fired the head of security at the airport, who they claim to be a Hezbollah operative but who Nasrallah claimed today to be an ordinary Shia.

Anyway, these disputes are rooted in a deep web of Lebanese history, stretching all the way back to the Taif Accords, which resolved (or, perhaps did not resolve) the 1975-1990 Civil War. Basically, since December 2006, Hezbollah, Amal, and the Free Patriotic Movement have been abstaining from the Lebanese government in protest to the current balance of power between Christians, Shia, and Sunni. When Emile Lahoud's term as president of Lebanon was set to expire in 2007, this opposition movement refused to attend the Parliamentary sessions necessary to elect a new president. According to an agreement reached after the Civil War, Lebanon's president is always a Christian; its prime minister a Sunni; and its speaker of parliament, a Shia. Because the Christians are split between the so-called March 14th governing coalition and the March 8th opposition (the dates refer to demonstrations in 2005 after Prime Minister Hariri was assassinated, the former of which pushed Syria to end their longstanding occupation of the country), the president could tip the balance of power in one direction or another. But because the opposition will not seat their MPs during any of the several attempts to elect a president, a quorum cannot be reached, and therefore there is still no president of Lebanon.

Nevertheless, everyone seems to have agreed upon the commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces, Michel Suleiman, as the appropriate next president of Lebanon. The military is the most widely respected institution in Lebanon, one that has prided itself on its non-partisanship. So Hezbollah and company's opposition to the election has very little to do with the president-to-be himself and far more to do with the makeup of the president's cabinet. To put it simply, Hezbollah and Amal want to have greater Shia representation in the cabinet and some sort of veto power over the government.

In addition to all this, and perhaps more importantly, UN resolution 1701, which ended the July 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, calls for the disarming of Hezbollah. Hezbollah has erected a relatively thick network of weaponry and security infrastructure since the Civil War to guard the country against repeated attacks and invasions by Israel. Although Israel's continual violations of 1701 are perhaps far more egregious, Hezbollah is still admittedly in possession of a fairly large stockpile of weapons.

--interruption: after about 45 minutes of heavy gunfire within earshot of our apartment, I am now hearing very little gunfire and instead cheering coming from the streets to the south of us in Hamra--

Anyway, the government, perhaps under pressure from the US, is determined to disarm Hezbollah--to end the "state within a state" status that Hezbollah currently enjoys.

The declaration of the government this week to shut down Hezbollah's phone system is seen at least by Nasrallah as part, and the beginning, of this operation. This move, in fact, Nasrallah argued today, is an act of war by the government. And while, he claims, Hezbollah does not want war, they "have a right to defend ourselves against [whomever] declares war against us."

So anyway, about an hour after that speech this afternoon, B and I left our apartment on the American University of Beirut's (AUB) campus to get some groceries in Hamra, the West Beirut neighborhood bordering us just to the south. Although predominantly Sunni, Hamra has a history of non-sectarianism or at least peaceful co-existence. In the eight months that we've been here, nothing extraordinary or violent has happened in this part of the city. We've often commented that we feel safe walking around Hamra at any time of the day or night. So we felt ok about heading a few blocks into the neighborhood for groceries.

The streets were eerily empty. What is usually an annoyingly congested Bliss Street, was just about entirely devoid of traffic. When we got to our grocery store, we found it, and just about everything else in the neighborhood completely closed. Just at that time, then, we started hearing gunfire that sounded fairly close. Then it got louder and heavier and definitely closer. Luckily, we had run into a friend of ours who lived a couple blocks away. We hurried, sometimes running, sometimes just walking very quickly, to her apartment, got in the door and quickly went upstairs. Gunfire in Beirut is not entirely uncommon. Before and after political leaders give speeches, their supporters often fire their handguns and kalashnikovs into the air as an expression of solidarity. So we thought that there was a good chance that this pro-Hariri neighborhood could very well be celebrating the beginning of Saad Hariri's (the son of slain former PM Rafic Hariri) speech, which was scheduled for sometime this evening. But there was something different about this gunfire. On the one hand, it was far more sporadic than usual. And on the other, it was accompanied by extremely loud explosions, what our friend identified as rocket propelled grenade (RPG) fire.

Anyway, to make a long story short, we were strongly advised to go home before nightfall, which was quickly approaching. So at a lull in the fire, we got the hell out of there and hurried back to the virtually fortressed AUB campus.

We're staying here until things significantly calm down and we are assured by campus security that it is safe to go out again. But on campus, although we can hear the gunfire outside, we are (knock on wood) very safe.

I'll write more tomorrow. But in the meantime, you can read more about this conflict on www.naharnet.com, www.nowlebanon.com, and www.dailystar.com.lb. Each of these sites has its strengths and flaws.