Thursday, May 8, 2008
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.
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