Every time I walk through the frontline of the political confrontation in downtown Beirut between the American and Saudi-backed Fouad Seniora Lebanese government and the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah-led opposition, I have the sense of walking through a 1970-era American rock festival or a World War II movie set.
The Beirut scene encapsulates today’s multiple ideological and cultural confrontations in the Middle East and the world, and may be the most visible frontline of the wider global face-off. Like all other things Lebanese, this serious, often tense, and increasingly unpredictable confrontation is garnished with a bit of levity, and much humanity. On one side are numerous encampments of government soldiers, amidst armored personnel carriers and several layers of barbed wire barriers, reflecting both the special camaraderie of their profession and the deadly serious nature of their mission. The relaxed demeanor of the troops suggests that D-Day is some ways away.
One giveaway is that this muscular war scene takes place on a stretch of road that houses a music conservatory, a church, Beirut’s Buddha Bar, a Subway shop, major banks, the Serail, and one of Beirut’s best cigar shops. Facing this military encampment across the frontline is the tent city of several hundred full-time protestors from Hezbollah, the Free Patriotic Movement and half a dozen other mini-movements, where young lads seem to sleep most of the day and rally most of the night to fine music and fractious political rhetoric. When the weather is fine, especially on evenings, weekends and official holidays, thousands of families converge on downtown Beirut to rally for the opposition. The smell of grilled meat wafts over the scene, music interspersed with political speeches fills the air, and hundreds of young couples, families, and groups of friends sit around on chairs and mats, playing cards or backgammon, waving flags, and, mostly, smoking water pipes loaded with nicely flavored tobaccos. For an indiscreet moment, you think that this is what one version of Paradise must be like: friendly folks having a good time, with plenty of camaraderie, good food and music, and only pleasant garden smells from a thousand water pipes. That is a passing thought only, for this is serious business, pushing Lebanon towards an increasingly strident confrontation with no clear outcome. The dramatic frontline is much more than just an anthropologically fascinating bifurcation of a very pluralistic and tolerant society. It is also more than a great urban center’s ability to keep adding to its historical repertoire by inventing new ways for people to congregate and affirm their powerful humanity as well as their simple need to enjoy life. The sharp cultural and political distinctions between the two camps that face off in central Beirut will now spread throughout the city, following Monday decision by the Hezbollah-led opposition to escalate the peaceful protests to government offices and public facilities. Like the central Beirut dynamic, this escalation is matched step by step by an increasingly self-confident and assertive government.
Among its moves has been the deployment of the army and police force to preserve order and keep open public facilities.
Little encampments of army and police are visible all over the city at strategic junctions. Mostly they comprise a single armored personnel carrier with a typically dashing young soldier hanging out of the hatch door, smoking a cigarette or munching on sandwich, with a few other of his mates standing around on the street. The message of all this resonates far beyond central Beirut, reflecting a trend that we are witnessing in several Arab countries simultaneously: incumbent governments facing challenges from Islamist-led oppositions are standing their ground, defending their positions, and fighting back politically; in Palestine, Iraq and Somalia, the state also fights back militarily.
Beirut’s standoff remains peaceful, even though politicians on both sides occasionally verge into silly-land with their vitriolic rhetoric. Here is the long delayed synthesis between anthropology, ideology and politics in the modern Middle East, as groups with very different agendas and significant domestic and foreign support square off and battle for control of the governance system.
The roughly equal weight and determination of the two Lebanese camps augurs for a compromise in due course, unless foreign interests push for a prolonged battle. Watch this political battle closely. Lebanon may emerge from all this as a historic beacon of peaceful, increasingly democratic contestation of power in the modern Arab world; or, if things go badly, it may shatter and collapse in an ugly heap, fuelled by a combination of mediocre local, provincial politicians egged on by selfish foreign patrons.
Rami G. Khouri writes a regular commentary for THE DAILY STAR
