Beirut Dispatch
Hezbollapalooza
by Annia Ciezadlo
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 12.05.06

In Lebanon, where election results don't reflect actual numbers of voters, crowd size is everything. The number of people you can bring out into the streets shows your group's political strength, its base, and, in the irrational sectarian calculus of politics here, your religion's population. Nobody acknowledges how many Sunnis or Shia or Christians follow a particular political movement until they all get together and have a big street bash. Think of it as voting by crowd.

In that spirit, the Shia militia Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM)--the mainly Christian party led by former army commander General Michel Aoun--decided to hold massive street demonstrations starting last Friday. In a nod to the nonviolent revolution that ousted the pro-Syrian prime minister last year, they decided to camp out and stage a peaceful sit-in downtown Beirut. Their goal is to prove that they represent the popular majority and to get a bigger share of Cabinet posts. They pledged to stay until U.S.-backed Prime Minister Fouad Siniora steps down.

Siniora seems pretty stubborn, but, then again, the opposition has plenty of time: During this summer's war with Israel, nearly a million Shia fled their homes, so they're old hands at camping out. And the Aounists have been protesting against Lebanon's Syrian occupation since the early '90s, when much of the current anti-Syrian faction was firmly in the pocket of Damascus, so civil disobedience is nothing new to them either. Confusingly enough, the Aounists were a major force in last year's so-called Cedar Revolution, which ushered in the very government they're now trying to topple. Only in Lebanon.



I arrived downtown on Friday, a couple hours before the sit-in kicked off. Trucks were unloading cloth-covered foam mattresses into Martyrs' Square, the historic plaza where last year's uprising took place. The scene looked naggingly familiar; suddenly I realized they were the same kind of mattresses that Shia spent the war sleeping on in schools, churches, and Beirut's single, tiny public park. Many of those who fled to the mountains were taken in by Christians from the FPM and other, smaller Christian groups now aligned with Hezbollah.

Crowds of Shia aren't usually known for their fun factor--think Ashura, where thousands of faithful rhythmically lash themselves until they draw blood while chanting the names of their slain martyrs. But this was different. The mood was festive, even jolly. I saw girls in tight, low-slung jeans with visible thongs and yellow Hezbollah flags. There were guys wearing curly wigs in bright orange, the color of the FPM, and spangled orange cowboy hats. Boys hoisted girls onto their shoulders, where they waved the ubiquitous Lebanese flag. Both sides pursued some vigorous cross-sectarian flirting; a Hezbollah guy tried to score my email address "for chatting." It was Hezbollapalooza.

Despite the carnival atmosphere, the theme was unmistakably economic. One guy carried a long pole festooned with dangling loofahs and soap. "If we can't have a clean government," he chanted, "we'll clean it with soap and a loofah" (it rhymes in Arabic). Women wore signs with green scouring pads, and a man handed out little green sponges. The imagery was a reference to the mind-boggling corruption of Lebanon's government, which managed to run up a $41 billion public debt while--not coincidentally--turning many of its politicians into gazillionaires. A couple of people in the crowd said they wanted Lebanon to have campaign finance disclosure laws; several mentioned the new electoral law, a long-promised reform that the current government has failed to deliver. One man pointed out that, even though he lived in Beirut, this was the first time he'd been downtown. "If I bought a sandwich here," he said, pointing toward the rows of glitzy restaurants, "I'd be broke for a week."



Later that evening, the crowd thinned out enough to walk across downtown. Outside the Shaker and Oweini Building, where the international press camped out, men performed ritual ablutions at the feet of the decorative trees planted in the middle of the sidewalks. Groups of Shia men removed their shoes and prayed, barefoot, on the sidewalks in front of Buddha Bar. Muslims prayed on blankets of bright orange. Christians milled around flirting with soldiers; one girl tried to convince them to let her walk home through the rows of concertina wire blocking off the Serail, the graceful, Ottoman-era military barracks where Siniora and his Cabinet ministers were holed up.

The party atmosphere lasted through the weekend. Then, late Sunday night, a 20-year-old Shia named Ahmed Mahmoud was shot and killed as he and others drove through a Sunni neighborhood on their way home from the protest. There's talk of further civil disobedience this week; since this is Lebanon, everyone's uneasily expecting the unexpected. Hezbollah leaders have vowed "surprises," as they often did during the war. But, for one weekend at least, Hezbollah stuck to its promise of holding a protest that was "peaceful, modern, and democratic."

Copyright 2006 The New Republic