Aftermath: following the bloodshed of America's wars in the muslim world Part 15

According to As'ad Abu Khalil, "Hizballah's arms existed from the 1990s until 2005, and back then it was praised by the same Sunni voices who were aligned with them. The Hariri Saudi alliance has been successful in alarming Sunnis in the wake of Hariri's a.s.sa.s.sination. After the failure of Israel they tried to drive a bigger wedge between Sunnis and Hizballah. The Saudis surpa.s.sed the success of Al Qaeda in deepening the Sunni-s.h.i.+te rift-they are the heirs of Zarqawi in that regard, utilizing their media and defining every political issue in pure Sunni-s.h.i.+te term. The Saudis are the pillar of the American agenda in the Middle East and want to further American interests. The U.S. wants to weaken Hamas and Hizballah. So they make Hizballah seem not as a resistance movement (as it was perceived by Sunnis up until 2005) but portray it as a sectarian force that furthers Iranian interests in the region through their media, publis.h.i.+ng houses, statements of their politicians. They control the culture industry in the region. Saudis control Arab newspapers in the Arab world and outside."

To understand the point of view of Hizballah's policy-makers, I met with the cerebral Nawaf al-Musawi, a key adviser to Nasrallah, as well as one of Hizballah's most ubiquitous public faces and head of its foreign policy unit. Just recently Ahmad Fatfat, a key Future Movement figure who was the former interior minister and current minister of youth and sport, had described Nasrallah's May 2007 statement on red lines (see Chapter Six) as the worst political mistake the s.h.i.+te leader had ever made. I asked Musawi about this. Nasrallah had been concerned about three issues, he told me. "First, protecting the Lebanese army, because it is the guarantee that prevents civil war from happening. If it is weakened, the pro-American faction in Lebanon will ask for the deployment of multinational forces. Second, preventing a new 'War of the Camps' in Lebanon and preventing Palestinians from being targets of new ma.s.sacres and tragedies. This would destroy Lebanon and deepen the suffering of Palestinians, and would disperse the Palestinians and negate their right of return. Third, preventing Lebanon from becoming a place of war for Al Qaeda. This would transform Lebanon into an oven, and the coals of this oven would be the bodies and property of Lebanese and Palestinians. The Bush administration transformed Iraq into a place of war with Al Qaeda, and now it is a place of ma.s.sacres, and we don't want our country to become a place of ma.s.sacres. So let the Bush administration solve their problems away from Lebanon."

He rejected the notion that Sunni ideology had changed. "The new thing that happened with Hariri was the increase of Saudi influence in the Sunni environment," he said, "And this happened with Syrian approval and cognizance, because without Hafiz al-a.s.sad's approval, Hariri would never have been prime minister. The Lebanese Sunni position reflects the Saudi position. The sectarian tension in Lebanon is enhancing Saudi influence in Lebanon. And the other way around as well: Saudi influence is enhancing sectarian tensions in Lebanon."

Musawi insisted that the Future Movement, which dominated the Interior Ministry, was supporting jihadist Salafis in Lebanon. "These were the Sunni reserves to fight the s.h.i.+tes," he said. "Until Nahr al-Barid, the Ministry of Interior characterized the Palestinians as part of the Sunni reserves that would fight with them against s.h.i.+tes. This idea of building a Sunni militia to fight s.h.i.+tes began after the killing of Hariri. Since 2005 I was warning European officials on a constant basis and let them know that we see what the house of Hariri is doing with Sunni extremists and Salafis, and this is a very dangerous game and it will be against he who plays with it, as it happened in Afghanistan. As for us, we are not looking for any war with anybody, internally or externally. Our only objective is to defend and protect our country and preserve its stability." He blamed Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi amba.s.sador to Was.h.i.+ngton, for the creation of groups like Fatah al-Islam. "It is Bandar's project to take Saudi Salafis and bring them here to fight Hizballah."

Musawi dismissed the notion that Hizballah wanted to impose a s.h.i.+te state. "We understand the political reality of Lebanon very well," he said. "No single group can rule by itself. The Lebanese can't be governed except by consensus, and we want a democratic and consensual country."

In recent months a military alliance backed by the United States had been established in the region, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had even explained that American arms s.h.i.+pments to Saudi Arabia were meant "to counter the negative influences of Al Qaeda, Hizballah, Syria, and Iran." "It's an illusion," Musawi said. "Even the countries allied with the U.S. know Bush will not stay long. So these allies are not serious. The Saudis have their own concerns, Egypt and Jordan have their own concerns. If Rice says this, it doesn't mean the Saudis will do this. They will do what's in their best interest." But like other Hizballah leaders, Musawi was concerned about the role of Jordan. Its intelligence agents were said to be in Lebanon, and Sunni militiamen were being trained in Jordan.

He rejected accusations that the demonstrations in downtown Beirut were an "occupation." "Beirut is a cosmopolitan city in the international sense," he said, "and a city for all Lebanese and its demographic fabric is proof of this. It's not true that Beirut has one sectarian ident.i.ty. It has Orthodox, Maronites, s.h.i.+tes, etc., and Beirut is our capital. The s.h.i.+te presence in Lebanon is an old one. We are not refugees or guests. If they don't like it, they can go find another place."

Nothing was unique about Hizballah possessing an armed wing. "All the sectarian militias have weapons," he said. "The only thing we have that they don't have is missiles, and these cannot be used in a civil war." But Musawi conceded that Hizballah might not have succeeded in explaining its position on Syria to the people of the north, who had suffered under the Syrian occupation, but he reminded me that until the mid-1990s the Syrians had supported Hizballah's rivals. "I won't defend the military, political, or security performance of the Syrians. We were the first victims of the Syrians." He also reminded me that most of the so-called anti-Syrian politicians had collaborated closely with the Syrians politically and financially until the Hariri a.s.sa.s.sination. They had thanked Syria in 2005 for one reason, he said: their support for the resistance. "We are friends or enemies based on the position on Israel, not a struggle for power or sectarian differences."

Superglue and Sectarianism.

As the Americans tried to galvanize Sunnis in the region to view Iran and its allies as a threat, they showed more signs of succeeding in Lebanon than anywhere outside Iraq. Events in Beirut in early 2008 reminded me of Baghdad in 2004, when the civil war was just beginning and every morning we would hear of small sectarian incidents. New militias were being formed, such as the all-Sunni Tripoli Brigades in the north. In Beirut, street fights regularly occurred between members of the Future Movement and the s.h.i.+te Amal Movement. Amal's young men were more thuggish, and the movement was less ideological and disciplined than Hizballah, which normally avoided being drawn into internal conflict.

In December 2007 Brig. Gen. Francois al-Hajj was killed by a car bomb. It was the twelfth political a.s.sa.s.sination in the past three years but the first targeting an army officer. Hajj was expected to be the next commander of Lebanon's army, but he had also been in charge of the army's operations in Nahr al-Barid. He had been the army's liaison with Hizballah and was not at all close to the March 14 camp, so it seemed unlikely that opposition forces were behind it. On the other hand, it may have been the hand of Fatah al-Islam reaching out for revenge. At an opposition demonstration, the army shot and killed seven s.h.i.+tes who were protesting extended power cuts, complaining that the pro-opposition area of Dahiyeh had more cuts than progovernment Christian and Sunni areas. Neglect of s.h.i.+tes was the whole reason Hizballah had created its so-called "state within a state."

In the first few months of 2008 small clashes between Sunni and s.h.i.+te militias occurred regularly. A January roadside bomb targeted an American diplomatic convoy, but it was less newsworthy than the increasing sectarian polarization-which grew worse following the a.s.sa.s.sination that month of the Sunni Internal Security Forces official who was himself investigating Lebanon's numerous political a.s.sa.s.sinations. At his funeral crowds chanted, "The blood of Sunnis is boiling!" The next month Saad al-Hariri seemed to move the country closer to a civil war. "If they are after a confrontation, we are up for the job," the Future Movement leader announced. Sunni thugs then took to the streets and shot into the air in celebration. One Friday the sheikh of the Dhunurein Mosque, in Beirut's Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood (formerly a front line between Christians and Muslims, now a front line between Sunnis and s.h.i.+tes), declared that Beirut was occupied and Sunnis had to defend it. The implication was that s.h.i.+tes were occupying Beirut and that they were the threat. The following day young men from the s.h.i.+te Amal militia vandalized the mosque. Graffiti warned s.h.i.+tes to beware of Sunni rage and invoked the names of early Islamic leaders whom s.h.i.+tes revile, such as Omar and Muawiya.

In Tariq al-Jadida's main shopping street, Afif al-Tibi, there was a huge commotion one Monday morning following weekend clashes. The streets were lined with about two dozen retail and wholesale clothing stores owned by s.h.i.+tes, who are a minority in this largely Sunni enclave just north of s.h.i.+te southern Beirut. At least five of these shops had their locks clogged with superglue by Future members. Earlier anti-s.h.i.+te slogans had been spray-painted on the s.h.i.+te-owned shops. After the superglue incident some s.h.i.+te shop owners felt threatened and left their shops closed, choosing to stay home. That weekend there had been intense clashes in the Ras al-Nabaa district. Members of the Future Movement had attacked an Amal Movement office. Following the fighting Future supporters stood guard at every street corner in the surrounding area. Many carried chains, metal clubs, or M-16 automatic rifles. They included Lebanese Kurds. After one young man concealed his M-16 from a pa.s.serby, another shouted at him, "Why are you hiding it? Show it, we don't care! Let them know that we have guns too!" Shooting could be heard all night, and in Tariq al-Jadida supporters of the Future Movement destroyed the locally famous Ramadan Juice shop, which was owned by a s.h.i.+te man from Dahiyeh and had been open in the neighborhood for twenty years. Future members claimed he was a spy for Hizballah. One Future member explained why they were hara.s.sing local s.h.i.+tes. "We don't want them in Beirut," he said. "Beirut is only for Sunnis."

At the time of the superglue incident, the head of the local Future militia on Afif al-Tibi Street was Abu Ahmad. He had prevented hotheaded militiamen from burning down the s.h.i.+te-owned shops. He had also previously refused to arm his men or allow them to maintain a weapons depot because he sought to avoid problems with s.h.i.+tes. He explained that Sunnis had been living side by side with their s.h.i.+te neighbors for many years and that they should solve their problems peacefully. He was replaced, however, by a more aggressive man, said to hate s.h.i.+tes and love weapons, who armed the young men.

Although the s.h.i.+tes of Tariq al-Jadida were not overtly political, it was becoming clear that they were not trusted or wanted. Militiamen a.s.signed to intelligence duties stood watch on street corners all day long. Young men worked on various s.h.i.+fts, usually at night, getting paid a few hundred dollars a month, with the promise of a bonus if they took part in fighting. Some were posted in other areas, where more bodies were needed to confront the s.h.i.+te Amal movement, a less ideological and more sectarian group than Hizballah. Sunni militiamen coordinated with members of the security forces and army. The Future Movement also mobilized Sunnis from Akkar, who were considered more aggressive than Beiruti Sunnis. Other "real Sunnis" were imported from Dinniyeh and the town of Arsal in the Bekaa Valley to defend the Sunnis of Beirut. Numerous apartment and hotel rooms around the city were rented for them. The Future militias were also recruiting retired army and intelligence operatives. There was even a Future security company in Tariq al-Jadida, its office festooned with posters of Rafiq and Saad al-Hariri. Senior March 14 leader Walid Jumblatt confided to me that Sunnis were joining militias and training in Jordan. He disapproved of this and said they should join the security forces.

Shaqer al-Berjawi was one of the new militia leaders in Tariq al-Jadida. His movement was called the Arab Current. Berjawi had once belonged to the Murabitun militia and fought in west Beirut during the civil war. After Hariri was a.s.sa.s.sinated, he began forming his new movement (with support from the Future Movement) because Sunnis felt leaderless and weak. He recruited Fatah supporters from the Palestinian camps to fight alongside Sunnis, a growing phenomenon. Hamas members in Beirut blame his people for clashes that occurred between rival Palestinian factions. Berjawi partic.i.p.ated in the January 2007 clashes and is rumored to be among the Sunni snipers who were targeting s.h.i.+tes. He was arrested afterward and accused of weapons smuggling but soon was released.

I met a nineteen-year-old black-market weapons dealer in Tariq al-Jadida who had been selling guns illegally for nearly three years. "Its very profitable," he told me. "You can double your investment, especially in these times, when all gun prices are getting more expensive lately and everybody is worried about themselves and getting ready for the 'zero hour.' People will defend their sect." He explained that he sold to Sunnis, and occasionally to Christians or Druze, but never to s.h.i.+tes because "these are the people we want to fight and they have a lot of weapons." He admitted that until 2005 he had never heard sectarian language. "Now everybody is speaking about sectarian conflict," he said. "Now even a four-year-old or a six-year-old kid speaks of Sunnis or s.h.i.+tes."

Business started getting good for him after the so-called "Tuesday incident," which is how many Lebanese refer to the January 2007 clashes, and it improved again after the "Thursday incident," when Amal and Future supporters clashed in 2008. "After those incidents, people demanded guns in a big way," he told me. The Kalashnikov was in highest demand, with people often opting for a package deal including an ammunition vest and ammunition for eight hundred dollars.

Most of his customers were in Tariq al-Jadida, where he said three-quarters of the people were now armed. The majority of his clients were men between the ages of twenty and thirty, though women were also purchasing small pistols. Almost all of his clients were with the Future Movement.

The young gun dealer, thin and tattooed, also belonged to the local Future militia and worked as a guard. He explained that he had received paramilitary training on a base in Akkar for twenty days along with about sixty-five other young Sunni men. Retired army sergeants had done most of the training, though foreigners, including an Australian of Lebanese descent, had trained them in close protection. The training was conducted under the cover of the Secure Plus security company, one of several owned by Saad al-Hariri. The Interior Ministry was stacked with Sunnis loyal to Hariri, and its Internal Security Forces were viewed by Hizballah as a Sunni militia. Pro-Hariri control of the ministry has eased the way for legalizing these companies-c.u.m-militias.

By the spring of 2008, it seemed as though there were two Lebanons: a Sunni one and a s.h.i.+te one, with less important groups just bystanders. The youth, not remembering the violence of the 1980s, seemed eager for another civil war. It was a good time to join Sunni militias, the gun dealer said, because there were several groups recruiting, and this was driving up prices for new recruits. The Murabitun, a civil war-era Sunni militia that had been reactivated, allegedly paid its men nearly three hundred dollars a month. Some Secure Plus recruits guarded installations such as the Saudi emba.s.sy. Others wore civilian clothing and monitored Sunni neighborhoods or stood on standby, well armed and uniformed, in case fighting erupted. If recruits proved especially capable, my young interlocutor explained, they were sent to front-line areas such as Ras al-Nabaa, where there were many s.h.i.+tes. Some were selected for more advanced training in Jordan, which lasted longer. His brother had gone for this training, but graduates were secretive about what they were taught.

I asked him if he wanted to fight s.h.i.+tes. "Definitely," he said. "I want to defend my sect. s.h.i.+te areas are different. There are no police there, they train kids from an early age and put hatred in their hearts from an early age and teach them that Sunnis killed their leaders. I feel threatened leaving Sunni areas. Iran and Syria have a plan to control Lebanon but so far have not succeeded." He drank alcohol and was not religious, so I asked him why he was fighting for Sunni Islam. "My ident.i.ty card says I am a Sunni Muslim," he said, "and I have to defend my sect. Before I didn't know the difference between Sunnis and s.h.i.+tes. s.h.i.+tes made us hate them by their acts." He expected that there would be a war with s.h.i.+tes, and he hoped so, not just because it would be good for business. "Sunnis can win only if they are united," he told me with obvious approval, but he explained that they were not relying merely on the Sunnis of Lebanon but on the help of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni countries. "The Saudis will help. The Saudis are funding all this, not Hariri. Tariq al-Jadida is the castle of Sunnis. If it falls, Lebanon falls."

The May Events.

On May 1 Walid Jumblatt, the most prominent Druze politician in Lebanon and the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, called a press conference and announced the discovery of cameras that were monitoring Beirut International Airport. He implied that Hizballah was planning an operation and that it might fire shoulder-launched rockets at planes on the runway. He also warned that Hizballah had its own communications network. Two days later Jumblatt called for the Iranian amba.s.sador's expulsion and asked that flights from Iran to Beirut be banned to curtail the delivery of financial and military aid to Hizballah. Jumblatt then attacked the airport's security chief, Gen. Wafiq Shuqair, accusing him of conspiring with Hizballah to install the secret cameras. Two days later, on May 5, Lebanese judicial authorities announced that they had ordered an investigation into the affair. Coincidentally or not, statements from American military officials were published in the Western media that day accusing Hizballah of training Iraqi s.h.i.+te militias.

On May 6 the government rea.s.signed Shuqair. Given Hizballah's angry reaction to his removal, it appears the charges against him were true. Then the Council of Ministers questioned the legality of Hizballah's parallel communications network, which was a key element of the group's military command and control ability. The government called the communications network "an attack on state sovereignty." It was the first time Hizballah's military was challenged internally; until then the weapons of the resistance had been off-limits. The government's moves were conducted in coordination with the Americans and the UN envoy, who warned that Hizballah "maintains a ma.s.sive paramilitary infrastructure separate from the state," which "const.i.tutes a threat to regional peace and security." Nasrallah's deputy Sheikh Naim Qasim said the network was an integral part of the resistance. It seemed like a culmination of a process beginning in September 2004, when the UN Security Council pa.s.sed Resolution 1559, which supported Hizballah's rivals' call to disarm the resistance.

The General Federation of Labor Unions called for a strike and demonstration on May 7 to demand that the government raise the monthly minimum wage, which had not been changed since 1996. Hizballah and its supporters planned their mobilization for the same day. Early that morning s.h.i.+te demonstrators blocked bridges and roads throughout the city, including the important airport road, with burning tires, vehicles, garbage containers, cement blocks, and earthen mounds. The airport suspended flights. Many of the demonstrators were masked; some were armed.

A grenade exploded in the Corniche al-Mazraa neighborhood, wounding several people. As it became clear that the situation was getting out of control, the General Federation of Labor Unions called off the demonstration and strike it had planned for that day. As Sunni and s.h.i.+te zaaran clashed, throwing stones at one another, Lebanese soldiers separated the two sides by firing into the air and using tear gas. Upon hearing that the Future Movement's office in the Nuweiri district was destroyed, Sunni supporters of Hariri in the north and the Beqaa gathered to come to Beirut and face the opposition. Small armed clashes occurred throughout the city.

I hurried toward Ras al-Nabaa with some local journalists searching for where shots were coming from and spotted Amal fighters hiding behind street corners and Sunni fighters huddled in front of Future offices. As armed men materialized from behind corners on both sides, I suddenly realized things were potentially more lethal than I had thought. I wanted to leave immediately, but Nada Bakri, a fearless stringer for the New York Times, went charging ahead, so I followed her, not wanting to appear to be cowardly. In the end, an armed man with a revolver in front of a Future office told us to go away, which I did with relief. That evening Hizballah supporters fortified barricades to block the road to the airport. Tents were brought in preparation for a long stay.

On May 8 I returned to Corniche al-Mazraa, to the divide between Barbir and Tariq al-Jadida. Hundreds of disorganized s.h.i.+te youth, mostly teenagers from other areas, were gathered on the road. Lebanese soldiers prevented them from crossing to the other side. The call to prayer blared from the nearby Sunni Jamal Abdel Nasr Mosque. The s.h.i.+te zaaran stood up. "The blood of s.h.i.+tes is boiling!" they shouted, adding religious slogans. Some were holding stones or chips of cinder blocks; others had knives, clubs, and plastic bottles full of gasoline. They threw their stones and cinder-block chips across the road at the soldiers and the Sunni neighborhood. The soldiers threw the stones back. One of them was filming the s.h.i.+te youth. Some soldiers pleaded with the youth to stop, while others loaded and aimed their M-16s. I was surprised by how provocative the Amal supporters were. For them it was just a show of force to intimidate Sunnis. Older men, with serious faces, well-groomed stubble, and s.h.i.+rts b.u.t.toned all the way up, herded the boys. Whenever it seemed as though the boys were about to cross to the Sunni side, they were reined in. I felt as though Hizballah had Amal pit bulls who were foaming at the mouth, eager to attack, and that Hizballah was letting them bark and bite a little to show the other side that it was holding the leash and could let go at any time.

Many of the families living in Barbir had packed up and left for the mountains or their villages, expecting things to get worse. That afternoon, a few hundred s.h.i.+te shabab (youth) were organized in rows. Many Amal men wore combat boots and combat pants. They squatted and peered across the road at Tariq al-Jadida, squinting and pointing, looking for snipers in the buildings. Most of them were the same young men I had seen the day before. I saw a few men wearing the gray Internal Security Forces uniforms working together with the Amal men, who set up checkpoints and demanded ident.i.ty papers in plain sight of the Lebanese soldiers. I sat on the street next to a few shabab who were resting, waiting for something to happen. One of them was from Dahiyeh. "Hamra Street is for them," he said of Sunnis, and told me that there were Sunni volunteers from Akkar there. We discussed buying arms. The shabab told me that AK-47s were coming in from Iraq. I asked them why they were there. "We are here to defend the weapons of the resistance," one of them said. "We as the s.h.i.+te sect are targeted. They are removing high-ranking s.h.i.+te officers from their positions." We discussed which ident.i.ty mattered most to them. Three agreed that they were s.h.i.+tes only, not Arab or Lebanese, much to my surprise. "We are here to fight Qabbani," one said, referring to the mufti of Lebanon. In the afternoon sandwiches were brought for all the shabab. I noticed men appearing with AK-47s and other rifles, sitting on corners, talking among themselves, getting ready for something.

That day the order came down from the Future leaders.h.i.+p for the presenter on Future TV to begin the news segment on Nasrallah's speech with the inflammatory "How the resistance became the occupier." In Barbir we sat around listening to Nasrallah's speech from car radios. Everybody cheered. Nasrallah said that the cause of the crisis was the attack on Hizballah's military apparatus, which was "a declaration of war . . . against the resistance and its weapons for the benefit of America and Israel. The communications network is the significant part of the weapons of the resistance. I said that we will cut off the hand that targets the weapons of the resistance. . . . Today is the day to carry out this decision." The opposition-led activities would not cease until the government revoked its decisions, Nasrallah concluded. Saad al-Hariri then responded in a speech calling the opposition actions a "crime" and warning, "We will not accept that Beirut kneel before anyone." By Beirut, he meant Sunnis.

As the speeches ended, shots could be heard. The Lebanese army retreated as if on command, their vehicles rumbling away. The boys shouted in triumph and jumped. More and more armed men emerged from a building-some with ammunition vests, some in designer clothes with carefully gelled hair. They stood behind corners emptying their magazines into the buildings across the street without discrimination, firing from RPGs. The troops of boys who had been calling for blood until then fled, some started crying. The local commander, a dark-skinned man in his forties called Haj Firas, was a former Amal fighter who was now with Hizballah. He was frustrated with his men for not aiming properly. He took one fighter's AK-47 and demonstrated, shouting, "Aim and shoot!" Shots were being returned from buildings and street corners on the other side, but n.o.body was aiming at anything. "It's open now," one Amal fighter told me. "It will get worse. I hope so, so we can win." Reinforcements were brought in from Dahiyeh. A commander arrived and reported that Amal leader Nabih Beri had ordered them not to shoot too much. One of the men cursed Beri. "He wants us not to shoot too much, but they are shooting a lot at us," he complained. Suddenly I recognized one of the Amal fighters. A fit young man, with gelled hair like the rest of them, he worked at the juice bar in my health club in the evenings and was a geography teacher during the day. We paused for a moment in surprised mutual recognition; then I sprinted across the street, ducking to avoid sniper fire. As fire from automatic weapons, sniper rifles, and the occasional RPG went back and forth, I was trapped on one block. I wound up spending the night in the lobby of an apartment building nearby with local journalists from Al Jazeera and other media.

The next morning, May 9, I walked home past armed Amal men on patrol, some of whom waved their party's flag as they pa.s.sed indifferent Lebanese soldiers and headed into Sunni areas. Clashes continued in much of Beirut, and the occasional RPG explosion could be heard. The Future newspaper office was attacked and burned. Hizballah surrounded the Future News television building, and the Lebanese army advised the station to halt all broadcasts, which it did. Ash Sharq radio, also belonging to the Future Movement, was taken off the air. Future TV offices containing archives were burned down after militiamen from the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) clashed with at least thirty-five armed Future supporters there. The SSNP looted the Future media office and hung pictures of the Syrian president. Shutting down the main news outlet may have been wise from Hizballah's point of view-it prevented Future's ability to mobilize supporters and probably helped prevent more violence-but it looked ugly, even if people were reminded that former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri had shut down many opposition media outlets himself. Beirut residents were stunned to see Hizballah soldiers patrolling the streets and manning positions. They were in control of Hamra and Verdun, and there were a few last gun battles in the Sadat area as the Hizballah soldiers surrounded Hariri's headquarters in Qoraitem.

In the morning March 14 officials were summoned for an urgent meeting in Maarab at the home of Samir Geagea, the leader of the extreme right-wing Christian Lebanese Forces. They decided to escalate the conflict in the north, where Hizballah and its allies were weaker. The mountain road from Beirut to the Beqaa Valley was closed, as was the main highway in Tripoli and the road to Halba in Akkar. The road leading to the Masnaa border crossing with Syria was blocked by angry Sunnis from the Beqaa, especially the town of Majd al-Anjar.

I walked on west Beirut's Hamra Street and approached a group of soldiers wearing beards and irregular uniforms. I realized it was a mix of Hizballah soldiers and the Lebanese army. Some Hizballah soldiers had sacks of RPGs on their backs. A commander sat on a chair in front of the Crowne Plaza hotel. The streets were empty and shops were closed. A platoon of Hizballah soldiers patrolled in formation down Hamra, scanning the rooftops in all directions and covering one another. They wore knee pads and had gear like American soldiers. Their professionalism reminded me of the times I had patrolled the streets of Baghdad with Americans, except that some of these young men wore sneakers. They shooed away journalists and politely but firmly detained a friend and me; they removed his camera chips but for some reason allowed me to walk alongside their patrol all the way down Hamra Street. Once Hizballah secured locations throughout the city, it handed them over to the Lebanese army. It was clear the army-historically always a weak force-had taken sides and was collaborating with stronger side, the resistance, under the guise of appearing neutral.

In Tariq al-Jadida, I went looking for the Sunni reaction and ran into three men I had seen earlier. One had long hair, one was skinny, and one was fat. "You're talking about Amal and Hizballah, man," one told me when I asked him why they had given up so quickly. "There is no creed here. Sunnis fight for money. We were doing it for a hundred dollars. We're only good for waving flags and singing songs. We were betrayed by our own leaders, even by Saad al-Hariri himself. We thought we had guns and ammunition, but when we went to ask for bullets and ammunition, our organizers and leaders abandoned us." The Secure Plus headquarters had been burned down. One man denied they had surrendered to Hizballah. "We handed Tariq al-Jadida to the army ourselves," he said. "If they come back, our shabab are ready." Hizballah had twenty-five years of experience, one man told me, while local fighters in Tariq al-Jadida were getting high on pills. Close to the smoldering Secure Plus headquarters, a suspicious boy working security for Future checked our IDs. Angry youths surrounded us, but he a.s.sured them I was American and not working for Al Manar, Hizballah's television station.

Checkpoint One, where I had been stopped before the fighting, was now closed-n.o.body was there. "Here it's frustration," one Future militiaman man told me. "They laughed at us. All the leaders are liars. Saad is a liar. The army is with them." The volunteers from Akkar all ran away, they said. The fighters on the other side had all been Amal, they said. "If it was Hizballah, they would destroy us in a minute." I asked one man if he wanted a national unity government. "I didn't say yes and I didn't say no-n.o.body asked me," he said. "Ask them, the men with the guns."

The feelings of shame and betrayal were palpable on people's faces. "Beirut fell to AKs and RPGs," one man said. "We won't attack s.h.i.+te civilians, but they attacked Sunni civilians," said another. "Our allies inside and outside didn't help." "They're going to provoke us now; they want to make a Persian state." "We are calling the people of the world: we are under siege. We were five hundred fighters facing fifty thousand fighters."

The army had taken their weapons, the men complained. "We don't trust the army. The army was against us in the battle." They were worried that s.h.i.+te militias and their allies would come in now. "Secure Plus turned us down when we asked for weapons," many people said, explaining that they were also worried that their names were in files inside. So local Sunnis burned it down.

"We are frustrated and everybody is cursing Saad," one man said. "All militias in Lebanon, they pay money for their guys to prove themselves on the field," said one. "Our militia didn't support us. Now anybody who gives money or arms, everybody will support him." They complained that the Future militia leaders had turned off their phones the previous night, not answering when they called for help.

HIZBALLAH MEN were patrolling the streets of Beirut, calling into question their commitment never to use weapons inside Lebanon, though they justified this by claiming they were defending the resistance's weapons and that they sought no political advantage in the standoff. As Nasrallah explained at a press conference, Hizballah had used its weapons to defend its weapons. By the morning of May 9 all of west Beirut was in the hands of Hizballah or its armed allies. The government headquarters, called the Serail, was surrounded, as were the homes of key March 14 leaders like Hariri and Jumblatt. It was the coup that never happened, but it galvanized the more militant Sunnis of the Beqaa and northern Lebanon. Even if Hizballah's motives were not sectarian, the group could not evade the fact that one side was s.h.i.+te and the other was Sunni.

That evening Sahar al-Khatib, a relatively unknown presenter on Future News, appeared on the right-wing LBC TV. She broke down and spoke emotionally, condemning the army for taking Hizballah's side. "We were driven out of the Future TV building," she said. "We did not want to surrender." Then she addressed the leaders of the opposition and the people of Dahiyeh and Baalbeq, meaning s.h.i.+tes. She had given them a voice, she claimed. Now who would be the voice of the people of Beirut (meaning Sunnis)? Sunnis, she implied, were the people who said, "There is no G.o.d but G.o.d," meaning they were the real Muslims. She directly addressed s.h.i.+tes, who she said wore ski masks on the streets of Beirut. "People who are proud of their actions do not wear ski masks," she said. Sunnis had opened their homes to s.h.i.+tes in the July war. "They took you into their hearts," she lectured s.h.i.+tes. "We prepared food for you with love during the July 2006 aggression, but you threw it on the ground." s.h.i.+tes, she said, "have made me regret my objectivity" for reading the names of s.h.i.+te martyrs from the 2006 war. She had defended s.h.i.+tes, she said. Who would now defend Sunnis when Future TV was shut down? s.h.i.+tes had broken the hearts of Sunnis, she said, who loved them. It was rare to hear such openly sectarian language, but she grew more explicit. "Why do you hate us?" she asked. "You have awakened sectarianism in me. . . . You kill the people who build this country."

The Bush administration promised to provide the Siniora government with whatever support it needed against what it described as a Hizballah "offensive." March 14 officials described it as a coup.

The Sunni Response.

On the night of May 9 the mufti of Akkar, Osama Rifai, went on television and radio and called indirectly for the Syrian Social Nationalist Party to be attacked, as revenge against the SSNP activists who had burned down the Future TV office in Beirut. Attacking Hizballah's weak ally in the north was a safe way to send Hizballah a message. "We'll teach them a lesson," he said. SSNP leaders and their allies believe that the Future Movement leaders.h.i.+p, including Saad al-Hariri, gave an order for a response. Khaled Dhaher, a former member of Parliament and leading Islamist politician allied with the Future Movement, and Musbah al-Ahdab, an independent Tripolitan member of Parliament, helped to organize the response in the north. The decision was made to send a warning to the March 8 coalition in Halba. The SSNP had a weak presence in the north, and Halba was a small, majority-Sunni town whose people supported the Future Movement. The two parties had clashed three years earlier. On the night of May 9 armed supporters of the Future Movement took positions around Halba.

Halba is the capital of Lebanon's northern region of Akkar. Many of the towns sitting on the mountainous region afford views looking down all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Green fields surrounded the town, with houses scattered on the green hills above it. Like most of Lebanon outside Beirut, it is a lawless region, at least in the sense that the state's presence is not strongly felt or seen. Shortly after 9 a.m. on the morning of May 10, young men set tires on fire and parked trucks to block the roads leading into Halba. Bright red flames rose from the tires and black smoke billowed up, concealing the low apartment buildings. The wind carried the stinging rubbery stench. Members of the Internal Security Forces, in their gray uniforms with red berets, strolled around next to the crowds of young men who stood around the burning tires. Others in the army's green uniforms took a look as well. They were not armed. More and more young men gathered, many carrying clubs and metal bars. Some zipped back and forth on scooters. They disappeared into the smoke. The rain that started to fall did nothing to slow the activities or the flames. Some dragged sandbags to fortify their roadblocks. Tractors came with tires piled on them and young men sitting on top. In Lebanon there always seem to be tires available to burn at roadblocks. Cars approaching turned around to look for a different route. At first traffic continued as normal-these armed acts of civil disobedience are normal in Lebanon, and the culprits are rarely punished.

Sunni leaders in the north used the loudspeakers on local mosques to call people together, and thousands of men gathered in the center of town for a demonstration. By now the sun was out again, s.h.i.+ning on the sky-blue flags of the Future Movement as well as the green-and-black flags with Islamic slogans that men waved. Others carried posters of Rafiq and Saad al-Hariri. Many men clapped; others just watched. An Arab nationalist song from the 1960s blared from loudspeakers, sending the message that G.o.d would defeat the aggressors. Perhaps the organizers were trying to claim the mantle of Arab nationalism and deny it to their opponents. A speaker proclaimed that theirs was not a project of militias; it was the project of Rafiq al-Hariri, the project of education. Hariri did not graduate gangs or militias, he said. On one poster a man had written that Sayyid Ha.s.san Nasrallah, whom he called Ariel Sharon, was fully responsible and should take his thugs and tyrants out of Beirut. Another sign said, "Saad is a red line."

Men shouted to G.o.d. Others chanted, "Oh, Nasrallah, you pimp! Take your dogs out of Beirut!" (which rhymes in Arabic). "Oh, Aoun, you pig! You should be executed with a chain!" "Tonight is a feast! f.u.c.k Nasrallah!" "Nasrallah under the shoe!" "Who do you love? Saad!"

Suddenly in the distance shooting started. Some men ran away, while others ran toward it. One man in a loudspeaker shouted, "Fight! The order is yours!" Another man called for caution. "The Internal Security Forces should take the proper position so there won't be any attack here, and we ask the army to control the situation," he shouted. "The mufti is coming. Brothers, we need to control ourselves. We are delivering the wrong message to the others. We did not come to fight."

Armed men stood on the top floors of apartment buildings, looking down from balconies. Others on the street with M-16s and AK-47s used buildings for cover. Exchanges of fire echoed through town. Men gathered in corners and peered over to see where the shots were coming from. Crowds remained in the center of town, and religious leaders from Akkar's Sunni Endowment hurried to the scene to take part in the demonstration. Some were guarded by armed men in civilian clothes. Some members of the Internal Security Forces and Lebanese army also stood watching.

That morning fourteen members of the SSNP were manning the local party headquarters, which was in an apartment building off the main road, surrounded by trees. Founded in 1932 by Antoine Saadeh, the SSNP is an Arab nationalist party that calls for the establishment of a Greater Syria uniting all the countries of the Levant. It is one of the smaller parties in Lebanon, but it had allied itself with the powerful Hizballah and Amal-led March 8 bloc, and its militiamen were known for being more thuggish than most. It is not clear exactly what happened in the first moments of the battle, but one version suggests that around ten o'clock that morning hundreds of armed Future Movement members and supporters attacked the SSNP office with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. The SSNP members had some light arms in their office, and when they returned fire, two of the attackers were killed. Another version, equally plausible, is that a mob armed with sticks and clubs began to attack the SSNP office, and it was then that two of the Future Movement supporters were killed by the SSNP men inside. Armed attacks against the fourteen men inside the office followed. Trucks brought more men from the area into town. Many of the vehicles belonged to Future Movement officials or allies such as Khaled Dhaher.

Sporadic gunfire soon turned into steady volleys and exchanges. After a few minutes the first RPG hit the building. Two hours later the fire was so intense that the SSNP men asked their leaders.h.i.+p in Beirut to help them get out. The Beirut office tried to coordinate with the Lebanese army and Internal Security Forces, attempting to negotiate the peaceful surrender of the SSNP men to the army. The building had been set on fire, and by then the smoke was making it difficult for the men to stay inside.

Muhamad Mahmud Tahash was one of the SSNP men inside. A low-ranking member of the party, he had gone to the office that morning completely unaware of what the day had in store for him. "RPGs were coming down like rain," he later told me. "There was heavy shooting, and no army outside." He went out of the building, hoping to seek the army's protection, and was shot in the shoulder. "It shattered my bone," he said. "I started walking in between people to go out, then the rest of the men went out as I was walking. I was beaten by people with rifle b.u.t.ts and screwdrivers." He would later receive fifty st.i.tches on his head. "I fell on the ground and they dragged me away to the Future Movement office, where they beat me," he said. The other men who followed Tahash out of the building were all unarmed. They had reached an agreement with the Lebanese army, and they a.s.sumed that the Future Movement supporters and militiamen were part of the agreement. The local Future Movement leader, Hussein al-Masri, who was present for all the day's events, had indeed told the army he agreed. But when the SSNP men emerged, one was. .h.i.t with three shots and killed; another pretended to be dead; the others were all captured. Among them were other low-ranking members, guards, administrators, and a member of the local management committee. The Lebanese army was not there, but hundreds of armed men were. The SSNP men were beaten with stones and sticks, stabbed, burned, and shot in their legs to prevent their escape. The mob's attack was filmed by many of the partic.i.p.ants.

The men were sprawled on the ground, swollen, b.l.o.o.d.y, and barely conscious. Hundreds of men continued to beat and taunt and shoot at them. "Mahmud, shoot him!" one man called out as somebody cursed a victim's female relatives and shots were fired. "We are Islam!" someone else shouted. "G.o.d will make us victorious!" "Shoot him! This is for Beirut! f.u.c.k his mother! You think we are Jews that you're shooting at us? Shoot the f.u.c.ker! We are the rulers, you brother of a wh.o.r.e! Are you proud of yourself for shooting a Muslim?" "This guy shot Hariri's picture! This guy, this guy!" the man was then beaten with a stick. "G.o.d won't give you mercy! I'm going to shoot you like you shot my cousin! G.o.d is great!" One man in the crowd pleaded for the attackers to stop. "Enough, he's dead, enough! Oh, Muslims!" Others continued to attack and shout. "You infidels! You Jews! By G.o.d, I'll f.u.c.k your sister." "Bring the flagstick," somebody shouted. One of the victims was stabbed with a stick. "G.o.d is one! Pray for the Prophet!" The same lone voice continued to plead, "We are Muslims! In our religion this is forbidden! If they don't know the religion we know the religion! Act like Muslims! Guys, act like the Prophet has told you guys! Guys, we are Islam, G.o.d will give us victory . . . please, please!" One young boy asked to be allowed to abuse the wounded men. "I don't want to do anything, I don't want to do anything," he said. "I just want to break his arm." "We have four men in here and we have one inside as well! Guys, burn them! Burn them now!" "By G.o.d, I'll f.u.c.k your sister!" One of the wounded men moaned, "Oh, G.o.d! Oh, G.o.d!" One man pointed to one of the victims' necks and said, "I'm going to shoot you here! You're not going to die alone!" "Enough, Nabil, leave him!" Someone pleaded, while elsewhere the attack continued. "This is the first b.a.s.t.a.r.d that started shooting at us! And this one too, he shot at us directly, this one! Film me while I put my slipper in his mouth, film me!" "Make us proud, guys!" One young attacker with a Future Movement headband shouted to the men, "We want to f.u.c.k your sisters!" "Shoot the second one, come on!" "f.u.c.k his mother!" "Guys, burn them!" "I'll f.u.c.k your sister!"

Two adjacent buildings were also attacked. Hundreds of men surrounded them and shot from all sides. "G.o.d is great!" they shouted as they burst into apartments and ransacked them. Residents were terrified; there was n.o.body in charge. They broke into one family's house and threatened a mother and her children, pointing their guns at them. "We will kill you," they said. One of the boys was nine years old. As one group of attackers left the apartment another would charge in, and the terror would begin again. As the families from the apartments fled down the streets, they walked past bodies and pools of blood. One of the apartments belonged to a Christian Lebanese army officer and his family. Like their neighbors, they watched their furniture get destroyed, their clothes flung about, their apartment shot up. "When there is so much violence and hatred, it's impossible to build a state," the officer later told me. The eighty-year-old father of one of the Christian SSNP members was also in a nearby building. Despite being weak and sick, he too was detained for much of the day and threatened with death. The office of Arc en Ciel, an aid organization that helped the handicapped and was located above the SSNP headquarters, was looted and destroyed. A nearby gas station whose owner was affiliated with the SSNP was also torched.

Survivors of the attack on the SSNP office who made it to local hospitals were attacked by mobs that were waiting for them. Nasr Hammoudah was killed when a fire extinguisher was shoved into his mouth and emptied into him. Mohamad Hammoudah, Abed Khodr Abdel Rahman, and Ammar Moussa were also attacked on their way to the hospital and upon their arrival.

Khaled Dhaher was one of the leaders of the mob. Witnesses implicated him in ordering some of the executions and even of shooting the SSNP prisoners himself. Dhaher protected Muhamad Tahash from execution and interrogated him, asking him how many men were in the office and what kind of weapons they had. One of the men approached and shot Tahash in the belly. Dhaher's bodyguard, who was Tahash's childhood friend, helped spare his life. He prevented a man from executing Tahash, so instead the man kicked Tahash in the face and broke his teeth as Dhaher looked on. While in captivity, Tahash observed Dhaher giving detailed orders to the mob. Dhaher told his men to attack the local Syrian Baath Party office. They told him it had been closed for three years. "I don't care," Dhaher responded. "Break in and burn it." Muhamad al-Masri, a local Future Movement leader, was also present. Dhaher's bodyguard locked Tahash in a room and called the Internal Security Forces to pick him up. They drove him to the hospital in a white civilian Mercedes-Benz. Tahash saw the mob waiting to kill survivors of the ma.s.sacre. "I was left in the Mercedes by myself," he said. "Men came and tried to cut my arm off. They couldn't, so they twisted it and broke it. Then they emptied a fire extinguisher in my mouth and all over me. While they were attacking us, they accused us of defending Hizballah and the s.h.i.+tes." Tahash's wife learned of the attack in Halba from the news. She called her husband's mobile phone, but a stranger answered. "Muhamad was burned to death," he told her. "f.u.c.k you and f.u.c.k Antoine Saadeh [founder of the SSNP]."

As the men lay dying on the dirt, their attackers and other gleeful onlookers filmed them with their cellphones, bringing the lenses in close and squatting to get better angles. The men were kicked in the head. Some of them were forced to reveal their genitals so the attackers could determine if they were Muslim or Christian. All but two of the victims were Sunni Muslims. Some had been beaten to death; others were still struggling to move or breathe. Their bodies, turned to b.l.o.o.d.y pulps, lay strewn on the ground. The attackers disappeared. Fires continued to crackle inside the building. One of the men still had his s.h.i.+rt pulled up and his pants open. By 5 p.m. eleven men were dead, crushed, beaten, and shot to death. Soon crowds came to view the bodies. Old men and young boys filmed the dead. The Lebanese Red Cross finally arrived, and then the Internal Security Forces and the Lebanese army. The bodies were taken away in ambulances. Army vehicles rumbled into town, taking positions on the streets. As in January 2007, the offices of the SSNP were attacked because it was an easy target with no sectarian base and less immediate consequences. But the SSNP had a long memory and a history of seeking revenge, party members in Beirut warned me. They believed that the mayor of the Akkar town of Fnaydek and his brother were among the leaders of the mob and that the attacks had been ordered by senior Future Party men and Sunni politician and Parliament member Musbah al-Ahdab.

In Tripoli that day I saw a banner that said, "No to Wilayat al-Faqih," a reference to the Iranian system of government. That evening I interviewed Ahdab in his ostentatious Tripoli apartment. He had a small militia of dozens of fit armed men protecting him. One of his security guards belonged to Afwaj Trablus, the Tripoli Brigades. He was paid by Secure Plus. There were six or seven thousand men like him, he told me, who had been trained but not in the use of RPGs. A few had received advanced training in Jordan. "It would be better if the Syrians were here," he said ruefully. "At least there was security." Ahdab's eyes were bloodshot and wide in near hysteria. His breath smelled strongly of alcohol. An Iranian militia had taken over an Arab capital, he told me. As we spoke, we got word of clashes in the slums of Bab al-Tabbaneh.

I raced over with a Lebanese friend. There was no power, but the buildings were illuminated by the occasional thunderous flashes of RPGs. At a nearby traffic circle, we saw dozens of men running toward Bab al-Tabbaneh carrying launchers and RPGs. They had long beards and were obviously Salafis. We stopped to talk to several men who stayed behind. They were fighting the Nusayris, they told me, using the pejorative term for Alawites, in the hilltop neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen, which overlooked Bab al-Tabbaneh. "They've hated us for 1,400 years," one man told me, referring to s.h.i.+tes. "The rich are in Beirut," a garage owner who was watching the fighting said. "We are the poorest area of Lebanon." "They are afraid of Tabbaneh. They are afraid of Sunnis," another man told me. "We have a.s.sabiya for our sect."

Hundreds of fighters rushed into the blackness. "This fight is revenge for Beirut," one man said. I asked them why they didn't go and fight in Beirut. "We are waiting for permission from Sheikh Saad," someone told me. "Saad realized he didn't want to fight s.h.i.+tes, he doesn't want a military conflict. Future is a moderate current. If Future disappears, then Sunnis will die. If you cut our wrists, the blood will come out and spell Saad, and spell Sunnis."

My friend was a Sunni from the Ras Beirut area of the capital, which is identified as Sunni. He was stopped by several irate armed Salafis who demanded to see his ID card to confirm his address. "If you are not from Ras Beirut, I will slaughter you now," the leader of the group barked at my friend." One of the men disparaged the Sunnis of Baghdad, who had failed to stand up to Hizballah. "The Sunnis of Beirut want to have nice jackets, nice cars, and nice apartments," he told my friend. "They like to go out on a Sat.u.r.day night and stay out. Here we are day laborers, and we save money to buy guns because we know we will need them. That's why we blame you." As I left I realized Saad al-Hariri was actually a moderating force, preventing Sunnis from pursuing further violence.

The next morning I returned. One woman had been killed in the clashes, but no fighters had been hurt. I visited the home of nineteen-year-old Ibrahim Jumaa, who had gotten married a month and a half earlier and had just moved in. An RPG had gone through his wall, through his living room, and into his toilet. The Lebanese army was on the streets of Bab al-Tabbaneh. They had also been there before the previous evening's clashes started. Like in Beirut, the fighting was preceded by youth throwing stones at one another. When the army withdrew, the shooting started. "We all fight," one man told me. "It's our neighborhood, our land. We are on fire after the battle of Beirut." Some of the people tried to console my friend, who was a Sunni from Beirut. Others asked him why Tariq al-Jadida had fallen so quickly. Their radios crackled. "Hide your weapons, the army is coming," somebody said. The men told me they hid their weapons when the army showed up for the sake of the army's feelings. "The problem with the army is as soon as they hear a shot, they leave," said one man.

Most of the bearded men in Afghan attire were gone in the morning, save a few of their leaders, who sat in a cafe and coordinated with their men by radio. Locals were hostile to the media, and warned that they would not accept Al Jazeera or the local Lebanese channel, New TV, which were perceived as pro-Hizballah. The Saudi-owned Arabiya network was welcome, though. They demanded that Future TV be allowed to operate again and that the siege on the airport be removed. "Hariri airport is not Nasrallah airport," one man said. "We are mad because Sunnis were broken," another said, but they were not angry at Saad. One man who had fought in Iraq in 2003 told me it was part of the same conflict.

Mustafa Zaabi, the man who had guided me through the area in the past, told me that "Sunnis here won't be quiet." I walked by a cafe with a poster of Saddam at his trial, in which he was holding the Koran. It said, "Long live the Muslim community, Long live Palestine, Arab freedom." Mustafa had led his own group of fighters during the clashes. He carried an RPG launcher. He and the older men knew how to fight, he said, but the younger guys didn't. He seemed ecstatic. "It's an experience, fighting," he said. "We felt as if they took us back twenty-seven years. We went back to the same positions we were in before."

Hundreds of Tabbaneh residents had been ma.s.sacred by the Syrians and their allies in the 1980s. The civil war had never ended there. The bitterness remained and occasionally erupted into violence, but with the influx of Salafis and jihadists and the interpretation of local conflicts through the paradigm of a regional conflict between Sunnis and s.h.i.+tes, it was becoming more explosive. The Salafis played a crucial role in the latest battle. "We depend on them," Mustafa told me. "They have a creed."

Local militiamen scrounged their money and relied on donations from wealthy Sunni patrons and politicians. All the Sunni leaders in Lebanon had provided them with a.s.sistance, including Najib Mikati, Omar Karameh, and Saad Hariri. And their various supporters all fought together against the Alawites. They bought many of their weapons from the Palestinian camps. "If we had part of Hizb Ashaytan's [the devil's party] weapons, I would be talking to you from the mountaintop," Mustafa told me. Musbah al-Ahdab was particularly loved in the area for his public anger and financial support. "Musbah was 20 percent popular before he went on TV and said that people should organize themselves and get their weapons so what happened in Beirut won't happen here," one man told me. "Then his popularity became 100 percent." Some people told me that Ahdab had also provided them with weapons and ammunition. Khaled Dhaher was a good guy, they all agreed. ("He didn't abandon us," Mustafa told me. "He took care of us.") Many of them had footage of the Halba ma.s.sacre on their mobile phones. Dhaher's people had been involved, everybody said proudly; his people were well armed. Mustafa bragged that Dhaher had killed some of the victims himself. It was rumored that the families of the two Sunni supporters of the Future Movement who were killed in Halba during the clashes each received one hundred thousand dollars from the Hariri family. Locals told me that Dhaher's people had distributed ammunition to the militias of Tabbaneh. "Jund Allah dazzled us with their weapons and the amount of ammunition that they had," Mustafa said of Kanan Naji's militia. Two Future officials, Muhamad al-Aswad and Khalid al-Masri, also had armed groups in Tabbaneh.

The way the clashes erupted sounded familiar. n.o.body knew who started shooting first, Mustafa told me. Zaaran from both sides were insulting one another and throwing stones, and then the shooting started. It was a result of an old anger in their hearts, he told me, which went back to the Syrian occupation. "It's an old war," he said. "There isn't a house or a family in Tabbaneh that doesn't want revenge on the Alawites, that doesn't have a blood debt with the Alawites," another man told me.

People had been told to expect a battle that day, so they had prepared for one. And indeed, a battle happened in Tabbaneh and other poor areas around it. Suddenly all the old armed groups that had once dominated Tripoli re-emerged, but their men were too old and the young men on the streets lacked proper training. As a result Sunnis often turned to current or former members of the security forces. An Alawite leader claimed that the first RPG had been fired by a pro-Syrian Sunni group.

The army had come the previous night during a truce, but when fighting resumed it withdrew again. Mustafa's area was a front line. He broke a hole in the back of his building so his men could sneak out to the other side. One of his men showed me a wad of cash he had just received to buy more ammunition. The price for a hand grenade was now seventeen dollars. Before the fighting it had been four dollars. A rocket-propelled grenade was now seventy dollars. Mustafa would buy weapons from Palestinian dealers in the Minyeh area close to Bedawi.

One of his men had gone down to Tariq al-Jadida with several hundred others from the north for the Beirut fighting. They were only given clubs, he complained, not guns, and had barely been fed. He felt betrayed. "No," said another, "Saad didn't want bloodshed."

"There is a strong Sunni awakening in Lebanon," Mustafa's younger brother Khudhr told me. "We all became terrorists," another man said. "Ha.s.san Nasrallah made us all terrorists. We don't want to fight Israel." Instead, they told me, they would fight the s.h.i.+tes with all they had.

"We as the shabab of Tabbaneh are fighting as Islamists, not as the opposition or the majority," Mustafa explained. "We are in solidarity in defense of our religion." He told me that they feared a repeat of the ma.s.sacres they had faced in the 1980s by the Syrians and their allies.

Whenever power was used against Salafis and Islamists, they became more devout and defended their religion, Mustafa told me. There was no area in Lebanon that had poverty and neglect and didn't have people embracing their religion. "The comfortable citizen doesn't think about the gun," he said. "In this area it's like you're in a Palestinian camp." If they could have left their area, they would have gone down to Beirut to defend Sunnis, he told me. They were resentful of the Sunni leaders.h.i.+p, which had betrayed them. "During Nahr al-Barid they accused the shabab of belonging to Fatah al-Islam because they were Sunnis. They killed who they killed and imprisoned who they imprisoned just because they were Sunnis. But Hizballah did what they did in Beirut, and n.o.body questioned them or confronted them."

"If we close the airport road, they will say we are terrorists," one man said. "Yesterday I started to pray because I felt like I am in the hands of G.o.d. And that's how I became a terrorist. They pushed me and abandoned me, and I am alone. What can I do? I seek shelter with G.o.d."

One day I showed up in front of Mustafa's shop and found him wearing a new military vest he had just purchased for twenty dollars. The other guys wanted one too. His Salafi cousin Shadi Jbara gave him money to purchase more. There had been fighting the night before. One of the men bragged that in all their fighting ten civilians had died in the clashes but none of the fighters had been killed.

Shadi had just been released from prison two weeks earlier and was opening a bakery. Along with several other Al Qaeda wanna-bes, he had tried to blow up a local Kentucky Fried Chicken. Shadi's father had been a.s.sa.s.sinated during the battles of the 1980s, and he bragged that his mother had become a mujahida, carrying an AK-47 and shooting RPGs at the Alawites of Jabal Mohsen. Shadi had known some of the Fatah al-Islam men in prison. One of them, an Algerian, told Shadi he had come to Lebanon to defend Sunnis from s.h.i.+tes.

At first Shadi wasn't sure if he could talk to me because he hadn't received permission from the sheikh he followed. He had once been like any other guy, he told me, going out at night, chasing women. In 1991 he met a man who led him to the right path-the path of G.o.d. He went to Saudi Arabia in 1993 and met with Afghan Arabs and leaders of Salafi movements. He worked in a restaurant, and at night he would study there. After five years he returned from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden gave orders to attack U.S. businesses; the easiest targets for Shadi and his friends were restaurants, so they decided to attack a Kentucky Fried Chicken. They placed one kilogram of TNT by the restaurant early in the morning so n.o.body would get hurt. They didn't want to cause casualties, just damage to the restaurant to gain media recognition.

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