Residents of ruined neighborhoods consider Sheikh Nasrallah the victor and themselves victors with him.
Photo: Valery Melnikov
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The Neighborhood of the Victors
// Beirut residents ready to stand up for their own
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will visit Beirut today. Lebanese authorities are hoping that his visit will help to call off the air and sea blockade of the country that Israel has been enforcing for a month and a half. A humanitarian catastrophe threatens if Israel does not. Residents of the ruined district of Beirut controlled by Hezbollah are not facing a catastrophe, as Olga Alennova discovered when she visited there. Here, Hezbollah is restoring everything itself. It is gaining ever more support in the country.
Lebanese Tanks Move on Lebanon
Because of the blockade, Lebanon can be entered only by land, across the Syrian-Lebanese border. You fill out an application, receive a visa and jump into a Lebanese taxi. The war can be felt in the border town of Al-Mansaa. Two bombs fell on the road there creating a crater so deep that it filled with groundwater. Another 20 kilometers along is a ruined bridge over a gorge. The narrow bypass road leads through the mountains and we follow a T-62 tank being pulled on a trailer to join a tank battalion that was stationed here a few days earlier. Finally we reach a checkpoint, where we see eight more tanks parked and the soldiers wave us on. “There are more tanks behind us too,” our driver tells us. “Finally the Lebanese army has started to do something!” The army is not liked. People think that, if the Lebanese army had protected them along with Hezbollah, the war would have ended quicker and without such huge losses.
Hezbollah has placed signs along the road all the way from the border to Beirut. They depict people in uniform with grenade launchers aimed at Israeli cities “Sacred victory” is written on them in English. There are also pictures of children in ruined buildings, and of Ibrahim Kasem, a resident of the village of Blid, outside Qana, whose family – 13 people – was killed. His two-month-old son was the last he recovered from the burned out ruins of his home. There were 140 houses in Blida and the Israelis fires 1500 rockets at them. Kasem looks in everyone's eyes as they pass. His right fist is upraised in anger. There is a burning house behind him. I understand that his tragedy is being exploited by Hezbollah for its own purposes, but it is hard not to be moved by those billboards.
“Hezbollah is the party of the people,” Asad Deiya, founder and director of the Russia-Lebanon Ensemble. “Ask any Lebanese who he is, and he will say, I am Hezbollah.'”
The Hezbollah Neighborhood
There are practically no reminders of the war in the business district in Beirut. The luxury hotels and banks along the shore pour multicolored light into the twilight sky and Lebanese sit on the embankment and smoke hookahs. Only personnel carriers parked at occasional corners and the tightened security around UN offices, embassies and broadcasting companies hint that it might still be dangerous there.
There is a high building on the central square adorned with a portrait of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Underneath is written “Thank you for our children.” That was put up by anti-American demonstrators on the same day the Lebanese created a spontaneous memorial in the center of Beirut. The relatives of children who were killed brought their toys, clothes and notebooks and spread them out on the ground. Several hundred white headstones were placed around that and a candle was lit at each headstone. At night, when the candles are burning, it is a quiet here as a cemetery.
“There is no Arab politics,” Deiya said. “America rules the world. Israel does what America wants. America wants to make the whole world in its image. And the Arab world is not capable of resisting it and defending Lebanon.”
Deiya is from Nabaqia, a southern city that now, in his words, “looks like Stalingrad.” During the war, Deiya brought about 300 refugees out of southern areas of the country and helped Russian citizens leave the country. As the former governor of Nabaqia, he enjoys great authority there.
“We are here,” he shows me on a map of Beirut. “This is the business district. It cannot be identified with Lebanon. It wasn't bombed, I think, because there was some agreement. Rich people the world over find a common language. And here, by the airport, is the poor Shiite quarter. Here is ruined Dahia, Haret especially. It's 15 minutes from here by car.”
Leaving the elegant part of Beirut, I realize that Deiya is right. It's a different Lebanon. Densely constructed neighborhoods with narrow streets and newly created ruins – that is Dahia, the southern part of Beirut. It was populated by people who came to Beirut from the south of the country looking for work. Then it became a Hezbollah stronghold. Hezbollah's headquarters and the offices of its television channel Al-Manar were located here in Haret. Neither one of them exist now. There are ruins everywhere that bulldozer began clearing just two days ago. White dust hangs in the air. There is a checkpoint at the entranced to Haret. Young men wearing dust masks check our identification and work permits and ask if we have a permit from Hezbollah. “In peacetime you can only enter here with a permit,” Deiya says. He goes to talk to them. They like Russians here because they consider Russia the enemy of America. They let us in.
We walk past mountains of broken bricks, cement, metal and furniture. There are still bodies in the ruins and everyone we encounter is wearing a mask. There are practically no buildings left whole. One multistory building stands with gigantic holes in its walls. A sign hangs from it reading “Bush's democracy.” The Hezbollah anthem is blaring from a souvenir shop nearby that avoided destruction. The anthem is militant and ceremonial and, in these surroundings, it has an almost mystical effect. The phrase “For your sake father who has lost his son, we, Hezbollah, are ready to become shahids” repeats often. It is a reference to Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, who lost a son in the previous war with Israel. The men and women who pass us look us closely in the eye and sometimes smile. There is a strange feeling in these ruins. People lost everything, but no one is crying. On the contrary, it feels like a celebration that I cannot understand.
“The loss of an apartment is no loss,” local resident Ammar Asfahani explains to me. “They will restore our apartments and we won on the front. We maintained our honor. The blockade they imposed is nonsense. We have lived through many wars and did not sink to our knees. We will hold out to the last. We launched rockets at them to the last day.”
“People who have had loved ones killed probably think differently,” I replied.
“They just hate Israel even more,” he said. “We will have our way. Israel will be wiped from the face of the Earth.”
The family of mechanic Mohammed Awada lives on the seventh floor of a building in Haret. He is one of the few people who have risked returning to their apartments since the bombardment. It is not habitable, of course. The balcony is falling off, there are holes in the walls, and there is no gas water or electricity. Awada has lived in a rented apartment in the north of Beirut for the last month and has come to collect any possessions that may have survived. Among the objects he has collected are a Koran and a prayer book with a portrait of Nasrallah on the cover. Hezbollah gave every family that lost the roof over its head $12,000 to rent accommodations for a year. “In that year, Hezbollah will restore the whole neighborhood,” Awada's 18-year-old son Ibrahim said. “They will tear down these buildings and build new ones. And we will return here.”
“We are not sorry about it,” Ibrahim's 19-year-old brother Ahmed says waving a hand around him. “We lost this for the sake of victory. For the sake of Hasan Nasrallah.”
The boys' mother, Um-Jamil, agrees. I see genuine joy in her eyes. “This is a holy victory,” she says.
Returning to the street, we see a portrait of Nasrallah on the building opposite. “Do you know what Nasrallah' means?” Um-Jamil asks. “It means victory of God.' On the picture it says Nasrallah has come. God's victory has come.'” We are joined by a woman wearing a closed black dress. She is carrying two girls about eight years old. The little girls are carrying portraits of Nasrallah. Her name is Um-Muhamad Halal. Her sons Hasan and Muhammed died in the bombing of Bent Jbeil. “They couldn't make war on Hezbollah so they made war on us,” she says proudly, her gleaming eyes fixed on me. “But they will not beat us. I lost two sons, but if I had any more, I would give them up too.”
As we left the Haret district, still to the accompaniment of the Hezbollah anthem, I understood that everyone I had met there said practically the same things.
Humanitarian Catastrophe
It is completely dark in this part of the city at night. The electric lines were severed. The rest of Beirut is poorly lit. They are saving electricity because they need it in the south, where all utilities are out and there is no drinking water. If water is not provided soon, it will be a humanitarian catastrophe.
Prof. Husein Hamut of the Lebanese National University said that, while they were bombing the suburb of Dahia, many in Beirut were huddled in their apartments. Some even went to bomb shelters. Now everyone has returned to their normal lives. Only the tourists won't be back any time soon. Before the war, 25 percent of the government's income came from tourism. Now there is an ecological catastrophe. After the bombing of the electric plant at Said, more than 400 tons of fuel spilled into the sea. Now you can't swim here. Fishermen catch fish and throw them back, the sea smells of fuel and the water in inlets has a cloudy film over it. Lebanese authorities have warned swimmers that they risk being poisoned by the petroleum products in the water.
In Beirut, they talk about one of the biggest problems of post-war life, the lack of gas. Tankers with Arab fuel cannot enter Lebanese waters. They are waiting for permission from Israeli authorities. Israel argues that, if it removes its blockade, arms will enter Lebanon and a new war will start. “I don't have a drop of gasoline,” Prof. Hamut told me. “All the filling stations are closed and even the blackmarketeers, who sold 20 liters for $40, have run out. People who have relatives in the south can't g there because of the problem with transportation. There will be no life here until they remove the blockade.”
They tell me about the blockade in the headquarters of the high commission to aid Lebanon, which was set up by the government and is headed by Gen. Yahya Raad. Removing rubble, repairing electric grids and water pipes, providing food and water to those who need it – it is all the responsibility of the general's commission. He says that 800,000 people fled the hostilities in the south of the country, but now 90 percent of them have returned to their villages. Half of them have ruined homes and are staying with relatives. They need food, water and medicine. Otherwise an epidemic will break out.
“We need prefabricated houses because winter will be here soon, rain, and people will have to wait for their homes to be restored,” Raad said. “We need high-voltage electrical generators from 60 to 400 kWt to power the pumps for drinking water. We have 230,000 families on the books, 1 million people. And we can't let those people start getting sick.”
Humanitarian aid is coming from around the world, but the country receives it in small portions because of the blockade. In Larnaka in Cyprus, many tons of humanitarian provisions have been accumulated and they are loaded onto any ships or planes that Israel grants permission to cross Lebanese borders. So far, only German pilots and the ship Anamkar have received permission. It sailed to Beirut twice under the aegis of the UN. Gen. Raad considers the blockade the main problem the UN needs to solve. “They call us from around the world and say that there are ships ready but they don't give them permission,” Raad says. “There is a ship on the sea with 2000 tons of humanitarian supplies, but they won't let it into Lebanese waters. That problem needs to be solved immediately.”
Great efforts are going into the repair of the bomb-damaged runways at the airport in Beirut. The authorities hope that, when the peacekeepers begin arriving in two weeks, air communications will be restored. The only airplane at the airport now is a German Air Force plane with humanitarian aid. Crate with the Russian flag on them are being unloaded. A member of the crew approaches us. “Can I help you with something?” he asks. He seems to be amazed to find people here.
“The Germans hate America too,” Deiya says. “The word community is on Lebanon's side, because American has made everyone sick of its revolutions. They think that the Lebanese will come to hate Hezbollah and overthrow the government. The Americans will stop at nothing. They make schemes bu they don't take others' mentalities into account. They won't do here what they did in Ukraine. They don't know that, in the Middle East, the straight path is not the shortest.”
Olga Alennova
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 28, 2006
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