Ahmad (right), a 19-year-old student of engineering and one of Bab Al-Tabbaneh’s fortunate young people, chatting with a friend. He has been able to go to university, thanks to a grant from the Ruwwad Al Tanmeya NGO. Credit: Oriol Andrés Gallart/IPS

By Oriol Andrés Gallart
TRIPOLI, Lebanon, Jan 10 2015 (IPS)

“People get used to war. During the last battle, children were still coming to play. Can you imagine, a seven-year-old boy running through the bullets just to play video games,” says Mohammad Darwish, a calm man with a curled beard framing his face.

Sitting behind the counter of his cybercafé, located in one of the main streets of the Bab Al-Tabbaneh neighbourhood in this northern Lebanese city, Darwish says that his young customers have resigned themselves to the persistence of armed conflicts.“People get used to war. During the last battle, children were still coming to play. Can you imagine, a seven-year-old boy running through the bullets just to play video games” – Mohammad Darwish, owner of a cybercafé in the Bab Al-Tabbaneh neighbourhood of Tripoli

Despite their age, they are pretty sure that clashes – which have become routine here over the past six years – will erupt again sooner or later. Even when calm reigns, the shelled and bullet-riddled buildings in Tabbaneh stand as a reminder of previous clashes.

The last eruption of violence was in late October 2014. Clashes between the army and local Sunni gunmen paralysed Tripoli for three days and destroyed part of the historic old city, leaving at least eight civilians, 11 soldiers and 22 militants dead. The army now controls Tabbaneh, with soldiers and tanks deployed on every street corner.

Curiously, flags and posters of the Islamic State (IS) can be seen displayed in houses and shops.

“I support IS [Islamic State] and the [Al-Qaeda-affiliated] Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN)”, says 19-year-old unemployed Hassan with a smile, explaining that he thinks IS will give him rights “to have a job, to live peacefully according to Islamic precepts, to move freely.”

Tabbaneh is probably the hardest neighbourhood to grow up in the whole of Tripoli. Despite being the second largest city in Lebanon, barely 80 kilometres north of Beirut, policy neglect by various central governments has left this Sunni-majority city suffering from alarming poverty, unemployment and social exclusion, and Tabbaneh is one of its poorest and most marginalised areas.

Seventy-six percent of Tabbaneh inhabitants live below the poverty line, according to a study on ‘Urban Poverty in Tripoli’, published in 2012 by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).

These circumstances, aggravated by the political exploitation of sectarianism within a very conservative society, have fuelled the frequent rounds of violence, mainly between Tabbaneh and the neighbourhood of Jabal Mohsen.

A giant poster on a balcony in Bab Al-Tabbaneh in memory of a young boy killed during clashes in the neighbourhood. Credit: Oriol Andrés Gallart/IPS

Both neighbourhoods are separated just by one street, but while Bab Al-Tabbaneh inhabitants are mostly Sunni (like the main Syrian rebel groups), most of Jabal Mohsen’s inhabitants are Alawites (the same sect as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad).

This sectarianism has determined a rivalry that dates back to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon which began in 1976 and ended in 2005, but which has turned violent again since 2008, and especially since the beginning of Syrian civil war in 2011. During the last three years, more than 20 rounds of fights have broken out in Tripoli, most of them between Tabbaneh and Mohsen militias.

“We fight to defend our people, to achieve peace,” says 19-year-old Khaled, who usually works in a bakery but also belongs to a local militia. But Ahmad, who is of the same age, is sceptical: “People fight because they don’t have money or work.”

Ahmad is studying engineering, thanks to a grant provided by Ruwwad Al Tanmeya, a regional NGO that works in the area through youth activism, civic engagement and education. Because his father served in the army, the state paid the major part of his school fees when he was younger and he was able to study in private schools outside Tabbaneh.

Hoda Al-Rifai, a Ruwwad youth officer, agrees with Ahmad: “Many families don’t have incomes. Whenever the conflict starts, the fighters get paid. And these fighters also give money to children to fulfil specific tasks. They can have three dollars a day and this is better than going to school. Their parents also think this way.”

Stereotypes also contribute to make things hard for Tabbaneh’s youth – including finding a job outside the neighbourhood – and shape their personality, explains Hoda. “When we started, the youth had no self-confidence. The media do not produce an image of these neighbourhoods as areas where you can find brilliant young men, willing to study. They just underline the clashes and all kinds of negatives things.”

“There are no members of JN or IS here,” Darwish tells IPS, adding that many in Tabbaneh see the IS flags as a way of showing dissatisfaction over the government’s alleged abandonment of the Sunni community and specifically of Tabbaneh.

“This is not a religious conflict but political. When politicians want to send a message to each other, they pay for clashes here,” adds Darwish’s 49-year-old aunt, veiled and dressed completely in black. “In this city, you can give 20 dollars to a boy so he starts a war,” explains Darwish.

Nevertheless, various studies have found that only a small percentage of the estimated up to 80,000 Tabbaneh inhabitants take part in combats, and Sarah Al-Charif, Lebanon director of Ruwwad, stresses the immediate improvements observed in Tabbaneh and Mohsen youths who participate in the NGO’s projects.

“They become aware of their shared interests, values and pain,” she says. “They became more open-minded, especially the girls.”

For Sarah, in addition to public investment and job opportunities, any solution must include awareness and education, to which Hoda adds: “First of all, citizens need to understand why the clashes take place.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Sub-Saharan migrant garbage collectors push their carts through the streets of Tripoli´s old town. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
TRIPOLI, Libya, Dec 18 2014 (IPS)

It’s easy to spot Saani Bubakar in Tripoli´s old town: always dressed in the distinctive orange jumpsuit of the waste collectors, he pushes his cart through the narrow streets on a routine that has been his for the last three years of his life.

“I come from a very poor village in Niger where there is not even running water,” explains the 23-year-old during a break. “Our neighbours told us that one of their sons was working in Tripoli, so I decided to take the trip too.”

Of the 250 Libyan dinars [about 125 euro or 154 dollars] Bubakar is paid each month, he manages to send more than half to his family back home. Accommodation, he adds, is free.

“We are 50 in an apartment nearby,” says the migrant worker, who assures that he will be back in Niger “soon”. It is not the poor working conditions but the increasing instability in the country that makes him want to go back home.

Thousands of migrants remain detained in Libyan detention centres, where they face torture that includes “severe whippings, beatings, and electric shocks” – Human Rights Watch
Three years after Libya´s former ruler Muammar Gaddafi was toppled and killed, Libya remains in a state of political turmoil that has pushed the country to the brink of civil war. There are two governments and two separate parliaments – one based in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk, 1,000 km east of the capital. The latter, set up after elections in June when only 10 percent of the census population took part, has international recognition.

Accordingly, several militias are grouped into two paramilitary alliances: Fajr (“Dawn” in Arabic), led by the Misrata brigades controlling Tripoli, and Karama (“Dignity”) commanded by Khalifa Haftar, a Tobruk-based former army general.

The population and, very especially, the foreign workers are seemingly caught in the crossfire. “I´m always afraid of working at night because the fighting in the city usually starts as soon as the sun hides,” explains Odar Yahub, one of Bubakar´s roommates.

At 22, Yahub says that will not go back to Niger until he has earned enough to get married – but that will probably take longer than expected:

“We haven´t been paid for the last four months, and no one has given us any explanation,” the young worker complains, as he empties his bucket in the garbage truck.

While most of the sweepers are of sub-Saharan origin, there are also many who arrived from Bangladesh. Aaqib, who prefers not to disclose his full name, has already spent four years cleaning the streets of Souk al Juma neighbourhood, east of the capital. He says he supports his family in Dhaka – the Bangladeshi capital – by sending home almost all the 450 Libyan dinars (225 euros) from his salary, which he has not received for the last four months either.

“Of course I’ve dreamed of going to Europe but I know many have died at sea,” explains Aaqib, 28. “I´d only travel by plane, and with a visa stamped on my passport,” he adds. For the time being, his passport is in the hands of his contractor. All the waste collectors interviewed by IPS said their documents had been confiscated.

Defenceless

From his office in east Tripoli, Mohamed Bilkhaire, who became Minister of Employment in the Tripoli Executive two months ago, claims that he is not surprised by the apparent contradiction between the country´s 35 percent unemployment rate – according to his sources – and the fact that all the garbage collectors are foreigners.

“Arabs do not sweep due to sociocultural factors, neither here nor in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq … We need foreigners to do the job,” says Bilkhaire, Asked about the garbage collectors´ salaries, he told IPS that they are paid Libya´s minimum income of 450 Libyan dinars, and that any smaller amount is due to “illegal subcontracting which should be prosecuted.”

Bilkhaire also admitted that passports were confiscated “temporarily” because most of the foreign workers “want to cross to Europe.”

According to data gathered and released by FRONTEX, the European Union´s border agency, among the more than 42,000 immigrants who arrived in Italy during the first four months of 2014, 27,000 came from Libya.

In a report released by Human Rights Watch in June, the NGO claimed that thousands of migrants remain detained in Libyan detention centres, where they face torture that includes “severe whippings, beatings, and electric shocks.”

“Detainees have described to us how male guards strip-searched women and girls and brutally attacked men and boys,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher in the same report.

In the case of foreign workers under contract, Hanan Salah, HRW researcher for Libya, told IPS that “with the breakdown of the judicial system in many regions, abusive employers and those who do not comply with whatever contract was agreed upon, can hardly be held accountable in front of the law.”

Shokri Agmar, a lawyer from Tripoli, talks about “complete and utter helplessness”:

“The main problem for foreign workers in Libya is not merely the judicial neglect but rather that they lack a militia of their own to protect themselves,” Agmar told IPS from his office in Gargaresh, west of Tripoli.

That is precisely one of the districts where large numbers of migrants gather until somebody picks them up for a day of work, generally as construction workers.

Aghedo arrived from Nigeria three weeks ago. For this 25-year-old holding a shovel with his right hand, Tripoli is just a stopover between an endless odyssey across the Sahara Desert and a dangerous sea journey to Italy.

“There are days when they do not even pay us, but also others when we can make up to 100 dinars,” Aghedo tells IPS.

The young migrant hardly lowers his guard as he is forced to distinguish between two types of pick-up trucks: the ones which offer a job that is not always paid and those driven by the local militia – a false step and he will end up in one of the most feared detention centres.

“I know I could find a job as a sweeper but I cannot wait that long to raise the money for a passage in one of the boats bound for Europe,” explains the young migrant, without taking his eyes off the road.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Poster in Lebanon's Beqaa of Hezbollah 'shaheed' killed in Syrian conflict. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
BEIRUT, Aug 5 2014 (IPS)

Concerns about supporting a national army collaborating with a ‘terrorist organisation’ in Lebanon have in recent times been superseded by threats inherent in growing regional conflict.

The fact that Hezbollah, officially designated as a ‘terrorist organisation’ by both the United States and the European Union, no longer conceals its involvement in the fighting across the Lebanese-Syrian border makes little difference.

When traveling through the eastern Beqaa Valley, posters of Hezbollah ‘shaheed’ (‘martyrs’) of the Syrian conflict vie for space with those of popular Shia imams and the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.The fact that Hezbollah, officially designated as a ‘terrorist organisation’ by both the United States and the European Union, no longer conceals its involvement in the fighting across the Lebanese-Syrian border makes little difference.

In one seen by this IPS correspondent on a recent trip to the area, Nasrallah’s face and that of another Shia political leader flank that of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad, with the writing ‘’this is what heroes are’’.

On July 26, the ‘Party of God’ announced in a statement that Nasrallah’s nephew, Hamzah Yassin, had been killed performing his ‘’jihadist duty defending holy sites’’, implying he had lost his life fighting in Syria.

The United States and other nations’ support for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) has long served as a bulwark against excessive volatility in the small but confessionally-diverse Middle Eastern country. At the same time, care has been taken to prevent it from becoming so strong as to pose a threat to its southern neighbour and strong U.S. ally – Israel.

Hezbollah, sworn enemy of the ‘Zionist entity’ (as it refers to Israel), continues to claim that its more powerful arsenal is for its struggle against Israel, even as ever more of its means and men are directed at fighting rebel groups in Syria.

At the same time, it seems to be gaining ever more influence in Lebanon’s policies and military.

Yezid Sayigh, senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, told IPS that Hezbollah ‘‘is believed to have a lot of influence on the military intelligence [directorate] in particular –which would make sense as it is the most sensitive agency and the agency that would, potentially, monitor Hezbollah.’’

On the fact that Hezbollah moves fighters and weapons across the border, Sayigh said that ‘’Hezbollah has a lot of de facto power; it acts autonomously on these issues. They must have some sort of agreement that allows them to bring back their dead and wounded, for example,’’ or ‘’it may be that they move them through corridors no one, including the army, is allowed to enter.’’

Sayigh noted that compared with the LAF, Hezbollah ‘’has heavier, longer-range missiles.’’

However, the LAF will benefit, he said, ‘’if the current development programme goes through’’, because ‘’significant quantities of more up-to-date weaponry, transport systems and so on’’ will be available to them.

In January, Saudi Arabia pledged 3 billion dollars in aid and the International Support Group for Lebanon promised at a Rome conference in June to provide more training, among other support.

However, Hezbollah’s key strategic advantage remains ‘’its superior organisation, intelligence, battlefield management and the close relationship between its political and military leaders,’’ which is what the LAF lacks, according to Sayigh. ‘’It is also thought to have a lot of say in the choice, recruitment and promotion of Shia officers in the army.’’

In relation to border control and weapons smuggling in certain areas by Syrian rebel groups, he noted that ‘’once Hezbollah accepted the deployment of the police in its own strongholds in southern Beirut, it became possible for the army to deploy more extensively along the northern and eastern border, and be somewhat more effective.’’

The effectiveness of the LAF is further weakened by such problems as the soldier-to-general ratio, which according to a paper published earlier this year, stands at just under one general for every 100 soldiers, compared with the U.S. army, which in October 2013 had one general for 1,357 soldiers.

The more efficiently organised non-state actor has instead been called a ‘’jihadist’’ organisation, and describes what its fighters dying in the conflict in Syria are doing as their ‘’jihadist duty’’.

Asked to comment on whether Hezbollah is comparable to Sunni jihadist organisations, Sayigh said that ‘’it is an Islamist organisation’’ but ‘’it has accepted that it cannot construct an Islamic state in Lebanon.’’

Sayigh noted that ‘’to the extent that they are mobilising Shia fighters from Iran or from Iraq to go fight in Syria, we do witness a growing form of Shia jihadism, the idea that people are going to fight in defence of the Shia doctrine, to protect Shia shrines. There is a growing sense of, if you like, Shia jihadism,’’ but ‘’Hezbollah stands out for working within a much more careful political and military framework.’’

He said, however, that ‘’they are increasingly recruiting from outside of their own ranks,’’ showing a ‘’higher level of mobilisation among the Shia community. Whether or not these people get paid is unclear.’’

Mustafa Allouch, head of the Tripoli branch of the Future Party and former MP for the city, said instead that ‘’a lot of money is being paid.’’

‘’It is said that Hezbollah provides 20,000 dollars for a ‘martyr’ buried openly, and 100,000 if the parents agree to bury him without a funeral,’’ he said.

In relation to the United States and its financial support for Lebanon overall, Sayigh said ‘’there seems to have been a strategic decision to continue to cooperate with the Lebanese government, the Lebanese army, and other agencies even when Hezbollah is in a coalition government.’’

‘’The country is fragile and in deep economic trouble,’’ Sayigh pointed out, ‘’and the U.S. decision has been to ‘’avoid overburdening the Lebanese system to breaking point.’’

However, a local employee of a U.N. agency expressed concerns to IPS – on condition of anonymity – that de facto authorisation in many areas comes from Hezbollah and not the government itself.

Nevertheless, the army can point to some achievements in the past few months. In December 2013, LAF was given a mandate to keep order in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli amid rapidly escalating violence. In a visit to the city in July by IPS, overall calm prevailed and many of the sandbags, tanks and troops deployed earlier in the year were nowhere to be seen.

When asked what the major factor was that led to the calm, Allouch said that ‘’when you have a political agreement to withdraw all gang leaders,’’ citing arrest warrants issued for Alawite community leaders accused of crimes, which led to their escaping across the border to Syria, ‘’you can achieve things. The military is simply imposing what the political agreement was.’’

He noted that, although Hezbollah could be compared in many ways to a ‘’gang’’, there could be no talk of the Lebanese army ‘’confronting Hezbollah militarily’’.

‘’It would end in civil war. And the Lebanese army itself would not hold, given the situation in the region. Hezbollah is not a local issue, it is a regional one.’’

(Edited by Phil Harris)