The specter of civil war returns to Beirut – Pierre Haski

Fate has no mercy for the Lebanese. In the last two years, the population of Lebanon has experienced a constant deterioration in living conditions, has suffered the blockade of assets by the banks, has had to live with the constant shortages of essential products and has learned to live with an electric current that the more often than not it is missing, without forgetting the cataclysm of the explosion of the port of Beirut, on 4 August 2020. In the meantime, a predatory political class continues to cling to power despite the undeniable failures.

Now, as if that weren’t enough, the specter of armed conflict has returned, thirty-two years after the end of the civil war that for fifteen years transformed Beirut into a battlefield, neighborhood against neighborhood, community against community.

On October 14, the elderly relived that nightmare in the heart of the capital, when some armed individuals fired on demonstrators from two Shiite parties, Hezbollah and Amal. The dead were at least six, as well as numerous wounded. The city center has suddenly emptied. The shops have closed their doors. The army has arrived in the city. Fear has returned to prevail.

These tensions are due to a tug-of-war over a judge, Tarek Bitar, owner of the investigation into the port catastrophe, which caused 216 deaths and 5,000 injuries. Bitar, 46, does not allow himself to be intimidated in his search for responsibility in the explosion of the ammonium nitrate stored in the port.

The judge accused a former prime minister and several former ministers, and tried to summon some security officials. But he comes up against pressure to get him out of office, like his predecessor.

A few days ago Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, launched an attack against Bitar, accusing him of having “political objectives”. On October 14, Nasrallah invited young Shiite party militants, dressed in black, to protest against the judge.

But an opponent of Hezbollah, Samir Geagea, has launched an invitation to surround the neighborhood. His men are suspected of having opened fire. Geagea is not a stranger, but a civil war survivor whose Christian militia participated in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. He served a ten-year sentence for murder.

Samir Geagea against Hassan Nasrallah: it is the Lebanese syndrome, in which political life always revolves around the same characters.

The serious incidents of October 14 showed that heavy weapons circulate in Beirut, and not just in the ranks of Hezbollah. The national army appears weak and unable to stop the mechanism of violence if it continues.

Calls for calm multiply, as well as references to the civil war. The new prime minister, Najib Mikati, asked “not to indulge in sedition, whatever the pretext”. But his newly formed government split over Judge Bitar’s fate, and he couldn’t even get together this week.

These macabre political games confirm two aspects: the first is that there is still much to discover about the origin of the explosion of the port, and this explains the widespread nervousness; the second is that the Lebanese people are held hostage by a political class ready for anything, even to let the country continue to sink into hell.

(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)