Let me make this clear. I am no denouncer of Ziad Baroud. Lebanon’s hugely popular Interior Minister, who received widespread acclaim from his handling of the June 7 election, is a man I appreciate greatly. His apparent ability to see past the sectarian rivalry – in which many senior politicians seem hopelessly mired – is as refreshing as it is admirable. Baroud’s maxim of “security is a red line,” over which partisanship must never tread, is welcome.
From an administrative point of view, his tenure on the Internal Security Forces has been successful. As an order-keeping unit they are rightly respected, regardless of the heavy-handed tactics individuals within the ISF sometimes employ.
But the Interior Ministry’s decision to ban the use of motorcycles outside of daylight hours in the wake of the clash in Ain al-Remmeneh that left one man dead and four others seriously injured is a reaction straight from the knee-jerk category.
True, there are almost daily reports from the suburbs of Lebanon’s big cities of residents being terrorized by gangs of thugs atop scooters. Two-wheeled vehicles are perfect – so the argument goes - for people seeking to harm or intimidate others as they can make speedy getaways through Beirut and Tripoli’s labyrinthine alleyways.
But banning all motorcycles is unnecessarily heavy-handed and may yet prove counterproductive to its acclaimed goal of reducing security breaches.
Security is a red line.
There is first the issue of a lack of differentiation. As a logical premise, a considerable percentage of criminals ride motorbikes or scooters. But the “bad people are people, bad people ride motorcycles, therefore all people who ride motorcycles are bad” reduction is obviously wrong. A great deal of law-abiding citizens are being punished for the misdemeanors of a few.
Next is the fact that people who do bad things on motorbikes don’t do it because they ride on two wheels. They do it because they are bad people. If someone has a score to settle or a bone to pick, they are unlikely to be deterred if they can’t ride their scooter. A murderer doesn’t become absolved if you take away his ride – he just becomes a slower murderer.
There are a few exemptions from the ban; bakers and press for example (lucky me). But in many cases carrying a bag of flour between your seat won’t make you safe from prosecution, as many bikes are unregistered. Even if, like me, you have all documents present and correct, you still face regular interrogation from soldiers holding guns asking gruffly for your papers. This is a deeply unpleasant experience even if all it does is make you five minutes late for work.
Unforeseen side-effects from the IM’s bitter medicine are likely to emerge. Many people rely on their bikes to get to work or visit family members. The ban won’t just make this harder to do, it is likely to deteriorate Beirut’s already derisory traffic situation further, as scooters and bikes are narrow; cars and minibuses are not.
There is another, less comfortable association with targeting motorbike and scooter owners. I have been stigmatized for owning a scooter, with people telling me, quite openly that “only poor people and zooz (Lebanese chavs) ride them.” Baroud’s decision to ban their use raises the doubtless-unintended prospect of the Ministry targeting a particular socioeconomic group. Less well-off people will find it harder to get to work or travel around the city to do what they need to do. (Generally but by no means definitively) richer car-owners will continue unscathed. There is no proof that this was the IM’s intention, but the suggestion is nonetheless uncomfortable.
Of course, Baroud faced a barrage of political pressure to be seen to be doing something following outrage over Ain al-Remmeneh from senior governmental figures. But a blanket ban on two-wheels is misjudged.
Ali sits outside MAG's Kfar Zor headquarters. I have no idea who the man in the shades is
Ali Murad smiles serenely as he tells me about the day he lost his leg.
He is dressed smart, in a pristine, grey t-shirt and khaki combat trousers and speaks in broken English with measured understatement.
“I was conscious when I went to the hospital, believe me, I remember everything,” he says and shuffles awkwardly onto his prosthetic leg.
Ali was part of Lebanon’s Mine Action Group, a team of some 400 trained mine clearers who have been working to rid the country from its estimated one million cluster bombs – relics from the 2006 war with Israel that still carpet much of south Lebanon – on a fateful February morning. His squadron had been working on a plot of land, known to be “heavily contaminated” all morning and had stopped for a break. These were the last moments of Ali’s first life.
Suited for cluster-bomb clearing in Tibnin, Lebanon
One of the most enjoyable things about being a reporter in Lebanon is the access it affords.
You want to speak to the Interior Minister? Sure, here’s his mobile and home phone number. You need a quote from the Head of the Internal Security Forces? Go ahead, he’ll call you after lunch and tell you, in perfect English, what it is you’re after.
Last week, I wanted to speak with UNIFIL troops in the south of the country, and file a dispatch from Tibnin on how the cluster-bomb clearing operation is going three years after the Summer War of 2006.
After a few phonecalls and correspondence with a charmingly eccentric Italian UN General, I was on the way to the south, a few kilometers from Israel, a state against which Lebanon is still officially at war.
Everyone has their idea of a good dog.
Be it lumbering and covered in damp grass or small, fluffy and crammed into a handbag, there is a dog for every kind of person. My ideal dog (since you asked) is a sedate Labrador situated at the foot of my armchair, the kind who doesn’t require endless attention and doesn’t mind when you break wind and blame it on him.
There are many dogs in Lebanon, and not many people find them ideal. Some can be found loitering round the grimier backstreets of East Beirut, their owners fled from war or hardship. Others form packs in the southern villages surrounding Nabatieh. They are fed on raw meet and terrorize the locals, high on protein and the taste of blood.
It was 10.13am when the jets flew past. Roaring over the port in east Beirut, they banked high in the air and drifted off over the glittering Mediterranean.
My first reaction was probably shared by most people up at that time. Jetplanes? Who owns them in this region? Nervous looks were exchanged and the Daily Star splashed the next day with a story detailing “intensive” Israeli flyovers.
At the same time, reports from the south suggested that four merkava tanks had been mobilized near the contested occupied Kfar Shuba region, further heightening tensions next to the Blue Line. At the same time, LAF commander Qahwaji ordered his troops to remain on the highest level of alert and to be ready to combat Israeli aggression.
Of all the emails you expect to find in your inbox on a Sunday, a video from Al Qaeda isn’t one of them.
To appear in one the next day is the very definition of unforeseen.
The shaky CGI and amateurish, hand held footage wouldn’t look out of place on an late-night Channel4 educational video. In a way, this makes sense; al Qaeda want to teach the veiwer a lesson.
At the start of the year, two Katuysha rockets were fired into Israel from positions in South Lebanon. The attack, which injured several civilians and damaged buildings in an Israeli village, threatened to shatter the fragile peace that had fitfully settled between the two countries since the 2006 war.
We’ve been in Haifa Hospital for precisely seven minutes before the power cuts out.
I know this because the clock on the wall by the reception booth sits proudly in between a picture of Yasser Arafat and a plastic sign showing a Kalashnikov rifle crossed through with livid red strokes. No guns. Not in here, at least.
“Electricity is one of our biggest problems,” says Dr Alim al-Ahmed. “You’ve lived in Beirut, you know the problems we have. Here, those problems are ten times worse.”
In the next 30 minutes the power goes out a further six times. Each time the two head surgeons, sitting languidly in their air-conditioned office, stop their paperwork for the briefest of moments, and resume with eyes squinted.
This morning I visited Haifa hospital in the Palestinian camp Bourj al-Barajneh, South Beirut.
This hospital, funded almost exclusively by the PLO, has 3 emergency rooms, one ventilator and 30 beds for the estimated 60,000 Palestinians residing in Lebanon.
Here are some of the pictures I managed to hurriedly take.
Three trauma surgeons after operating on a young man's abdomen
The maternity clinic with stirrups et al
A young Palestinian recovering from heatstroke
Maternity unit in Haifa Hospital
As usual, by the time my pay cheque cleared at the start of the month, I had already spent most of it.
This time, however, I have a legitimate reason for such a splurge. I am learning Arabic.
I won’t bother delving into how difficult a tongue it is to learn – anyone who has ever tried to master even a few phrases will know all about that.
What I like about it is its lucidity; it’s interchangeability and adaptability. A few, select, words or phrases can be used in a variety of situations in which the may mean anything and nothing. It is reassuring to begin to comprehend even a tiny bit of what is said around you all day long.
When Terry Anderson is talking to you, you stop and listen.
This is the man who was for a period of time the most famous journalist on the planet.
Anderson had been the AP’s Beirut bureau chief for two years when he was kidnapped by armed militias after a morning tennis game in Ain Al-Mreisseh, west Beirut on 16 March 1985.
He spent six years and nine months being held as a hostage by a group answering to the name Islamic Jihad. Often beaten and maltreated, he won the unwanted title of the longest-held Western captive in Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.
Anderson was in Beirut on Monday to talk about press freedom, a two word phrase, the facets and sum of which he knows plenty about.
Speaking earnestly, thoughtfully holding my gaze from beneath spectacles as thick as your thumb, Anderson said how important it was for a journalist to believe in what he was doing.
It’s a job that might get you killed, he said, so you damn well better see its necessity.
The question and answer session ended. Anderson, jokingly complaining of being offered too much acrid black coffee, addressed the room in general and me in particular. What followed was a serious of journalistic epithets, each concentrating the bible of reporting advice Anderson has collected during 25 years in the profession into truisms spanning a few lines.
Print these off and tape them to your notepad:
Finding and telling the truth is a good all by itself, even if that’s all you can do.
When the truth is one sided, so is the story.
Journalism has always been more than a job. It is a mission.
Anderson’s response to an IDF general who asked him why he wrote bad things about the Israelis:
Sir, if you stop doing bad things, I’ll stop writing them.
And my personal favourite, sound advice indeed…
All the best journalists I know have a sense of indignation to them. They want to reach out, take you by the shoulder and say: ‘Look at this. This is important. You have to know this.’ They feel this demand to find the truth and to get you to listen to it.
