Hizbollah cigarette cases and celebratory gunfire

As I’m sure many of you will be aware, Lebanon had its first post-Syrian general elections. They were billed as the closest in a generation and could have proven to be pivotal in the Middle East peace process.

On one side was March 14, a Western-backed coalition lead by the Future Movement’s MP Saad Hariri. On the other, the Hizbollah-dominated March 8 alliance, seen as leaning towards Iran and the foundation of an independent Islamic state.

Fortunately for those of us with fair skin and blue eyes, March 14 won, an outcome that never seemed so straightforward during campaigning and polling. Speaking with entire subjectivity, this is a good thing for Lebanon. It means that the huge amounts of US aid dollars will continue to flow into the country and that the delicate but so far finely-kept peace should be maintained.

I went with the Star’s business reporter, Osama, to Baabda and Aley, both March 8 strongholds and the birthplace of Hizbollah. Osama neglected to tell me we’d be going to Harek Hreik, a deprived and overcrowded suburb of South Beirut. I had been warned, without prompting, on a number of occasions not to go their – Hizbollah supporters are not too accommodating to the press.

We stepped out of the car and were instantly surrounded by frantic young men, some nowhere near the 21 years of age for suffrage here, all clad in bright yellow t-shirts and baseball caps. Dozens raced town the main highway in cars and pick ups, music playing at full volume, trailing angry yellow flags emblazoned with green AK-47s. (Politics in Lebanon is all colourful imagery – yellow for Hizbollah, orange for FPM, white for Amal etc. The supporters have their party’s colour on clothes, furniture – I even saw a yellow Hizbollah cigarette packet cover, replete with a picture of bearded Nasrallah.)

The polling stations were hideously overcrowded; some women had been queuing for four hours in the unremitting heat. People were visibly enraged that their chance to vote was being jeapordised by poor organisation. For both sides to have been engaged in such imflammatory rhetoric in the build up - banging on about necessity of voting – only to arbitrate a shambolic polling process verges on criminal incompetence.

At one particularly congested and feisty polling station I was feeling a little threatened by the sheer volume of angry young men shouting and staring menacingly in our direction. Osama waited until this moment to realise he’d left his phone in the office. “It’s OK,” he said, none-too-convincingly. “I only needed it for some numbers in case we got in trouble.” He trailed off at this point.

We drove up into the foothills surrounding Beirut and in between tiny sandstone villages, framed around pretty churches and mosaiced squares. The contrast from jarring, cloying Baabda couldn’t have been greater, yet voter fervour was just the same.

Read the article here: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=102773

At night, as the results were unofficially announced, I was sharing a taxi with six other men; town is so quiet it was about the only service I saw all day. I headed back to the apartment and sat on the roof as Beirut reflected on the day’s events. The pock-pock of distant celebratory gunfire was all that permeated the silence.