nonvolleyball

note-a-bear:

fursasaida:

Okay, so Vice is absolutely not at all my favorite source, but proxy wars are kind of my thing (and I appreciate that they used the term!), so here we go.

Over the past eight days, fighting between these two neighborhoods in Lebanon’s second city of Tripoli has claimed nearly 30 lives and resulted in over 200 injuries. But while Tripoli’s Sunnis may outnumber Alawites to a ratio of four to one, there is little chance of either side gaining an advantage any time soon. Instead, an ongoing battle of attrition is being played out [….]

Clashes between Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen are nothing new. The two have been going at it for decades, yet they have started clashing far more regularly since the beginning of the uprising in neighboring Syria two years ago. This latest outbreak of violence began at the same time as an Hezbollah supported assault just over the Syrian border in the strategic town of Qusair. This has only served to fuel speculation that what’s going on in Tripoli is not just linked to the Syrian civil war, but is actually a proxy of it—with the Alawites of Jabal Mohsen supporting embattled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the Sunnis of Bab al-Tabbaneh on the side of the rebels who are trying to topple him. […]

Despite the poverty of their surroundings, the fighters are armed with an impressive array of weapons. “This gun cost me $2,000,” one thick-bearded fighter tells me. “I paid for it from my own pocket.” In northern Lebanon, Sunnis are thought to have been giving logistical support to Syrian rebel forces for some time, as well as aiding in their recruitment drive. In Bab al-Tabbaneh, it isn’t hard to find men who claim to have fought in Syria. Others, like 40-year-old Abu Hamza, a driver in designer glasses, bemoan the fact they aren’t able to. “I would like to have that honor,” he says, “but I need to stay in Tripoli to defend my family and my neighborhood.”

There’s an increasing belief that Hezbollah and Assad are directing their supporters in Lebanon to engage local Sunnis in combat. That way, the reasoning goes, men like Abu Hamza are persuaded to stay home and defend their loved ones rather than join the rebels attempting to overthrow Assad’s regime. Those already fighting in Syria may also feel compelled to return from their foreign war, to face battles much closer to home.

This is just how it works in this particular area (not the Middle East as a whole, but Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, somewhat Jordan). You cannot have a fight in your own house without trampling all over the neighbors’ lawn and getting them involved. Proxy wars are passive-aggressive as all hell, and around here, there isn’t really any other kind. 

The border between Syria and Lebanon is 100% artificial. It exists because the European powers were like, “look at all these religious minorities in Lebanon! Not Muslims! We’re gonna take care of y’all,” and particularly the Lebanese Christians being like “word, can you rejigger this so we can have a country where we’re a majority?” and Europe being like “sure no problem boo.” (Christians are totally not a majority anymore in Lebanon, btw, so that kind of stopped working out for them.) Most Muslims in Lebanon, for a long time, preferred the idea of still being part of Syria, and for sure Syria never once gave up the idea that Lebanon belongs to it.

This is why Lebanon has never really gotten its shit together. It’s got all these minorities with allegiances somewhere else. That doesn’t mean those are their only allegiances—for example, I do believe Hizballah are basically invested in a Lebanon that works and is stable—but there’s not much natural cohesion.

And I should make sure to be clear that that fractiousness exists for a reason: Europe looked at Lebanon, which was basically just a province of the Ottoman Empire at the time and everybody mostly went about their business, and saw, through their Orientalist bullshit, a place that was naturally prone to violence. And when they were moving in on the Ottomans’ economic monopolies, they deliberately made connections with specific minority groups and exploited that. (The French had a total Catholic boner for the Maronites Christians, and the British thought of the Druze as similar to Scottish Highlanders [???], so they, like, decided to adopt them.) Eventually, when the  were powerful enough in the region, they managed to get the Ottomans to organize the regional government in a way that reflected that vision of a whole bunch of groups that hated each other and were bound to explode into carnage at any minute.

Artificial structures, no matter how artificial, do have an effect on the way people see their situations. They can’t help but react to the way they’re expected and even coerced to behave. So Lebanese people were set up to identify in a sectarian way, not in a geographic way, and then the way they’ve negotiated those identities and the way they’ve organized governments has entrenched it. Lebanese people aren’t stupid; they’re aware that this is a problem. It’s just a problem that works in some people’s interests, so it doesn’t go away. Add in the arbitrary border and you get a lot of confusion.

Since Monday morning there has been a lull in the heavy fighting, albeit a lull punctuated by occasional sniper fire. Human Rights Watch yesterday called on the Lebanese government to enforce this fragile ceasefire by deploying more security forces to the area, seizing weapons from the gunmen and arresting and prosecuting those responsible for shooting at and shelling residents. However, this is unlikely to happen. In Abu Hamza’s opinion, “The fighting here will only finish when Assad is finished—and not before.”

So everything I said up above is exactly why HRW in this paragraph is so silly and sad. The Lebanese Army can’t do shit. They haven’t been a real thing since at least the Civil War, because when the government couldn’t decide what the fuck to do all the soldiers were like “okay then peace bro” and went to fight in the various militias.  

The army ceded most of Lebanon’s “rough terrain”—meaning the east close to Syria and the south—long ago; they have no standing, authority, or presence in most of these areas. Hizballah’s domination of the south came about during the Civil War, and they’ve been able to hold onto that territory as well as the Beqa’a (the east) because the borderline-pathetic army has never really tried to take it back. (In fact, most of the army’s better moments in the last couple decades have been the result of Hizballah being like “yo you want in on this? Cool, but no funny business.”) Ever since the end of that conflict, Lebanon’s been trying to put itself back together—and again, ending the sectarian system was  explicitly identified as a core goal—and that means trying to put institutions, including the army, back together as well. Unfortunately, they haven’t been successful. The army is still irrelevant, and I honestly don’t know what it would take to make it relevant again.

Proxy wars: the worst!

Read this.
Really.

…geez.