April 13th, 1975 … April 13th, 2006
Thirty one years ago, the Lebanese bloody civil war was triggered. A war that lasted 15 years, and resulted in the death of more than 200,000 lebanese, 1,500,000 immigrants, thousands of missing people, displaced and handicapped persons.
i m posting this since it seems that Iraq is no longer a problem of US occupation or terrorism. it's fair to say that Civil war has already started, and if we were to draw the comparision with lebanon: if the conflict in a small country of 3 million people lasted for 15 years, i can't dare to imagine the suffering the Iraqui people (26 Million) are going to face, and for how long.
here's an interesting article i found on another forum. It's a bit long but a nice read.
.........................................
Check point
I am running down a deserted, flaming street in West Beirut. Broken glass, smashed concrete and burning cars litter the street. I hear the hysterical screaming of young children huddled for shelter in the dark basements beneath their homes. Their Arabic wailing mixes with the sound of gunfire and the shock waves of crashing artillery shells. I run from street to street, photographing all I can see.
About a block away, I see a lone figure, a gunman with a red scarf. I call to him, and he waves me over. A few moments later we huddled in the doorjamb of a shattered building. His name is Nero. I explain that I am a photographer and I want to see the battle, up close. He closes his eyes, and smiles. Nero likes pictures. We share a Marlboro cigarette. Then he gives me a curious look, swings his machine gun over his shoulder, checks the bolt action, and says, "Now we go to the war."
We race across bullet sprayed streets until we finally reach an old bunker, battered by ten years of war. Inside, several young Islamic guerrillas are crouching with their weapons in the darkness. Nero introduces me, one by one. Some are as young as 13 others as old as 30. All are from the neighborhood called Chiya, now under ferocious bombardment by the Lebanese army and the Maronite militia called the Lebanese Forces.
The 'Army of Chiya'
It is clear this motley group of fighters are blood brothers in the most literal sense. As we speak of outer attack route to the church called Mar Michail (St. Michael's) the outer walls of our bunker are being raked by unending hails of machine gun fire. Nero pulls me up by the collar to my feet. Turning to the others he barks, " Castro, Fadi, Jafar, Issa, Kojack, Ali. Come." They shoulder rocket launchers and machine guns. "Now we go kill some from the army, " he says. Turning to me he laughs, "And you will get very good pictures today."
Nero and his boys are among the more than 10,000 Shiite Muslims who make up the militia known as Amal (Hope.) Although Shiites constitute the largest religious community in Lebanon, they are the poorest, least educated, most under represented of the nation's citizen's. For the past ten years, the Shiites of Beirut and southern Lebanon have joined forces with the Druze and Sunni Muslims to try to overturn the Christian dominated government in Lebanon. The result has been a ferocious civil war that has destroyed a once-idyllic nation.
Amal, like many of the other Lebanese factions's is a people's militia, made up of loosely organized , semi-disciplined bands of young men who are dedicated to protecting their neighborhoods. Beirut has the most heavily armed citizenship of any place on earth. It is a city where nearly every adult male owns or has easy access to an automatic rifle (typically an AK-47 assault rifle) and often, heavier armaments such as rocket launchers and hand grenades. This fact, combined with the lack of any credible central authority to control the militia's in times of "peace" has made policing individual acts of vengeance virtually impossible. As a result, Lebanon is a place where the cycle of violence and counter violence has taken on a life of it's own.
It is against this backdrop that Nero and the boys of Chiya were born and raised. They grew up in the most dangerous section of the most dangerous city on earth, and they are in many ways, quintessential Beirut street fighters. Their generations is both the perpetrator and the greatest victims of the Lebanese tragedy. While they are imbued with a sense of communal responsibility, in many respects Nero and his gang are not so different from the street corner boys I grew up with in South Philadelphia. The boys of Beirut handle their weapons with the same kind of confidence and schoolyard grace that my boyhood chums carried footballs. On the verge of becoming men, they have the same need to prove their courage and bravery- to each other and the local girls- and they engage in the same kind of macho posturing and exhibitionist displays of muscularity and teenage derring-do.
Machine gun nest
But when the street-corners boys of South Philly needed to settle a score, they did so with their fists, sometimes knives, chains or baseball bats. Nero and the boys of Chiya do so with assault rifles, heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
I follow Nero, Castro, Fadi, Jafar, Issa, Kojack and Ali towards the rear entrance of the bunker. We run from house to house towards the Mar Michail, Nero firing rocket-propelled grenades, the others shooting wildly with assault rifles.
Fire fight
An hour later, we are two buildings away from the shattered church, which commands a crucial passage between Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut. The Army and the Lebanese Forces have launched a massive counter attack against our position and we are trapped, unable to advance or retreat.
Next to me, flat on his stomach, eyes half closed, is a 13 year old boy. His name is Issa. We agree, in whispers, that we are history. Issa tells me he will die trying to stop enemy troops from overrunning his neighborhood. The boy quietly slips a bayonet onto his rifle. He is ready for whatever comes to pass.
The bombardment continues. Nero, standing erect by a gaping hole in the outer wall, is screaming at the enemy. Our situation is impossible, and I am simply counting the moments, waiting to die. Suddenly, Nero decides to lead a run for safety under the rain of mortar and tank fire, back to our original position.
The run remains a blur in my mind, a wild race against bullets and shrapnel. Thirty yards from our home bunker, I hear a scream and a heavy thud behind me. I run the last 90 feet bent low with all the speed in my legs, throwing myself head first into the shattered concrete house The boys are already there, panting like hounds and grimacing as explosions shake the walls around us. They argue in Arabic as their friend lies wounded and bleeding in the mud only 90 feet away. The wounded boy is pleading for his friends to save him. Each of us eyes the stretch of open ground, silently weighing the chances of being cut in half by the Army's .50 caliber guns. Nero looks at a 16 year old boy called Kojack. Without a word, they bolt from the door, running low under the sandbagged barrier, scoop up the boy's arms and legs, spin, and drag him back to cover. The boy is bleeding heavily, but he, like the rest of us, is thankful to be alive.
Shelling
One month after the battle of the Mar Michail church, I decided to return to Chiya, hoping to find Nero and his rag-tag army and discover who these gunmen are. Pulling up to Nero's home bunker, I jump out of the car and am greeted by a young man called Castro, who tells me that Nero can be found on the sixth floor. "The sniper are out today," he warns.
Reaching the top floor, I find Nero and two others huddled around a powerful, long anti aircraft gun peering down into an adjacent Christian neighborhood. Although a shaky cease-fire has been effect throughout Beirut for the past week, Nero and his boys are waiting to kill someone. To pass the time they listen to a cassette of Tom Jones, on a beat up portable tape player. We hear "It's Not Unusual"(To Be Loved By Anyone) at least four times.
NERO
"The key to being a good sniper is patience," Nero tells me. As we listen to the music and smoke cigarettes, I ask Nero why he is about to break a cease-fire that has lasted longer than most.
"In the beginning of the war, my sister was wounded by the Christians here, her, here, here, and here,"he says pointing to his legs, arms and his chest. "When I see that, I go crazy. I get my gun and, boom, I go to kill someone. But that isn't the only reason I fight." Seven years ago, Nero spent a month in a Lebanese army prison after they caught him at a checkpoint in the Christian controlled hills overlooking the city. In prison, Nero said they strapped him to a chair and wrapped electrical cables around his genitals. "They pour cold water all over me, then, Ppzzzttt !! Ppzzzttt !! The army did that to me for one month. I was only 17 years old. "
Suddenly Nero tenses. Brroom ! He fires the huge gun. Grabbing at the binoculars, the fighters strain to see down into Ein al Rumani, the Christian neighborhood just a few hundred yards away. The boys jump in the air. Screaming and laughing, they slap and punch each other. "Quick, look, look," Nero says handing me his binoculars. Through them I see a man lying wounded and bleeding in the street below. He has been hit by a 14.5 caliber exploding round. Nero's special.
"Quick, we must go; it's time to fight," Nero says. We scramble down a broken staircase as machine gun fir begins to rip into the room we have just abandoned. In a few hours, young men throughout the neighborhood have taken to the streets. By day's end fight will have spread like brushfire to other neighborhoods along the Green Line. Another Beirut cease-fire has just ended.
************************************************** ************
A few days later I ask Nero about his disregard for the city's many painstakingly arranged cease-fires. "Look," he says, "I don't anything from any man. Not from Amal, not from Hizbollah...not from anybody. Here I am alone. I have my gun, my house, my everything, and no one can tell me what to do. When Amal announces on the radio 'Please don't shoot today,' I shoot anyway. I have too many problems with Amal. When I shoot the big 14.5 from the Druze building, I can hit one mile (into East Beirut.) Sometimes the Amal MP's come around asking, "Who shoots from these positions with heavy calibers ?" Everybody knows it's Nero, Nero, Nero. They say to me 'Nero, don't shoot again !" he laughs, making a mock serious face. "I used to have a B-9 rocket launcher, but Amal confiscated it because I fired it too often."
Hassan Mansour, Nero's real name, lives with his mother and two sisters in a small house one block from the Green Line separating the two halves of Beirut. It is a comfortable house with worn sofa's, overstuffed chairs and an old black and white T.V.
One Saturday when I visit, Nero, Fadi and Kojack have just returned from a day's snorkeling at the beach. They relax in the living room, playing with Nero's puppy - a black mutt named Sultan - and telling stories about girls and the war.
Home Guard
"In the last four months have you seen any girls in Chiya ?" Nero asks. "In Chiya you cannot even talk to a girl, no way. Jafar liked a girl from Chiya. When he went to her house her family said, "Don't speak to that boy !" So do you know what he did ? He went out to the front (the war front) took a machine gun, put it to his leg, counted one, two, three and boom ! (pulled the trigger.) He had a hole from here to here," he says pointing at his calf. "Do you know why ? So the girl could visit him at the hospital !"
Nero's two sisters enter the room carrying beautiful hand made brass trays , one laden with demitasse of Arabic coffee , the other with several brands of foreign cigarettes. After settling in we joke about many things. Eventually our attention turns to the boy called Kojack. Kojack is 16. He shaved his head early in the winter so he could look more like Nero. Like the other boys Kojack has never had any formal military training. His knowledge of small unit tactics is limited, his firing sometimes wild and undisciplined. But he is loyal and tenacious and like the others, shows little fear of death.
"When I first me Kojack he was working as a volunteer in he Amal office" Fadi explains. "I knew he was from Chiya, but I had never seen him out fighting with the rest of us. One day I went up to him and said, ' You've got to learn to shoot.' The first time I took him out I said, ' Now I'm going to shoot this rocket and you cover me with your machine gun.' He was so scared he was shooting everywhere. But little by little he became good. Very good. Now Kojack goes out on his own, shoots at the army and gets back. Alone."
One week later I return to Chiya. In front of the bunker where we first came under fire together, I find Nero sitting on the ground, his face buried in his hands. Nero is crying. His clothes are soaked with blood. When I try to touch his arm he screams and punches the air. One of the boys of Chiya is dead, shot through the heart by a Lebanese Forces sniper as he stood in a doorway high over the neighborhood. Nero carried him down the stairs and now is covered by his friends blood.
Tomorrow his friend will be washed and anointed, wrapped in green Islamic cloth and buried in one of the few spaces remaining in the local cemetery. Nero's friend, like many others, is now a martyr. In a few days posters with the boy's photograph bordered in black and with a prayer printed underneath will join the posters of other men and women covering the bullet scarred walls throughout Chiya.
Aftermath
Nero wipes his face with his forearm. Turning to me he says simply, "Come. It's time to go to war."
George Azar, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Thirty one years ago, the Lebanese bloody civil war was triggered. A war that lasted 15 years, and resulted in the death of more than 200,000 lebanese, 1,500,000 immigrants, thousands of missing people, displaced and handicapped persons.
i m posting this since it seems that Iraq is no longer a problem of US occupation or terrorism. it's fair to say that Civil war has already started, and if we were to draw the comparision with lebanon: if the conflict in a small country of 3 million people lasted for 15 years, i can't dare to imagine the suffering the Iraqui people (26 Million) are going to face, and for how long.
here's an interesting article i found on another forum. It's a bit long but a nice read.
.........................................
Check point
I am running down a deserted, flaming street in West Beirut. Broken glass, smashed concrete and burning cars litter the street. I hear the hysterical screaming of young children huddled for shelter in the dark basements beneath their homes. Their Arabic wailing mixes with the sound of gunfire and the shock waves of crashing artillery shells. I run from street to street, photographing all I can see.
About a block away, I see a lone figure, a gunman with a red scarf. I call to him, and he waves me over. A few moments later we huddled in the doorjamb of a shattered building. His name is Nero. I explain that I am a photographer and I want to see the battle, up close. He closes his eyes, and smiles. Nero likes pictures. We share a Marlboro cigarette. Then he gives me a curious look, swings his machine gun over his shoulder, checks the bolt action, and says, "Now we go to the war."
We race across bullet sprayed streets until we finally reach an old bunker, battered by ten years of war. Inside, several young Islamic guerrillas are crouching with their weapons in the darkness. Nero introduces me, one by one. Some are as young as 13 others as old as 30. All are from the neighborhood called Chiya, now under ferocious bombardment by the Lebanese army and the Maronite militia called the Lebanese Forces.
The 'Army of Chiya'
It is clear this motley group of fighters are blood brothers in the most literal sense. As we speak of outer attack route to the church called Mar Michail (St. Michael's) the outer walls of our bunker are being raked by unending hails of machine gun fire. Nero pulls me up by the collar to my feet. Turning to the others he barks, " Castro, Fadi, Jafar, Issa, Kojack, Ali. Come." They shoulder rocket launchers and machine guns. "Now we go kill some from the army, " he says. Turning to me he laughs, "And you will get very good pictures today."
Nero and his boys are among the more than 10,000 Shiite Muslims who make up the militia known as Amal (Hope.) Although Shiites constitute the largest religious community in Lebanon, they are the poorest, least educated, most under represented of the nation's citizen's. For the past ten years, the Shiites of Beirut and southern Lebanon have joined forces with the Druze and Sunni Muslims to try to overturn the Christian dominated government in Lebanon. The result has been a ferocious civil war that has destroyed a once-idyllic nation.
Amal, like many of the other Lebanese factions's is a people's militia, made up of loosely organized , semi-disciplined bands of young men who are dedicated to protecting their neighborhoods. Beirut has the most heavily armed citizenship of any place on earth. It is a city where nearly every adult male owns or has easy access to an automatic rifle (typically an AK-47 assault rifle) and often, heavier armaments such as rocket launchers and hand grenades. This fact, combined with the lack of any credible central authority to control the militia's in times of "peace" has made policing individual acts of vengeance virtually impossible. As a result, Lebanon is a place where the cycle of violence and counter violence has taken on a life of it's own.
It is against this backdrop that Nero and the boys of Chiya were born and raised. They grew up in the most dangerous section of the most dangerous city on earth, and they are in many ways, quintessential Beirut street fighters. Their generations is both the perpetrator and the greatest victims of the Lebanese tragedy. While they are imbued with a sense of communal responsibility, in many respects Nero and his gang are not so different from the street corner boys I grew up with in South Philadelphia. The boys of Beirut handle their weapons with the same kind of confidence and schoolyard grace that my boyhood chums carried footballs. On the verge of becoming men, they have the same need to prove their courage and bravery- to each other and the local girls- and they engage in the same kind of macho posturing and exhibitionist displays of muscularity and teenage derring-do.
Machine gun nest
But when the street-corners boys of South Philly needed to settle a score, they did so with their fists, sometimes knives, chains or baseball bats. Nero and the boys of Chiya do so with assault rifles, heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
I follow Nero, Castro, Fadi, Jafar, Issa, Kojack and Ali towards the rear entrance of the bunker. We run from house to house towards the Mar Michail, Nero firing rocket-propelled grenades, the others shooting wildly with assault rifles.
Fire fight
An hour later, we are two buildings away from the shattered church, which commands a crucial passage between Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut. The Army and the Lebanese Forces have launched a massive counter attack against our position and we are trapped, unable to advance or retreat.
Next to me, flat on his stomach, eyes half closed, is a 13 year old boy. His name is Issa. We agree, in whispers, that we are history. Issa tells me he will die trying to stop enemy troops from overrunning his neighborhood. The boy quietly slips a bayonet onto his rifle. He is ready for whatever comes to pass.
The bombardment continues. Nero, standing erect by a gaping hole in the outer wall, is screaming at the enemy. Our situation is impossible, and I am simply counting the moments, waiting to die. Suddenly, Nero decides to lead a run for safety under the rain of mortar and tank fire, back to our original position.
The run remains a blur in my mind, a wild race against bullets and shrapnel. Thirty yards from our home bunker, I hear a scream and a heavy thud behind me. I run the last 90 feet bent low with all the speed in my legs, throwing myself head first into the shattered concrete house The boys are already there, panting like hounds and grimacing as explosions shake the walls around us. They argue in Arabic as their friend lies wounded and bleeding in the mud only 90 feet away. The wounded boy is pleading for his friends to save him. Each of us eyes the stretch of open ground, silently weighing the chances of being cut in half by the Army's .50 caliber guns. Nero looks at a 16 year old boy called Kojack. Without a word, they bolt from the door, running low under the sandbagged barrier, scoop up the boy's arms and legs, spin, and drag him back to cover. The boy is bleeding heavily, but he, like the rest of us, is thankful to be alive.
Shelling
One month after the battle of the Mar Michail church, I decided to return to Chiya, hoping to find Nero and his rag-tag army and discover who these gunmen are. Pulling up to Nero's home bunker, I jump out of the car and am greeted by a young man called Castro, who tells me that Nero can be found on the sixth floor. "The sniper are out today," he warns.
Reaching the top floor, I find Nero and two others huddled around a powerful, long anti aircraft gun peering down into an adjacent Christian neighborhood. Although a shaky cease-fire has been effect throughout Beirut for the past week, Nero and his boys are waiting to kill someone. To pass the time they listen to a cassette of Tom Jones, on a beat up portable tape player. We hear "It's Not Unusual"(To Be Loved By Anyone) at least four times.
NERO
"The key to being a good sniper is patience," Nero tells me. As we listen to the music and smoke cigarettes, I ask Nero why he is about to break a cease-fire that has lasted longer than most.
"In the beginning of the war, my sister was wounded by the Christians here, her, here, here, and here,"he says pointing to his legs, arms and his chest. "When I see that, I go crazy. I get my gun and, boom, I go to kill someone. But that isn't the only reason I fight." Seven years ago, Nero spent a month in a Lebanese army prison after they caught him at a checkpoint in the Christian controlled hills overlooking the city. In prison, Nero said they strapped him to a chair and wrapped electrical cables around his genitals. "They pour cold water all over me, then, Ppzzzttt !! Ppzzzttt !! The army did that to me for one month. I was only 17 years old. "
Suddenly Nero tenses. Brroom ! He fires the huge gun. Grabbing at the binoculars, the fighters strain to see down into Ein al Rumani, the Christian neighborhood just a few hundred yards away. The boys jump in the air. Screaming and laughing, they slap and punch each other. "Quick, look, look," Nero says handing me his binoculars. Through them I see a man lying wounded and bleeding in the street below. He has been hit by a 14.5 caliber exploding round. Nero's special.
"Quick, we must go; it's time to fight," Nero says. We scramble down a broken staircase as machine gun fir begins to rip into the room we have just abandoned. In a few hours, young men throughout the neighborhood have taken to the streets. By day's end fight will have spread like brushfire to other neighborhoods along the Green Line. Another Beirut cease-fire has just ended.
************************************************** ************
A few days later I ask Nero about his disregard for the city's many painstakingly arranged cease-fires. "Look," he says, "I don't anything from any man. Not from Amal, not from Hizbollah...not from anybody. Here I am alone. I have my gun, my house, my everything, and no one can tell me what to do. When Amal announces on the radio 'Please don't shoot today,' I shoot anyway. I have too many problems with Amal. When I shoot the big 14.5 from the Druze building, I can hit one mile (into East Beirut.) Sometimes the Amal MP's come around asking, "Who shoots from these positions with heavy calibers ?" Everybody knows it's Nero, Nero, Nero. They say to me 'Nero, don't shoot again !" he laughs, making a mock serious face. "I used to have a B-9 rocket launcher, but Amal confiscated it because I fired it too often."
Hassan Mansour, Nero's real name, lives with his mother and two sisters in a small house one block from the Green Line separating the two halves of Beirut. It is a comfortable house with worn sofa's, overstuffed chairs and an old black and white T.V.
One Saturday when I visit, Nero, Fadi and Kojack have just returned from a day's snorkeling at the beach. They relax in the living room, playing with Nero's puppy - a black mutt named Sultan - and telling stories about girls and the war.
Home Guard
"In the last four months have you seen any girls in Chiya ?" Nero asks. "In Chiya you cannot even talk to a girl, no way. Jafar liked a girl from Chiya. When he went to her house her family said, "Don't speak to that boy !" So do you know what he did ? He went out to the front (the war front) took a machine gun, put it to his leg, counted one, two, three and boom ! (pulled the trigger.) He had a hole from here to here," he says pointing at his calf. "Do you know why ? So the girl could visit him at the hospital !"
Nero's two sisters enter the room carrying beautiful hand made brass trays , one laden with demitasse of Arabic coffee , the other with several brands of foreign cigarettes. After settling in we joke about many things. Eventually our attention turns to the boy called Kojack. Kojack is 16. He shaved his head early in the winter so he could look more like Nero. Like the other boys Kojack has never had any formal military training. His knowledge of small unit tactics is limited, his firing sometimes wild and undisciplined. But he is loyal and tenacious and like the others, shows little fear of death.
"When I first me Kojack he was working as a volunteer in he Amal office" Fadi explains. "I knew he was from Chiya, but I had never seen him out fighting with the rest of us. One day I went up to him and said, ' You've got to learn to shoot.' The first time I took him out I said, ' Now I'm going to shoot this rocket and you cover me with your machine gun.' He was so scared he was shooting everywhere. But little by little he became good. Very good. Now Kojack goes out on his own, shoots at the army and gets back. Alone."
One week later I return to Chiya. In front of the bunker where we first came under fire together, I find Nero sitting on the ground, his face buried in his hands. Nero is crying. His clothes are soaked with blood. When I try to touch his arm he screams and punches the air. One of the boys of Chiya is dead, shot through the heart by a Lebanese Forces sniper as he stood in a doorway high over the neighborhood. Nero carried him down the stairs and now is covered by his friends blood.
Tomorrow his friend will be washed and anointed, wrapped in green Islamic cloth and buried in one of the few spaces remaining in the local cemetery. Nero's friend, like many others, is now a martyr. In a few days posters with the boy's photograph bordered in black and with a prayer printed underneath will join the posters of other men and women covering the bullet scarred walls throughout Chiya.
Aftermath
Nero wipes his face with his forearm. Turning to me he says simply, "Come. It's time to go to war."
George Azar, The Philadelphia Inquirer
