Verknald

G*dvrr…. Weer iemand opgeblazen. De afgelopen dagen deden geruchten de ronde dat, na Libanese politici, journalisten en (medewerkers van) ambassades, nu willekeurige buitenlanders het doelwit van aanslagen zouden worden, maar dit keer was het een hooggeplaatste medewerker van de Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdiensten en een aantal passanten.

Shit.

Het blijft een vreemd fenomeen, dat een radeloos gevoel van machteloosheid met zich mee brengt. Wanneer houdt dit nou eens op? Wie heeft het gedaan? En maakt dat eigenlijk wel uit?

Sommigen geven het nieuws een plaats door er direct over te schrijven, terwijl iedereen wel weet dat de reguliere media allang over het aantal doden bericht hebben. Anderen bellen, smsen, mailen met mensen die ze kennen die wonen of werken in de buurt van de explosie. Iedereen veilig? Wel gehoord, niet gewond. Gelukkig.

De gedachten schieten naar mijn eigen leven – kom ik ooit in die buurt? De plannen voor de komende dagen, moet daar iets aan veranderd worden? Zal wel niet. We gaan gewoon door. Kan ik er wat aan doen dat het land de vernieling in draait?

Reflections on an assassination

Saturday. My dad calls and asks: ‘So how is Beirut today?’ I feel the oh-so-familiar knot tying itself in my stomach – I’ve been out all morning and haven’t checked the news yet, so who knows what has happened. ‘Why, did they blow up someone else?’ ‘Well, the guy from three days ago…’ Ah yes. The guy from three days ago (now almost a week). François el Hajj, a general in the Lebanese Army, mentioned as a possible successor to Michel Sleiman (the current commander of the army), if Sleiman indeed becomes the next president of the Lebanese Republic. He came from a poor family in the South, el Hajj, and as one of 10 children this job represented a rare chance for someone of his background to make it to the top. In Rmeish, his village in the South, there was even talk of him becoming president, eventually – for a commander of the Army, necessarily a Maronite Christian, not a strange career-move in Lebanon.

I arrived to work Wednesday last week to find one of my colleagues crying. ‘The explosion this morning, it was her uncle’, whispered another colleague to inform me. Other than her red, teary eyes, there was nothing that day that reminded me of the awfulness of what had happened that morning. Nothing on the streets, nothing in the conversations – not even the loud accusations of Syria, the country that gets blamed first (and exclusively) for every assassination, by members of the current government.

One of my colleagues thought it was because he was from the army, and the army is supposedly ‘neutral’ in Lebanon – neither with the government, nor with the opposition – so if you have no political party to stage the mourning for your martyrdom, your death hardly receives any public grief.

Yet the silence over el Hajj’s murder, the absence of government-members blaming Syria, might have another source: apparently, el Hajj refused to join the ‘Southern Lebanese Army’, an armed group that helped the Israeli army, when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. Being from a village on the border with Israel, he has seen the destruction and aggression from Lebanon’s Southern neighbor, and his moral stance against Israel hasn’t changed over the years. This means that having him as the leader of the Lebanese Army (which is deployed in South Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from re-arming, or even disarm them) might be disadvantageous to countries other than Syria, to put it mildly.

Question remains: who blew him up? Maybe this time, we shouldn’t look to the East for an answer…

It's a brain thing

Similar to many people I know here in Lebanon, I don’t follow the news. I don’t read newspapers (the few available sources in English, like Daily Star and Naharnet, being of abominable quality), I don’t watch the news or listen to the radio (I still don’t understand much of the classical Arabic in which the news is broadcast), and political discussions among friends tend to go from English to Arabic in 2 seconds, making it very easy for me to tune out. Generally, my attitude is one of: if something really bad happens, I am bound to notice (wars tend to be very noisy); otherwise there is no need to get scared by the fear-inducing way of reporting that is going on. For my friends it is less easy to completely disregard the political situation: they understand the discussions and because opinions are so polarized, so black and white, so completely one-way or the other, it is hard not to join them. And so, before you know it, you are vigorously defending a political standpoint that is only remotely connected to what you really believe in, just because the politician who defends your cause said this or that. What’s worse, this politician may very well change his mind entirely, retrace his steps and seek alliance with his former ‘enemies’. As one of my colleagues said: ‘Sometimes you lose a friend because you spend a whole night fighting about a political issue, only to hear the next day that your politicians have suddenly agreed on the issue.’

To preserve friendships, it would of course be possible not to discuss politics at all. For example, I never knew the political conviction of one of my friends here, I thought he was neutral – until his girlfriend let slip that the only fights they had were over politics, she being with the government, he with the opposition. I guess that when you get this close, there is no way to hide your convictions. Or, as Rayan said: ‘You know, even when you don’t talk about politics, it is hard to be friends, because if they are on the other side, politically, and you know that, you will always wonder if there is something wrong with their brain.’

Da’s nog eens wat anders dan de zwarte herenfiets van Donner

Even dacht ik dat er vandaag toch verkiezingen waren. Maar nee, voor de 7e keer werden ze uitgesteld. Waarom dan toch de weg volledig afgezet werd op sommige plekken? Waarschijnlijk omdat de politici bij elkaar moesten komen om de Grondwet aan te passen. Dit vanwege het feit dat de enige ‘consensus-kandidaat’ (lees: onuitgesproken allemansvriend) op dit moment nog opperbevelhebber van het leger is, en er normaal gesproken 2 jaar tussen een post in het leger en een aanstelling als president moet zitten. Nood wijzigt wet, kennelijk. Maar die wegafzetting, daar gaat het me om. Zoiets wordt uiteraard niet vantevoren aangekondigd, want het gaat er nou net om de bommenleggers te slim af te zijn. Dus, wandelend van mijn ene afspraak naar de andere, mocht ik ineens niet verder. Alle auto’s, bussen, scooters, alles stond stil. De zijstraten werden bewaakt door politieagenten, het grote kruispunt door een bosje soldaten die per legerjeep aangevoerd waren. Vooraan hadden de auto’s het al opgegeven en de motor uitgezet, achteraan stonden ze nog te toeteren.

Daar sta je dan, te staren naar een lege straat. Vier banen breed, geen beweging op te bekennen (weinig voorkomend fenomeen in Beirut). Wachten. Vijf minuten. Tien minuten. Een kwartier. Ineens grijpen de soldaten hun machinegeweren wat steviger vast en heb ik geen bereik meer op mijn mobiele telefoon. Dan komen ze aanscheuren: drie zwarte, glimmende auto’s, getint glas, zwiepende antennes, alledrie hetzelfde model en hetzelfde nummerbord. Ze slingeren om elkaar heen, wisselen van volgorde om te voorkomen dat duidelijk wordt in welke auto de politicus zich bevindt. Piepende banden. Dan zijn ze alweer de hoek om. Nog een paar minuten houden de soldaten het verkeer in bedwang, tot iedereen weer verder mag scheuren. En ik blij dat er wederom niemand bij me in de buurt is opgeblazen...

It's what the Dutch did with Melkert and Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In an opinion poll conducted by an international information company, Lebanese people were asked what they thought would be the best way to protect their politicians from assassinations. No less than 40.3% was of the opinion that for the politicians to emigrate / leave the country would be the best solution.

Imagine that: "Today's session of the Lebanese Parliament will be held in... Luxembourg!" At least it would finally bring an end to the lie (as recently restated by the Italian minister of Foreign Affairs, when discussing the Lebanese presidential elections with his French and German counterparts) that "the Lebanese future is decided in Lebanon".