the army's inferiority complex

I went to Hamra yesterday for the first time since the fighting began last Wednesday. In a single week, the popular main street in west Beirut had been transformed from bustling commercial and social hub to Hizbullah stronghold to ghost town. On a Monday at 5 pm, you would normally spend the most part of 15 minutes stuck in the stifling, fume-ridden air that is Beirut’s daily traffic. But now, all roads west of Damascus Road (better known during the Civil War as the “Green Line” which separated east from west), are completely deserted. It was a Beiruti motorist’s dream: cruising unhindered through quiet, almost-picturesque streets. If it weren’t for the trails of tanks that lined the streets or the army checkpoints every few hundred metres, you would think it was perhaps a Sunday in a quaint northern Mediterranean village, where all the shops shut and people leave the heat of the city for the coolness of the countryside.

I arrived at my friend’s house, and she immediately made use of my presence in the kitchen, setting me the task of chopping up endless bunches of parsley for tabbouleh. As we chopped we chatted about the events of the past few days, debating the topics that had dominated every single conversation that I had had in the past week: the extend to which Hizbullah’s actions had been either brave or delegitimizing; the problem of using violence to remedy social injustice; the vast gulf between ideological conviction and pragmatic power-plays; the dangers of romanticising resistance.

She, despite the terrifying presence of armed gunmen on her street a mere three days before, despite the deafening sounds of violence that prevented her from stepping out her door for 72 long hours, was still relatively sympathetic towards the movement. I suppose that is one of the many measures of strength-of-character: sticking to your guns in spite of the fear that another’s guns provoke in you.

On my way back home, I was fortunate enough to catch a service (Lebanese communal taxi) straight away without waiting. In the desolation that is Hamra at night these days, I wouldn’t want to be hanging around too long on a street corner, especially with the recent revival of civil war jokes about kidnapping… The service was full, a girl in the front seat and two guys in the back, and I slipped in alongside them. As we drove east, we passed the innumerable army checkpoints that seemed to have spawned up since the night had fallen, with the inside light of the car on so that the soldiers could peer in and see whether or not they considered us as dangerous passengers.

Twice, we were stopped by the soldiers, who requested that the boys in the backseat show then their national identity cards. (Unlike in Iraq, girls have not yet shown themselves to be a threat to state security. Rather than being agents of change, they are relegated to the role of passive spectators, those who will not cause death but who are needed to mourn it.) One of the soldiers took a particularly long time inspecting the information on the cards and then scrutinized the photographs of the bearers while exaggeratedly comparing them to the faces of those two young men sitting next to me. After three slightly uneasy minutes, the soldier seemed satisfied that the identity cards and the individuals matched eachother, and ushered us along.

The whole palaver made me chuckle inside: this is the army who did not fire a single shot during the three days while the armed Lebanese factions were having a field day blowing each other, and any unfortunate bystander, to smithereens. This is an army who, in the name of neutrality and fearing of dissolution, does not exert its authority over the more dangerous elements in society. Instead, like the bully in the playground who knows not to mess with the big tough kids, it picks on the weakest.

(Incidentally, I firmly believe that this behaviour was probably what lead to the pitiless, vile destruction of the Nahr el Bared refugee camp: having had no role in the victory against Israel in 2006, the army needed to show it’s strength in some way. Luckily for the army, the overcrowded, impoverished Palestinian camps are an easy target, and provided them with more than enough cannon fodder for them to be able to flex their muscles and reclaim their clout. The results of that domination-affirming exercise were measured in tons piles of rubble and tens of thousands of lives literally reduced to ashes)

I briefly wondered what that very soldier would have done if he had stopped a car full of armed militia men: I am sure that, again in the name of neutrality, he would have hastily waved them on.

This whole issue of ‘neutrality’ effectively paralyses the army. It means that their energies are directed at intimidating young boys on their ways home from university instead of preventing bloodshed. So, on one hand, I think “what’s the point”? What sort of stability does a toothless army bring to a nation on the brink of war? But then on the other hand I remember the accounts of the last war, in which the dissolution of the army into factions was a definite turning point in levels of violence.

Nevertheless, even if the army’s value is more symbolic than anything, in a country where every household has a gun that it can use without consequence, I feel that its proclaimed neutrality is actually the cause for an inferiority complex that manifests itself in much darker ways elsewhere. I wonder who will be the next victims of the army’s most recent bout of trigger-happy frustration. Any guesses?