Not exactly having much luck concentrating on my assignment on voter registration in Sierra Leone at the moment. And spending far too much time in the office playing “who’s the bomber” – a singularly useless pastime but as we’re all currently leading such boring lives, need to chat about something during our coffee breaks...
Results being; we’ve pretty much concluded that it can’t be Fatah al-Islam – from all the evidence, their style is more throat-slashing and decapitation than carefully targeted yet largely symbolic bombings. So far, we’ve had two bombs in affluent Christian and Sunni neighbourhoods, and one in an up-scale Sunni/Druze holiday resort town. Easy conclusion is that Syria is behind it: the targets have been those groups who are typically anti-Syrian, and the attacks appear to have been designed to destabilize without going too far. Or else it could be anti-Syrians trying to frame the Syrians. Either of those would explain why no responsibility/demands have been made.
Me however – I go for latter day Marxist terrorists targeting the symbols of globalised capitalist consumerist culture ie shopping malls and luxury holiday resorts. Did I mention I like to go against the flow?
What’s more of a punch to the gut is hearing about the conditions in Nahr el Bared. You know those really manipulative “human interest” stories that the media uses shamelessly: well, they work. I was reading this article in The Daily Star, the Lebanese English language paper, and was practically in tears. ‘"They said we were brothers, then they bombed us. The Jews are better than them," said one man. "At least give us a chance to get out."’ A telling statement, that...
And of course, there’s the small detail of destroying yet again what lives the beleaguered Palestinians have managed scrape out for themselves in a country which doesn’t want them and largely blames them for the 15 year civil war. Not without some justification, mind – there are few, if any, whiter than white innocent victims in the Middle East. However, the Palestinians have more right than most to be a mite pissed off at the cards they’ve been dealt over the last 60 years. Seeing the exodus out of the camps reminds me of that line in that Kipling poem about watching “the things you gave your life to, broken,/ And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools.” Except times two. And they’re the lucky ones.
God, that line just gets me every time. The sad thing is that it’s true of so many people in the world – hell, it was true of my parents and my family. Profound thought of the day: this world can be such a shitty place. [Wow, no red line on “shitty” – what an open minded spell check.]
Robert Fisk gives his usual opinionated but, IMO, spot on analysis of the situation here:
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2573297.ece
I like what he said about there being in the Middle East “no such thing as responsibility – only a commonality of interests”. Not that this message has got across to those [ahem] running the country [or any other for that matter]. After a brief hiatus, Lebanese politicians are back to their favourite pastime: just heard that Qassem (Hizbollah) and Geagea (latter day Phalangists/prototype Nazis) are once again at each other’s throats with rusty daggers. Come on guys, you could at least have waited until the conflict was more or less resolved before exploiting the situation for your own gains. Oh I’m sorry, I forget that the termites on dung hills on Mount Lebanon give more of a shit about this country than you do. And I haven’t even started on the trio who are actually in power…
On that note of sterling confidence in the abilities of the Lebanese political class to sort themselves out, I’ll sign out. Be safe and remember to report any unknown vehicles on your street. Just don’t blame me if you end up being rather unpopular with your neighbours. And the police.
BTW, Liberation Day tomorrow (day marking the anniversary of Israeli withdrawal from the South).
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