Lebanon: a Revolution Against Sectarianism Chronicling the First Month of the Uprising

The Anarchist Library (Mirror) Anti-Copyright Lebanon: A Revolution against Sectarianism Chronicling the First Month of the Uprising CrimethInc. CrimethInc. Lebanon: A Revolution against Sectarianism Chronicling the First Month of the Uprising November 13, 2019 Retrieved on 17th June 2021 from crimethinc.com Report courtesy of Joey Ayoub, writer. usa.anarchistlibraries.net November 13, 2019 Contents How It All Began ....................... 5 The Dual Nature of the Uprising .............. 7 Reclaiming Our Streets ................... 9 Tripoli, Light of the Revolution . 10 The South and East Rise ................... 13 The Establishment Fights Back . 16 Creative Energy ....................... 18 Subterranean Shockwaves . 20 The Revolution Is Feminine . 21 What Comes Next? ..................... 22 3 and, especially, Generation Zs—those who have lived their entire Since October 17, Lebanon has experienced countrywide lives hearing their parents complain “Where is the government?” demonstrations that have toppled the prime minister and trans- when they have to pay two separate bills for electricity (private formed Lebanese society. These demonstrations are part ofa and public) and three separate bills for water (private and public global wave of uprisings including Ecuador, Chile, Honduras, running water, private bottled drinking water). As the warlords Haiti, Sudan, Iraq, Hong Kong, and Catalunya, in which the get older—two of the most powerful ones, Aoun and Berri, are 84 exploited and oppressed are challenging the legitimacy of their and 81 respectively—we will see the inevitable decline of the sec- rulers. In Lebanon, a sectarian power-sharing arrangement dating tarianism of the civil war era. from the end of the civil war has created a permanent ruling But while this might be inevitable, the question is whether anti- class of warlords who use patronage networks to maintain power sectarian progressives will succeed in building sustainable alterna- by winning elections—confirming our thesis that politics iswar tives that can challenge the old order. by other means. In this thorough account of the events of the We have many reasons to hope, as Bassel F. Salloukh wrote, be- past month, an on-the-ground participant describes the Lebanese cause “the October 17 revolution marks the definitive end of the uprising in detail, exploring how it has undermined patriarchal civil war, and a genuine bottom-up reconciliation between one- structures and transcended religious divisions to bring people time warring communities.” together against the ruling class. How It All Began For the people of Lebanon, the week of October 17, 2019 was among the most eventful in recent memory. On the night of October 13–14, wildfires ravaged Lebanon and parts of Syria. We lost up to 3,000,000 trees (1200 hectares) in a country of 10,500 square kilometers (4035 square miles), nearly doubling the annual average of tree loss in just 48 hours. The government’s response was disastrous. Lebanon had only three heli- copters, donated by civilians who pitched in, that were just sitting at the airport because they had fallen into disuse as the government had not maintained them. Although the government had allocated money for maintenance, it had “disappeared,” as so many funds do in Lebanon, into the hands of the sectarian upper class. The fires were eventually put out by a combination of volunteer civil ser- vants (civil defense hasn’t been paid in decades) including people from the Palestinian refugee camps, random volunteers, aircraft 24 5 sent by Jordan, Cyprus, and Greece and, luckily enough, rain. It Consequently, a dominant perception among protesters is that could have turned out much, much worse. we need to be both angry and careful. Not satisfied with their own incompetence, Lebanese politicians That being said, the soup kitchens, the free healthcare tents, and started scapegoating Syrians, spreading rumors that Syrians were the reclaiming of privatized historical sites and coastal areas are starting the fires and moving into abandoned Lebanese homes (Syr- all initiatives that implicitly affirm what we can call the commons. ians are apparently fireproof). Some of them, like Free Patriotic This is crucial to understand in a country that has had nocom- Movement (FPM) politician Mario Aoun, complained that the fires mons in recent memory, where they dominant “pro-market” ideol- were only affecting Christian areas, ignoring the fact that the Shouf ogy predates the establishment of the nation state of Lebanon. region, where much of the fires happened, is actually a Druze- Although the main actors could be argued to be roughly a dozen majority area. (See the Lebanese Politics podcast, episode 59.) or so public figures, the reason the clientalist networks have so far Rather than addressing the repercussions of the fires and pre- worked also has to do with the existence of a subset of the popu- venting the next ones, the state exacerbated the situation. On Oc- lation which benefits from these networks. They place themselves tober 17, the state approved a bill that would tax internet-based as intermediaries between the oligarchs and those seeking wasta phone calls via services like WhatsApp. They framed this as an (bribes, nepotism, “who you know”) to receive services not pro- attempt to bring in additional revenue in order to unlock over$11 vided by the state. In other words, some people have financial in- billion worth of “aid” promised at the CEDRE conference in Paris: centives to maintain clientalist networks against the establishment of anything that might be called public institutions. Overhauling “The World Bank Vice President for the Middle East and then overthrowing such a system will be difficult. Overthrow- and North Africa Ferid Belhaj said that if Lebanon ing such a system while confronting the state’s brutal potential will wanted to see any CEDRE money soon, it needs to get be even more difficult. serious about implementing reforms.” But if the loose coalition of anti-sectarian progressives doesn’t These “reforms” were essentially measures further punishing the tackle this issue, it is likely that the state will scapegoat those it has bottom-tier economic majority while excepting the top minority. already been targeting: Syrian and Palestinian refugees and work- Lebanon had already experienced a series of economic crises ers, migrant domestic workers (mostly from Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, tied to corruption and national debt—the vast majority of which and the Philippines, and overwhelmingly women), LGBTQ+ peo- (approximately 90%) is owed to local banks and the central bank— ple (citizens and non-citizens), sex workers, and the like. Any indi- resulting in several bank runs, fuel shortages, and strikes. Nearly vidual who doesn’t fit the dominant patriarchal-capitalist-sectarian $90 billion is concentrated in only 24,000 bank accounts in Lebanon, paradigm is at risk of physical, psychological, and symbolic vio- which is to say, something between 6000 and 8000 account holders lence. in Lebanon have over eight times the amount of money that the Finally, and this is related to the previous point, defeating polit- government is hoping to “unlock” with CEDRE. Although many ical sectarianism and “the sectarian way of doing things” is seen media outlets focused on the so-called “Whatsapp tax,” it was ac- as an immediate priority. This system, which dates back to the tually the combination of all of these factors and many more that 1860s in one manifestation or another, has been losing its aura of inspired outrage. being untouchable with the postwar generations, both Millennials 6 23 their presence known within the wider demands for justice and On the night of October 17, thousands took to the streets of equality. Feminists have led many of the roadblocks and many Lebanon, including Beirut, Tyre, Baalbek, Nabatiyeh, Saida, and chants as well as maintaining an active presence in day-to-day many other places in spontaneous protests. The protests were so activities that help maintain the momentum of this uprising. One overwhelming that the state cancelled the tax immediately. That way they have accomplished this is by reclaiming chants and night, a woman named Malak Alaywe Herz kicked the armed songs—both traditional and recent—and removing their sexist bodyguard of a politician; the video went viral and, as in Sudan, connotations. The popular “hela hela” song against Gebran Bassil a woman became a revolutionary icon. By October 18, parts of insulted his mother—it is very common in the Arabic-speaking downtown Beirut were on fire and large parts of the country were world to use women or their genitals as insults—so feminists completely shut down by roadblocks, many of which involved changed it to insult both Gebran and “his uncle” (the president, burning tires. Michel Aoun) instead, creating a chant that has since caught on. I had joined the protests in Beirut by then and have been going They also reclaimed a traditional song used to send women offto nearly every day since. As an organizer of the 2015 protests, who marriage, changing the lyrics to “she went to protest, she went to grew up in Lebanon and who has been writing about it since 2012, close the roads, she went to bring down the government.” I could see right away that these protests were going to be differ- ent. I wasn’t the only one taken over by that rarest of all feelings: What Comes Next? hope. On the contrary, it was everywhere. In this account, I will try to explain why these protests have already created irreversible Contrary to what some have assumed, the elephant in the room changes in the country, changes that the ruling warlord-oligarch is not sectarianism as of now. While the risk of sectarian ten- elites are struggling to reverse. sions will likely remain for the foreseeable future, the more immediate risk is the looming economic crisis.

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