Category Archives: Lebanon

How street protests across Middle East threaten Iran’s power

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Demonstrations from Baghdad to Beirut reveal the extent to which Shia dominance across the region has weakened

Turmoil in Baghdad, paralysis in Beirut and flames of unrest in Tehran; it has been a bad few months for Iran at home and elsewhere in the Middle East, where more than a decade of advances are being slowed, not by manoeuvrings on battlefields or legislatures – but the force of protest movements.

Early last week, Iran went dark for four days by closing its internet connections down. Even for the country’s autocratic leadership, this was a drastic step. But such are the stakes for a regime that is increasingly facing obstacles across its hubs of Shia influence. And those who laud Iran’s rise, as well as those who fear it, sense it is at a loss over how to respond.

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Lebanese women demand new rights amid political turmoil

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Feminist bloc plans to build on role in protests that brought down prime minister

A man may just have stepped down as prime minister, but the women of Lebanon are not going anywhere.

During the protests that led to the resignation of Saad Hariri, women were among those chanting, blocking roads and debating the future of the country’s politics.

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The Guardian view on Lebanon and Chile: too little, too late for protesters | Editorial

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Mass unrest has seized both countries. The long-term causes will not be resolved quickly or easily

The events which have brought two countries to the brink were precipitated by apparently small policy shifts that proved emblematic of the ruling elite’s inability to answer or even understand their people’s basic needs while enriching themselves. Chile’s biggest political crisis since the return of democracy almost 30 years ago was triggered by a 3% rise in metro fares, the protests which have engulfed and paralysed Lebanon by a proposed tax on WhatsApp calls. But the underlying causes run far deeper, and have been building for much longer. There is deep anger at political and economic systems that have ignored most of the population.

These countries are, of course, very different. Lebanon has been staggering along for years, due to both political dysfunction and endemic corruption. The central bank governor warns that its economy – long shored up by remittances from overseas – is now days away from collapse. Recently it emerged that, before he became prime minister, Saad Hariri gave $16m to a South African model: a sum encapsulating the gulf between the lives of those at the top and the rest.

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Lebanon PM Saad Hariri resigns amid mass protests

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Hariri says he intends to make ‘positive shock’ to country gripped by anti-government protests

Lebanon’s prime minister, Saad Hariri, has announced his resignation, in a move set to spark more uncertainty in a country paralysed by ongoing political crises and a nationwide protest movement that has risen up in response.

Hariri’s announcement came several hours after large groups of youths overran protest sites in downtown Beirut, ransacking tents and stalls set up by thousands of demonstrators who for the past 13 days have demanded an overhaul of the ruling class and an end to rampant corruption.

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Lebanon protesters form human chain across entire country

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Anti-government grassroots movement says it wants to foster feeling of national unity

Tens of thousands of protesters in Lebanon have attempted to form a human chain running across the entire country to symbolise newfound national unity.

Demonstrators planned to join hands from Tripoli to Tyre, a 170km (105-mile) chain running through the capital, Beirut, as part of an unprecedented cross-sectarian mobilisation.

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Protests rage around the world – but what comes next?

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Unrest is seemingly everywhere. We look at the some of the reasons for and responses to it in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, Catalonia and Iraq

In Lebanon they are against a tax on WhatsApp and endemic corruption. In Chile, a hike in the metro fare and rampant inequality. In Hong Kong, an extradition bill and creeping authoritarianism. In Algeria, a fifth term for an ageing president and decades of military rule.

The protests raging today and in the past months on the streets of cities around the world have varying triggers. But the fuel is familiar: stagnating middle classes, stifled democracy and the bone-deep conviction that things can be different – even if the alternative is not always clear.

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Lebanon protests: key moments from a week of unrest – video

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The largest protests in Lebanon in 14 years have shut down the country as a revolt against a weak government, ailing services and a looming economic collapse continues to gain momentum. The demonstrations began last week amid anger over the government’s plan to impose new taxes, and have since widened into demands for resignations and a secular state

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Lebanon’s mass revolt against corruption and poverty continues

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Dissent gains momentum with country’s largest protests since Cedar revolution of 2005

The largest protests in Lebanon in 14 years are set to shut down the country for a fifth day on Monday, as a revolt against a weak government, ailing services and a looming economic collapse continues to gain momentum.

Demonstrators took to the streets of most urban centres on Sunday to rail against officials who they say are preventing badly needed reforms that would cut into the pockets of the ruling class, and are instead trying to recoup state revenues by taxing the poor.

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Violence flares in Lebanon as protesters tell their leaders to go

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Dozens wounded or held as warnings over economy spark biggest protests in decade

Security forces fired teargas and chased down protesters in Beirut on Friday after tens of thousands of people across Lebanon marched to demand the demise of a political elite they accuse of looting the economy to the point of collapse.

Riot police in vehicles and on foot rounded up protesters, according to Reuters. They fired rubber bullets and teargas canisters, dispersing demonstrators in Beirut’s commercial district. Dozens of people were wounded and detained.

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‘Football is forbidden’: how girls in a Lebanon refugee camp kicked back

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After religious leaders tried to stop girls taking part in the sport, local coaches came up with an unlikely solution

A secret pitch where girls can play football away from the disapproving gaze of religious leaders and the rise of a top female football referee are among the unlikely success stories emerging from a refugee camp in north Lebanon.

Under the aegis of a project to encourage learning through sport, Nahr el-Bared, a camp where thousands of Palestinian and Syrian refugees continue to live hand-to-mouth in dire conditions, has become the improbable setting for a minor cultural revolution.

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Middle East drones signal end to era of fast jet air supremacy

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Tiny, cheap, unmanned and hard-to-detect aircraft are transforming conflicts across region

In the history of modern warfare, “own the skies, win the war” has been a constant maxim. Countries with the best technology and biggest budgets have devoted tens of billions to building modern air forces, confident they will continue to give their militaries primacy in almost any conflict.

Tiny, cheap, unmanned aircraft have changed that, especially over the battlefields of the Middle East. In the past three months alone, drones have made quite an impact in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and possibly now Saudi Arabia, where half the country’s oil production - and up to 7% of the world’s global supply – has been taken offline by a blitz that caused no air raid sirens and seems to have eluded the region’s most advanced air warning systems.

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Hezbollah says it has downed Israeli drone over Lebanon

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Israel confirms drone loss while claiming an Iran-backed Shia militia fired rockets towards Israel from Syria

Hezbollah has claimed it shot down an Israeli drone that crossed the border into Lebanon, a week after the bitter enemies traded fire for the first time in years, as regional tensions between Israel and Iran and its allies intensify.

The unmanned aircraft was flying near the southern Lebanese town of Ramyah, the Iranian-backed group said, adding that it fighters had removed the wreckage.

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Israel and Hezbollah trade cross-border fire for first time in years

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Tensions between Israel and Iran threaten to drag Lebanon into renewed conflict

Hezbollah has launched an attack on Israeli military positions and drawn heavy return fire in the first cross-border clash for years between the longstanding foes.

Israel’s military said “two or three anti-tank missiles” had been fired from southern Lebanon toward an army base and a military ambulance but had caused no deaths or injuries..

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UN calls for ‘maximum restraint’ after alleged Israeli strike in Lebanon

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Israel has also allegedly bombed Iraq recently, and claimed an attack on Syria

The UN called for maximum restraint on Monday night after a reported drone attack in a Hezbollah stronghold south of Beirut that was blamed on Israel.

A spokesman said the UN was unable to confirm the reports about Sunday’s incident, the latest in a series of attacks reported recently in the region that have stoked a proxy conflict raging between Israel and Iran across the Middle East. “The United Nations calls on the parties to exercise maximum restraint both in action and rhetoric,” he said. “It is imperative for all to avoid an escalation.”

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Mashrou’ Leila concert cancelled after ‘homophobic’ pressure from Christian groups

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Human rights organisation says decision to remove popular Lebanese indie rock band from Byblos international festival amounts to enabling hate speech

A concert by one of the Middle East’s most popular bands, Mashrou’ Leila, whose frontman is openly gay, has been cancelled following pressure from Christian groups.

The Lebanese quartet were due to play Byblos international festival on 9 August, but the set has been cancelled “to prevent bloodshed and preserve security” according to the organisers, after critics of the band on social media threatened to attack the concert.

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Syrian refugees in Beirut and Istanbul detained and deported

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Lives put at risk as thousands face forcible return to warzones under air attack

Countries neighbouring the still rumbling Syrian war are rounding up hundreds of workers and sending many back to volatile parts of the country, raising fears of mass deportations that will imperil large numbers of refugees.

Syrians living in Istanbul and Beirut have been targeted by immigration authorities in recent weeks, with more than 1,000 detained in Turkey’s biggest city last weekend and given 30 days to leave.

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Tattoos, tans and techno: the photographers capturing the unseen Beirut

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Ravers, semi-naked sun-worshippers, booming queer culture … we meet the photographers chronicling a new generation of Lebanese shaking off the trauma of civil war

‘Parties are a privileged place, a space for exploration, a time for fusion,” says photographer Cha Gonzalez. They’re also the focus of her series Abandon, which looks at the way some Lebanese people have used nightlife – and techno music in particular – as a release after the trauma of the country’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990. “I knew a lot of people who were either born during the war or in exile,” she says. “What was put aside during the day came to light – and their internal struggles surfaced.”

Abandon is a pertinent theme not only for Gonzalez, but for all of the 16 contributors to an exhibition in Paris called C’est Beyrouth (This Is Beirut), at the Institut des Cultures d’Islam. Gonzalez in particular seized on the city’s dance scene, and later continued the series in Paris, where she lives, because “there was something to say about countries that are very far from war as well. The war is inside us: how we feel useless, alone, bored, guilty, horny.”

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Rose seeds from Syria: the refugee family cultivating a new life | Jenny Gustafsson

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Sweet-smelling success for Syrians who have settled in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley is dampened by growing anti-Syrian sentiment

When the plastic bucket is filled with roses, Nahla al-Zarda takes it into the kitchen, where she separates the petals from the buds. She soaks them in boiling water, which blushes pink.

“I love this colour. It will be even stronger when the drink is ready,” she says.

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Syrian refugees forced to destroy their own homes in Lebanon

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Demolition ordered by military leaves 5,000 families homeless again, says charity

Syrian refugees in Lebanon are being forced to tear down their own homes in the face of an aggressive new campaign by the Lebanese authorities to pressure refugees into returning home.

In the border town of Arsal, informal settlements that house 55,000 refugees were the scene of frantic activity under the hot summer sun on Friday as young men took apart the breeze-block homes with pickaxes, hammers and drills, covering the ground in rubble and dust.

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