REPORTER: Mark Davis
The razor wire is coming down in downtown Beirut. The camps of Hezbollah and its allies, which for more than a year have blockaded parliament and the heart of the city, are being dismantled and simple signs of civility are returning.
REPORTER: Who’s paying?
MAN (Translation): The opposition, Hezbollah, in plain language.
An army of Hezbollah construction and landscaping companies have moved in, transforming downtown almost overnight. The message is fairly clear. At a moment's notice, Hezbollah can deliver rockets or flowers. The choice is yours, kind of. Just two weeks before, Hezbollah, a Shiite militia supposedly dedicated to fighting Israel, bought its army to Beirut and the Lebanese army faded away before them. The government had tried to ban Hezbollah’s private telecommunications network but the violent response took the government totally by surprise, including senior coalition member Samir Gea Gea.
REPORTER: Why did the government bring on this confrontation with Hezbollah and do you regret that now?
SAMIR GEA GEA, LEBANESE FORCES: Pragmatically speaking, yes, pragmatically I mean. But in the beginning it was a matter of principal for the government. For me personally it was an inconceivable act, an important time that Hezbollah would turn its arms inside for a declaration of principal for the sake of the government, but it did happen.
More than 60 people were killed in the fighting here and in the mountains. With its own army withdrawing from the fight, the government had little option but to negotiate a settlement. And that settlement, forged in the Qatari capital of Doha, is unfolding today in Lebanon's Parliament House.
JOURNALIST (Translation): The Arab and international attendance is unprecedented.
The deal creates a new president and a new government, with Hezbollah guaranteed cabinet positions and a veto power over all decisions - hardly a recipe to strengthen an already weak state but perhaps enough to avert a civil war between the Shia Hezbollah and the liberal coalition government composed mostly of Sunni Muslims. An uneasy peace has descended over Beirut, celebrated by a burst of gunfire nearby. Apparently it is happy bullets from Hezbollah today but, in Beirut right now, no–one can be quite sure…
It’s the day after the new President is sworn in and the government dissolved, and the Hezbollah faithful are rallying in West Beirut. Triumph is in the air.
MAN (Translation): We consider this to be a cure, we have defeated the American – Israeli project. We have united the Lebanese and we will always be united.
WOMAN (Translation): Of course, it is a victory of good over evil, and we are the good. Thanks be to God.
Under the leadership of Hassan Nassrallah, with the financial and military backing of Iran and Syria, Hezbollah has emerged over the past decade as a powerhouse in Lebanon - Hezbollah's ongoing battle with Israel is supposedly the reason for its existence and, for his own security, the reason why Nasrallah almost never appears in public.
HASSAN NASSRALLAH, HEZBOLLAH LEADER (Translation): Government weapons cannot be used to target the resistance and its weapons. Israel will disappear. We the Lebanese national opposition on the streets, in negotiations and in Doha, we were the decision makers.
But recently his guns weren’t pointed at Israel. They were pointed and fired at Lebanese - a very significant switch, for which Nasrallah in unrepentant. More happy bullets are fired to celebrate Hezbollah's victories but the direction they are being aimed is not entirely coincidental. The bullets will be falling on a Sunni suburb and a dozen Sunni civilians will be hospitalised this afternoon.
Despite the belligerent speech, Beirutis take the chance to flock into the city again. This popular talk show goes on to the street trying to answer the question that all of Lebanon is asking –
TALK SHOW HOST (Translation): Have we entered a long-term settlement or are we laying the foundations for a new civil war?
It seems that the heady days of the liberal coalition government are now behind it. Known as the March 14 coalition, it was forged out of the protest movement of 2005 which forced Syria to end its occupation of Lebabnon. But it has met its match for now in Hezbollah. March 14 still holds the majority of seats in parliament but it looks like it will be a very nobbled version when the so called unity cabinet is finally announced.
Just up the road, a concert is called to celebrate the reopening of downtown Beirut - a pleasant diversion from the terror that has preceded it, but it is no less chaotic. Like the country, it seems that everyone deserves to be on centre stage. And the army seems no more adept at controlling pop fans and photographers than they are at controlling armed miltitias.
In the surrounding streets, it seems these few nights of peace are too good to be true, as the telephone of Mohamed, my fixer and translator, starts to ring.
MOHAMED, FIXER AND TRANSLATOR: So it says that there is heavy shooting at..I just received a message saying that they just shot an RPG missal at a mosque. It is basically the place where the clashes started two weeks ago.
We head towards the pro-government Sunni suburb that has just come under attack, just a few kilometres from the celebrations in the centre of town.
MAN: There is a checkpoint. Put the camera down.
The army has thrown up roadbloacks to stop anyone entering the scene, which we manage to avoid. But, just like two weeks before, it seems the army make no attempt to apprehend the attackers.
YOUNG MAN (Translation): A rally convoy went by, they lobbed grenades and fired at us, look at the army standing around, they are useless. If I were a soldier I would get my gun and go after them.
No-one here will appear on screen but they all keen to tell their story.
REPORTER: So two grenades were thrown into a crowd? Like a hand grenade? Why can’t you be filmed, why can’t you go on camera? And why can’t anyone else go on camera?
MAN: Because someone will see me talking about this, they saw me and they will kill me.
Eventually, Sohel, the local branch leader of the Future Movement party, the single biggest member of the government, comes down to talk.
SOHEL, LEADER, FUTURE MOVEMENT (Translation): I doubt the Lebanese president can do anything about them because they see themselves as stronger than the state. They are a state within a state. “In this building she put sniper.’
It’s still not clear how many have been injured by the machine-gun fire and grenade attacks but Sohel is keen to find out.
SOHEL: If you want see, I will take? Yes, let's go.
As on the street, no-one here wants to be filmed. All of them claim they fear Hezbollah reprisals. 20 people are seriously injured in the attack. One man loses both his legs but still only Sohel wants to be seen to be pointing the finger at Hezbollah or its supporters.
SOHEL (Translation): This is the doing of the ‘resistance and liberation.”
Cover your face if you want, cover your face.
Even politicians here are coy about discussing Hezbollah. Only one government member accepted an invitation to appear in this program and he has the protection of a personal army - Samir Gea Gea, leader of the former Christian milita, the Lebanese Forces.
REPORTER: People are very reluctant to talk out against them. I’ve come across that a lot in the time that I’m here.
SAMIR GEA GEA: This is true – it is not the advantage of Hezbollah to be without fear.
REPORTER: Do you look at them with fear?
SAMIR GEA GEA: No.
REPORTER: Your security is incredibly tight, as tight as I have ever seen any politicians. Who do you think is trying to kill you?
SAMIR GEA GEA: We have seen many assassinations of politicians in Lebanon in the last era.
REPORTER: In the last two or three years, right? And who has been assassinated, let’s be clear about this, who has been assassinated and why?
SAMIR GEA GEA: There was 14 people, there was 14 people because of the political program.
REPORTER: But what I am getting at is the number, I think 8 politicians and a number of journalists have been killed and the defining characteristic of all those people that have been killed is what they opposed Anti-Syrian, Anti-Hezbollah, yes.
SAMIR GEA GEA: Yes and that is why we have to take precautions. Are you ask me, are you sure Hezbollah are killing people? I will tell you No. Are you sure they are Syrians? Probably.
Hezbollah aren’t great at answering questions for themselves. They can be camera-shy at the best of times but during this period they declined multiple interview requests and permission to film anywhere in their part of West Beirut. But they now have a surprising and rather more open coalition partner - the mostly Christian Free Patriotic Movement. Businessman Ziad Abz is a senior member of the Movement, who negotiated a surprising parliamentary alliance with Hezbollah.
REPORTER: It is hardly an open, liberal democratic, freedom-loving group?
ZIAD ABZ, FREE PATRIOTIC MOVEMENT: Look it’s not, it’s not, we have to remember that it’s a resistance group, they are fighting against Israel. We know deep that after political discussions, after talking with them of the future, about what will happen to Lebanon, what is their vision on the current regime, that they are much more liberated.
I knew Ziad eight years ago when he was a leader of a student movement that bravely challenged the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.
ZIAD ABZ: When you speak outside those guide lines, you become a trouble maker. I have here my hand broken, they were beating me on my face with the back of the gun so I put my hand on the front of the gun and it was broken.
Ziad and his friends were arrested, beaten and tortured, some of them killed by Syrian intelligence who were then, and still are, amongst Hezbollah’s closest allies.
ZIAD ABZ: You can see them, they are sitting on the entrance of this building. It is an interrogation apartment, where they usually arrest people and interrogate them. You can see intelligence everywhere.
Ziad’s group are led by former general Michel Ayoun have split the Christian community with their alliance with Hezbollah and their support for Hezbollah’s extra parliamentary activities have confounded many.
REPORTER: You supported the blockade of parliament and the blockade of downtown but did you support the military advance on Beirut by Hezbollah?
ZIAD ABZ: Look we understood what happened at that time, we understand what Hezbollah did it, we would have done it differently but we can not judge really at this act, taking it out of its time frame and out of its particular context.
REPORTER: What’s the context? Your sending guys into Beirut and scaring the hell out of everybody and possibly starting a war?
ZIAD ABZ: Let me go back and tell our fellow Australian citizens, a couple of weeks before what happened. Six Hezbollah supporters were killed by gunmen, in one of the universities we had snipers from the Futures Movement, on the roofs killing students.
In some ways the spilt emerging amongst the Christians is more significant than the Sunni-Shia divide. Elections are looming in 2009 and it’s the Christian bloc who will form the vital swinging vote.
REPORTER: The Sunni and Shia voting blocs or voting patterns will be fairly clear?
SAMIR GEA GEA: Their known.
REPORTER: The Chrisians then become a vital..
SAMIR GEA GEA: Battleground, a political one.
REPORTER: What role will Christian bloc play in forming the next government?
SAMIR GEA GEA: We expect the result of this election to be more to the benefit of March 14 than the benefit of Hezbollah.
ZIAD ABZ: The big battle is happening on the Christian ground. We are confident I can say today that we might meet after the elections, I’m sure you will cover it and I might be a member of the parliament and I am sure that the Free Patriotic Movement will have the majority of the Christians.
REPORTER: Really
ZIAD ABZ: Definitely.
Back in the Sunni suburb of Tari Jadidi, the kids are playing with toy guns and real bullets.
REPORTER: What are they for?
BOY (Translation): It is for war, for power and greatness.
I meet up with Sohel again, who denies the Hezbollah accusation that there are Sunni militias.
SOHEL (Translation): We follow the school of Rafik Hariri, don’t worry it is fireworks.
There are some fireworks going off but a lot of them go by the brand name Kalashnikov, which leads to our next topic...
SOHEL (Translation): We have personal guns, private property. And I assure you 100% that our guns are our own. They are not from Future Movement. We buy them with our own money, my money. So we organise night guard duties to protect our area and our properties.
Sohel is adamant that the Sunnis are only carrying small weapons, without any government or party backing - nothing compared to the military might of Hezbollah, which has a pipeline of cash and firepower from Iran and Syria. What’s becoming clear is that if there weren’t Sunni militias before Hezbollah took to the streets there certainly will be now.
As night falls, Sohel prepares for his evening guard duty.
SOHEL (Translation): Hand grenade, I bought it for $10, I bought this for $500, money from the family budget. I bought it about six months ago. If an armed man attacks me, do I defend myself with my bare hands?
The final composition of the new government should be decided this week but it is unlikely to ease the tension in suburbs like this. Their government was unable to protect them when Hezbollah came calling last time and now the government and its agencies are about to become weaker, certainly until the election in 2009. And that’s a lot of long tense nights in the suburbs of Beirut and the villages of Lebanon.
LITTLE BOY (Translation): Shoot Daddy
SOHEL (Translation): Why would we shoot.
Credits
Reporter/Camera
MARK DAVIS
Editors
WAYNE LOVE
ROWAN TUCKER-EVANS
Fixer/Translator
MOHAMED ALI NAYEL
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Subtitling
JOSEPH ABDO
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN
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