Tag Archives: Bab el Tebbaneh

A Visit To Bab El Tebbaneh

I recently visited an area of Tripoli that few want to think of, let alone set foot in: Bab el Tebbaneh. After my visit, I can see why. Even though the area is only a 25 min drive from home, it makes you feel like an outsider to your own country: nothing about you fits there. The people don’t want you to fit there. You don’t want to fit there.

The people of Bab el Tebbaneh thought I was a foreigner. I found it odd at first – we all share the same identification papers. But I later took it to my advantage. It’s much easier to pretend to be a gullible foreigner who has no idea what he’s doing than to try to reason with them using your native tongue. A foreigner can get away with more.

A few years back, when I used to visit the area’s vegetable market frequently, the people seemed to be much more at ease. They were poor back then as well and they were without prospects back then also. But they were hopeful. Little hope can be found in the faces of the people of Tebbaneh anymore. My visit to Bab el Tabbaneh exposed me to a section of our Lebanese society that is in constant paranoia – of that outsider walking among their shelled buildings, among their tarnished markets, violating their area.

We tried to delve deeper into Tebbaneh but faced resistance the likes of which I hadn’t seen in Lebanon before. We went up a flight of stairs that seemingly led nowhere only to have young men come out of nowhere to ask us what we’re doing there. Somehow they thought we were an “archeological team.” They let us through. Moments later they came back: “But there’s no archeology up this way.”

Bab el Tebbaneh is now a place where you are not allowed to take pictures and where you being out of place might warrant the Lebanese army to come hassle you as well. The people of Bab el Tebbaneh who were more than welcoming way back when look at every outsider suspiciously now. Their eyes will stalk you like a hawk whenever you move, tracing your every step, wondering what your plans are.

It is an area where the mosques are shelled, where little kids feel that those semi-demolished buildings are a point of pride and want you to go check them out. It’s a place where poverty is so entrenched in every fabric of that society that you have absolutely no idea how or where to start fixing.

“We are all poor people here,” a man came up to me and said, smiling, as I made my way through his street. “You won’t see anything but poverty.” I smiled back and moved on. There was really nothing I can do.

Where can one start? The politicians promise these people better lives every four years and end up doing nothing. They are untouchable. The religious men who sport the latest cars and equipment use these people’s poverty to their advantage in order to radicalize them. Factions use these people’s needs in order to carry on with their battles after handing them copious amounts of weapons. Most Lebanese hate the people of this area and the “image” they give their country and are more than willing to bash them in and out.

As we reached the point of saturation of what little we got access to of Bab el Tebbaneh and made our way out, as a man shouted at us not to take pictures anymore, another stopped us and pointed at a mosque whose walls were filled with bullet holes. He was exasperated by all the fighting. But he knew there was nothing he could do.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved when I reached the newer parts of Tripoli. It’s hard to imagine how this poverty can be found at a stone’s throw away from the house of one of Lebanon’s richest men. Then you realize that all of Lebanon’s richest men feed off this poverty and help perpetuate it. It’s how they remain powerful.

The mosque and its bullet holes.

The mosque and its bullet holes.

The section we couldn't visit

The section we couldn’t visit

"Come see all the destroyed houses."

“Come see all the destroyed houses.”

"You can't take pictures here."

“You can’t take pictures here.”

People used to live here.

People used to live here.

Bab el Tebbaneh vs Jabal Mohsen: The Dichotomy Representing Lebanon?

Ask any Lebanese today and they try to distance themselves from Bab el Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen as much as they can.

That’s simply not us, they’d tell you. They’re just not us, we’d all rationalize.

But the simple truth is Bab el Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen are the perfect representation of the Lebanese id, Lebanon without limits, Lebanese without boundaries, Lebanon let loose.

On one hand, you have Jabal Mohsen. The only thing Lebanese about Jabal Mohsen is its location. Even the people who are from there would rather be Syrians. Their leader had even asked for the return of the Syrian army to Lebanon not very long ago. In fact, this is their official Facebook’s cover picture, just to show exactly where their allegiance lies:

On the other hand, you have Bab el Tabbaneh: the poorest region in Lebanon, where people follow politicians not because they are convinced by them but because they are a source of food and living. It’s a place where many families live in what used to be prisons with no basic facilities and with each elections coming up, politicians come and throw a lot of promises around to get these poor people’s votes. And then they go into the realms of forgetfulness again.

You’d never see such an array of flags in Jabal Mohsen

Both neighborhoods are heavily armed, as is the entirety of Lebanon, whether we like to admit it or not. Jabal Mohsen’s weapons are provided by Syria or its allies in Lebanon. Who’s providing the weapons in Bab el Tabbaneh? Your guess would be as good as mine. Or as good as Mustapha who wrote about it here (interesting read, by the way, so check it out).

Why are they fighting?

The struggles between Bab el Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen are very old. They are making news more than usual these days because they’ve become more recurrent than before, because they are being linked to the crisis Syria is going through next door and because of the different kinds of weapons used.

My friends from Tripoli have been telling me about how they’re spending their nights, cowered away in one corner of their house with their family – where the bullets wouldn’t reach them. The fights had never been this heavy. The weapons had never been this strong.

The fights between Bal el Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen have been recurrent since 1986 with the Bab el Tebbaneh massacre. The wounds run too deep for the healing.

You have the poor Sunnis on one side and the empowered Alawites on another. The fights are sectarian.

You have the staunch pro-Assad group on one side and the staunch anti-Assad people on another. The fights are political.

Both regions are marginalized, forgotten, and impoverished. The combination of their living conditions make them much easier to be manipulated. Both regions are puppets in the hands of those who are stronger than their people. The fights are a mere expression of other powers wanting to meddle in Lebanese affairs.

Everything aside, Bab el Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen are us. They are sectarian Lebanon. They are politically divided Lebanon. They are poor Lebanon. They are controlled Lebanon. They are armed Lebanon. The only difference with the rest of Lebanon? Their self-restraint regarding violence is much weaker.

It is here that I stop and give a biology analogy. A neuron, which the most important cell that makes your nervous system, responds based on an all-or-none law. That is, if the stimulus given to the neuron is above a certain threshold, the neuron will give a maximum response no matter how much you increase the stimulus.

Beirut is not much different from Jabal Mohsen or Bab el Tebbaneh. It just needs a higher threshold of stimulus because of its apparent “civility” in order to fire. And we’ve already crossed that threshold a few times.

In a way, Jabal Mohsen and Bab el Tebbaneh are a compas of some sorts to the Lebanese situation. Whenever they explode, know that there are worse things going on behind closed doors and that the crisis that our country (the Syrian affair, Sunni vs Shiite, etc…) has always found itself in is in one of its upward, rather than downward curve, of the alternative current that is Lebanese politics.