Aftermath

Muhamad Abdel Rahman, head of the Sunni religious endowment in the Beqaa, emerged. Hundreds of men surrounded him as he gave a speech with a loudspeaker. An establishment figure, he came, like others, to try to influence the men. The Sunni elite feared young men like Nabil, whom they could not control. Representatives from the Future Movement had asked them to open the roadblocks, Nabil said, as had the municipality. Although locals voted for the Future out of Sunni solidarity, they did not belong to the party—which had opposed the initiative taken by local youths to close the road.

Sheikh Muhamad addressed them directly. “You represent Majd al-Anjar,” he said. “The decision to open the road is yours. It’s impossible to open the road without your agreement. The decision must protect the interest of the town and the people of the town and the shabab of the town.” He warned that there were some infiltrators among them. “You are not here for stealing. If there are people among you stopping and stealing, it’s harming your dignity.” The issue was protecting Sunnis’ dignity and autonomy, he said; they would open the road if it was in the interests of the sect. “The Islamic Sunni resistance begins today,” he said. “We work for Lebanon, and they work for Iran.” Young men shot into the air as he spoke.

“The sheikh, the municipality, the Future Current, the world came to open the border,” one of the young men said triumphantly, “but the shabab of Majd al-Anjar who closed the border refused to open it.”

The following Friday I visited the Abdel Rahman Auf Mosque in Majd al-Anjar, also known as the Wahhabi Mosque. Nabil met us at the entrance to town and guided us to the mosque, handing us over to a chubby bearded friend before going home. Expensive cars were squeezed in around the mosque, which was full of young men and boys. It had two floors, with a screen on the second floor so people could watch the imam give his sermon. Sheikh Adnan al-Umama, a local, spoke of Hizballah’s “barbaric raid” on Beirut and condemned Iran. In Iraq the mujahideen were called terrorists, he said, while Hizballah’s Shiite brothers in Iraq helped the Americans.

The battle was one of creeds, he said, meaning between Sunnis and Shiites. “These people who came against us are secular and infidels. If they were honest about what they say, then we have to be ready to fight them. We saw them invading Beirut with hearts full of hate and accusing us of the murder of Hussein. If they have a problem with the government like they claim, why did they attack civilians and humiliate our women and our Muslim homes in Beirut?” Hizballah “terrorized us in our cities. Their friends in Iraq are friends with the Americans. We are the real people of the resistance. Sunnis are the real resistance.” The battle against Israel was a Sunni battle as well, he said. “I’m not agitating for a sectarian conflict. But, on the other hand, we won’t stand still if they try to humiliate or insult our homes and our women.” The Lebanese army would fall apart soon because of the sectarian division inside it, he said. It was time for Sunnis to stop being afraid of Shiites to start rising up. “Until the government is able to defend us, we insist on carrying our guns,” he said. “And we will resist [the Shiites] with our women and children and all the power we have. I praise our heroes who blocked the road. Yes, they did the right thing. We are the pure, noble Muslims, and we are merciful, and we won’t stay silent about the attack on the people and our women in our cities.”

As I listened to the sermon with a friend, a man turned to question us suspiciously, but Nabil’s friend explained that we were with him. Then suddenly a thick older man with a long gray beard took my friend’s notebook from his hands and demanded mine as well. After the prayer ended he interrogated us as others surrounded us. He tried to read the notes and ordered Nabil’s friend to make copies of our identity cards.

I later went to meet Sheikh Adnan at his home. Landscape paintings and gaudy European art decorated his guest room. Given the tone of his sermon, he was younger, quicker to smile, and more jovial than I had expected. He began by apologizing for the men who had interrogated us at his mosque. He normally preferred not to give political sermons, he told me, focusing instead on religion, because politics was always changing.

Majd al-Anjar, with its twenty thousand residents, was unique, he said, because it was close to the border, was populated only by Sunnis, had a large number of graduates in Islamic studies educated all over the Arab world, and had no secular political parties. Sheikh Adnan was not optimistic. “Outside powers determine events here,” he told me. Shiites were doing the same thing in Lebanon that they were doing in Iraq, but Iraqi Sunnis were stronger because they had weapons from the former regime at their disposal and a better geographical location. Bin Laden and Zawahiri were wrong when they called for Al Qaeda to operate in Lebanon, because they did not know the nature of the country, he said. It was too divided and mixed, and Al Qaeda could never establish a stronghold.

He did not want fitna in the Muslim community, he said; he wanted to fix the problems of arms in Lebanon and the dangers they posed for Sunnis. After seeing what happened in Beirut, Sunnis understandably wanted to arm themselves too. The Future Movement had no creed, he said. Its people worked only for money, unlike Hizballah. Sunnis were looking for a leader to represent them, but the Mufti Qabbani was too close to the Saudis and the Future Movement, and he was weak, having done nothing in response to the events in Beirut. There was an opening now for Islamist movements, but the experience of Nahr al-Barid had made Islamists wary of organizing. He wondered why the Americans had abandoned the Siniora government and asked me if I had any insight.

We drove to Nabil’s house. He lived with relatives on the second floor of a compound. Nabil’s guest room was a shrine to jihad. He had a large collection of ammunition shells and grenades on display in his cupboard. Upon entering his house, guests were greeted by framed pictures of the 9/11 attacks—the Twin Towers aflame and a smoldering Pentagon. “We are not in line with Sheikh Adnan,” Nabil told me. “He is moderate, as they say.” Instead Nabil and his friends took fatwas from scholars associated with Al Qaeda. Nabil asked his little boy what he wanted to be when he grew up. “A mujahid!” his son grinned. A tall man wearing jeans and a T- shirt that were too tight (in true Lebanese style) burst in the room. His name was Hossam, and he was one of the organizers of the roadblock. Seeing the pistol on his belt, I asked if he was a cop. “No, I’m a mujahid,” he said. He explained that closing the road was a spontaneous decision taken by the shabab. “Our conscience and our honor made us close it,” he said. “I smoke hashish, I’m not religious. It was something from the inside.”

I visited often in the spring and summer of 2008. Nabil always had his 9-millimeter Glock pistol in his hand, on his lap, or on the table beside him. Like many Glocks I had seen in Lebanon, it had been smuggled in from Iraq, an American gift to mostly Shiite Iraqi Security Forces now in the hands of radical Sunnis in Lebanon. Once, as I sat in Nabil’s guest room, he received a phone call. He grabbed his pistol and ran out. Three unknown cars with tinted windows had entered the town. He called Hossam. “Three cars came in,” Nabil said. “They might be military. Park your car and I’ll send someone to pick you up. . . . They’re raiding your house. . . . Don’t worry about me. I’ll start shooting if they get close to my house.” Nabil took out a walkie-talkie and contacted other men in their network. Hossam, sweating and out of breath, walked in with a thuggish-looking friend. Hossam wielded a new AK-47 equipped with a scope and flashlight as well as a drum magazine to hold far more ammunition. He wore an ammunition vest laden with extra ammunition and several American hand grenades that he said cost fifty dollars apiece. His friend carried a PKM, a belt-fed machine gun. “If Saddam Hussein was alive he would help us with ammunition,” Hossam said. “That’s why they killed him.”

Hossam’s father had killed a man, and the two families were feuding, which was why he always carried a pistol. But in the battle against Shiites the two families were together, he said. “I never carried a rifle before,” he said, “but since the Shiites attacked I started carrying one.” Hossam had taken part in sectarian clashes between Sunnis from the nearby town of Saad Nayel and the Shiites of Talabaya. A few days earlier Sunnis and Shiites had fought each other in the nearby town of Sawiri as well. Hossam claimed he had forced Shiite officials at the Masnaa border crossing to stop working there. This was why security officers were paying a visit to the town. “We and the state are opposed,” said the thuggish man.

“Before May 8 I used to love life,” said Hossam. “I would never sleep. I was into women, drugs, alcohol—I was living life to the fullest. Something happened in my heart I can’t explain to anybody. Since May 8 I am a different person. I started praying five times a day, feeling more confident when I’m fighting.” Now he fantasized about becoming a suicide bomber. “I should be doing martyrdom operations too,” he told me, his eyes darting to Nabil, looking for approval. “I would like to blow myself up during Nasrallah’s speech when there is a large group of people.” He got so much pleasure from shooting, he said, and he surmised that if he went on a martyrdom operation his soul would feel even better. Nabil expected suicide operations like those in Iraq to occur in Lebanon, targeting Shiites. “I won’t be surprised if it happened,” he said.

Nabil didn’t seem to have a job, but I soon realized he had a lucrative underground business selling weapons. I asked him why he always carried a pistol with him. He quoted a hadith about how one must always be armed. I asked if he was not worried about the authorities. “The army is not allowed in here,” Nabil said. I asked