Why a .762 round is no joke

 These were taken while working on a story with the ever wise scribe Mr Josh Wood and talented translator Miss Naziha Baassiri, which will no doubt soon be gracing the pages of the International  Herald Tribune for y'all to read (hopefully with one of these pics). All three patients are suffering paralysis to some degree, which they claim is due to gunfire from government forces whilst they were attending protests, and are receiving treatment at a private hospital in Tripoli.

Picking up the pieces

I missed the fighting in Tripoli on Saturday but on Sunday, myself and colleagues Josh Wood and Zak Brophy went to sift through (almost still smoldering) the rubble. We saw residential apartments in both neighbourhoods that had been wrecked by RPG/Energa fire, with people from both sides claiming that the other was entirely to blame.  

This scenario is old news here, these neighbourhoods have been fighting for years. However, the current conflict in Syria has given them yet another reason to have at it, and sadly, likely the the funds to do so too. During the Civil War Lebanon was a sandpit in which the world waged its wars; it'll be a sad day if this becomes the case again.

Protests and potshots in Tripoli

A new sight for me at the Sunni anti-Assad protests in Tripoli (that'll be the Lebanese one) on Friday was a small female contingent, albeit separated from the male demonstrators by a rather stern chaperone.

 Following the protests, fighting erupted between militias in two neighbouring yet warring districts of the city. The hardline Sunni/Salafi and Alawite communities have been at each others' throats since the civil war but things are heating up here as it's now a sectarian microcosm for the fighting across the border in Syria. More about that from the tweets of the talented Mr. Joshua Wood here and the BBC. Sadly I filed too late too make the Reuters deadline, dammit.

Apologies for the watermarks but it's still an ongoing news story and bloggers are fond of stealing pictures and not attributing them.    

A sunni milita man runs beneath a Free Syrian Army flag as he heads toward the fighting.

Streets empty as gunfire rings out.

Tripoli residents cautiously peer down the street at Bab al-Tabbaneh, the Sunni neighbourhood  involved in the fighting.

So much for concrete

On January 15th, a seven story building just two blocks from my apartment collapsed, killing twenty seven of the inhabitants. While Lebanese civil society rallied around those that survived and the community mourned those that it had lost, the Lebanese government's response was nothing short of disgusting. See here, how two of the survivors were arrested while still in hospital for having incorrect work visas, and here,  how the residents of an entire nearby building have been kept out of their homes because opposing political groups are fighting over who gets the kudos of  sending in engineers and check that it's safe. This tragedy quickly became a photo op for Lebanon's political elite who shouted themselves hoarse trying to out do each other with condemnations and calls for investigations. 

For me, this was a coup; I sold picture to Reuters, one of the biggest news organisations in the world.   It's easy to feel like a vulture, gaining success from other's misfortune, but such photos and stories are essential if those responsible for such travesties are ever to be held to account.

Ghost refinery

It's hard to believe in the today's world of Gulf oil Goliaths, but back in the 80s Lebanon's Beddawi Oil Refinery was once a crown jewel in the region's petrochemical industry, well, that was according to Salim Rizk, the former shift supervisor who was kind enough to show me around the mothballed plant this week.  That's him below, entering the plant's control room for the first time in 20 years. Beautiful light, decaying machinery, great access. Good day. 

Unhappy holidays: Ashura 2011

Anyone in need of  history lesson regarding Ashura, look here.  In Lebanon most of those who mark the event stick to ritual chest-smacking and non take it to the extremes as those in the southern town of Nabatiyeh. It's a bit of a gratuitous event for me, no real news value as such but visually it's certainly arresting.  Walking backwards amid a large group of excitable men vigorously waving large, sharp swords takes a modicum of faith; fortunately the inevitable spatters I had to clean off myself and my gear were all due to mourners.

Once were wrestlers

Actually the title of this post is total crap. These guys are very much still wrestlers and the brightest and best among them are being touted by some of the more optimistic voices as a way to offer an economic alternative to cattle rustling, an problem endemic across South Sudan. Commercialising the sport would be a small but useful boost for the world's newest country, which has hardly any economy to speak of. For the most part, the people have no cash; even if they did, hardly anything is produced here and there's limited options for transporting goods so it's not much like there is much to buy in the first place.

After two weeks here it seems that the country has a long, long, journey ahead of it - a fact acknowledged by almost every one we've spoken to - but there's a generally pervasive attitude that people are proud as hell of their new country and want to do right by it.