Region | Lebanon
Rebuilding Peace Blog: Day 6
Gulf News reporter Abbas Al Lawati and eleven other reporters from around the world go on a five day field trip to Lebanon to witness the reconstruction efforts after the war with Israel last year.
- By Abbas Al Lawati, Staff Reporter
- Published: 15:36 April 11, 2008
- Image Credit: Reuters
- Two men hold up their hands as a sign of unity in front of Lebanon's Hezbollah's flag.
Gulf News reporter Abbas Al Lawati is attending a workshop in Geneva entitled Beyond Wars, Building Peace which is organised by the Swiss press agency InfoSud and the Media21 journalist's network in coordination with the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.
Following a five day workshop, Abbas and eleven other reporters from around the world go on a five day field trip to Lebanon to witness the reconstruction efforts after the war with Israel last year.
Meeting Hezbollah
It is often said that Hezbollah's strength lies in its strict discipline and ability to avoid deviating from its core vision.
That's no secret, but seeing it first-hand can be an eye-opening experience.
As part of our field trip to Lebanon following a workshop in Geneva on post war peace building, we were scheduled to meet with Hezbollah officials and get access to the southern suburbs of Beirut which witnessed a significant amount of destruction during the 2006 summer war with Israel.
Until the last minute, we had no idea who we would be meeting. We managed to get access to Hezbollah through an analyst/expert who is very close to the group.
The analyst wanted to meet the whole group of ten journalists before giving us the green light, so we all went for dinner, introduced ourselves and talked about Hezbollah and the war.
He told us that any meeting between us and the party would require us to fill in an application form attached with our passport photocopies. This was to ensure that the party knew exactly who it was dealing with, he said. Understandable, we thought. Impressive, too.
On the day of the meeting, all we knew was that we would be going to the suburbs of Beirut and meeting a couple of officials from the party. That was it.
We eventually reached Hezbollah's media relations office in Harat Hreik, where we were told that we would be taken on a guided tour of the suburbs to see the destruction. We were also free to talk to locals as we wished, they said.
As we left, I noticed two plainclothes security officials accompanying us, with wires sticking out of their ears—Secret Service style.
They were there, one of them told me, to inform us where we could or could not take pictures, and protect us. Protect us from what, I asked.
"People here are suspicious of foreigners, especially those taking pictures. We're here to ensure to them that you are with us," he said. Residents of the suburbs are very vigilant, he added. "If there's any suspicious activity, they get in touch with us."
"How," I asked. "Is there a hotline?"
He grinned. "They know how to get in touch with us".
He was partly right. As we walked down the streets of Harat Hreik, we noticed youth on motorbikes more than once stopping to ask who we were. They would look to our escorts for a gesture of assurance before zooming away again.
We also realized that there were more people with us than we had previously noticed.
Other than our two plainclothes bodyguards, we spotted a number of plainclothes officials with walkie-talkies about a hundred metres away, forming what seemed to be a second ring of security around us.
I asked another official later why we had to be escorted. He politely repeated one of the bodyguards' claim that it was for our protection. That was obvious, and not hard to believe, but I asked if they were there for another reason too.
"Of course," he said. "Their primary objective is to guarantee your safety, but they are also required to ensure that you are here to do what you said you would do," he said.
Were they trained in combat? He laughed. "Do you think these men were randomly picked off the street?"
I wondered, however, why Hezbollah would go through the inconvenience of providing access to its officials and stronghold neighbourhoods to journalists.
Every request from journalists for access to Hezbollah goes through the soft-spoken but tough media coordinator, Madam Wafa. She decides whether or not access should be granted, and told me that journalists file such requests on a daily basis.
She has given access to journalists from all over the world, even those from Western networks that come with a set opinion on the group. "We have nothing to hide. We tell them to come here and report as they wish, so they can decide for themselves instead of coming with preconceived notions about us," she said.
This strategy of transparency and discipline certainly works. Every analyst, expert, and civilian we met, whether Westerner or local, Sunni, Shiite or Christian, spoke very highly of the organization. Some even became defensive upon being asked about the party's "true objectives".
Sure, the party has a solid base of supporters in Lebanon, but it also has a significant base of the less visible independent players, local and foreign, who defend the organisation and speak out for it behind the scenes.
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