Baalbek: "There are only civilians here."

taking in the devastation from ground level in baalbek, lebanon...



Baalbek, Lebanon

It's the morning of August 1, 19 days into Israel's assault on Lebanon, the second day of the Israelis' self-styled cessation of air attacks.

In a few hours time, 200 Israeli commandos will helicopter in, make a sweep through a Hizbullah-associated hospital and make off with five men, leaving between 10 and 20 people dead.

Israel will say the dead and detained are militants, that the raid demonstrated how they can strike anywhere they want in Lebanon. Hizbullah will say the Israelis were lured to Baalbek by leaked information that a member of the leadership was in town and that the dead and detained are civilians.

"A Hizbullah stronghold," Baalbek is a mixture of Christians and Shiite and Sunni Muslims, thus reflecting the population of the Bekaa generally.

It isn't exactly bustling the day of the raid. It's not abandoned either. A pair of young Internal Security Forces officers in gray camouflage chat beneath a pink parasol. Soon after entering town, an older gentleman asks if you need a room for the night.

"You should get permission from Hizbullah if you want to look at the bomb sites," he cautions. Indeed, within a few minutes a polite, bearded man in sandals asks how he can help you.

A walkie-talkie appears and you're led to another fellow who quickly takes down your group's details - more or less as if you were buying a visa at the border. The second man apologizes, but there's a war on and the party has to take precautions.

An ancient Mercedes appears - the sort Beirut taxi drivers use to ply their trade - and you're told to follow in your car. A guide sardines himself into the back seat, alongside two rangy hacks.

[...]

Your guide directs you through Baalbek's winding roads to what looks like a ruined apartment block. There's very little to see, in fact, but shattered breezeblock and concrete, the odd Nido (powdered milk) tin, machinery wrecked to anonymity.

"This was a school," he points to one gap. "This was the Taawaniyye (Co-Op grocery store)," he points to a second pile of rubble. He says planes destroyed them on successive days in the first week. "There were no casualties. We evacuated in time."

Walking atop the rubble, the scale of the damage defeats your camera, so you fall to peering into the blasted sitting room of an adjacent flat.

[...]

You count at least five ruined gas stations in town. Further on is a water-filled hole in the road - a former garage apparently. Across the street is another collapsed apartment block.

A blown-out wall reveals a wardrobe overstuffed with clothes - the way wardrobes can get when you can't bear to throw things away. Facing it is shelf, stuffed with plush toys.

From behind his camera someone - acutely aware of the low voyeurism of this - makes a grim joke about how a set designer couldn't construct such an effective shot.

You drive on, pausing at an intersection long enough for your guide to point out where an Islamic benevolent society used to be.

You are directed to another, rather larger, gap in the urban fabric and a more gregarious man materializes. This was a residential area before it was struck by a series of bombs and missiles, he says.

At the back of one building, the walls and floor of an upper-floor flat have collapsed, leaving a child's coat hanging on a coat peg. More voyeurism.

A sign atop one partially gutted building reads "Centre Mustafa Balouq." Balouq, Gregarious Man says, is "a businessman who set up a benevolent society. There was a business center. A place to take out small loans. A charity."

"Over there," he points across the street. "That's a Husseiniyyeh [Shiite cultural center-mosque complex]. The people around it are terrified it's the next target."

Your guides tell you some 135 people have been killed in the Bekaa since this conflict began. Unlike the devastated South, there's no shortage of food and water yet but there hasn't been any electricity in the villages in two days. At every site the refrain is the same. "There are only civilians here."

please, i beg, let it stop...

(thanks to juan cole...)

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