Tripoli: A Powder Keg of Fundamentalism
The northern Lebanese city of Tripoli has been severely affected by the conflict in neighboring Syria, with heightened sectarian tensions threatening an outbreak of civil war, writes Jean Aziz.
For the fires of the Lebanese civil war to be kindled, there need to be certain religious, historical, economic and social conditions present, and all of them can be found in abundance in the city of Tripoli.
The Land of the Cedars’ second-largest city by population after Beirut and the capital of North Lebanon, Tripoli seems to personify its namesake, which in Greek means “three-cities,” for the Tripoli of today is divided three sections: the narrow Alawite quarter, the sprawling Sunni quarter, and the demarcation line, which just four years ago would transform into a war zone every day after sunset.
In essence, Tripoli is a highly accurate microcosm for the Syrian civil war: an Alawite minority against a Sunni majority in a war fraught with blood feuds and religious fundamentalism that stretch back decades if not centuries. What’s more, the street dividing the Alawite and Sunni quarters just happens to be named Syria Street, highly reminiscent of how the Green-Line that divided the Muslim and Christian sections of Beirut during the 15-year Lebanese civil war ran along Damascus Road: Semantic coincidences that seem to have a necessary cognitive function where memory fades.
Tripoli is the only city in Lebanon, perhaps in the entire region, which still celebrates the anniversary of the coming of the Mamluks and their hard-line version of Sunni Islam, and the subsequent expulsion of the Crusaders at the beginning of the 13th century. It is a city which has hosted every proselytizing Sufi and Salafist movement known to the Near East, including those which later moved on to Turkey and North Africa. It is also a city stricken with much misery and suffering, with about two-thirds of its population living below the poverty line, according to official polls.
