Lebanon’s Tripoli rises above lingering effects of war to revolt | | Mada Masr
▻https://mada21.appspot.com/madamasr.com/en/2019/10/29/feature/politics/lebanons-tripoli-rises-above-lingering-effects-of-war-to-revolt
Très bon article sur Tripoli, qui va au-delà de la rave party sur la place al-Nour, et propose des éléments de différenciations avec les autres villes du pays.
The demonstrations in Lebanon’s second-largest city, which is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, have a different feel from the rest of the country. The clarion call of the nationwide protests — “All of them means all of them” — that expresses a demand to rid the country of its entire political order has been changed in Tripoli to, “All of them means all of them … No, all of us means all of us”— a call for unity and for all Lebanese to band together, regardless of region, religion, or sect.
It was from Tripoli that this message of unity in the uprising sounded strongest and helped pave the way for a new kind of street activism and movement building across the country.
[...]
Afterward, a number of protesters took to coming to the sit-in dressed in a uniform that read “guards of the city.”
“We have two missions,” one of the self-proclaimed city guards told Mada Masr. “First, we protect the sit-in from any potential problems and we try to kick out anyone who causes problems, but we do so calmly. Second, we organize volunteers from the sit-in to procure food and water for everyone.”
[...]
Tripoli has organized itself to sustain the protests, setting up encampments and selling coffee and food from stalls. Yet it is the social and political makeup of the city that forms a deeper basis for the strength of the protest movement in Tripoli and its importance as a cornerstone of the broader movement across Lebanon.
Unlike other cities, Tripoli has no single political leader, nor even a handful of powerful politicians who exercise control. Instead, there are numerous local leaders who are often at odds with one another, even though they are all complicit in rampant government corruption.
The lack of a centralized power structure has made it more difficult for a single politician to organize a disruption of the protest encampment, as was the case in Mazraat Yachoua, where supporters of President Michel Aoun and his son-in-law, Minister Gebran Bassil, assaulted protesters, or in cities such as Bint Jbeil, Nabatieh and Tyre, where supporters of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement attacked sit-ins.