Beirut rubbish protesters clash with police amid anger at political paralysis

Martin Chulov and Kareem Shaheen in Beirut, Monday 24 August 2015 12.39 BST, Source

Protesters and police clashed in Beirut over the weekend in one of the biggest shows of civil disobedience in Lebanon in 10 years, sparked by anger at piles of steaming rubbish on the streets and the political inaction that has led to the situation.

The clashes showed public frustration at the collapse of governance in Lebanon. Its political class, beholden to outside interests, has been unable to make decisions for the past 15 months, since the presidency became vacant.

Appointments, planning approvals and budgets have remained frozen, while political camps have feuded over who should take the top job.

The piling up of rubbish on the country’s streets, caused by a failure to agree on a new landfill site – and seen as a profound indignity by Lebanese – has become the defining example of the country’s dysfunction. It has united public opinion and rallies have been organised under the “You Stink” banner.

“The people are screwed over from A to Z,” said one demonstrator during Saturday’s protest. “We have no agenda, it’s spontaneous, and that’s why the politicians are scared.”

Organisers had promised to continue protests this week, but after a second night of violence in which some shops were vandalised, they suspended rallies, accusing “infiltrators” sponsored by politicians of disrupting the protests and sparking clashes with police.

The Lebanese Red Cross said it treated 402 people in Sunday’s protest, which saw more violence than the previous day. Most were treated for symptoms of teargas. About 40 people were taken to hospital.

The running battles and chaos left much of the central Riad al-Solh Square, which leads to parliament, in a shambolic state, littered with smashed up concrete and broken glass. On Saturday, police closed off all access to Nejmeh Square, which houses the legislature, behind wire fences as demonstrators called on them to join the protest.

“Their guns are just pointed at us,” one demonstrator told another as he spoke across the fence to the police. Protesters chanted “down with the regime” and cursed politicians, scrawling “a parliament of pimps” at the bottom of a statue.

Despite their size, the protests seem unlikely to force broader change in Lebanon, which continues to be buffeted by a tussle for regional influence fought by its two main backers, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Iran backs the country’s Shia Muslims and roughly half of Lebanon’s Christians and Druze. The Christian half is led by retired general Michel Aoun, who wants to assume the presidency and appoint his son-in-law as head of the army. Lebanon’s Sunnis, meanwhile, along with the other half of the Christians and Druze, are backed by Saudi Arabia.

When Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s most popular politician and a leading Sunni lawmaker, was assassinated in 2005 in a massive car bomb, close to one million people turned out in Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square, demanding the expulsion of the Syrian army, which had retained an iron grip on the country since the end of the civil war. An international tribunal has indicted five members of Hezbollah in connection with the assassination.

The demonstration was Lebanon’s largest ever, a show of power that culminated in the ignominious Syrian withdrawal and what was termed the “Cedar revolution”.

However, since then proxy powers have consolidated their holds on most aspects of political life.

Tehran in particular built up its proxy, Hezbollah, which would go on to fight Israel to a stalemate in 2006, conquer Beirut by force in 2008 and establish itself as the predominant player in Lebanese politics. The country’s legislators have postponed parliamentary elections twice, citing security concerns. The last poll took place in 2009.