Testing times in Tripoli

Last Friday two car bombs placed strategically outside Mosques frequented by Salafist preachers - vocal in their support of the Syrian opposition and critical of Hezbollah's military participation on behalf of the Syrian regime across the border - went off during Friday prayers. 30 people were killed and over 300 were injured. On saturday morning BEIRUTSTATEofMIND headed up to Tripoli to report on a manifestation of growing unrest in Lebanon:

Sitting on a street corner about 60 feet from the Salam Mosque in the Al-Mina district of Tripoli, 21-year-old Yasser looked sorrowfully into the distance. His head and left hand were wrapped in bandages. A line of dried blood snaked its way down from his temple to his chin. Fragments of glass and small chunks of concrete covered the ground around him next to a pile of tomatoes rotting under the summer sun. Farther up the road surrounding a crater, about ten-feet in diameter and six-feet in depth, the carcasses of burnt out cars lay at unnatural angles across the tarmac. The windows of surrounding buildings were blown out.

I had just finished my work for the morning and was in the mosque praying," said Yasser who moved to Lebanon fro Damascus two months ago in an attempt to flee Syria's ongoing civil conflict.

"I spent a lot of time here at the mosque, not just to pray but sometimes to sleep," he continued explaining that he has no fixed abode.

"I remember I was kneeling to pray and then suddenly I opened my eyes and I was in a hospital ward."

"Sometimes I just feel like there is no escape."

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Men overlook the damage outside the Salam Mosque, Tripoli. 24/08/13.

A crowd gathers outside the Salam Mosque, Tripoli, on Saturday morning. 24/08/13.

Men pass by a damaged vending cart outside the Salam Mosque, Tripoli. 24/08/13.

Blast damage on adjacent buildings, viewed from inside the Salam Mosque, Tripoli. 24/08/13.

Rotting Fruit, Salam Mosque, Tripoli. 24/08/13.

A klashnekoff-heavy motorcade of Bab al Tabbaneh residents parades round the Abu Ali roundabout
next to the Taqwa Mosque, Tripoli. 24/08/13.

Klashnekoff-heavy motorcade (2), Tripoli. 24/08/13.

Damage outside the Taqwa Mosque, Tripoli. 24/08/13.

A young man sits outside a damaged shop front next to the Taqwa Mosque, Tripoli. 24/08/13. 

Boy on BMX, man holding head, Taqwa Mosque, Tripoli. 24/08/13. 

A bulldozer  clears the blast site outside the Tawa Mosque, Tripoli. 24/08/13.

The peculiar case of chemical weapons in Damascus

Last week, despite the presence of a team of UN weapons inspectors in Damascus, chemical weapons were supposedly used in the East Ghouta suburb of Damascus - resulting in the death of between 500 and 1,300 people according to different estimates. As the international community lead by America, the UK, and France debate the efficacy of military intervention in Damascus and a UN convoy comes under sniper fire en route to assess claims of the use of chemical agents in East Ghouta, here is BEIRUTSTATEofMIND's take on events:

The attack came at perhaps a strange time. Over the last few weeks, the Assad regime seemed to be gaining the upperhand in Syria's complex, protracted civil war. UN Inspectors were in Damascus on a fact-finding mission to verify previous claims of the use of chemical weapons earlier in the year.

But in the early hours of Wednesday, August 21, reports began to spread on social media that chemical agents had been deployed in a number of towns in East and West Ghouta, districts on the eastern outskirts of Damascus. Harrowing videos surfaced on YouTube and Facebook showing panicked civilians on suburban streets struggling desperately, gasping for breath as others lay motionless on the ground around them. Other videos showed children foaming at the mouth, eyes open but lacking sentience, convulsing uncontrollably in overcrowded hospital wards. What's depicted in these videos hasn't been corroborated, but by the end of the day most of the videos showed rows of corpses, with bodies and faces unblemished as if in sleep, wrapped in white funeral shrouds. Children in diapers are side by side with men, noncombatants beside combatants.

As the sun set on Wednesday, the UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting in New York and estimates for the total dead ranged from 500 to 1,300 in what, if verified, would constitute the world's most lethal chemical attack since Saddam Hussein sanctioned gas attacks in Halubjah in 1988, killing between 3,000 and 5,000 Kurds.

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Two examples of "safe loads" in Lebanon

To be honest these are two pretty tame cases of what Lebanon really has to offer...

Now this is what you call a "safe load". Beirut-Tripoli Highway. 23/08/13.

Ooh, oh - This looks a bit precarious. 23/08/13.

Troubled times in the Dahiyeh

BEIRUTSTATEofMIND was returning from a beach-trip to Jiyyeh, 20 minutes south of Beirut, when a car bomb struck the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh on Thursday 15th August, claiming the lives of 24 people and injuring at least 250.

Deciding to head directly to the scene BEIRUTSTATEofMIND was picked up by some local Dahiyeh youths under the employ of Hezbollah and driven to a local safe-house, still wearing swimming trunks, for a spot of questioning:

The car pulled down a quiet backstreet and stopped outside what looked like a social club. They lead us in and a giant poster of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei - founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran - was hung from the back wall, flanked by lesser dignitaries from the Hezbollah theo-political pantheon.

My colleague and I were separated behind black partitions at either side of the hall. A glass of water was placed on the table behind the partition next to three brown plastic chairs. In the corner of the hallway a group of teenagers sat eating chicken tawouk.

The man in the cap left, and a clean-cut, smiling man named Issa joined us accompanied by a silent scribe with a shaved pate.

"I don't speak much English so you are going to have to help me in Arabic," says Issa, though he speaks good English.

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Syria Diaries: A hip hop Sheikh in Tadamon

Shelling in the Tadamon area of Damascus. 16/10/2012.

Back in Gaziantep in April BEIRUTSTATEofMIND met with Mahmud al-Hosseini, the Imam of the Uthman ibn Efan Mosque in the Damascus neighbourhood of Tadamon, when Syria's civil war broke out.

In 2011 as the Syrian regime began to use force to quell popular and peaceful demonstrations al-Hosseini increasingly voiced his opposition to the Assad regime - a course of action that put him on a collision course with regime intelligence working in Tadamon.

As FSA units began to arrive in Tadamon in the summer of 2012 Hosseini took to wearing a disguise in order to avoid being detected and picked up by the Syrian mukhabarat:

Hosseini ditched his clerical garb, instead opting for baggy tracksuits, a baseball cap and largeheadphones to avoid detection. "You know, like a hip-hop style," he says. "I started to walk with a swagger."

The disguise proved to no avail. Hosseini was eventually picked up.

This is the account of the time he spent in a detention center presided over by the anti-terrorist branch of the Syrian security services:

GAZIANTEP, Turkey/ Sitting in the salon of a modest house on the outskirts of this southern Turkish city, a group of Syrian refugees congregate around freshly prepared meze. Jokes are exchanged. Mahmud al-Hosseini sits cross-legged, anxiously rubbing his wrists together.

This is a nervous tic he developed uring the four months he spent sharing a cell with 60 other men in a prison run by the Syrian intelligence agencies, somewhere on the outskirts of Damascus.

"It was a scene of misery," he says. "A mass of decaying bodies - fleas, scabies, even gangrene. There was not enough room for people to lie down. We slept cross-legged, resting our heads on the shoulders of our neighbors. One morning after I woke up I was standing to stretch my legs, and I realized the guy whose shoulder I had been resting on had died during the night. I hadn't noticed. When someone died in that place, we used to say that God had blessed them. They were free."

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Wire box, Fassouh