On the Party Trail

Wandering the back-alleys of Lebanon, it can sometimes be a little intimidating when faced with the posters of the political parties & militias here.

Men in ski-masks, brandishing kalashnikovs; party logos bearing crossed arms; names such as the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine. I find it particularly disturbing when these images are plastered on the doors of a UNRWA school. Children are growing up with this image.

But this imagery also reflect the psyche of despair in political progress. Talks come and talks go, and little real progress seems to be made.

Hezbollah has a bad name in the Western press, but following the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, they also garnered a lot of support with the progress they made in security, and in the education and social welfare that they brought.

I direct you to a small series of some of what I saw adorning walls in the Lebanese capital.
» Click here to see the photos, though some things were “off limits”.