"The Days of the Ghosts are Numbered" [we hope]

Claudia Rosett writes about the dark, dangerous elements hovering around the fringes of yesterday's freedom demonstrations and reminds us of just how perilous are these times [she remembers Tianamen, perhaps too well]. Naharnet, though, sees only joy and hope and a miracle in the making.

Biggest Opposition Demo Swears to Break Syria's Stranglehold and Lahoud's Regime

Lebanon's opposition staged the biggest show of force in the nation's modern history from slain ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's graveside Monday, taking a thunderous oath to break Syria's ruthless stranglehold and tear apart President Lahoud's police state of "secret service phantoms." Between 1.5 and 2 million opposition activists converged on Beirut's downtown Martyrs Square and surrounding neighborhoods to mark the lapse of one month on Hariri's assassination. They shouted slogans demanding the resignation of all security commanders in Lebanon because of dereliction of duty in stopping the assassination.

The demonstration was so huge that Syria's loyalists led by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's Hizbullah and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri's Amal movement, who pose as standard-bearers of the Shiite community were dwarfed into an overwhelmed minority.

What made the trick was the massive turnout of the Sunni sect onto the streets of the capital to defy Syria's tutelage. Crowds from densely-populated Sunni neighborhoods stood shoulder-to-shoulder with opposition activists from various Christian communities and Walid Jumblat's Druze sect, chanting "we want the truth, we want sovereignty, we want Syria out." The Sunnis make up the biggest bloc among Lebanon's eligible voters.

Note these dramatic vignettes:

Legislator Marwan Hamadeh, who survived an assassination attempt in October, formally opened the sit-in protest by declaring that the massive opposition was "writing the end of President Lahoud's police state and its Syrian backers." He drew thunderous cheers when he announced "this is the end to the one whose regime has been extended and to those who extended his regime." Hamadeh, a former minister under Hariri's premiership, said "the days of the secret service, the days of the ghosts are numbered."

Bahia Hariri, the ex-Premier's sister who is a member of parliament, stole the hearts of the Lebanese when she took the makeshift podium to address her slain brother at his nearby grave in the courtyard of Al-Amin's mosque.

"You have accomplished Lebanon's long-elusive miracle, the miracle of national unity, the miracle of Christian -Muslim unity that has been baptized by your blood," Bahia Hariri said.

She then raised her right arm and urged the crowds to do the same, vowing "we pledge to be loyal to Lebanon, your Lebanon which you rebuild from the rubble of civil warfare. We pledge to you that Lebanon would never be torn by civil warfare again under any circumstance," she said.

Another touching expression of post-Hariri's national unity came in an address to the crowds by Joe Sarkis, the representative of Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces. "I want to convey to you Geagea's tribute from eleven years behind prison bars to the national unity welded together by the last tragic thirty days of Rafik Hariri's assassination," Sarkis said.

Hundreds of thousands trekked overland and by sea in bus and motorboat convoys to fill the sprawling Martyrs Square and the nearby Riad Solh Square to the brim. Thousands upon thousands assembled at rooftops and nearby highway passes in what old-timers said was the biggest demonstration since Lebanon's 1943 independence.

Read the whole thing here.

This is the face of Beiruit that inspires us all, but as Claudia Rosett reminds us, it could all come crashing down at any time. In her broadcast last night Claudia said that time after time demonstrators, upon learning that she was a western journalist, pleaded "don't let them forget us." To a great extent, the success of the Lebanese freedom movement, and the lives of many of those who spoke in Martyrs Square, depends on just that -- keeping the attention of the west, and especially the US, focused on what is going on in Beirut.

This has been, so far, a war of images, one that the protesters are winning, but there are real limits to what media power can accomplish. An outbreak of violence could occur today, tomorrow, or next week, or anytime. If it does, and I sincerely hope it doesn't, then the protesters' only real hope is the fact that there's a big honkin' US army right nextdoor. Soft power and image manipulation can only take you so far, even in a media age.