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<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=5 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:18.0pt;font-weight:bold'>Ad Blitz Satirizes <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
Divides</span></font></b><br>
Provocative Signs Target Pervasive Sectarianism<br>
<a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/27/AR2006112701456.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/27/AR2006112701456.html</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=2 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>By
Anthony Shadid<br>
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:State w:st="on">Washington</st1:State></st1:place>
Post Foreign Service<br>
Tuesday, November 28, 2006; A12</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><st1:City w:st="on"><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>BEIRUT</span></font></st1:City>, Nov. 27 -- The
evening was tense, as most are these days in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Beirut</st1:place></st1:City>, its Maronite Catholics, Greek
Orthodox, Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Druze perched imprecisely between war
and peace. Malak Beydoun, a young woman, pulled her car into a parking lot in
the Christian neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh. She peered at a billboard overhead,
alarmed and then indignant.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"Parking
for Maronites only," it read.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Beydoun
recoiled. "How did they know that I was a Shiite?" she remembered
asking herself.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Part
provocation, part appeal -- with a dose of farce that doesn't feel all that
farcical -- advertisements went up this month on 300 billboards across the
Lebanese capital and appeared in virtually every newspaper in the country.
Thousands of e-mails carried the ads across the Internet to expatriates. Each
offered its take on what one of the campaign's creative directors called a
country on the verge of "absurdistan" -- cooking lessons by Greek
Orthodox, building for sale to Druze, hairstyling by an Armenian Catholic, a
fashion agency looking for "a beautiful Shiite face." At the bottom,
the ads read in English, "Stop sectarianism before it stops us," or,
more bluntly in Arabic, "Citizenship is not sectarianism."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
campaign, designed for free by an ad agency and promoted by a civil society
group, has forced <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>
to look at itself at a time when the country is spiraling into one of its worst
political crises in years. The timing was coincidental, the message universal,
in a landscape with ever dwindling common ground: The forces that dragged <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region> into
one civil war are threatening another.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Many have
praised the ads for asking uncomfortable, even taboo questions about a system
in which sectarian affiliation determines everything from the identity of the
president to loyalty to sports teams. Some have mistaken the campaign for
reality. Across the capital, one in six billboards was torn down, prevented
from being put up or splashed with paint, usually the tactic of choice for
conservative Muslims irked by lingerie ads.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"They
didn't get it," said Fouad Haraki, a 53-year-old shawarma vendor, idly
dragging on a cigarette next to a kerosene tank, across the street from
billboards that had been defaced. "They just read what was written on top,
not what was on the bottom."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
result in his neighborhood, he said, was "a sectarian clamor."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It is
almost a cliche that <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>
is home to 18 religious sects -- from a tiny Jewish community to Shiite
Muslims, the country's largest single group. The system that diversity has
inspired has delivered minorities a degree of protection unequaled anywhere
else in the Arab world. But it has left <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region> a country where individual
rights and identity are subsumed within communities and, by default, the
personas of their sometimes feudal leaders, who thrive on that affiliation.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>By
tradition, the president is Maronite, the prime minister Sunni, the parliament
speaker Shiite. Other posts are reserved for Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic and
Druze. Boy scouts are organized by community, not country -- the Mahdi Scouts
for the Shiites, for instance. Television stations have their own sectarian
bent -- the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. for Christians, Future for the Sunnis.
Christians are partial to the Sagesse basketball team, Sunnis the Riyadi team.
There are even two Armenian soccer teams -- Homenmen and Homenetmen -- one
faithful to Armenian leftists, the other to the community's right wing. Before
this summer's war, Sunni soccer fans loyal to Ansar brawled in a stadium with
Shiite youths loyal to Nijmeh.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
system, known as confessionalism, dates to long before <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
independence in 1943. But there is a growing sense that the decades-old
principles underlying Lebanese politics have grown obsolete. In some ways,
today's crisis is about the assertion of power -- a coup to its critics -- by
the long-disenfranchised Shiite community led by Hezbollah. Hardly anyone can
forecast with certainty how the struggle will end, but almost everyone sees it
as a turning point, a crisis that intersects raw ambition with ideology,
foreign policy, perspective and history, all awash in sectarian combustion.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"This
is today a very explosive situation where you have all those sects being
triggered, teased and hammered by all their leaders," said Bechara
Mouzannar, the regional creative executive director for H&C Leo Burnett in <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Beirut</st1:place></st1:City>, which authored
this month's ad campaign. He calls himself "a little dazed and
confused."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"Something
is about to explode, unfortunately," he said.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Added his
colleague, Kamil Kuran: "If we keep thinking like this, the future is
going to look like this."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
inspiration for the campaign came almost by coincidence in their cramped
offices, its walls cluttered with ads for L&M cigarettes, a poster for the
film "Reservoir Dogs" and memorabilia from last year's protests after
the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. Those protest signs
appear a little dated; "<st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Independence</st1:place></st1:City>
'05" and "All of us for the nation." On one window hangs a
handwritten quote: "The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in
my opinion, is believability."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Manal
Naji, a 27-year-old senior art director, had glanced at a r?sum? tucked
underneath another piece of paper. "Christian," it read. "We
were so shocked," she recalled. In the end, it turned out it was the name
of the applicant's father, but it gave Naji an idea. "What if it actually
existed," she said. "What if it reached the point of putting it on
your job application."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"We
wanted the same shocking effect," added Reem Kotob, a 25-year-old member
of the creative team.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>This
weekend, the two sat with another member of the team, 26-year-old Yasmina Baz,
in the agency's conference room, looking over the ads they designed in a burst
of energy on that first night and a later session at a nearby bar, Club Social.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>One is a
doctor's plate: "Dr. Mohamed Chatila, Muslim Sunni." Another is a
three-story banner that reads, "For Druzes, Building for <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Sale</st1:place></st1:City>." A license plate is pictured:
"A Shiite car," it says in Arabic, "Shiite" in English. And
an ad for a car: "2000 model, in near perfect condition. Owned and
maintained by a Maronite. Never driven by non-Maronites."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The team
took the ads to Amam 05, a grass-roots group that grew out of last year's
protests. The name means "ahead," an acronym of the Arabic for civil
society. It states its mission, admittedly ambitious, as "a modern,
sovereign state built on non-feudalism, non-confessionalism and
non-clientelism." But even its leaders admit to being a little glum, given
today's crisis.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"Very
frustrated," said Nicole Fayad, one of the activists.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
original idea was to actually hang the signs in the city: "Maronites
only" in a parking lot, "For Druzes" on the side of a building.
But when Asma Andraos, one of the group's leaders, approached the owners, they
cringed.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"They
called me back, and they said they loved it, that I was crazy, and that there's
no way they could do this," she recalled. She shook her head. "If I
had a building, I wouldn't have done it, either," she said.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>They went
instead to newspapers, placing the ads in eight papers for two weeks this
month. One printed them for free, the others at a 50 percent discount. A
billboard agency agreed to post 300 for free for a week. In all, it cost the
group $40,000; Mouzannar estimated it would have cost more than $500,000
commercially.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But
before the billboards went up, they had to go through the formality of getting
permission from the intelligence branch known as General Security. At first, officials
refused; one compared the ads to Nazi-era segregation. It took two hours of
face-to-face meetings to reach a resolution, by convincing the officials that
the campaign was intended to be ironic.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Then when
the billboards went up, 50 were defaced or torn down. Some residents stopped
them from going up in the first place. In <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region> and abroad, e-mails flitted
back and forth, some of their authors believing the messages were real.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"People
were seriously panicked," Andraos recalled. "Are there really signs
like that in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>
now? The mere fact that people think it's possible, that there might be signs
like that in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>
now, means we're not really that far off."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Members
of the group say people have criticized the timing, and the group delayed the
campaign's next step after the assassination last week of a government
minister, Pierre Gemayel. But they plan to distribute as early as this weekend
15,000 business cards with the same theme at bars and restaurants in <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Beirut</st1:place></st1:City>. Each card lists a
person's name and religious affiliation. Next, they will send copies of the
cards to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
128 legislators.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"We
want it to be raised as an issue," Fayad said, "but we don't have the
pretension to say we have the answer."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>At a cafe
near downtown, Randy Nahle, a 21-year-old student, wondered about the way out.
His father is Shiite, his mother Maronite Catholic. The neighborhood he sits
in, like virtually every one in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Beirut</st1:place></st1:City>,
has its markers: the posters and religious symbols on walls, the muezzin or the
church bells that identify its affiliation.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>For once,
he said, something organized spoke to his rejection of being "categorized
or oversimplified."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>He smiled
at his favorite ads, the ones that identified doctors by their sect. "It
has infiltrated our fabric so much, almost indelibly," Nahle said.
"If I have an earache, an Orthodox doctor will understand it better. It's
an Orthodox ear."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>He
recalled sitting with a Shiite woman at a cafe near the <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">American</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType> in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Beirut</st1:place></st1:City>. She treated him as a fellow Shiite
until he revealed his mixed background. She looked at him disapprovingly. It's
bad for the children, she said. "They're going to come out confused,"
she told him.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"I
said, 'You know, the problem of this country is we don't have enough confused
people. The problem is we have too many people blindly convinced by their
political orientation, by their religion, by their community's superiority.'
"<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>She
smiled, he recalled, and then laughed a little uncomfortably.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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