Warfare 101

The Nahr el-Bared camp in Northern Lebanon

Looking at a bombardment in the company of two war buffs gives you quite a different angle of a battlefield. Today I spent a good part of the day on a balcony overlooking the Palestinian camp Nahr el-Bared (‘cold river’, in Arabic) with two (semi) military experts, while the Lebanese army on the other side of the road was busy pounding the camp.

I don’t think you can get any closer to the phenomenon ‘war tourism’ than this.

To give you an idea how odd the situation is; We are sitting on a balcony some 600 or 700 meters away from the bombardments. Now and then they get closer, but the cars on the road below us continue as if nothing is happening. You can cross the road, but you cannot get any closer than that to the fighting, because the army will stop you right there.The two 'military experts' were a French photographer, who was an ex-military man, the other an LBC reporter who has done battlefields for some 17 years now. I learned lots of stuff about attacking strategies, the reason behind certain bombardments, types of weaponry (B7, RPG and the likes), claymore mines, firing ranges and what not all.

The camp (I heard some Palestinians calling it NBC today) has changed quite a bit in appearance since I was last there, some 10 days ago. All the upper floors have been razed. There are no more sharp edges; the top of the camp has been steadily eroded.

What I also understood is that further bombardments are pretty useless as the entire camp is made of cement. The more you bomb, the more you provide shelter for the lower regions since the slabs of concrete just pile up. Which means that the men of Fatah Islam are safer and safer in their dungeons down there below.

This is not to say Fatah Islam is doing fine. The constant bombardments, day and night (and these are explosions that we - some 700 meters away - felt the blast of) must have a psychological effects on the combatants. They’ve been together now for over a month, without relief, in constant noise, not much time to sleep, in between their own dead, they must be getting sick of tinned sardines by now, and of each other, and there is not much hope for victory.

The army has been much more compliant with letting journalists take pictures. This is usually a sign that they are doing well.

Still, the battle isn’t over yet, contradictory to what the Ministry of Defense claimed earlier this week. They lost another three soldiers today, and as long as they haven’t caught the guys yet, cannot enter all parts of the camp yet and are still bombing constantly, I do not see where the victory is.
But, we were promised, the end is indeed in sight. Another 3 days, we were told. We shall see.

The evening gave a fabulous sun set, but I fear that this that may have escaped the attention of the men of Fatah Islam.