Hizbullah pulls off impressive feat of logistics
Source: Daily Star, 02-12-2006
BEIRUT: Routes into the capital were clogged on Friday with hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora`s government. Most Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) supporters flooded into Beirut from Northern Christian communities after traffic forced them to abandon their cars, while most f Hizbullah`s constituents got to Martyrs Square on the airport road.
Nour Farhad, 16, traveled to Beirut with her family early Friday morning on one of 26 buses assembled in the village of Al-Kawthariyya in Nabatiyeh. The trip, which can usually be made in a little over one hour, took three since Hizbullah hired buses in all Shiite villages to make the round trip to Beirut free of charge.
"The buses will take the women and children back tonight around 8 p.m. because it`s not appropriate for us to spend the night, but the men will stay," she told The Daily Star.
The municipality established a phone chain to alert participants when buses would be leaving at night. Nour`s school, along with most others in Southern Lebanon, was closed on Friday and her teachers encouraged her to take part in the demonstration, she said.
"Our teachers told us to come and share our opinion and in the South there are so many people who say that we should be against this government because it`s doing illegal things," she said. "We will come back every day as long as they are here and when they quit we will stop."
She acknowledged, however, that she would take a day off from demonstrating in the event of an exam.
Most young FPM supporters, on the other hand, seem to have played hooky since most schools in Christian areas remained open. In another marked contrast to its coalition partner, the transportation provided by FPM was unreliable and many demonstrators traveled to the capital independently.
George Khachoya drove with his older brother from Souloumi to Dora, where congestion forced them to walk the rest of the way with the 300 other Aoun supporters dressed in orange from their caravan.
The FPM "hired other buses but they are late," George said. "Maybe they paid the buses and they took the money and didn`t show up. It happens like that at all the protests."
