Lebanon removes political banners a legacy of civil war

(MENAFN- Arab News) BEIRUT: Lebanon has begun removing political posters and party banners from neighborhoods of the capital in a move to unify a country still divided from a civil war following an agreement between the militant and political group Hezbollah and its rivals.

Beirut is fragmented into fiefdoms where political banners and photographs of dead fighters and warlords have marked territory controlled by various groups since the start of the civil war that raged from 1975 to 1990.

The poster ban was agreed by Lebanon's main political groupings after gun battles car bombs and skirmishes on the border with Syria highlighted the need for reconciliation.

Shiite Hezbollah supports Syrian President Bashar Assad against a majority Sunni insurgency angering its Lebanese political rivals who say it is dragging the small Mediterranean state into conflict 25 years after peace accords.

In neighborhoods where Hezbollah is strong posters of men who fought Israel for decades have been joined by pictures of young men killed more recently in Syria's civil war.

'Ripping down the posters is sensitive but it's a political decision' said a Beirut-based Hezbollah supporter who asked to remain anonymous.

'One family on this road was upset because we took down a photo of their son who died late last year fighting in Syria' he said speaking in Zarif an old district full of battered French-style houses.

He said 1000 posters in the area had been removed. Only a few faded photos of Assad and some tattered yellow Hezbollah flags remained.

Bashir Itani a senior member of a rival political party Future Movement said: 'You can now walk in the streets and find it clean ... you couldn't previously see the sky due to the banners.'

A large photograph of exiled Sunni politician Saad Hariri a former Premier was taken down from the Beirut neighborhood of Tariq Al-Jadideh.

'It doesn't change what people feel inside' said one man.