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SAVAGE_NIRVANA

                                             November 15, 2006


  From "Pity the Nation" (2002)
  by Robert Fisk                         PITY_THE_NATION


   Southern Lebanon became a catalyst, a hot, treacherous
   place of unexpected death and savage retaliation.  Yet
   it was also a nirvana made all the more credible by the
   presence of the international army which had settled
   itself across the scrubland and hills between the sea
   and Mount Hermon.  Ibl al-Saqi, that dangerous little
   village from which Abu Meyad had pointed out the
   Israeli tanks to me in 1977, was now transformed into
   the Norwegian books and a sauna.  Palestinian and
   Israeli shells passed literally over the heads of the
   Norwegian soldiers who occupied the village.

   In May of 1980, the PLO regularly fired at Haddad's
   toytown 'capital' of Marjayoun.  I spent one morning
   sitting with the Norwegians in the dusty square at
   Ibl al-Saqi as they watched the bombardment, viewing
   it much as they might have observed a remote ski
   competition or a sailing regatta.  Small clouds of
   blue-grey smoke drifted lazily up from the red roofs
   of Marjayoun followed two seconds later by the
   distant sound of explosions.  The Norwegians viewed
   it dispassionately, hands on hips, blue berets at a
   rakish angle, rifles slung nonchalantly over their
   shoulders.

   All day it went on.  At dusk, a reggae band from the
   newly arrived Ghanaian UN troops -- who were to take
   up positions to the west of the Norwegians -- tuned
   up their instruments next to the ruined church.  For
   the children of Ibl al-Saqi, a Norwegian soldier
   produced an old-fashioned projector and began
   beaming Woody Woodpecker films onto the wall of a
   smashed house.  On the roof of the officers' mess, a
   Nepalese colonel insisted on explaining to me how
   King Birendra's environmental wisdom had saved the
   architecture of old Kathmandu.  Just to the north,
   three flares rose majestically as a Norwegian
   platoon tried to find a group of Palestinian
   infiltrators near the Hasbani River.  A fire was
   still burning in Marjayoun.

        -- p. 148-149

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