BEIRUT: The stout, gray-haired man, who says he is “bigger than the mukhtar” in the community, stares coldly and speaks with authority.
“The Kurds have no religion,” Serge says firmly, standing only a block away from where a Syrian Kurd put a local man in intensive care Saturday. “They have no Jesus, no God.”Serge is one of many in Beirut’s northeastern suburb of Burj Hammoud who harbors a flagrant resentment toward Kurds. Enmity between some runs so deep that tensions have even descended into gang warfare in the past.
That sentiment boiled over during the weekend after Lebanese citizen Elias Kalash was knocked unconscious by a gas canister thrown by a Syrian Kurdish man.
The ensuing tensions were only quelled Monday when local municipality figures and representatives comprising various security forces held a series of meetings aimed at preventing a recurrence of Saturday’s events. A representative from the Kurdish Lebanese Razgari Party was also in communication with the Burj Hammoud municipality in an attempt to further defuse ethnic and communal hostilities.