Tripoli, Lebanon – Coupled alongside immense posters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Syrian government flags, the faces of young men who died during violent clashes line the bullet-pocked walls of the Jabal Mohsen neighbourhood in this coastal city.

For years, Tripoli has endured periodic bloodshed between Jabal Mohsen’s Alawite residents and their neighbours downhill in the predominantly Sunni area of Bab al-Tabbaneh in Tripoli.

Young men from both neighbourhoods have journeyed to Syria to take up arms. Yet, like in Tripoli, they find themselves on opposite sides of Syria’s battlefield, with fighters from Jabal Mohsen joining the Syrian army or militias loyal to the Syrian government, which is controlled by Assad’s Alawite sect.

Herve Bar and Fran Blandy, AFP

Paris (AFP) – Whether fluttering over the ruins of a captured city in Iraq or Syria, or in the background of gruesome execution videos, the black flag used by the Islamic State group has become an instantly recognisable symbol of modern global jihad.

Along with its slick Hollywood-style propaganda videos, experts say IS has harnessed bygone apocalyptic prophecies and Islamic symbols to carve out a brand even more potent than Al-Qaeda at the height of its notoriety.

The black standard has become so recognisable that "in the public’s mind, any Muslim militant who waves a ‘black flag’ is ISIS," said William McCants, author of "The ISIS Apocalypse", which uses an alternative name for the group.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The United States is providing the Lebanese army with a consignment of laser-guided artillery shells in an $8.6 million arms package intended to help Lebanon defend against cross-border incursions from Syria, the U.S. embassy said on Friday.

The package, which includes 50 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles and 560 artillery rounds including the "precision munitions", will boost the Lebanese army’s ability "to secure Lebanon’s borders against violent extremists," it said in a statement.

Lebanon, which is still rebuilding after its own 15-year civil war, has seen clashes between gunmen loyal to opposing sides in the Syrian conflict, as well as strikes on the army and cross-border attacks by Syrian rebels.

    Lebanese protesters are sprayed with water during a protest in Martyr square, Downtown Beirut, Lebanon October 8, 2015. Lebanese security forces fired a water cannon at scores of anti-government protesters on Thursday, Reuters witnesses said. The crowd chanted "the people want the fall of the regime" as riot police surrounded them in downtown […]

Natasha Bertrand

President Barack Obama’s stance of calling on Syrian President Bashar Assad to transition out of power while maintaining basic government functions after he’s ousted is a "fantasy" in the context of how the country works, according to Tony Badran, a researcher at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

"The biggest myth out there is the existence of ‘state institutions’ separate from Assad," Badran said in an interview.

"The reality is, once you concede the regime, you inevitably concede Assad."

Months after the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, Obama called for Assad to step down to hasten an end to the violence.

theguardian.com

The Lebanese civil war, which began in 1975 and ended in 1990, claimed an estimated 150,000 lives, left 200,000 wounded and displaced almost a million civilians. It also ravaged visual arts in the country, cutting the capital, Beirut, in two, destroying entire archives and driving many artists into exile. The art scene still hasn’t fully recovered. It will get a much-needed boost this month, however, when Beirut’s historic Sursock Museum reopens after a seven-year renovation.

The Sursock mansion, completed in 1912, is an ornate, white wedding cake of a building, at the top of a hill in the capital’s swanky Achrafieh neighbourhood. Combining Venetian and Ottoman architectural styles, the building is a melange of influences, much like Beirut. Originally the residence of aristocratic art-lover Nicolas Sursock, it was bequeathed to the city on his death in 1952. President Camille Chamoun subsequently used it as a showpiece in which to host visiting dignitaries.

By Dalia Mortada (follow) 

Just trying to pay for juice I have to switch back and forth from English to Arabic. The stand clerk starts in Arabic, “Here you go,” before switching in English, “these two [juices]?”

Pia Bou Khater is at the market with me. At the juice stand, she switches too. “Oh, I think I have change,” she says in English, before she continues in Arabic, “3000.”

Codeswitching this way is one of the characteristics that defines life in Beirut for visitors and for many Lebanese.

“When I’m interacting with people, like buying things or trying to bargain, I rarely switch,” Pia explains. “I do try to often figure out what the green leafy thing in question is, like, oh, is this the same as that in English? And then the word in French comes up,” she laughs, “and I’m like oh no I don’t know it in French, please stop making this difficult.”

AFP Beirut: Five Lebanese army soldiers were wounded Wednesday when a mortar crashed into their base in the eastern town of Ras Baalbek near the Syrian border, a military source told AFP.

“Five soldiers were wounded after a mortar shell landed inside their base,” the source said, adding that it had been fired by “terrorist groups outside Ras Baalbek”.

“There are no clashes but we are responding now,” the source said.

Militant groups are entrenched in the mountainous border area near Syria and have used the arid terrain to launch attacks on Lebanese security forces.

Earlier this year, five Lebanese soldiers died in clashes with around 200 gunmen who entered Lebanon from the Qalamoun region of Syria.

Pamela Engel

ISIS has been met with some popular support in Iraq and Syria, but much of it might come from people’s desire for survival rather than authentic support for the militants’ ideology.

Reporters for The Washington Post interviewed dozens of people who have lived under ISIS’s rule in Iraq and Syria and found that many people join the terror group out of desperation and a lack of other options.

The quality of life for ISIS fighters and their families much better than it is for those who simply live under the terrorists’ control in the group’s self-declared "caliphate."

Experts and caliphate residents told Newsweek last month that there is a widening income gap between ISIS fighters and average civilians, who pay taxes to the caliphate’s authorities to fund ISIS fighters’ salaries.