LEBANON: Playing war in Beirut

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As if there isn’t enough violence in Lebanon, a group of journalists and their friends recently decided to spend an evening in mock combat. playing paint ball in Beirut.

They were a rag-tag bunch, many of them veterans of the Iraq war. There was Jim, a grizzled broadcaster who had covered the Lebanese civil war. Nadeem, an Iraqi, had fled his country’s conflict in 2005. Kate, a photojournalist, had weathered Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as Iraq. A couple of French diplomats joined the fray, along with a trio of Russian visitors.

They paid their $20 entrance fee — $7 extra for guns modeled on AK-47s or M-16s — and played war. They brandished their paint-ball guns, put on their protective gear and spread out in two teams across the playing field, a converted basement parking lot in north Beirut, splattered with paint.

The whistle blew, and the crackle of paint-ball gunfire commenced. They crouched, took aim and opened fire. ‘Move in! Move in!’ they cried. ‘Get over!’

The sounds of gunfire resurrected all-too-familiar memories of Baghdad, Kabul and other war-torn cities. But the adrenaline of simulated close-quarters combat trumped the uncanny dread welling up in their guts. After 90 minutes they walked off the field, panting, aching from bruises and welts and dripping of sweat.

As they stripped off their gear, they noticed another group of four or five guys getting ready to play. They had brought their own super-cool guns, protective gear and paint balls. They had even brought their own tanks to pump up their weapons. The newcomers wore khaki and black.

They didn’t return the journalists’ greetings and instead eyed them with contempt, like a bunch of pretenders playing war and messing up the battlefield before the real soldiers arrived.

— Borzou Daragahi in Beirut