Tripoli's Terror Duo: Mawlawi and Mansour

October 03, 2014 by Justin Salhani

In a dimly lit office in the heart of Tripoli’s Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood, a man in his 40s with slicked back hair and intense eyes sat behind a desk and watched a television set playing an American action movie with Arabic subtitles. The door’s office slid open and another younger man walked in. “That Bazzi guy was shot!” he said excitedly. The movie-watching man’s gaze didn’t stray from the television as he answered back, “eh.”

“Who did it?” the second man exclaimed. Breaking the television’s hypnosis over him, the man glared at his curious neighbor.

He answered with one word, uttered with what appeared an intense disgust: “Dawaesh,” he said using the Arabic word for members of Daesh, or ISIS.

Why Did a Boy From Tripoli Go to Iraq to Blow Himself Up?

September 05, 2014 by Justin Salhani

In early August, about two months after Khaled Mahmoud al-Hajj left his hometown of Tripoli to join ISIS, he called his brother from Iraq. It was the last time they ever spoke.

“I tried to stop him,” said Mohammad, 25, the eldest of the Hajj brothers.

But it didn’t work, and on Aug. 7, Khaled blew himself up in a suicide attack in the Kadhimiya neighborhood of Baghdad. He was just 18 years old.

France 24: Lebanon Blasts Raise Concerns of Syrian Conflict Spilling Over

August 23, 2013 by Justin Salhani

Bab al-Tabbaneh's Pill Problem

February 19, 2013 by Justin Salhani

It’s past 1 am on a chilly night in Tripoli. Ali, a bulky man in his 30s with a well-groomed beard, shaved above his upper lip in the Salafist style, sits on a bench beneath the apartment building of a prominent Tripolitan politician, where he works as a night watchman.

“I used to take pills [for fun] but I stopped. Now I take them for my medical condition,” he says. Ali has anger issues that get him into fights.

Other people, he says, mix the pills with alcohol. “One or one and a half with some alcohol is all it takes to mess you up. Five or six will make you fall down or lose consciousness.”