Sunni City

Lebanon is one of the most researched countries in the Middle East. Scholars have published hundreds of studies in recent decades on its unique consociational political system, historical evolution, media, and social dynamics. Yet its second largest city, Tripoli, escaped scholarly attention despite its crucial historical and sociopolitical importance.Numerous journalistic pieces and policy papers depict the city as the hotbed of Islamic radicalism. One Lebanese journalist even called it Lebanon’s Kandahar in reference to the previous headquarters of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Most of the academic studies that touch the recent history and contemporary developments of the city also examine Sunni Islamic movements and jihadi violence in Northern Lebanon.The heavy focus on this aspect of the city’s complex dynamics perhaps provides a somewhat one-sided picture. Tine Gade’s comprehensive analysis of the political and social dynamics of Tripoli, therefore, fills an extremely important lacuna. She points out that while much of the political violence in the city was committed by Islamic and jihadi groups, simply ascribing it to Islamism oversimplifies the situation. Instead, she proposes to take a broader look at the ways urban politics, sectarianism, and the state interplay in causing urban violence.By this, she provides a broader understanding than the common narratives that put Sunni Islamism at the center of the city’s troubles. Bernard Rougier’s the Sunni Tragedy in the Middle East: Northern Lebanon from al-Qaeda to ISIS (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016) is the most sophisticated and well researched among these narratives. He argues that the violence in Tripoli and the northern areas of Lebanon chiefly emanates from the diffuse and fragmented Sunni Islamic authority and non-state character of Sunni Islamism unlike its Shiʿi counterpart. This makes it possible for jihadi networks to sideline local elites and recruit disillusioned Sunni youth. While Rougier does not ignore the specificities of the local context, his book remains Sunni-centered.For Gade, the instability and violence in Tripoli, and the radicalization of certain segments of the Sunni community, is partly the result of the loss of power of Sunni leaders to Shiʿi political elites as well as Sunni militants. According to her, the factors that led to Tripoli’s troubles are not inherent to the Sunni community but are related to the loss of the credibility of the political regime in the eyes of the population, much like other Arab countries in the Middle East. Radical ideologies could thrive in Tripoli because of the structural lack of governance in Lebanon. How this crisis subsequently unfolded in Lebanon is explained in Gade’s book.Gade defines Tripoli as a “secondary city,” “a large city with a recent history of significant decline in its power and prestige” (8). Other secondary cities in the Middle East include other former Ottoman provincial capitals such as Aleppo and Mosul. The author builds on Michel Surat’s argument that the dethronement of these secondary cities resulted in their rebellious character and their ambivalent relationship with the modern state due to the rivalry with the capital (such as Damascus, Baghdad, and Beirut).A central theme of the book is city corporatism, “the ability to federate the city as a unitary actor” (228) as one the main features of secondary cities. Gade argues that episodes of violence in secondary cities are created both by structural conditions of contentious politics and the agency of political elites.The first chapter of the book explains how Tripoli emerged as a secondary city after the First World War and how city corporatism evolved in the time period between 1920 and 1979, especially under the leadership of the Karami family. The Karami’s leadership was characterized by a cohesive opposition to Maronite political dominance, positioning the city as a bastion of Arab nationalism. The evolution of the urban poor’s involvement in political movements, including their turn toward Islamist groups in the 1980s, is highlighted as a significant factor in Tripoli’s political landscape. Significantly, the chapter sets the stage for understanding the subsequent emergence of Islamist movements in Tripoli by examining the roots of sectarian conflict, particularly between Sunni Bab al-Tibbeneh and the Alawi area of Jabal Mohsen, which reflects deeper sociopolitical divisions within the city and Lebanon at large.The second chapter focuses on the rise of the Islamic Tawhid Movement that managed to control the city in the beginning of the 1980s until its fall in 1985. The narrative explores the complex interplay between local dynamics and the broader regional conflicts, particularly highlighting the Syrian–Palestinian War in Tripoli from September to November 1983. Tawhid lost its power in Tripoli due to three main factors. First, its internal disorganization; second, the lack of support by Tripoli’s middle classes and religious elite; and third, military defeat by the Syrian army.The third chapter explores the systematic decline of the cohesive social and political fabric that had previously characterized Tripoli’s governance and public life. It discusses how the postwar period ushered in a new system of representation that was increasingly fragmented, with a significant decline in the influence of traditional Sunni leadership. This was marked by the rise of neoliberal norms among the conservative bourgeoisie, characterized by a focus on individualism and material success, which further distanced the elite from the concerns and struggles of the broader population, especially the urban poor, among whom, “alternative imagined communities,” as the author labels them emerged, such as Salafism.Chapter 4 focuses on the adaptation of Salafism within the national context of Lebanon, the rise of Jihadi Salafism among the young urban poor, and the social and governance-related roots of radicalization. It delves into how the global movement of Salafism was localized or “Lebanonized” in Tripoli, presenting variations that reflect both the global Salafi ideology and the unique sociopolitical dynamics of Lebanon. The chapter examines the attraction of Jihadi Salafism to the disenfranchised urban youth, offering insights into how economic marginalization, social disenfranchisement, and the lack of state governance and services create a fertile ground for radical ideologies.The significant political shifts in Lebanon following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005 are the focus of chapter 5. The Future Movement, led by Rafiq Hariri’s son, Saad Hariri, alongside other neoliberal elites from Lebanon’s nouveaux riches political class, gained a substantial base in Northern Lebanon. For the first time, Tripolitanians, traditionally inclined toward local leadership, rallied around a Beirut-based political party, marking a shift in the political affiliations within the city.The chapter explores the reasons behind Tripoli’s acceptance of representation by a political entity from outside of the city and delves into the Future Movement’s strategies in Tripoli and Northern Lebanon. It examines the movement’s challenges in providing services to its constituents, its sectarian electoral strategies in poorer areas, and its reliance on cash handouts and co-option of local brokers and former Syrian acolytes. This strategy, while initially successful, revealed that the Future Movement, initially aspiring to create a multi-sectarian identity, ended up relying on identity entrepreneurs and utilizing sectarian slogans to garner support the Sunnis, especially as memories of the Hariri assassination began to fade.Most of chapter 6 focuses on the evolution and structure of Tripoli’s ideologically diverse Salafi movement. Gade shows how Salafis benefited from the cooperation with the Future Movement by accessing funding, media outlets, and political concessions. She argues that Gulf donations undermined Tripoli’s religious authority, which in turn elevated political Salafis in particular, such as Salim al-Rafiʿi and Zakariyya al-Masri.The last chapter examines the effects of the Syrian conflict on Lebanon, particularly highlighting the resurgence of violence and political instability in Tripoli. As Syria descended into war, Lebanon faced renewed turmoil, with Tripoli becoming a focal point for sectarian clashes, political polarization, and institutional frailty. Tripoli served as a battleground for proxy conflicts reminiscent of the 1980s, with national and regional powers influencing local groups for strategic purposes. This period saw Jihadis gaining a foothold and possibly local support due to growing frustrations with Hizballah’s increasing influence.Despite the potential for spillover from the Syrian war, Lebanon and Tripoli, in particular, managed to avoid descending into full-scale conflict. This precarious stability was maintained through the formation of a national unity government led by Tammam Salam, whose main mandate was to facilitate the election of a new Lebanese president—a process that took over two years but also included implementing a crucial security plan for Tripoli. Gade subscribes the success of the security plan to the survival of Tripoli’s city corporatism. One of its manifestations that she mentions is the religious elite’s including Salafi shaykhs’ mediation efforts between the authorities and jihadi figures, encouraging them to surrender. The chapter also examines the Future Movement’s loss of popularity mainly due to its disregard of the needs of its followers.Gade concludes her book by identifying four causal mechanisms that explain why urban violence erupted in Tripoli: external interference, local elite ambitions, socioeconomic disparities, and weak governance. Tripoli’s susceptibility to violence was often due to its entanglement in national and regional conflicts, serving as a proxy battleground for external powers. Local political rivalries further intensify this volatility, with leaders’ personal ambitions sparking conflicts. The city’s stark socioeconomic inequalities bred discontent, making marginalized communities susceptible to radicalization. Compounding these issues, the Lebanese state’s failure to provide effective governance and services leaves a vacuum, undermining social cohesion and trust in institutions. Together, these factors created a complex ecosystem where violence emerged from the interplay of external manipulation, political ambitions, economic grievances, and governance failures, illustrating Tripoli’s challenges in breaking cycles of conflict and instability.The book is extremely well researched. Gade relies on rich empirical material collected during more than a decade of fieldwork. Her ability to speak fluent Arabic and to understand the local dialect enriched her research with semi-structured interviews conducted with representatives of different layers of the city’s society, as well as with her own participant observations.The text is written well providing an enjoyable read. I especially liked the way she presented her conceptual framework. Unlike several other works that focus on social mobilization, the Sunni City is not lost in theory. Gade uses what is necessary for her argument instead of creating theory for sake of the theory.Perhaps the only fault of the book is related to the treatment of Tripoli’s Salafi movement. She claims that local adaptation of Salafi discourses and practices have not been treated by previous studies. However, my own contribution, Salafism: Local and Transnational movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) pays particular attention to this issue. Gade somewhat ignores my effort that, beyond the transnational diffusion of Salafism, explains, for example, the Salafi religious leader’s penetration of local social structures such as patronage networks and how they take the lead in the mediation of social conflict, as well as how they employ Salafi ideology to frame local sociopoltical issues. That said, Tine Gade’s Sunni City is a highly interesting book and the only comprehensive study on the sociopolitical dynamics of Tripoli

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