Haugbolle 141him to another guy ... In any case, 90% of those who fought
were decent. The war was fought by great heroes and exploited
by great cowards. I don’t think that a human being who sacri-
fices his soul can be mean and despicable. (Hisham, PSP)The externalized cause of the war is here represented by the other ten per-
cent of non-decent fighters and their leaders. According to confessions
like this, the leaders manipulated the militiamen and their co-fighters
committed atrocities, while they themselves were caught between a rock
and a hard place not knowing what was going on:
I regret all those who killed and died in vain. It was a war of
gangs. I regret that I took part in the war. I was a kid and I
didn’t know where I was going ... During a battle in the Amal-
Murabitun war, we raided my neighborhood and threw my
neighbors out. The qabād.ay [popular leader] beat them up,
but I didn’t. That day I cried and I regretted. I was afraid that
they would kill them. They were children of my street, my
folks [awlād al-h.ayy]. Their family knew my family. H.arām,
what had they done? That day I understood that the war was a
lie. And that ‘the movement’ [Amal] was chaos and was lack-
ing every sense of organisation. Since that day I began to sepa-
rate myself gradually from the movement until I finally left it.
(Hussayn, Amal)
Many people gained a lot and ended up in power. Today they
are ministers. They took advantage of us and they still do by
leading the country in a dishonest way. They are laughing at
us. (Niqula, the LF)Apart from resenting “the responsible,” they also regret their own partici-
pation in the war and what it did to the country. George (the LF) consid-
ers that:
The war achieved nothing. I am sorry for all those who died.
The fighters fueled the war. A car doesn’t drive without fuel.
But fuel burns out; and this is how all these young men evapo-
rated. And those who didn’t die lost a great deal in terms of
society, family and economy. I also regret what happened