Beirut, Lebanon (CNN)An elderly woman in an SUV snakes through a crowd of young people on Beirut‘s main highway, known as “the Ring.” “You shouldn’t have let her pass!” protester Amir Baroudy, 26, yells at a group of youths, apparently distracted from the task at hand: forcing a road closure.
The demonstrators are scattered around the entrance to the Ring. Some form a circle, sitting cross-legged on the asphalt. One protester rolls a cigarette, another scrolls through his phone. A month ago, the city’s residents would have considered the scene surreal. But since nationwide protests against political elites and corruption took off on October 17, casual gatherings of young men and women disrupting Lebanon‘s main arteries have become the norm.
“This specific place is significant,” says the long-haired, bearded Baroudy. “The Ring was used to divide people during the civil war, and this is the connecting point.” The highway cuts across a former frontline, the “green line” that split predominantly Christian East Beirut from predominantly Muslim West Beirut until the end of the country’s civil war in 1990, laying waste to its central district.
