The Maronite Cause

I live in an area in Metn with a population about 22,000 local residents. It hosts around 6,000 Syrian refugees/workers, and currently welcomes about 5,000 refugees from the Shiite community, distributed on two public schools and people’s homes.

The municipality has only 10 unarmed and untrained police on its staff. They are barely enough to organize traffic in the main streets. The central state is completely absent; no Army or Police can be seen anywhere.

On the first day of the war, one traditional Christian party mobilized its youth and prepared for what seemed to be establishing neighborhood watches. This changed quickly, however, for reasons I do not know (as I’m not a member of any political party), and the project was quickly abandoned the next day.

As I wanted to walk my talk, I started a one man foot patrol, if one can even call it that. I walked our streets for one or two hours every day. It is not enough and maybe barely makes a dent, but I wanted to be present to the best of my ability.

I used my previous security training to observe and take notes. Everyday I patrolled my own street, the adjacent streets to us, then walked the old market back and forth, then chose one street at random from there, before walking again to the gym for workout and then back home.

After more than a month of patrols, I’ve had only two small incidents but many worrying observations. Generally, I just took a mental note of what’s what in each street, spotting any new changes or new arrivals or suspicious behavior.

I did not engage anyone except twice, but I greeted every local resident on my way. Over time, I connected with the grocery owner, the gas station worker, the warehouse guard, the neighbors, and others. I learned a lot more about these streets and the people who live in them. Now I’m not a very social person and I only moved to this area a year ago, but if I got to know these people just from walking, it’s safe to assume that our Christian community is hungry for any kind of reassurance and action on the ground. Our community misses us. I don’t know how to quite explain this feeling in writing.

Back to the patrols. In one instance, I noticed two individuals out of place, just walking aimlessly in a small alley. After observing them for a while from a distance, they never reached a destination or talked to anyone, and they weren’t lost. They were casing houses and cars, observing each parking and street, and checking several building gates to see if they are open by default. As I approached and greeted them, they looked at me nervously and disappeared fast. A few days later, we heard about a home robbery in the next street. And a few days after that, there was an attempt to steal my car from our building’s parking, but was thwarted at the last moment.

I’m not saying those two individuals were the perpetrators, but my intervention might have saved someone’s property. One of my most worrying observation from this experiment is that there is a troublesome amount of outsiders, mostly Syrian refugees, casing cars and buildings at all times in our neighborhoods. Anyone with basic security training would be able to spot these guys from afar.

In another incident, I spotted an unfamiliar SUV with tinted windows and a Bint Jbeil plate parked in a building with two guys wearing black clothes. One guy stood on the street, talking on the phone. Another seemed to be scanning the perimeter, checking the exists and entrances of the parking. Both were carrying and out of place. As I approached, I asked one of them if there’s something I can help with; he said they’re just waiting the building’s owner to come. Coincidence has it that I know the owner there as I rented in this building before, and I answered “Oh you know F, yalla he’s in the store and coming now”. This seems to have startled him, and after a few seconds, they both got into the car and left, never to be seen in the neighborhood again. I’m not sure what to make of the this incident as there are many possibilities here, none of them good.

Another thing I noticed in my patrols is that many people are renting their homes to potential Hezbollah members without informing the municipality. Every couple days there’s a new car or a new family moving into a nearby building, some of them wearing the Hezbollah-affiliated black shador and not just the normal Shiite hijab.

Another important observation is that our municipal police is not trained nor equipped to deal even with basic security. I’ve seen it first hand how four officers were struggling to detain one person in an incident that ended up in an unnecessary severe beating to the suspect. I learned later that the municipality has handguns, but it cannot put them in the hands of its staff because they haven’t been trained to use them. The ministry of interior has been consistently denying requests of training. When local residents who are in the official security forces offered the municipality to train its police for free, including basic detention SOPs and weapon safety, the proposal was blocked for unknown reasons. This degree of dysfunction at the local level is worrying.

However, if one person can notice these things, can you image the amount of threatening stuff going on in our neighborhoods right now that no one is dealing with?

Maybe my solo efforts didn’t do much but it did give me a very sober profile of our security reality; one that we all seem to be aware of except for our government and leaders.

The Case for a Neighborhood Watch

The Lebanese government has abandoned its duties and left our communities completely exposed to the militia of Hezbollah and the numerous armed gangs that operate within its orbit. It has withdrawn its army and security forces from all over the country since the war started on 2 March 2026. There are no patrols on the roads, no checkpoints, and no presence of any security personnel anywhere, including major refugee camps. It is as if the entire security apparatus of the state vanished overnight.

With more than one million internally displaced refugees from the Shiite community, many citizens in Christian and Druze areas raised their concerns. As evidenced by hundreds of events, Hezbollah operatives hide in civilian neighborhoods, often renting under fake names. This has exposed our community to the dangers of their war, already causing the loss of life and property for many families.

This severe security vacuum, coupled with large-scale loss of income and unemployment, is also enabling skyrocketing crime rates. Almost every Christian neighborhood from north to south is currently experiencing unprecedented levels of theft, disputes, and violent crime.

As the war escalates and drags on, there are valid concerns that militants or sympathizers embedded among the displaced would draw more strikes into civilian zones, or could transform their host areas into a lawless zone.

With official security forces absent, and with traditional Christian parties unwilling to take action, and with municipalities understaffed and underequipped, there’s only one choice left: community-led neighborhood watches.

The case is extremely straightforward. When the state cannot or will not guarantee safety, citizens have a fundamental right and duty, to safeguard their families, homes, and way of life.

Even without sectarian tensions, and even without terrorist organizations, displaced populations bring their own pressures on host areas, overcrowding in schools, churches, and shelters, straining infrastructure and fueling resentment. Without visible community presence, minor incidents escalate.

Neighborhood watches provide eyes and ears on the ground, deterring petty crime and enabling rapid response to serious threats. They signal to outsiders and potential troublemakers that these neighborhoods are not lawless voids but defended communities committed to peace and legality.

How a Neighborhood Watch Works

The youth of Ein Al Remmenh and a few other areas are already implementing watches with the implicit support of some organized political powers, and we can learn from them and apply the model everywhere else.

Many people are afraid that the watches might become a militant situation or might cause intra-Christian conflicts, but there are simple frameworks that can be established to ensure legality: watches must remain defensive, observational, and cooperative with authorities (and especially with municipal police) and never armed militias or enforcers.

Some people don’t know what a watch is supposed to do so here’s a brief outline:

• Patrols and guard shifts: The essence of a neighborhood watch is very simple: presence. Just be visible and vigilant at all time with proper guard shifts and patrols (preferably foot patrols to establish visible deterrence and reassure the community).
• Rules of engagement: Volunteers patrol in pairs or small groups, equipped with phones, flashlights, and preferably visible identifiers (e.g., vests). Their role is to monitor, document incidents via video or notes, and alert municipal police or the Internal Security Forces immediately. Its better to avoid physical confrontations unless in immediate self-defense or the presence of a visible and imminent threat (e.g. Hezbollah members, violent crime…etc).
• Rules of Conduct: Clear codes of conduct are key to avoid unnecessary problems and filter troublemakers. We all know that such initiatives attract hotheads. That’s why it’s better for such projects to be locally led by retired officers or experienced organizers. There should also be a clear code of conduct of avoiding sectarian escalation or personal grudges, and banning weapons, alcohol and drugs for participants. Any overreach (e.g., harassment) should trigger immediate expulsion.
• Focus on deterrence: The watch isn’t just patrols. It can identify weak point and enhance its security. For example, install cameras and solar lights at dim-lit streets, provide more presence near schools, local shops, or elderly homes, and making a neighborhood whatsapp group for real-time alerts. The goal is prevention, not swagger.
• Linking with the municipality: neighborhood watches will gain strength when formally tied to local administration. That doesn’t mean waiting the municipality to act, because these administrations are sometimes politicized and even conspire against our communities. However, municipalities are already the only semi-functional layer of Lebanese governance and can provide official recognition, funding for equipment or training, and legal cover.

Time for Action

Lebanon’s Christian community have endured wars, economic collapse, and emigration for decades without surrendering their homes. In this crisis, neighborhood watches are a measured, rational, and responsible necessity. The state has abandoned us but we will not gonna let go our responsibility towards our own.