Just over a year after the death of former MP Ali Hamad Jaafar, his clan is in disarray. The recent hostage standoff between Lebanon’s most notorious Shiite family and their Sunni neighbors threatens to undo over a century of goodwill built on “customs and traditions” that can be traced back to pre-Islamic Arabia.
“There is a little bit of chaos,” said Aref Jaafar, a leading figure in the family, referring to the erratic string of kidnappings and releases carried out in the name of the family over the past week.
The crisis erupted last Saturday when Hussein Kamel Jaafar was kidnapped outside Arsal and reportedly taken over the border into the Syrian town of Yabroud, where he is being held for a ransom of $1 million.
The Jaafars reacted by kidnapping eight members of prominent families of that town. The next day, they released four of the hostages only to kidnap two more Monday, one of whom was freed shortly afterward.
This pattern repeated itself several times until the clan called an emergency meeting Thursday morning during which they announced they would tolerate no more kidnappings. A few hours later, news broke that Arsal native Khalid Hujeiri had been kidnapped. He was turned over to the authorities soon after.
The events are merely one symptom of what one of the younger Jaafars called a “crisis of za’ama,” or traditional leadership.
“There is a certain amount of competition, if you like,” for leadership of the clan, he said, adding that none of the contenders possesses Ali Hamad Jaafar’s ability to keep the peace internally while preserving the family’s relationship with the authorities.
“There is competition between some of the guys, who get jealous of each other,” added Aref. “Those who have influence outside [the family] are weak inside [the family] – they cannot make decisions internally. And those who are strong internally have no one outside [the clan to rely on for support] ... This is what is happening with us: there is confusion.”
These divisions were especially apparent following Thursday’s meeting, when a group of some 30 Jaafar men welcomed a reporter into a home in Hermel to discuss the ongoing crisis and its implications for stability in the area.
Nafez Jaafar, speaking for the group, made a not-so-subtle dig at Yassin Ali Jaafar, the son of Ali Hamad Jaafar, who presented himself as the head of the clan during a meeting in Beirut with Future Movement General Secretary Ahmad Hariri to tackle the hostage crisis.
“We want to deal with this as families in order to preserve the fraternal ties between us,” said Nafez Jaafar.
“If I’m beholden to an official in Beirut, then I am no longer engaging with a son of Arsal based on my honor as a son of the Jaafar clan. It would be based on the honor of, say, Hariri, or someone else. We want to be beholden to each other in order to preserve the ties that bind us.”
At stake are the values that have guided the clan for generations and form the basis of their communal identity. These principles are also at the heart of the current standoff with the town of Arsal, where community leaders deny any role in the initial kidnapping that touched off the crisis.
The Jaafars maintain that not only did people from Arsal play a principal role in the abduction, but that the code of conduct that governs the clans of the northern Bekaa Valley holds everyone responsible for the safety of people who pass through their territory.
It was this tradition of safe passage that shielded Baalbek-Hermel from the worst of the sectarian fighting during the Civil War, and more recently, Nafez Jaafar pointed out, allowed wounded fighters from Syria to pass through areas controlled by the Jaafar clan.
“We and the people of Arsal are neighbors and we know each other ... a Syrian could not enter Arsal unless he had someone from Arsal helping him,” Nafez Jaafar said.
To an outsider, these unwritten laws may seem inconsistent: At one point, Nafez Jaafar boasts that the clan takes security so seriously that they were forced to release one of their hostages because he was snatched from inside Jaafar territory, a violation of their own enforced peace.
None of the Jaafars who spoke to The Daily Star saw a contradiction between the taking of hostages and the high value placed on neighborly relations according to the same traditions.
But in the absence of a functioning state on either side of the border, and the waning influence of leading Shiite political parties that only ever nominally controlled the area, some see the traditional family structure and its elaborate rules as a bulwark against instability.
“There are some things we still preserve, such as respect for one’s neighbor,” said another leading figure in the clan, Ahmad Sobhi Jaafar, speaking from his home in Baalbek.
“The wise people and the leaders are trying to instill this in their children, that this relationship should be preserved. Leave the clan aside: My neighbor, according to the old ways as I learned them from my father and grandfather, is dearer than my own brother.”
Another proud clan tradition, he said, was the rejection of any form of sectarian politics. Pictures of the Virgin Mary, Imam Musa Sadr and Zulfiqar, the sword of Imam Ali, decorate the wall above his head.
As of Friday night, the situation was far from resolved: the Jaafars were holding four hostages from Arsal, while their own Hussein Jaafar’s exact whereabouts were still unknown. In the meantime, the heads of various Jaafar branches vie for the opportunity to prove their mettle as clan leaders.
Aref Jaafar and his young companion seemed unconcerned that the current power struggles might lead to the weakening of the clan.
“There’s a crisis of leadership under way, which is open to all possibilities and [subject to everyone’s] ambitions,” said the young Jaafar. “Eventually, someone will settle things: The one who is bravest, wise, daring and honorable. But this takes time.”
Both he and Aref Jaafar see a future for the clan structure even in the unlikely event that a stable civil state is established, and spoke of eliminating some of what they see as the negative aspects of clan culture, such as blood feuds.
They denied the rumors tying the Jaafar family to the drug trade or car thefts, blaming the Lebanese state and political parties for the economic depression that plagues the Bekaa in general and pushes some to engage in criminal activity.
“The new generation of clan members who are educated and participate in civic life are slowly getting rid of the negative aspects and are keeping the good ones,” said the young Jaafar. “The negative we get rid of. For example, clans are famous for taking revenge. If someone kills my brother, I kill anyone [from the other clan]. But it’s no longer like this; only the perpetrators are held accountable.”
But isn’t the kidnapping of innocent Arsal residents a retaliation for the abduction of Hussein Jaafar?
“This isn’t revenge – it’s pressure.”
