Lea Baroudi, founder of March Lebanon, unites former rival fighters to rebuild their lives—showing how governments could prevent conflict rooted in identity.
n 2014, Omar (not his real name) returned home to Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, after fighting for ISIS in Syria. For two years, he hid in a small room behind his parents’ house, wearing a suicide belt, fearing arrest. His family eventually reported him to the authorities out of concern for their safety.
Omar was then incarcerated in Roumieh prison, located outside Beirut. This facility, specifically B block, is known for housing many inmates identified as “Islamic terrorists.” Inmates enjoy access to technology such as laptops, TVs, and phones, which officials believe serves as a deterrent against potential uprisings. However, some inmates have been linked to orchestrating deadly suicide bombings in Tripoli beyond the prison’s wall.
Once a prosperous commercial and shipbuilding port city, Tripoli has systematically been marginalized, making it one of the poorest cities in the Mediterranean region. Sectarian clashes often erupted between the predominantly Alawite residents of the Jabal Mohsen neighborhood, who supported Assad’s government, and the Sunni residents of the Bab al-Tabbaneh area, who favored the Syrian uprising. These rival groups have a long history of conflict in Lebanon, dating back to the Civil War, and they frequently engage in violence. Divided by a street called Syria Street, the two communities have fought not only with each other but have also crossed borders to fight in Syria or Iraq, as Omar did, drawn in by extremist groups like Hezbollah on the Alawite side and Al-Nusra Front and ISIS among the Sunnis.
While in prison, Omar saw on TV that a new cultural café had opened on Syria Street in Tripoli, providing a space for youth from rival sides to unite. Omar felt intense rage at the sight of it, vowing to bomb the café and those he viewed as traitors for seeking peace with their former enemies after enduring so much conflict.
Once released from prison in 2018, Omar, still furious, often walked by the café, plotting to carry out his plan. However, the presence of the military around the café made this difficult. Seven years later, the café on Syria Street is thriving, and Omar now oversees its security. Behind this extraordinary turn of events is the organization MARCH Lebanon and its founder, Lea Baroudi. Her organization works with former fighters and sectarian war prisoners from opposing sides of Syria Street, all of whom have been involved in violence during the “mini civil war” in their neighborhoods or have returned from sectarian conflicts in Iraq or Syria.
“None of them believe that the program is meaningful,” she says. “They always say, ‘I didn’t join because I want reconciliation; I just want to take advantage of the incentives.” However, Baroudi adds, “In the process, this is when the magic happens.” She recalls when Omar entered the café for the first time, brought in by friends after several attempts. Initially, he was uncooperative, avoiding eye contact. During a visit from the Red Cross for medical checkups, Omar refused to participate. Baroudi spent two hours with him to understand his fears, which stemmed from traumatic memories of the infirmary in prison.
Those two hours became a turning point for Omar. He later confessed to Baroudi, “The classes and skill training in the program are great. But when you sat with me for two hours to convince me to get my health checked, it was the first time in my life that I felt like a human being. I’ve never experienced such human kindness. This is what changed me.”
It isn’t easy to imagine how a Lebanese Christian woman could gain access to former fighters and prisoners on terrorism charges. Her initial entry point was the auditions for a play that their lives should inspire. “They live so close together yet so distant at the same time that it felt like a Greek tragedy,” says Baroudi. She transformed that situation into a play designed to test the power of theater to resolve conflict in Lebanon. By doing so, she successfully brought together, for the first time, a small group of 16 young Alawite and Sunni men and women from both neighborhoods.
The young men hardly attended rehearsals; Baroudi almost had to drag them out of bed. When they did show up, she and her team would find razor blades hidden under their tongues and knives in their pockets. They saw each other primarily as enemies until they began to share their stories and realized how similar they were. Both groups explained how everything in their neighborhoods happened on rooftops, from snipers shooting at each other to friends playing cards and to secret love rendezvous. There were no other places for them to meet.
“During the auditions, I remember asking a man from the Jabal Mohsen district whether he had friends from Bab al-Tabbaneh. He paused and replied, ‘I have one.’ When I inquired where they had met, he responded, ‘In prison.’ I exclaimed, ‘You live just a few meters apart and only meet in prison!’ He looked at me ironically and deadpanned, ‘Where do you want us to meet, in a public park?’ That made me think, let’s open a café.”
However, opening the café would put her group at risk, as people from their community began to view them as traitors for participating in the theater play. “We had a very honest conversation about opening the café,” Baroudi reckons. “I remember one man saying, ‘We already risked our lives for nothing because people manipulated us. Maybe it’s time we risk our lives for something positive.’” She opened Kahwetna café on Syria Street, with entrances from both neighborhoods. From there, her work started to expand in Lebanon, bringing in more and more young ex-fighters, trying to understand the root causes of violence and conflict and disrupt the vicious circle of radicalization.
Baroudi is not a conflict prevention policy wonk. She studied business administration and worked for a large consulting firm while pursuing a master’s degree in mediation. With a promising professional career ahead, she seemed destined to work for organizations like the UN in the Middle East – her father had worked for the UN long ago. However, the ongoing sectarian unrest prompted her to pursue locally-led peacebuilding action instead of aligning with a large international organization. Her approach to peacemaking suggests she is less concerned with the mechanics of conflict and more focused on understanding the nature and purpose that draw people in Lebanon to extremism and violence in the first place. Peace enforcement is often hindered by complex practices and internationally recognized strategies that complicate conflict resolution. Baroudi explains that those who instigate conflict act for rational reasons — they need resources and money. Yet, to mobilize support for their cause, they exploit emotions. “They tell their followers that the fight is about dignity and protecting our communities. They paint it as us versus them.”
“How can you address conflict rationally when you recognize that conflict is rooted in emotions?” she reflects. “If we do not humanize our approach and acknowledge that this is about people and their emotions and fears, we will not succeed.” One goal is to cut off the supply of recruits to instigators.
It is safe to say that not many peacemakers would turn to contemporary Middle Eastern literature to find answers. But Baroudi says that Les Identités Meurtrières (in English, In the Name of Identity) by author Amin Maalouf is one of the main pillars of how she learned things. In his book, Maalouf states, “Every individual is a meeting ground for many different allegiances.” In the history of humanity, the affirmation of one identity has always meant the negation of the other. When one of these core identities feels threatened, it overrides all our different identities. “I believe this is what happens to people who become radicalized. The constant perception of threat creates conflict in Lebanon and elsewhere,” Baroudi explains.
Her program gets to the mind through the heart. She believes it is essential to make people feel safe again in their identities so that you can allow them to flourish back again. “But the problem in the world is that we are making people more and more afraid. We are doing exactly the opposite. That’s why our world is becoming more polarized and extreme: everyone fears losing something very dear to themselves.”
It’s our gaze that locks people into specific identities, and our gaze releases them from it as well. The cultural cafés in Tripoli and Beirut serve this purpose, breaking down barriers of fear and mistrust within politically divided communities and allowing people to feel secure in “who I am.” However, this effort alone is not enough. “You cannot tell people: ‘Don’t look back at guns and violence. Forget everything,’ while not giving them anything to feel empowered in return,” Baroudi states. Since 2017, March Lebanon has implemented a comprehensive program to teach young men and women valuable skills while providing psychological, medical, and legal support, away from conflict. Over 700 individuals have received training in construction skills, carpentry, embroidery, cooking, furniture upcycling, and Fashion Design. Currently, the organization brings in new trainees every six months, allowing individuals to stay in the program for at least one year. Some participants even become youth leaders and mentors within the center, which serves as a second home for them.
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Sectarian violence in particular areas, such as the Bab al-Tabbaneh–Jabal Mohsen conflict in Lebanon, is the canary in the coal mine of wider conflicts that are often locally rooted but globally engaged. The government’s failure to address this particular conflict in Tripoli inspires deeper introspection. As a port city for Damascus, Tripoli was viewed as a competitor to Beirut, a coastal town with a smaller, less strategic port. This dynamic triggered Tripoli’s systematic neglect. The prospects of finding employment in the deteriorating city were daunting. Poverty was exacerbated by historical grievances stemming from Lebanon’s Civil War when residents of the Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen neighborhoods became rivals, and fighting frequently broke out.
After the civil war, Baroudi argues that instead of engaging with the sectarian conflict and acknowledging the need for unity, the government chose to keep communities in Lebanon divided. This division would lead to fewer clashes, and by impoverishing the population, authorities maintained control. However, they failed to realize that this approach would backfire. “As a country, you become fragile if you do not build a sense of belonging among certain population segments. When you marginalize such a large part of the community, particularly in the north near the Syrian border, you risk them feeling less connected to Lebanon. With a neighboring country experiencing Sunni empowerment and awakening, citizens may look elsewhere for a sense of belonging if the country ignores them,” explains Baroudi.
In 2014, the army entered the conflict area for the first time. Baroudi was fortunate, as she had just begun preparing for the theater play when the ceasefire was imposed. Approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people were arrested for their involvement in the clashes, but not those who instigated the conflict. This did not deter many young men from continuing to cross the border to fight in Syria on both sides, as the government provided no alternative to a war that offered “adrenaline, sometimes money, or a sense of belonging and fighting for a cause,” according to Baroudi.
I can’t help but wonder how the instigators feel now about Baroudi’s program undermining their recruitment efforts. Baroudi admits to having faced threats on multiple occasions. There have been incidents where people threw Molotov cocktails at their center, others entered with weapons, and others spread harmful rumors about them. Initially, the situation was more challenging than now “because the more the community grows around us, the safer it becomes,” she notes. The young men working with Baroudi also face backlash, especially from extremist groups who accuse them of renouncing their religion and other false grievances.
Another significant challenge that Baroudi encounters is continually adapting to geopolitical circumstances—Lebanon’s economic collapse and the fall of Assad’s regime, which, while positive, have created considerable turmoil and tension in the communities of Tripoli. Additionally, the recent war on Lebanon (linked to the war on Gaza) has had repercussions in Tripoli as well, leading to an influx of displaced individuals and provoking a resurgence of trauma. The march for identity and a sense of homeland is a foregone conclusion all over the Middle East —Baroudi offers a non-violent solution that finds hope in small victories.
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