Civil (war) engineering

byHabib Battah
Sep 28, 2013

So you want to save on building materials? Fill an old oil barrel with rocks, plop some cement on top, and you have half a wall. Simply fill in the rest, and well… who’s going to notice!

I wonder if this quick DIY job was a result of the war (to get it done before the shelling resumed) or just because the person who built it wanted to save on concrete blocks.

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 20 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.