Getting on a plane in the region is an exhausting—and revealing—process
, going through security checks is a streamlined if soulless passage into a hermetically sealed, sanitised zone. Not so in much of the Arab world. Reaching your departure lounge is a mental as well as physical obstacle course which reveals much about the regime—or regimes—in charge.
Some airports have competing security services. Beirut’s main airport is mostly controlled by Hizbullah, the Shia militia that dominates southern Lebanon. But as befits the country’s tortuously sectarian system of government, various groups have a foothold. Security agencies controlled by Sunni Muslims and Maronite Christians have their own-ray machines and lines of control. The ensuing duplication leads to one of the airport’s hallmarks: gridlocked queues.
Iraq’s airports also replicate the plethora of checkpoints that punctuate its roads. To reach Baghdad’s main airport, you pass through a series of concentric rings, starting many kilometres before the terminal. Passengers offload their luggage numerous times, first onto airport buses, then onto trolleys. Sniffer dogs, x-ray machines and officials, all from different factions, scrutinise your contents several times over—and you feel none the safer.
At the airport serving Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, notices recently said that no one could leave the terminal once he or she had passed through security checks. No one paid the slightest attention, happily walking in and out.section of the print edition under the headline
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