Jabal Mohsen in War and Pieces: the Urban Geopolitics of Lebanon’s Alawi Enclave This paper examines the embattled existence and contested identities of Tripoli’s Alawi community. It focuses on the entrenched hilltop enclave of Jabal Mohsen, perched above its historic Sunni rival, Bab al-Tabbaneh, in the valley below. Economically marginalised and religiously mistrusted, the social and urban fractures of Jabal Mohsen have been exacerbated by reliance and support on Syria’s Alawi-led Asad dynasty. Political and military complicity with Syrian forces during the Lebanese civil war (1975-90) and more recent support for Bashar al-Asad in Syria’s ongoing civil war (2011-2014) continues to enflame historic grievances and contemporary animosities. For almost four decades, Tripoli has witnessed intermittent violence between Salafist militias and Alawi fighters from these rival neighbourhoods. Open conflict has transformed and distorted daily lives and everyday urban encounters. Curfews, anti-sniper street curtains, informal barricades, tank lined streets, flying checkpoints intensify battle lines. This territorial conflict within Tripoli reflects and is fuelled by a number of broader struggles: the battle for Lebanese sovereignty and army control; the role and influence of Tripoli’s political elites and the intensification of geo-political rivalries - Syria-Iran-Hizbullah and Saudi-Qatar-Sunni ‘Future party’. The latter ‘external drivers’ explanation continues to dominate the limited scholarship on Jabal Mohsen (Mazis and Sarlis, 2012; Khashan, 2010). This paper seeks to challenge this view, arguing that Jabal Mohsen is a not merely an extension of the Syrian conflict but its own historic battlefield imbued with local grievances, political power-rivalries and internal tensions. Based on interviews and ethnographic observations within Jabal Mohsen, the paper seeks to examine the ongoing and complex negotiation of identity, social memory and everyday survival. It seeks to analyse Jabal Mohsen as a both a physical site of urban conflict and an imagined space of communal solidarities (national, religious, political, victimhood) and geo-political rivalries.