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Abdel Mohsen El-Husseini عبدالمحسن الحسيني
Abou Zafer during a meeting
Mayor of Tyre
In office 2001–2010
Personal details
Born	July, 10 1936 Jennata
Died	February, 25 2017
Occupation	Politician, mayor of Tyre, Lebanon and head of the municipalities of south Lebanon

Abdul Mohsen El-Husseini (Arabic: عبدالمحسن الحسيني) is a lebanese politician, mayor of Tyre (Sour) and founder of the UOTM (Union Of Tyre Municipalities). He was born in 1936 in Jennata. He's particulary well-known in Lebanon for his contributions to the prosperity and development in the cities he worked in. His popularity in the south brought him the nickname Al Khal (which means: the uncle, the person trusted by everyone) or Abu Zafer(as the tradition says, the name of his first son).

Biography

Early life

Abdul Mohsen was born in Jennata, a village located in south Lebanon, the 10th of July in 1936 and moved with his family to Tyre in the early 1940s where his father Muhammed-Ali held a mini-market. He then moved to Deir Kanoun Al-Nahr, another village in the south. The family's economical situation made him leave school around the age of 12; therefore, he started working with his father in the fields in Cadmous. In the 50s, he started reading and showing interest about the SSNP (Syrian Social Nationalist Party) inspired by Antoun Saadeh, until he signed a five years contract to become a member of this party, but the hard financial situation made him travel to Kuwait in 1959 where he worked as a plumber and in construction sites. Around 1961, following his mother's death, Abu Zafer traveled to Ivory Coast, a very poor country back at the time, following his older brother where they started a company that traded Cocoa and Coffee beans arriving to buying and selling land there in the 1970s, and that's where he met Musa al-Sadr.

Personal life

In 1963, Abdel Mohsen got married to Nazek Ezzeddine, with whom he had four sons: Zafer, Jaafar, Sadek and Mohammad, and three daughters: Hala, Hawraa and Hanadi.

Political career

Back to Lebanon

In 1977, Abdel Mohsen's oldest brother passed away making him come back to Lebanon, although things became really hard especially with Israeli attacks on Lebanon, his love for his country made him stay. He was particularly attracted to Musa al-Sadr's ideology, which main objective was not to leave any homeless people, and separating religion and power. This ideoloygy had a big influence on all his political career. In 1983, during the Israeli invasion, Abu Zafer moved all his family to Beirut as the Israeli army started capturing all men in the South, but refused to leave Tyre where he personally got food, clothes and money for his country's army during the war, mostly to Burj el-Shemali and Toura, Lebanon where all enemies' eyes were on him. Especially after the killing of his close friend and neighbor Dr. Khalil Atoui, which made Abu Zafer more eager to win the war.

File:Abou zafer 1989.jpeg

Abou Zafer (left) opening a road in the south in 1989.

Building Tyre after the invasion

Abdel Mohsen created the Tyre Development Committee, an association with volunteers to rebuild all destroyed cities and at the same time covering the municipalities's charges and debts that later became an important association that rebuild all villages surrounding Tyre and the renovation of Tyre making it an essential touristic heritage. Another achievement is making a new source of distributing water for over 50 villages in the South in a village called Wadi Jilou in the Bint Jbeil area after the government's long time ignorance. That and re-making all South Lebanon's infrastructures, one the South has never seen since Lebanon's independence in 1943, in addition to making 4 car entrances to Tyre which had only one cooperating with Rafic Hariri who later became Lebanon's most loved prime minister, and that's where good relationships started between Abu Zafer and the Hariri family, and making the two most famous streets in Sour located on the Mediterranean Sea, Senegal Street, named after people from Senegal agreed to finance the street opening's works, and the "President Nabih Berry Avenue" named for the same reason of the previous one, where the city's most famous restaurants and lounges are. In addition to fixing the city's port for transport, for fishermen and mostly for commerce and trading, or the opening of Tyre Coast Nature Reserve where all endangered turtles in Lebanon are born and protected, other than being home for all migratory birds, making Tyre's beach, apart from being the longest one, the most beautiful and cleanest one in Lebanon arriving to Naqoura, one of the world's purest water. Without mentioning the public parks El Husseini opened and the kids fun zones. In 1989, he joined Amal Movement where he worked with Nabih Berri the Lebanese prime minister, who later became his best friend and was appointed as financial officer and that's how he started his political career. Abu Zafer continued his political career and duties being elected as mayor of Tyre, Lebanon in 2001 and founding the Union of Tyre Municipalities (UOTM) in 2003 which included 20 villages in South Lebanon, 70 now, of about 500 thousand people, in addition to several thousands of Palestinian refugees that are distributed on three camps in the Tyre area, and millions of Syrians and Iraqis refugees that came to Lebanon after the Syrian Civil War that started in 2011.

During the 2006 war

Abou Zafer and a highly-ranked UNIFIL commando.

During the 2006 Lebanon War, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon from the south, making all citizens and politicians escape from Lebanon their country behind them, Abu Zafer was the only politician staying in Tyre, under the bombardments to make sure all his compatriots were safe with his arms wide open for all poor, homeless, injured or killed people when 40,000 displaced residents of the South flowed into his city and the government in Beirut was slow to respond that and showing up on multi international televisions an radio stations calling for help which strengthened the relations between Tyre and many countries such as Italy, France, South Korea, Turkey and many important people like Claudio Graziano, Alberto Asarta and François Hollande who later became a close friend. Abu Zafer stayed in Tyre during the war, but he didn't enter his house during the 33 days of war, the mayor's job wasn't enough for him, he turned into a driver, a gravedigger, a Red Cross volunteer, he opened all schools and hospitals as shelters, his mission was to ensure basic necessities, food, medicine and diesel fuel to run twin refrigerated trucks that he personally bought used as makeshift morgues. On the 14th of August 2006, Husseini was the first to call on the displaced to return to their towns and villages once the fighting stopped disregarding the rumors over unexploded munitions and the possibility of a fighting restart and had prepared 12 bulldozers a day before to open 8 crossings over the Litani River cut off by Israeli bombardment.The war ended and Abdul Mohsen was back to his daily routine with a heartbreak of all innocents killed something he mentioned in almost all his press conferences afterwards, a war that made so many damage to the whole country and still is the reason behind so many political, medical and economical issues in Lebanon more than 10 years after its end. Abu Zafer was honored by the Lebanese government and many other countries and nations for all his sacrifices during the war, such as the Italian, French and South Korean governments who all gave him medals in Lebanon as he refused to receive them anywhere but in his hometown.

After the war until the end

In 2010, Husseini didn't participate in the elections to be reelected as mayor of Tyre making chances for youngsters, but people insisted he should still be the UOTM president and remained an essential member in the municipality. Abu Zafer had relations with many municipalities, including strong relations with Barcelona province, the Union of the municipalities of south France, the Union of Italian province of Tuscany and Napoli province. Now that he stepped down from the Tyre Municipality presidency, Abu Zafer still worked for Tyre: he started a campaign to develop the tourism sector in South Lebanon with the help of the European Union making Tyre part of the World Heritage Site, and continued, as founder of agriculture ministry in South Lebanon, to work in the development of the agriculture sector believing in its importance and how many people depend on this sector to live being the link between farmers and the government or the ministry of agriculture, making sure each and every one of them gets his needs. He also worked in many different fields, heading the Health Support Committee in the city, a post he has held since the committee was set up in 1983 by the resistance to meet the medical needs of the community, needs not met by the government. he has, for example, worked on nature disasters like earthquake which is a big danger for the inhabitants of the South.

El Husseini in the fields of Jouar El Nakhel, Sour.

Also, Abu Zafer worked a lot on developing relations between Lebanon and the UN, especially South Korea UNIFIL that became part of South Lebanon by its help and humanitarian, social, educational activities; or even with François Hollande who became a friend of him, and mostly with Italian forces, whom relations started during the 2006 war. The Toscan region is ,for example , helping in a European Union founded project for the tourism in South Lebanon. He met a lot of importants people such as Glenn Miles, the Australian Ambassador in South Lebanon, the Ambassador of Bologna, or Francois Barras, the Swiss Ambassador in Lebanon. Al Khal is known mostly for his charity and donations for his country, he was, and still the only mayor and Municipality president who doesn't take wages from his work, he lives from the fields he used to work in in his young ages and from his sons helps, and instead he donates his money and helps his city develop apart from his own money he pays to develop his country, like the garbage and pollution problems Lebanon suffered from a while ago where he payed from his own money to start recycling and exporting the trash. In 2016, Abu Zafer was re-elected as the UOTM president contributing for his city and had the same role in the municipality being the reason of the city's consistency and behind its development beside being the only one working hard on maintaining the relationships with other countries especially Italy, Switzerland and South Korea; and working on many problems like environmental pollution and many more, other than the program he started with the Swiss army in 2006 to protect lebanese people and Syrian refugees nowadays.