The Lebanese have become increasingly obsessed with owning weapons and training to use them since the battle between armed Sunni extremists and the Lebanese army in Arsal on Aug. 2. A state of panic ensued in several regions near the clashes. Fear spread to other Lebanese regions, helping shelter more than a million displaced Syrians after official military sources and the media announced that a significant number of the militants who fought the army had come from Syrian refugee camps.

The idea of owning a weapon is not foreign to the Lebanese. It often seems that almost every Lebanese household possesses at least one firearm. This, in part, is related to memories of the civil wars, in addition to many Lebanese perceiving the government as weak even before it proves itself to be powerless in reality. Thus, what happened after the Arsal battle goes beyond owning a weapon. It's a phenomenon that has been known for decades as “self-security,” a polite way of explaining the existence of militias.

A few days after the clashes in Arsal, the trend took root in the villages surrounding this Sunni town, where about 30,000 residents live alongside more than 120,000 Syrian refugees in the Bekaa Valley. The residents in neighboring Christian and Shiite towns felt in danger. No official reassurance could assuage their fear of a possible Islamic State (IS) invasion.

Within a few days, security watches began to appear to protect neighborhoods at night. One of the residents from a Christian town told Al-Monitor: “It happened spontaneously, before any steady expansion of the [security] group, during the weeks that followed the battle in Arsal. It first started as an alert in the event that any of the terrorists snuck into our village. The person on guard would fire in the air to alert residents so someone could call and inform the army. However, it gradually developed. We now have specialized groups, shift schedules and a local arrangement for all of it. We even began to consider training our members.”