can beirut rebuild?
The Lebanon-Israel cease fire has held for over a month. The air and sea blockades have been lifted, the UN-sponsored international force is deploying--albeit at the usual snail's pace--and Israeli continues its withdrawal with a speed that's almost embarassing, given its failure to achieve any of its stated war goals (prisoner return, guaranteed disarmament). Olmert and company are apparently resigned to a stance of willful ignorance and/or denial in the face of almost certain Hizballah retrenchment. The US remains unpopular and Iran and Syria continue to bluster.
Plus ca change...
Which leaves us with the question posed in the post title: can Beirut rebuild? The simple answer is "Yes, Beirut will rebuild." Reconstruction in the South got off to a flying, Iran-sponsored start. Per Nasrallah's promise, Hizballah soldiers appeared at 6:30 a.m. the day after the cease fire to assess damages and begin distributing crisp $100 bills, much to the dismay of the Lebanese government, which (once again) saw itself getting upstaged by a non-state interloper. Perhaps in an attempt to smooth ruffled feathers, Nasrallah soon requested government assistance in the rebuilding efforts.
There's certainly no shortage of things to do. The American media often under-communicated the extent of destruction that occured in the South; many villages were virtually levelled.
But rebuilding is what the Lebanese do best. They did it after the civil war, and they'll do it again now. The state and Hizballah have the money and the wherewithal. And people are eager to return to their homes and reclaim the devastated land. The catastrophic--and massively underreported--oil spill caused by a July 15 Israeli bombing raid on Junieh could significantly impinge on tourist industry regrowth. Nonetheless, the economy will recover.
And people will move on. Beirutis in particular will soon give every appearance of having put this war behind them. Their willingness--enthusiasm, even--for ignoring the past was what struck me most when I visited the city in July. The disengagement is often physical. The Place d'Etoiles, center of Beirut's new downtown, is built within a stone's throw of Roman ruins. However, the square doesn't face them. Instead, they are shoehorned in between the back doors of a church, a mosque, and a collection of chic restaurants. Inaccessible by foot traffic, without labels or night-time illumination, they are unobserved by all locals and most visitors.
The recent past is similarly absent. Most civil-war damaged buildings have been torn down. The city center was completely rebuilt. Visiting this somewhat Disney-esque colonial reconstruction, I was suddenly struck by the thought: "This is what New Orleans will be like if it rebuilds." Identical in physical appearance, but utterly lacking in civic soul.
Beirutis exist in a constant state of forgetting. Disasters occur, they conclude, people and infrastructure recover, and the city moves on. Lingering on past events seems to be considered dangerous and emphasizing previous socio-political divisions discouraged. Historical silence is state policy.
The intentions are good: to discourage retribution and establish a unified society. But, in failing to officially acknowledge and examine the religious, geographic, and class cleavages that permeate Lebanon, true progress is curtailed. A "Ceder Revolution" might have occurred in 2005, but this war revealed its shallow roots. Until a real national dialogue (trialogue? quadrilogue?) takes place, until Beirut extends its economic attentions to Lebanon's rural communities, and until the state offers political involvement to disempowered populations like the Shia, expressions of "national unity" will remain a cosmetic fiction. In five or ten years, a crisis will occur. And there will be another war.
One of the few original frescos in Beirut's St. George Cathedral, damaged in the Civil War.
Plus ca change...
Which leaves us with the question posed in the post title: can Beirut rebuild? The simple answer is "Yes, Beirut will rebuild." Reconstruction in the South got off to a flying, Iran-sponsored start. Per Nasrallah's promise, Hizballah soldiers appeared at 6:30 a.m. the day after the cease fire to assess damages and begin distributing crisp $100 bills, much to the dismay of the Lebanese government, which (once again) saw itself getting upstaged by a non-state interloper. Perhaps in an attempt to smooth ruffled feathers, Nasrallah soon requested government assistance in the rebuilding efforts.
There's certainly no shortage of things to do. The American media often under-communicated the extent of destruction that occured in the South; many villages were virtually levelled.
But rebuilding is what the Lebanese do best. They did it after the civil war, and they'll do it again now. The state and Hizballah have the money and the wherewithal. And people are eager to return to their homes and reclaim the devastated land. The catastrophic--and massively underreported--oil spill caused by a July 15 Israeli bombing raid on Junieh could significantly impinge on tourist industry regrowth. Nonetheless, the economy will recover.
And people will move on. Beirutis in particular will soon give every appearance of having put this war behind them. Their willingness--enthusiasm, even--for ignoring the past was what struck me most when I visited the city in July. The disengagement is often physical. The Place d'Etoiles, center of Beirut's new downtown, is built within a stone's throw of Roman ruins. However, the square doesn't face them. Instead, they are shoehorned in between the back doors of a church, a mosque, and a collection of chic restaurants. Inaccessible by foot traffic, without labels or night-time illumination, they are unobserved by all locals and most visitors.
The recent past is similarly absent. Most civil-war damaged buildings have been torn down. The city center was completely rebuilt. Visiting this somewhat Disney-esque colonial reconstruction, I was suddenly struck by the thought: "This is what New Orleans will be like if it rebuilds." Identical in physical appearance, but utterly lacking in civic soul.
Beirutis exist in a constant state of forgetting. Disasters occur, they conclude, people and infrastructure recover, and the city moves on. Lingering on past events seems to be considered dangerous and emphasizing previous socio-political divisions discouraged. Historical silence is state policy.
The intentions are good: to discourage retribution and establish a unified society. But, in failing to officially acknowledge and examine the religious, geographic, and class cleavages that permeate Lebanon, true progress is curtailed. A "Ceder Revolution" might have occurred in 2005, but this war revealed its shallow roots. Until a real national dialogue (trialogue? quadrilogue?) takes place, until Beirut extends its economic attentions to Lebanon's rural communities, and until the state offers political involvement to disempowered populations like the Shia, expressions of "national unity" will remain a cosmetic fiction. In five or ten years, a crisis will occur. And there will be another war.
One of the few original frescos in Beirut's St. George Cathedral, damaged in the Civil War.
posted by Emily at 7:43 AM
1 Comments:
interesting post... from afar anyway, lebanon strikes me as the kind of state that will always, always be fraught with so much division that it will keep imploding and exploding, until someday it reconstitutes itself as a new set of states or as a more federal state. just as liberal capitalist democracy isn't for everywhere, the nation-state form isn't for everywhere either. there's no necessary global trend towards increasingly cohesive nation-states, lebanon is case study A.
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