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Resilient Lebanon: Perky Again—But For How Long?
PROLONGED bursts of gunfire clattered across Beirut, the Lebanese capital, on one recent night, setting nerves a jangle. But this was the racket neither of civil war nor foreign attack, sounds all too familiar to the city. It was revelers cheering, in traditional Lebanese fashion, their favorite team in the football World Cup. A few days later the crackle erupted again. It turned out this time to be neighbors fighting over a parking space, with the bullets mostly sent skyward rather than at each other.
With its penchant for strife and intrigue, expressed through 17 religious sects, myriad party factions and rival foreign meddlers, Lebanon is unlikely soon, if ever, to enjoy normal politics. Lately, however, it seems to have come closer to normal than at any time since its gory 1975-90 civil war. During this year’s World Cup season, enthusiasts flying the flags of Brazil or Germany or other national football teams did not immediately betray which Lebanese sect or party they belonged to, as they once did. And although the nasty escalation of a fight over parking showed that Beirut toughs remain trigger-happy, it also reflected the strain of an economic boom that has sent property prices rocketing and jammed the streets with too many cars.
Inching along in the heavier traffic brought by the baking summer’s flood of Gulf Arab tourists and returning Lebanese expatriates, it is hard to believe that just four years ago this country endured a war with Israel that left 1,200 Lebanese dead, made thousands more homeless, severed roads, bridges and electricity lines, and leveled whole blocks of Beirut to the ground.
Since that calamity the economy has rebounded with panache, growing at 9% in 2008 and 2009, even as the rest of the world floundered. It looks set to swell by 6-8% this year. Banks are flush with cash, hotels booked up, and the pace of building furious. Not only has war damage been erased. Older buildings are being demolished so fast that Beirutis fear their city and its mountain hinterland are turning into a high-rise jungle. Scores of trendy new shops and bistros enliven Hamra Street, long a dowdy, depressed zone that seemed fated never to regain its pre-civil-war glamour. The core of Beirut’s old downtown was tastefully rebuilt in the 1990s, but long remained a sterile island ringed by empty lots. Now they have been filled by fancy new buildings, making the ghettoized city feel almost whole.
Almost sort of normal
Two things have made this happen. One is a huge influx of money. The rival foreign governments of Iran, America and the Gulf states have each injected a billion dollars or more to bolster their Lebanese allies. Much more has come from the large and prosperous Lebanese diaspora. Remittances, which make up 20% of GDP, have soared not only because the war prompted generosity but also because of solid banks that offer 7% interest on the dollar and property prices that have doubled or tripled in four years, and only now show signs of cooling.
The other ingredient is political stability. This, in Lebanon, is a relative term. As recently as May 2008, heavily armed forces loyal to the parliamentary opposition, made up of Hezbollah, the fearsome Shia party-cum-militia, and motley allies backed by Syria and Iran, stormed areas loyal to the parliamentary majority that is dominated by Sunni Muslims, Druze and right-wing Christian parties and backed by Saudi Arabia and the West. That brief, decisive showdown, followed by elections last year that preserved the balance of power narrowly in favor of the pro-Western majority, focused political minds on the need to compromise. A string of assassinations, generally assumed to be the work of Syria or its friends, has stopped. Parliament, albeit rowdily and unevenly, has resumed its functions, passing a budget for the first time in five years and debating long-festering issues, such as the legal status of Lebanon’s 250,000 Palestinian refugees, hitherto shamefully barred from owning property or practicing many professions.
The equilibrium remains delicate, but important parameters appear to have been fixed for the time being. Hezbollah may keep its arms and sustain “resistance” to Israel but should refrain from provoking Israeli attack and let other Lebanese get on with business. Neighboring Syria, bitterly shunned by the parliamentary majority because of its long legacy of meddling, is again, officially, an influential sisterly state: Lebanese authorities have even begun harassing Syrian dissidents, for whom Beirut has long been a haven. Western allies, meanwhile, are being calmed by talk of strengthening Lebanon’s army and central state, and by the effective maintenance of a neutral stance in regional diplomacy.
Still, dark clouds loom, as ever, on the horizon. Israel itches to rid itself of the prickling menace of Hezbollah big rocket arsenal. And how will that Shia party react if, as many now suspect, an international tribunal under the UN’s aegis fingers its men? It is soon to issue an indictment of suspects in that string of assassinations, starting with the 2005 car bomb that killed Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s leading Sunni chieftain and a five-time prime minister, whose son Saad now holds that office.
The party’s turbaned leaders say little, except to cast doubt on the tribunal’s credibility. Their wary opponents are manoeuvrings to soften the expected blow. “We don’t want to implicate the party,” says Fouad Siniora, a former prime minister who leads the Hariris’ block in parliament. “These are individuals. If my son commits a crime, am I to be blamed?”
The Economist