05/05/2005
Lebanon, Part II
As I noted last time I was planning a trip to Lebanon and Beirut. Well I’m back and I’ll discuss more of the politics of the area in my 5/7 “Week in Review” column, including my trip to the Bekaa Valley Hizbollah territory.
For the purposes of this piece, though, I just want to add on to some remarks I made in the 4/21 “Hott Spotts” concerning former prime minister Rafik Hariri and his role in helping rebuild the country following the 1975-90 civil war. In a piece for the May / June issue of Foreign Affairs, Professor Fouad Ajami (Johns Hopkins) notes that it will never be proven with certainty just who was responsible for Hariri’s death.
“It is likely that the trail to Damascus will never be found. Access to the ‘crime scene’ – Lebanon itself – has been limited, and Syria’s regime of satraps in Beirut has done its best to hamper a thorough investigation of the crime.”
Well I can speak to this. I was staying at the Hotel Phoenicia, right across the street from the February 14 attack. My hotel suffered severe damage in the horrific explosion that claimed 18 lives and my room faced the damage where the main impact was felt. Yes, I guess you could say access was limited to the crime scene as there was a barricade about half a block from the area manned by a few Lebanese army soldiers. But from my room I could see there was a way to get even closer, though I didn’t try it myself. My point being in five days I didn’t see any activity at the crime scene and it’s supposed to be the work of the UN at this point. The crumpled cars are still there but no one around them.
As for Ajami’s assertion that access to Lebanon itself has been limited false. I had no problem entering the country and neither did I have a problem going to Baalbek where the last Syrian troops left on Tuesday, April 26. I was there on Sunday, May 1 though as I’ll explain in my other column I got cold feet and didn’t exit my car. Seeing posters of Ayatollah Khomeini and Hizbollah leader Sheikh Nasrallah, plus hundreds of Hizbollah flags (with the raised fist and a Kalashnikov), has a way of doing that.
[Beirut itself, however, was terrific. I had zero problems walking around and not one person bothered me. The people treated me very well.]
But back to Hariri, with his death he has become a true martyr for the cause of Lebanese independence. He deserves tremendous credit for bringing Lebanon back in the post-civil war days and through sheer force of personality, as well as his $billionaire wealth, he rallied the business community into redeveloping many of the bombed out areas of the city.
Hariri, though, could not have accomplished what he did without cooperating with the Syrian regime that was running things in Lebanon through its lackeys in the post-war years. And Hariri’s main patron was Saudi Arabia (he was a Saudi citizen). As Fouad Ajami notes, “his ties to the House of Saud ran to the very heart of the dynasty,” adding, “The Saudis are not given to expressions of public outrage, but one of their own was struck down in Beirut (and a) huge contingent of Saudi princes came to Beirut for Hariri’s funeral.”
There is nothing wrong with Hariri’s Saudi ties – it just needs to be noted – and while it’s true the Saudis put pressure on Syria in the aftermath of the assassination to exit Lebanon, at the same time you won’t find Saudi Arabia publicly stating Syria was responsible for the killing; that’s just not the way things work in this region.
In closing, though, I came across an editorial from the April edition of Lebanon’s business magazine “Executive” by editor- in-chief Yasser Akkaoui. It pretty well sums up the feelings of the populace in Beirut. [Yet it’s still far more complicated than this outside the city, as I’ll spell out in “Week in Review.”]
“Dr. Best, Himmler’s right hand man in the Gestapo, once said, ‘As long as the police carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally.’ That mindset allowed for countless political arrests and murders, during the period of Hitler’s Third Reich.
“The ghost of our late prime minister confronts us with political murder at the heart of our national dream. He forces on us the appalling questions: Of what is our constitution made? What is our citizenship, and more, our lives, worth? What is the future of a democracy where leaders can be assassinated under conspicuously suspicious circumstances while the machinery of legal action scarcely trembles? How many politically disguised murders will occur before they are exposed for what they are?
“On repression, Huey Long once said, ‘It will come in the name of your security – they call it ‘National Security,’ it will come with the mass media manipulating a clever concentration camp of the mind. The superstate will provide you tranquility above the truth, the superstate will make you believe you are living in the best of all possible worlds, and in order to do so will rewrite history as it sees fit.’ George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth warned us, “Who controls the past, controls the future.’
“What took place on February 14 was a coup d’etat. Its most direct and tragic result – and the subsequent terror bombings aimed at our retail outlets and industrial zones – was a reversal of Hariri’s commitment to economic prosperity and a declaration of war, because war is big business, worth billions a year. Our prime minister was murdered by a conspiracy to protect a state of war and all the conveniences and excesses that come with it. It was a public execution of the free entrepreneurial spirit that was slowly achieving supremacy over the business of war.
“In reality, however, it is the business of peace that is keeping us afloat. Riad Salameh, arguably the last of Hariri’s economic musketeers to still hold public office, watched as the coffers filled with the rewards of prosperity. Today, he is using these hard-earned savings – won on the field of economic recovery – to fight the forces of aggression.
“But the worst of all crimes is when a government murders truth. If it can murder truth, it can murder freedom. If it can murder freedom, it can murder our own sons if they should dare to fight for freedom. There are still enough Lebanese left in this country to make it continue to be Lebanon. We can still fight authoritarianism, and when we do that we are not being un- Lebanese; we are being Lebanese. We are sticking our necks out and that has to be done, because truth does not come into being automatically. Individual men and women have to work and fight to make it happen. As long as our government continues to be like that, as long as such forces can get away with these actions, then this is no longer the country in which we were born.”
I’ve decided Lebanon is the most fascinating place on earth today, in terms of political science, and you can be sure I’ll address the topic far more often in the future. While success or failure in spreading democracy in Iraq is critical to the health of the entire region, you can make the same argument that it is equally important Lebanon succeed in winning back its independence in a democratic fashion. Elections are scheduled for end of May and various terrorist activities should be expected to occur beforehand as Syria attempts to thwart the will of the Lebanese people.
Next Hott Spotts May 12.
Brian Trumbore
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