"Months after massive explosion, a worsening pandemic complicates Beirut’s recovery" PBS NewsHour 2/5/2021
Excerpt
SUMMARY: It's been six months since a massive fertilizer explosion at the Port of Beirut tore through the city, leaving hundreds dead and catastrophic destruction. Lebanon was already mired in a deep economic crisis before the blast, and is now experiencing another calamity with COVID-19. Special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen reports.
SUMMARY: A special international tribunal has found a Hezbollah agent guilty of assassinating former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in a deadly blast 15 years ago. Although the decision doesn’t implicate Hezbollah explicitly, it comes at a tense moment for the U.S.-designated terror group, on whom political and financial pressure is growing. Special correspondent Jane Ferguson reports from Beirut.
SUMMARY: Earlier this month, Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri shocked the region by announcing his resignation. Now back home from Saudi Arabia and his Middle East tour, Hariri says he’s postponing his resignation at the behest of president Michel Aoun. Special correspondent Jane Ferguson joined Judy Woodruff to discuss the regional implications of Saudi-Lebanese tensions.
HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour): With all the talk the past many months about a possible military conflict between Israel and Iran, a new source of conflict might be emerging. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the Islamic militant group, Hezbollah, is getting more advanced weaponry that could be far more precise in their attacks. Charles Levinson was one of the authors of the piece and joins us now. So, there has been this arms race under the guise of the Syrian war that has been happening in the neighborhood. Who is getting what kind of weapons?
CHARLES LEVINSON, Wall Street Journal: Right. So, when Assad starts losing control in Syria in 2012, Iran and Syria want Hezbollah to lend its expertise to the fight. Hezbollah was reluctant because of its own domestic political considerations inside Lebanon. To sweeten the deal, Iran basically offered Hezbollah to upgrade its weapons arsenal from having tens of thousands – about a hundred thousand unguided, dumb bombs and rockets and missiles to having smart, guided missiles that can hit precise targets inside Israel. So, the weapons transfers that we are looking at so far are the SA-17. It is an anti-aircraft, sort of highly mobile, advanced anti-aircraft missile that would really threaten Israel’s dominance in the skies above Lebanon, especially its helicopters. You are talking about the Fato-110, which is very precise within a… I cannot remember the exact… but within a few dozen/few hundred meters let’s say. A surface-to-surface missile that can reach basically all of Israel, and the same thing called the surface-to-ship/anti-ship missile, which can basically take out any Israeli (or U.S.) ship patrolling the Mediterranean off the coast of Lebanon.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Now to Lebanon, where a prominent politician and others were killed in a bomb attack today.
Hari Sreenivasan reports
HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour): The powerful blast shook buildings in central Beirut this morning and left what looked like the aftermath of a battle. A Lebanese TV channel captured the eerie silence in the streets moments after the explosion hit. Plumes of smoke rose from flaming cars, as shaken residents tried to make sense of what had happened.
MAN (through interpreter): As you can see, all the shops here are damaged. I consider all this terrorism. All this is terrorism, damaging the country and the people. What more can we say? God help us. God help this country.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The attack wounded scores and killed six people, including the main target, Mohamad Chatah, a prominent Sunni politician and former ambassador to the U.S. He was an outspoken critic of the Assad regime in neighboring Syria and the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah that is fighting for Assad.
Less than an hour before the attack, Chatah tweeted his latest criticism of the militants, saying, "Hezbollah is pressing hard to be granted similar powers in security and foreign policy matters that Syria exercised in Lebanon for 15 years."
Hezbollah denounced the assassination, but allies of Chatah took up his refrain in the hours after today's attack.
MARWAN HAMADEH, Lebanese Minister of Communications: The target is Lebanon, its institution, its president, the whole image of this country, the convivial country, the country of democracy.
HARI SREENIVASAN: From Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry also condemned the killing. He called Chatah's death a terrible loss and said -- quote -- "His presence will be missed, but his vision for a united Lebanon free from sectarian violence and destabilizing interference will continue to guide our efforts."
But that goal seems far off, as the civil war in Syria has already split Lebanon into opposing political camps, with a weak caretaker government since April. And there's been a tit-for-tat increase in bombings and other attacks in recent months. Last month, two suicide bombings rocked the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, killing 25 people. Iran is a backer of Hezbollah.
Today's attack was the first major strike at Beirut's upscale renovated city center in years.
SUMMARY: While the powerful political parties in Lebanon have talked about trying to keep things calm in their country, they support opposing sides of the Syrian civil war. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Anne Barnard of The New York Times about the symbolism of the bombing in the center of Beirut that killed a prominent political figure.
SUMMARY: Fragile relations between Lebanon's various religious sects have been strained by the continuing fallout of neighbor Syria's civil war and resentment of Syrian refugees. Margaret Warner concludes her series of reports from Lebanon with a closer look at the country's sectarian politics.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): In the final story of her overseas reporting trip to Lebanon, Margaret Warner looks at the tenuous peace among the country's various religious sects, and whether it can survive as the conflict in Syria moves deeper inside Lebanon's borders.
MARGARET WARNER(Newshour): In a high-end jewelry store in the Hamra district of Beirut, owner Elie Nawbar is entertaining a diverse set of friends.
ELIE NAWBAR, Lebanon: He is a Shiite, and I'm a Christian. He's a Muslim Sunni. And we live together.
MAN: And I'm very close friends.
MARGARET WARNER: And you want to keep it that way?
ELIE NAWBAR: Yes. And this is Lebanon.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): We turn to Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad claimed a major strategic victory today in recapturing the town of Qusayr from rebels.
We have a report narrated by Neil Connery of Independent Television News.
NEIL CONNERY, Independent Television News: Syrian army tanks roll into the heart of Qusayr, this key town which both sides have fought over now firmly in the grip of President Assad's forces.
State television making the most of this victory against the rebels -- the regime's view that whoever controls Qusayr controls the center of Syria. The fierce battle here has seen fighters from the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah cross into Syria and fight alongside the regime's forces, their intervention proving too much for the rebels.
"We have nearly 1,000 wounded people here," this man says, "but the outside world has forgotten us."
The Syrian regime is hailing this as a vital strategic victory. Qusayr dominates an important cross-border supply route in and out of Lebanon. But Qusayr is also the key to controlling the central area of Syria around Homs and the corridor which links Damascus to President Assad's Alawite heartland around the northern coastal city of Latakia.
I managed to travel to Qusayr last year and saw Syrian tanks and troops during a brief lull in the fighting. But even then, people feared President Assad's forces would take revenge on the town for supporting the rebels.
MAN: Maybe two or three weeks, not more. And he will come back to shouting and shelling.
NEIL CONNERY: They did come back, and, today, Qusayr is once again under the control of Syrian forces.
SUMMARY: In the past five weeks, three dozen people have been killed in Tripoli in the worst sectarian fighting Lebanon has seen in nearly a quarter-century. Margaret Warner reports from Tripoli on the deadly sectarian violence flaring between Sunni and Alawite fighters, and the influx of Syrian refugees into the city.
SUMMARY: Two rockets exploded in an area of Beirut controlled by Hezbollah, raising new concerns about the spread of the Syrian conflict into Lebanon and the region. Jeffrey Brown talks to Margaret Warner from Beirut about Hezbollah's support for the Assad regime and the country's history of strife and its remaining sectarian tensions.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And we return to the bloody civil war in Syria.
Today, U.S. Sen. John McCain became the highest-ranking American official to enter Syria since the start of fighting there. He crossed the Turkish border accompanied by a Free Syrian Army general.
Meanwhile, a fierce battle continues in the strategically critical town of Qusayr, with Hezbollah sending fighters from its home base in Lebanon to support the regime of Syrian President Assad. And, yesterday, two rockets exploded in an area of Beirut controlled by Hezbollah. That raised new concerns about the spread of the Syrian conflict into the larger region.
Margaret Warner is in Beirut. And we spoke earlier today.
SUMMARY: As the civil war in Syria rages on, refugees have fled to nearby Lebanon. Unfortunately, that move has brought new challenges, including inadequate supplies, discrimination, winter weather and hunger. The NewsHour sent video journalist Paige Kollock to Lebanon to report on the crisis first-hand. Ray Suarez reports.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Twenty-two months in and showing no signs of abating, the fight for the future of Syria drags on. Both sides continue to wage all- out war, with more than 60,000 dead and the plight of Syria's displaced and dispossessed only growing worse.
At this tent camp in El-Marj, in the eastern part of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, only 25 miles from the Syrian border, refugees are struggling to adapt to a new, impermanent reality and to winter temperatures that routinely drop below freezing.
ABU MOHAMMED, Syrian refugee: If you want me to compare between living here and living in Syria, we're not living here.
A powerful bomb devastated a Christian neighborhood of this capital city of Lebanon on Friday, killing an intelligence official long viewed as an enemy by neighboring Syria and unnerving a nation as Syria’s sectarian-fueled civil war spills beyond its borders and threatens to engulf the region.
The blast, which sheared the faces off buildings, killed at least eight people, wounded 80 and transformed a quiet tree-lined street into a scene reminiscent of Lebanon’s long civil war, threatened to worsen sectarian tensions. By nightfall, black smoke from burning tires ignited by angry men choked the streets of a few neighborhoods in the city, which has struggled to preserve a peace between its many sects, including Sunni, Shiite, Christian and Druse.
Within hours of the attack, the Lebanese authorities announced that the dead included the intelligence chief of the country’s internal security service, Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, instantly spurring accusations that the Syrian government had assassinated him for recently uncovering what the authorities said was a Syrian plot to provoke unrest in Lebanon.
“They wanted to get him, and they got him,” said Paul Salem, a regional analyst with the Carnegie Middle East Center.
But if the attack was targeted, the blast was most certainly not. The force of the explosion left elderly residents fleeing their wrecked homes in bloodied pajamas and spewed charred metal as far as two blocks. Residents rushed to help each other amid the debris, burning car wreckage and a macabre scene of victims in blood-soaked shirts.
It was the first large-scale bombing in the country since 2008 and was the most provocative violence here linked to the Syrian conflict since it began 19 months ago.
The attack struck a heavy blow to a security service that had asserted Lebanon’s fragile sovereignty by claiming to catch Syria red-handed in a plan to destabilize its neighbor, which Syria has long dominated. It threatened to inflame sectarian tensions by eliminating General Hassan, a Sunni Muslim known for his close ties to fellow Sunni politicians who support the Syrian uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. General Hassan was viewed by Syrian opposition activists as an ally and protector.
Imad Salamey, a political science professor at Lebanese American University, blamed Mr. Assad’s government and said that the attack seemed intended to show that Syria has the ability to destabilize Lebanon and threaten to embroil the region in chaos.
The Syrian government issued a statement condemning the bombing, quoting the information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, as saying, “These sort of terrorist, cowardly attacks are unjustifiable wherever they occur.”
Last February, the Obama administration accused one of Lebanon’s famously secretive banks of laundering money for an international cocaine ring with ties to the Shiite militant group Hezbollah.
Now, in the wake of the bank’s exposure and arranged sale, its ledgers have been opened to reveal deeper secrets: a glimpse at the clandestine methods that Hezbollah — a terrorist organization in American eyes that has evolved into Lebanon’s pee-eminent military and political power — uses to finance its operations. The books offer evidence of an intricate global money-laundering apparatus that, with the bank as its hub, appeared to let Hezbollah move huge sums of money into the legitimate financial system, despite sanctions aimed at cutting off its economic lifeblood.
At the same time, the investigation that led the United States to the bank, the Lebanese Canadian Bank, provides new insights into the murky sources of Hezbollah’s money. While law enforcement agencies around the world have long believed that Hezbollah is a passive beneficiary of contributions from loyalists abroad involved in drug trafficking and a grab bag of other criminal enterprises, intelligence from several countries points to the direct involvement of high-level Hezbollah officials in the South American cocaine trade.
One agent involved in the investigation compared Hezbollah to the Mafia, saying, “They operate like the Gambinos on steroids.”
On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in Virginia announced the indictment of the man at the center of the Lebanese Canadian Bank case, charging that he had trafficked drugs and laundered money not only for Colombian cartels, but also for the murderous Mexican gang Los Zetas.
The revelations about Hezbollah and the Lebanese Canadian Bank reflect the changing political and military dynamics of Lebanon and the Middle East. American intelligence analysts believe that for years Hezbollah received as much as $200 million annually from its primary patron, Iran, along with additional aid from Syria. But that support has diminished, the analysts say, as Iran’s economy buckles under international sanctions over its nuclear program and Syria’s government battles rising popular unrest.
Yet, if anything, Hezbollah’s financial needs have grown alongside its increasing legitimacy here, as it seeks to rebuild after its 2006 war with Israel and expand its portfolio of political and social service activities. The result, analysts believe, has been a deeper reliance on criminal enterprises — especially the South American cocaine trade — and on a mechanism to move its ill-gotten cash around the world.
“The ability of terror groups like Hezbollah to tap into the worldwide criminal funding streams is the new post-9/11 challenge,” said Derek Maltz, the Drug Enforcement Administration official who oversaw the agency’s investigation into the Lebanese Canadian Bank.
Najib Mikati, a billionaire backed by Hezbollah to become prime minister of Lebanon, promised on Wednesday to forge good relations with the United States and declared that he would not interfere with an international tribunal expected to accuse members of Hezbollah of involvement in the assassination of a former prime minister.
The remarks by Mr. Mikati in an interview were a clear signal of an independent path that he hopes to chart in a country reeling from its worst crisis in years and navigating a new alignment of power in which Syria has emerged again as power broker. Mr. Mikati faces enormous pressure to denounce the tribunal, and his supporters and opponents acknowledge that his ability to hew to that independence will probably define his tenure.
“We cannot afford to have an enemy,” he said.
Genial and engaging, Mr. Mikati, 55, is buffeted by a breathtaking array of influences that embody this Mediterranean country’s fate. Though small and relatively insignificant on its own, Lebanon has long served as an arena for battles far greater than itself, entangling the United States and France, as well as Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other nations in the region.
The tribunal is the latest incarnation of that contest. Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim movement, has sought to discredit it, accusing the United States and Israel of wielding the tribunal as a way to frame it in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. When Mr. Hariri’s son, Saad, Mr. Mikati’s predecessor, refused to denounce the tribunal, the movement withdrew its support, forcing the collapse of his 14-month-old unity government and setting off a bitter confrontation.
Two full-blown crises, in Lebanon and Iraq, are merging into a single emergency. A chain reaction could spread quickly almost anywhere between Cairo and Bombay. Turkey is talking openly of invading northern Iraq to deal with Kurdish terrorists based there. Syria could easily get pulled into the war in southern Lebanon. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are under pressure from jihadists to support Hezbollah, even though the governments in Cairo and Riyadh hate that organization. Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of giving shelter to al-Qaeda and the Taliban; there is constant fighting on both sides of that border. NATO's own war in Afghanistan is not going well. India talks of taking punitive action against Pakistan for allegedly being behind the Bombay bombings. Uzbekistan is a repressive dictatorship with a growing Islamic resistance.
The only beneficiaries of this chaos are Iran, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, who last week held the largest anti-American, anti-Israel demonstration in the world in the very heart of Baghdad, even as 6,000 additional U.S. troops were rushing into the city to "prevent" a civil war that has already begun.
Under the universally accepted doctrine of self-defense, which is embodied in Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, there is no question that Israel has a legitimate right to take action against a group that has sworn to destroy it and had hidden some 13,000 missiles in southern Lebanon. In these circumstances, American support for Israel is essential, as it has been since the time of Truman; if Washington abandoned Jerusalem, the very existence of the Jewish state could be jeopardized, and the world crisis whose early phase we are now in would quickly get far worse. The United States must continue to make clear that it is ready to come to Israel's defense, both with American diplomacy and, as necessary, with military equipment.
But the United States must also understand, and deal with, the wider consequences of its own actions and public statements, which have caused an unprecedented decline in America's position in much of the world and are provoking dangerous new anti-American coalitions and encouraging a new generation of terrorists. American disengagement from active Middle East diplomacy since 2001 has led to greater violence and a decline in U.S. influence. Others have been eager to fill the vacuum. (Note the sudden emergence of France as a key player in the current burst of diplomacy.)
AYYAD AMMAR moved among the rescuers clawing through the ruins of a Beirut apartment block yesterday morning, holding up a photograph of his 14-year-old grandson and asking if anyone had seen the boy.
Ahmed Kanj had gone to play computer war games in the internet café at the foot of the seven-story building minutes before an Israeli missile struck.
A fireman told the old man finally that he had found the teenager’s broken body at daybreak. Mr Ammar bowed his head and began to weep as the crowd around him swore vengeance against Israel for the massacre on Hajjaj Street. The walking wounded and families searching for missing relatives began chanting the name of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, even though most who live here support Amal, a rival Shia group.
Diaa el-Husseini, 34, a market trader, who lived in the adjoining tower block, said: “We thought we were safe here so we stayed. We are not fighters. We are families who only want a peaceful life, but Israel wants to terrorize us all into leaving the southern suburbs of Beirut. Today we all feel part of the Hezbollah resistance.”
If Israel thought that by slowly strangling the life out of the Lebanese capital, by blockading it from land, sea and air, it would turn Christians against their Muslim neighbors it appears to have miscalculated. The tragedy on Hajjaj Street, which killed at least 31 and wounded 60, was Beirut’s single biggest loss of life since the war began, bringing the total to more than 1,000. It hardened the public mood. Even those in the Christian half of the capital, who were beginning to call for a ceasefire at any price, spoke yesterday of their disgust at what Israeli warplanes were doing to their city.
George Serrin, 42, a businessman, has no love for Sheikh Nasrallah and his militia, but said: “Of course I care for my family’s safety and want this war over now. But I am sickened at the needless ruination done to my city, our city.”
The blockades, fuel rationing, rising prices, power cuts and shortages in the shops affect all Beirut’s citizens.
There is a conviction shared by every community that Israel’s agenda is not solely to crush Hezbollah but to dismantle Lebanon, and particularly Beirut, just as the capital was starting to enjoy an economic and political renaissance.
After a week of massive airstrikes by the Israeli air force on Lebanon, Washington has said it will deploy US marines to the region. Not, like in 1957 and 1982, to restore peace and order in Lebanon, but rather to evacuate US citizens.
Peace and order have to wait. US President George W. Bush has made that more than clear. He is not willing to support immediate measures to end the war. He doesn't want to send his secretary of state on her way to the region for a few more days. In Washington, that will have to take "about another week."
Another week like the last one? With hundreds of civilian casualties, hundreds of thousands of refugees and billions in damage to the Lebanese infrastructure? It is absurd and inhuman to constitute a new order in Lebanon based on this suffering and misery of innocent people.
The US president apparently has a very limited perception. It seems the government in Jerusalem insinuated to him that it needs this one week to vitally weaken Hezbollah now and in the long term. The White House gives Jerusalem the go-ahead -- no matter how high the price.
Congressional "Friends of Israel" are busy making noises about the "need" for the United States to provide that Middle Eastern land with full support as it assaults its neighbors.
But no genuine friend of Israel can be happy with what is being done in that country's name by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his misguided followers.
It started gradually - an assassination, then a bus ambush. Slowly, gunmen took to the streets and sporadic fighting erupted.
Then the tit-for-tat kidnappings broke out, and the "liquidations" and the car bombs. Those lucky enough to survive quickly picked up and moved - to another part of town or away altogether.
These days, many are harkening back to that time - in worry - wondering if Iraq and specifically Baghdad might not be headed for much of the same.
But a look at the first days of civil war in 1975 in Beirut is instructive about how things might look in Iraq, if they get worse.
It was 31 years ago - on April 13, 1975 - that the first major spark flared in a Christian suburb called Ein el-Rummaneh.
Lebanon already was on edge. Its old Christian-dominated power structure was under pressure as the country's demographics changed. Muslims sought new power with the help of Palestinian guerrillas whose presence exacerbated the tensions.
The initial spark - the assassination of a Christian Phalange Party official - was followed shortly afterward by a reprisal ambush on a busload of Palestinians that drove through the neighborhood, killing 22. Sporadic gunfire erupted, followed later by heavy gunbattles.
