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The Lebanon I love will rise once more

Richard Beeston

Wednesday, 19th July 2006

Richard Beeston has known Beirut for five decades, since the days when Kim Philby lived there. Here he recounts a recent visit to the city he loves

The legacy of that brutal murder lives on today. Several anti-Syrian Lebanese figures have been killed in similar fashion. One possible target is the French ambassador, whose country supported Hariri. When I visited his residence, the grandest of all France’s ambassadorial homes, the threat of more violence was still evident. The building was hugely damaged and evacuated during the civil war and restored by France at a cost rumoured to be about E120 million. It is now an exquisite palatial prison for the ambassador. The building is guarded by two tanks outside the twin metal gate, snipers on the roof and 40 armed bodyguards as bombs once more fall on Beirut.

A deep hatred of Syria is now felt by most Lebanese Christians and a good number of Sunni Muslims following the long Syrian occupation, but Damascus can still count on the support of Lebanese Shias whom they have long armed against Israel. Fifty years ago the Shias, mainly from southern Lebanon, were the poorest of the nation’s minorities, largely ignored by Christians and Sunnis, and they had no political clout.

In those days Lebanon maintained the fiction that the Christians accounted for 50 per cent of the population, and they were by far the richest community. Today the Shias, with a prolific birth rate, are by far the largest minority in the country and are rapidly ‘islamising’ the nation as their military wing, Hezbollah, once more calls down the wrath of Israel. One of my old flats, on a cliff-edge overlooking the sea, is now populated by Shia refugees who have taken over Beirut’s wealthy beach clubs and the once fashionable areas of Ras Beirut. An ever increasing number of women are choosing, or being induced, to wear the hijab (headscarf) and once smart shops have been transformed into shabby souks.

During what the Lebanese call ‘The War’, thousands of Christians — Maronites, Orthodox and Armenians — fled to Europe and America never to return, followed this week by a new flood. Fifty years ago they ran the country. Today they are holed up in Ashrafieh and Jounieh, along the coast. Meanwhile throughout the country more and more mosques are being built, including a gigantic one right in the middle of Beirut as the nation begins increasingly to resemble its Muslim neighbour Syria.

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