What Beirut was like before the war (2019)
the961.com
the961.com
I've probably visited Beirut 20+ times over the last 7 years. Last visit was summer of 2019, so haven't been since COVID. My company has an office there.
It's one of my favorite cities in the world. It's also one of the most heartbreaking situations in economic and humanitarian terms. The country has experienced one of the worst currency crises in history, did not wether COVID well, and then had one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history go off right in the city center. Two years later, nobody has been prosecuted.
The country is in complete deadlock politically - all of the warlords from the civil war just became politicians and then systematically looted the country. There isn't much optimism that the situation will turn around, and almost everyone I know who lived there has left, accelerating an already problematic brain drain.
Beirut and Lebanon has to be one of the largest missed opportunities or what-could-have-been situations of the last 100 years.
I always wonder why many democracies devolve into politicians just looting the government, whereas others become successful and relatively less corrupt.
Voting itself is an averaging process, and you get the average of what ordinary citizen wants. It is hard to make people want good things for themselves without proactive investments in education and developing a population with scientific temper.
Yes, absolutely, but they also depend on a strong civil society beyond government. You need a media that's interested in and capable of investigative reporting, a layer of trade unions and professional associations, and a social layer that integrates people. The units larger than extended family and smaller than the country. And they need to be somewhat independent, not all run by the Party, nor all aligned along ethnic or religious lines.
You don’t see that anymore in America anymore for example, republicans across the nation believe that if there candidate loses, it must be voter fraud by either by one scheme or another. Shit, Trump himself still claims that he won the previous election.
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-democrats-object-mor...
About as comparable as a housefly is to an elephant.
The only question that should be disputed is if it was enough to sway the election.
https://www.reddit.com/r/electionfraud/comments/v85iy4/mind_...
This report looked at the 64 court cases and 187 allegations of election fraud in all 6 battleground states and documented the evidence showing that each and every claim of voter fraud by Trump's team was false, consistant with all the court rulings. You can scroll to any case you are interested in and read the details.
They found that there were many republicans who voted a straight party ticket except for their vote against Trump. This is consistent with the recent Wyoming primary results, where some 25-30% of republicans voted for the person in congress who is trying harder than anyone else to put Trump in jail.
The 2020 presidential election was most definitely lost by Trump, not stolen. I acknowledge that there are biased sources claiming otherwise, much to the detriment of our democracy.
Well, what's their reddit user names?
What point exactly are you trying to argue by posting a mind map?
When people with the motivation, mandate, and access, plus often full support of an entire state government, to find as much fraud as they can, go looking for it, that's typically all they find. A handful of cases, mostly accidental, not part of a big conspiracy or effort to swing the election.
Like when Kobach, a guy who'd made his entire political identity "voter fraud is rampant and super-serious" got clearance to go on a big crusade in Kansas. 6 convictions, mostly accidental, none part of a coordinated effort, mixed R and D (IIRC the cases actually leaned R, but small sample size, so either way, not that meaningful)
Rhetoric that it's a big deal (that stupid D'Souza "documentary"), but when they have to put up or shut up (i.e. take their evidence to the courts) there's simply nothing (meaningful) there.
We do have a stable and functional democracy, though it's rather brittle against a bad-faith executive. One prominent theory is the 'good chap' model of government, which holds basically that the system is set up such that 'reasonable chaps like us' can govern well and with few constraints, but the flipside is that Johnson's impact was limited by his government's lack of competence, not by institutional constraints. That might be liberating or terrifying, depending on your views about good government.
In the case of Lebanon, the story is that it's ethnic/religious diversity is too much for stability, it being constantly open to interference from its neighbours and super-powers playing proxy war games.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_philosophers
What you say is true but besides the point. There's no argument to be made against ethnic/religious diversity. But there is a problem with foreign interference that stokes ethnic tension.
My own London is perhaps the most successful multi-cultural population in the world. We don't have RPG attacks on schools because we don't have superpowers spending millions on manipulating and arming the Hoxton Crips against the Hounslow Massive. And there's the important difference.
LOL.
Not forgetting the Chelsea Gym Rats, the West End Wide Boys, the Hackney Pirates, the East End Geezahs, the Brixton Yardies, the Camden Punks, the Camberwell Carrots, etc
2. Turkey as a whole is questionable. They have rampant ethnic violence even if Istanbul is doing ok.
3. The US and Western Europe arent turkey but again, have various degrees of ethnic tension being played out. Whether that’s trump and all he stands for or France’s burka bans. They’re also generally more powerful so less susceptible to meddling.
Main thing is I think there has to be some sort of cultivation of democracy (and some associated values), or it's just a facade or mob rule. It seems easier if the citizens are already middle-upper class for instance. We underestimate how much people need to be "primed" for democracy for it to flourish, it's also a more active process ideally that requires engagement, which isn't always so viable.
Indeed. Also that cultivation must be stronger than the forces that try to sabotage democracy and freedom. Now, most parties say they want democracy and freedom, but in many cases, it's a lie.
Just as the French and British dismembered the Ottoman empire to create modern Lebanon, so too did the British dismember the Indian empire to create India and Pakistan.
Pick up a globe, close your eyes and randomly put your finger anywhere and you will see the point under question was under different (political)boundaries every 300 years or so.
Boundaries of any country are just limits to which a certain political administration extends its powers to. They keep changing for various reasons, every few decades.
I always wonder why the Maurya Empire doesn't get brought up as a pan-Indian empire, it was local to the area and conquered almost the entirety of the subcontinent.
Now, I'm not sure what the difference of living under Maurya vs. Mughal vs. British rule was for its inhabitants, these are widely different polities from completely different time periods, but it's still a distinction. Though I suppose more of a retroactive one imposed by our modern bias, when we can point at India, Italy, and Germany and say, "ah, that patch of land is naturally meant to be united by someone."
- Signed, one of your mythical people with “very little Mughal ancestry” whose family founded Shahjahanpur.
The reason the British get blamed for a lot of the Indo-Pak issues is that, absent an indigenous Indian/Pakistani civil service bureaucracy, the British were tasked with executing the plan originally conceived by the Two-Nation Theorists, and they totally botched that execution.
We had high levels of autonomy under the Ottoman rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Lebanon_Mutasarrifate
Some historical figures have reached levels of influence that would qualify as "independent lebanon" (if people were so good at administrative bookkeeping back in the 1600s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakhr_al-Din_II
The modern state of Lebanon fails in part because it's a "contrieved post colonial state", you're right. But claiming it has no historical foundations is misguided. It's wrong. Colonials hijacked a very legit idea, and turned it into a failed state. It's different.
Regarding the article, before and after pictures of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria to name a few places are the same.
Prosperous sovereign nations outside Western Europe and North America are bad for business.
Maybe because they don't have the oil.
Japan was not made by Meiji, it was transformed but foundation of the "miracle" was there. During sengoku it created and armed with locally built firearms armies that dwarfed that of any European state of the time in one generation.. from bows to hundred thousands of muskets
Culture >> everything. In 1945 Beirut was a paradise compared to burned to the ground Tokyo and every other major city. In few decades it had built dams like Kurobe, challenged and beat American car manufacturers.. resources, colonialism.. right. Whoever was running the place knew how to do it, they do not know now and very unlikely to learn in the next 100 years.
Those prosperous states in South Asia, outside mainland China, do seem to have lots of American troops stationed in them.
Poland has been around over a thousand years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianization_of_Poland
Show me where Poland was on the map before the Western powers drew it on the map after WW1.
Much like Lebanon which has cultural heritage going back, so does Poland. But maps might not reflect that.
Sure parts of what is now Russia have been part of Poland before, but the center is surprising stable.
It’s a spectrum and different countries sit somewhere within this spectrum. In addition, modern democracies are relatively young and we have yet to fully figure it out.
For example in Germany, consider Weimer Repulic. It was a democracy and it failed and Nazis replaced it but now it’s Federal Republic and a relatively successful democracy. Such a wild ride. It’s hard to formulate. Now put it Next to Iran or China or US or Russia. Each have different conditions.
Some of these democracies have been caught in proxy wars and super powers. Some fell to bigots and despots. Some have oil and are targets of bigger players. Some are falling and others rising. It’s too soon to draw a clear conclusion I believe.
I am very concerned that US/UK appear to be decolving for the last 10 years. The standards of acceptable behaviour from politicians have definately gone down.
In the US the situation is quite a bit more dire, and roots of the current situation are also quite a bit deeper and go back longer beyond just "this asshole got elected to office".
presidental systems are really quite awful in practice
in the UK the electorate don't pick the leader
the electorate vote for an MP, and the group of those that form the party alone select the leader (and they can dismiss them just as easily)
the party has power over the leader, which is absolutely not true in most presidential systems
(and as to your second point, yes, under some hypothetical system that doesn't exist it's possible things may be different)
Go and read the Soviet Constitution of 1936 (Stalin) [1]. It talks about freedom of speech, freedom of press, assembly, demonstrations. It actually goes much further than the US constitution. It talks about the right to rest and leisure. Old age care. Education.
We all know that the reality of life under Stalin didn't quite live up to this. A constitution is just a piece of paper. It doesn't mean anything unless it is enforced. That's why I think we focus too much on things like originalism vs living constitution... the reality is that we should be focused on maintaining our democratic institutions which no longer look as secure as they used to.
[1] http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1936toc.ht...
The british sent their criminals to Australia (a harsh island continent) and they turned it into a thriving liberal democracy. Meanwhile most democracies in the developing world struggle. Culture is destiny: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20045923
Until Scott Morrison and the last three conservative governments undid some of that.
In Bangladesh, the government is putting leaders of the opposition party BNP in jail (https://learngerman.dw.com/en/bangladesh-court-sentences-opp...), and even then it’s the most functional government the country has had in decades.
I'm not even talking failed states here, I'm talking about respectable developing countries like Thailand and Turkey. The United States, despite its numerous obvious shortcomings, has it pretty good when it comes to political stability and democracy.
A misconception. Most people who moved to Australia were not criminals. Contrast that with Germany, which turned itself into a genocide state through the influence of European culture.
That would be a waste of time. Stalin had no intention to do anything of that and everybody knew where dissension would send them: jail, gulags, torture and death.
That's not "a cultural thing", that's just cynism and propaganda. A cultural thing is when everybody wants to make it work but it never really works as intended. But that's more like the government with its full coercion power is against it!
It can absolutely happen here, too, if we elect clowns who explicitly want to break the working parts of the system. The ones that have no intentions of making it work (Except in a way that serves them).
Laws and constitutions are indeed just pieces of paper, and carry no power in themselves. It's culture that ultimately decides whether or not they actually apply, and to whom.
That is sometimes the difference between stated preferences and revealed preferences.
A lot of people say they want democracy but when they’re faced with a democratic outcome they find repugnant they’re willing to look the other way when anti-democratic forces try to make changes.
The US constitution is specifically designed not to have an exhaustive enumeration of rights. Its terseness is its primary asset as it's solely a restriction on government authority with supreme power wielded by the populace. Every worker's paradise that tries to list all freedoms operates from the opposite principle that they are granted by government authority.
I believe it arises from an interaction between individuals and the surrounding culture and institutions.
Let's assume, a priori, that everyone is trying to maximize their "success". This doesn't necessarily mean purely selfish greed, but more an observation that there's a natural incentive to take care of ourselves and our own and that we will naturally try to figure out how to get there.
The "get there" part means navigating the social environment and institutions that surround us. We aren't living alone on a desert island where our options for survival are purely physical. Most of our interactions and choices are around other people and social systems. So when we seek success, we are pathfinding through the rules, norms, and ethics of the culture we're embedded in.
What kind of path do you take? In a culture with low corruption and high institutional trust, the most efficient way to acquire resources and stability is by playing the game honestly and cooperating in good faith with others. If we all do the right thing, we all win. Overall efficiency goes up and that benefits all of us.
In institutions with low trust and high corruption, playing by the rules and attempting to cooperate leaves you open to exploitation because your peers aren't doing that. You'll get screwed.
Now the fun part is the feedback loop between individuals and institutions. A culture is just the collective choices of all of the individuals in it, so every move we make in the game is also an act of defining the rules of that game.
The greater trust we have in each other, the more efficient the system gets and the better it is for everyone. But by that exact same token, the easier the system becomes to exploit and the more attractive it becomes to bad actors. The optimally efficient society is also the perfect honeypot. So as we seek greater trust and efficiency, we also directly incentivize deceipt and corruption.
Going in the other way, as a society gets more corrupt, it becomes less and less efficient. It's hard to get anything done when every single action requires several rounds of negotiation at gunpoint because everyone is presumed to be an adversary. So as a society becomes less trusting, it loses the ability to compete against other more efficient, trustworthy societies.
What I think you see is that as a larger society's institutional trust falls, within that society new pockets of trusted cooperating subcultures arise. Since those are more efficient than the larger society, they tend to grow and outcompete. But people in those pockets don't trust outside of that subculture, so you end up with the inefficiencies of mistrust and adversarial interactions at the boundaries between these groups.
Eventually a group might win and continue to grow, but the bigger it gets, the harder it is to maintain cohesion and trust across all of it. So eventually its overall trust fades but then new pockets of trust appear inside it.
This sort of slow boiling foam of fading trust and growing bubbles of cohesion is, I think, fundamental to human sociology.
I think what makes the potential of the city is also what makes it get into severe conflict. Beirut is a cross-road of global interests. I think it still is. It also has huge and wealthy diaspora.
Beirut will certainly come back, and most likely (unluckily) will come bursting again.
Countries can come back (the country that was Austro-Hungary, Slovakia has a city with one of the highest GDP per capita in Europe after massive repeated collapses), but there is (at least in the West) a very concerted effort not to call this situation like it is. It is obvious what happened, and now people say it is unsolvable when it has clearly been engineered to happen this way (blaming colonialism, too much diversity, anything but what it is).
To be more specific: Lebanon was a country that had avoided the stuff going on elsewhere in the Middle East. The PLO gets involved, and the country implodes.
For the record, I'm a Canadian who went to school with countless Lebanese people in Ottawa. I'm a big fan!
Nah, greed is distant #2. #1 is idiocy
2) Greed is pretty much constant, people have been extremely greedy forever. The cause is the thing that changed to allow that greed to be channelled negatively. We've figured out how to channel greed for positive ends - in the process called a 'modern economy'. Greed is just a fuel, the issue is whether it is burning in an engine or burning uncontrolled.
But to say greed causes suffering is untrue. The thing to underline in the last 200-300 years is that humans harnessed greed to deliver great results - the successive Asian economic miricles of the last century are not being caused by charity and goodwill! And the techniques that they are using were forged in some of the crucibles of most concentrated greed in human history. And while there was suffering, this was also where progress, peace and comfort came from.
The greed isn't the problem here, it is part of the solution. It just needs to be separated out from the other things going on and properly focused.
> the country that was Austro-Hungary, Slovakia
No, Slovakia wasn't Austria-Hungary, rather it was just a small part of Austria-Hungary (of Hungary, to be more precise). Wasn't even a successor de jure of Austria-Hungary.
However, the point stands. Many cities were bombed to rubble in WWII and they came back. The same could happen in Beirut if a stable political situation were to emerge. Though there are numerous reasons that will be very difficult.
Sorry, not clear. Would you mind explaining this li5? I'm pretty ignorant about Beirut and Lebanon
Not the other way around.
Iran was also never colonised by European countries. Its decline began with both theocratic rule as well as sanctions, but even despite this it’s still remarkably functional and developed in comparison to a ton of countries that weren’t put in such a position.
(Another good read that provides a brief glimpse about how the tragedy of partition affected people - An Indian author’s last days in the Lahore of 1947 - https://qz.com/india/1355466/khushwant-singh-recalls-lahore-... ).
As a part of Sykes-Picot Agreement, the French wanted Lebanon to be a Christian Israel in the Middle East.
WW1/2 didn't workout well for France and Britain(Should have listened to Neville Chamberlain, the empires would have continued for another century at least). And ensuing rise of USSR to the world scene mean't both French and British colonial aspirations were brutally put to an end.
Too bad for the French, their colonial designs failed, and it didn't achieve the required demographics to achieve its goals of geopolitical control in the Mid east. Lebanon didn't end up being a Christian Israel.
I often wonder what the Middle East would look like today if Iran has been able to use their oil wealth for their own democratic civil development.
Can you tell me - if Queen Elizabeth asked that Boris Johnson step down from role as PM(which is her right), and Boris Johnson instead refused and said that he was now the leader of the UK, whose side would you throw your support behind?
The rest is history and we've gotten to where we're at today because the UK and the US interfered with a nascent democracy because...oil.
> if Queen Elizabeth asked that Boris Johnson step down from role as PM(which is her right), and Boris Johnson instead refused and said that he was now the leader of the UK, whose side would you throw your support behind?
Regardless of Johnson's behaviour and incompetence I'd hold my nose and throw my support behind the Prime Minister. Such autocratic behaviour should not be tolerated. I should reveal that I'm an anti-monarchist and a believe that states should strip any and all powers from from their monarchies, even if they are quaint and historical anachronisms.
Isn't Johnson declaring himself the leader of the nation autocratic behavior? But simply non monarchical?
> The rest is history and we've gotten to where we're at today because the UK and the US interfered with a nascent democracy because...oil.
Mossadegh was on the path to maintain his all-encompassing emergency powers for the rest of his life, if only his policies weren't so boneheaded as to throw the entire country into chaos. I just can't understand what this has to do with democracy.
Going to have to insist on a citation for that claim.
> Isn't Johnson declaring himself the leader of the nation autocratic behavior? But simply non monarchical?
That's not how it works in the UK. In a general election it's traditionally the leader of the winning party who becomes prime minister, the electorate know this and it generally works out fine. The government of the day can still have their policies and legislation challenged in the houses of parliament (simplistically speaking).
Admittedly, what is anachronistic and anti-democratic are the current shenanigans going on to elect Johnson's replacement where the electorate have no say.
> if only his policies weren't so boneheaded as to throw the entire country into chaos
What's boneheaded about wanting to control your own natural resources and de-colonialise your country?
> What's boneheaded about wanting to control your own natural resources and de-colonialise your country?
No, the goal wasn't boneheaded, but the policies he implemented towards that goal were boneheaded. Nationalizing your #1 and basically only source of revenue which is propping up your society, when you don't actually have the ability to continue operating it by yourself, is boneheaded. Thinking that the British would stick around after you nationalized their assets(one mans nationalization is another mans theft) in order to help you figure it all out, is bone headed.
Likewise, rural people deserve freedom and to not be serfs to local lords, but at the same time, just setting them free and thinking they will be able to manage the land as well as the centralized administrator immediately is boneheaded
I guess Charles taking Bakr Bin Laden's (the half brother of Osama Bin Laden) money is not enough to outrage the English enough to strip him of his powers. But maybe if Scotland and Northern Ireland secedes, they'll realize their queen's successor is quite useless.
The thing is he has no powers. Even if/when he becomes king the "powers" of that role are purely ceremonial, even if enshrined in law and what paltry bits of a constitution we have in the UK. As another commenter here suggested, if the monarch were to use one of these powers (that they historically agreed not to use) then they'll endanger the privileges afforded to them for merely being the "royal family". They'll happily put up and shut up so they can roll around their estates in their Range Rovers and tweeds accompanied by their close protection unit.
> But maybe if Scotland and Northern Ireland secedes, they'll realize their queen's successor is quite useless.
But they're all quite useless, and many of us already realise this.
Curious why? Would you hold that position even if the monarch has present widespread support from the population?
Do you think something has changed to make that form of rule more objectionable than it was in the past? I.e., do you have an equally negative view of historic monarchies?
If the monarch as a person has present widespread support from the population they can probably do the aristocratic equivalent of a gofundme to keep living in their pretty palace if that's what the population wants, and then get elected to normal political offices like a normal person. If the monarch as an office has present widespread support I'm going to quietly disagree with the population and in the case of the UK at least roll my eyes a little.
If it really that were to happen, I suspect UK would become a republic in a few weeks. Parliament is sovereign in England and all the powers that the Queen has left are under the understanding that they are never to be used.
I think that doesn't make sense to ask
Not accurate.
Until the early 90s and the rise of Hamas the most active Palestinian militant groups were secular, some were even Marxist/Leninist (as in, officially areligious).
Fatah, in control of the PLO, has always been secular and the second most active Palestinian militant group during the 1970s was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist organisation led by a Palestinian Christian.
Political Islam as a force in Palestinian politics started in the 90s and only really became a big thing during the second intifada in the early 2000s.
The Wikipedia page [1] makes for an interesting read if you want to understand more about the Lebanese Civil War and the many groups and foreign interests involved in this tragic conflict. As for the Palestinians, they had a large refugee population established in Lebanon and the PLO leadership wanted a base for their militias; the Lebanese state understandably didn't want a parallel state operating with militias within their borders; this lit the fuse on a country with an already fragile sectarian balance and dozens of sizeable minorities that had grief with the state and each other.
I was too young to remember the civil war, but at least in the collective retelling of the story, it's commonly accepted that PLO tried to topple the Beirut government to install their own. There are many claims that Arafat wanted Lebanon to be an alternative for their "stolen" Palestine. If it's the first time you hear that, then I think it's likely you never talked to Lebanese people about the war and the PLO.
Arafat, the leader of the PLO, wasn't christian. That's ... weird you claim this. His name is Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini. That's as Muslim as it gets. He was even a member (or a close ally I don't know) of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It's tough to convey to non arabic speakers, but several politicians, PLO front and center, use the terms "Arabs" and "muslims" almost interchangeably.
The Lebanon "civil war" is a misnomer. For the majority of the time, it was a war between lebanese christian militias and palestinian invaders that were tolerated by the lebanese muslim groups.
Lebanon's history and the civil war are complex and I'm not doing a good job of explaining then in a HN comment. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that islam has become more strict in the palestinian ranks after the 90s. This may be true. But I assure you that from the late 50s to the late 80s, they were trying to kick the non-muslims out of Lebanon by force.
Hamas was founded in 1989, a bit late for participation in the Lebanese civil war.
> Arafat, the leader of the PLO, wasn't christian. That's ... weird you claim this.
I'm talking about the leader of the PFLP, George Habash, which was the second largest Palestinian force at the time and operating in Lebanon during the civil war.
> they were trying to kick the non-muslims out of Lebanon by force.
I'm not disputing that the intention of the PLO was to anchor themselves in Lebanon (out of the control of the Lebanese state, even if that meant toppling it) and use it as a base, but I'm going to need some sources for the claim that the PLO wanted to "kick the non-muslims out of Lebanon".
As for sources of how the PLO treated non-muslims during the civil war of lebanon, it's tough to find what you want. The whole civil war was about the christian factions vs the palestinian factions, with different entites in between with rapid shifting alliances.
I understand you are from Lebanon and from a sectarian background, but that's maybe partly why you have a biased understanding of the groups, ideologies and foreign players involved. You may want to read some background on the history and the conflict from some other sources maybe starting with [1]. Palestinian militancy played a big role, but their religion did not and they were not trying to ethnically cleanse Lebanon or establish a theocracy.
Lebanon was divided around ethnic lines all throughout the war. On one hand, christian militias. On the other hand, palestinian militias. I know what they said about each other. I know how they killed and assassinated each other. I know how impossible it was to cross the line. I grew up there, I don't full remember the last years of the war, but I definitely remember the after-war and what people did afterwards.
Maybe it "just happens" that the Lebanese muslims sided with the 90+% muslim-palestians. But judged from living there for my whole life I might know that this isn't what they say. Not how they saw each other. The Lebanese muslims sided with the palestinians because of a percieved shared identity. Call it pan-arabism, call it whatever fancy term you want.
I am NOT saying that middle eastern christians are perpetually persecuted or that coexistence with muslims isn't possible. I'm not saying that the situation is the same today in 2022. I'm saying that at one specific moment in history, in one specific country in the middle east, the muslims have attempted (and succeeded at) toppling a non-muslim government that was seen as pro-west-anti-arab.
And to be clear, I agree with you that Lebanon was not a solid nation, was gonna implode anyway, and was dealing with internal conflict long before Palestine was a thing.
> There was no "Islamic Jihad" in Palestinian groups before the 90s.
I guess those guys aren't real then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Jihad_Movement_in_Pale...
They operated in lebanon. They operated from lebanon. They still operate from lebanon.
You didn't even check your own link I guess. That group's first attack was in 1984 when they operated out of Egypt and in the south of Israel/Palestine. Not a single one of their attacks happened in Lebanon during the civil war. Their presence in Lebanon starts in 1989, at the end of the civil war, and they have to this day not attacked a Lebanese target.
This confirms the point I've been communicating this entire thread that religion only became a driving force in Palestinian politics and militancy in the 1990s and Palestinian Islamism was not a factor in the Lebanese civil war.
> radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon
This is false and misrepresents Palestinian movements in the pre-1990s era and their objectives in Lebanon. That is all I wanted to point out.
I agree with the rest of what you said though.
See, for middle eastern, words like "muslim" or "chrisitans" or "jews" doesn't represent your spiritual beliefs. It represents ethnic belonging. To put it in a western perspective, your religion is not a mutable characteristic. I'm born "christian", but my level of belief in Jesus Christ has nothing to do with it.
You're saying the factions that fought in Lebanon didn't emphasize a islamist rhetoric until the 90s. From what I know from the earlier days of the war, there was a lot of talk of pan-arabism and arabic identity, not talk of an Islam nation, so what you're saying sounds plausible.
But from our middle eastern perspective, lebanese muslims allied themselves to other muslims from syria and palestine to topple the christian-led government. I was communicating the point that the factions involved were based on ethnicity.
People picture "wars" like soldiers in battlefields and there was some of that. But a LOT of the Lebanese war was undisciplined militiamen mass killing villages based on ethnic lines. On both sides. Plenty of massacres in christian villages because they were christians. Plenty of massacres in muslim villages because they were muslim. From our point of view, we saw was christian and muslims killing each other.
> radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon
The first time I read that quote, I didn't react to the words "radical Islamist", but read "palestinians had left palestine and wanted a state in lebanon". I guess this shows my bias after all :D
Now I'm curious what caused the change in the palestinian rhetoric. I'll try to read some more about it. Thanks for opening my eyes to this.
It started in the 70s, before that all the islamist political groups were heavily repressed by Nasser and different nationalist leaders in the region, Sadat realignment, the Islamic revolution in Iran, and the commercialization of oil in the gulf countries opened the Pandora box for the different(and sometimes warring) groups inspired by different interpretations of Islam.
those damn communist and nationalist Palestinian factions wanting to create a caliphate.
Not interested in a political discussion, just wanted to point out that this guy has no idea about the Lebanese civil war or the history of the region
The parliament while Mossadegh was prime minister was democratically elected (though Mossadegh was appointed by the Shah, per the constitution). But by the time he was removed, Mossadegh had dissolved the parliament and was ruling by fiat based on a rigged plebiscite (his administration claimed the result was 99.9% in favore of the plebiscite[1]).
The U.S. certainly conspired with the Shah to oust him, but it seems like their initial plans failed (certainly, the plotters seemed to think it failed), and royalists in the Iranian military were ones who ultimately removed him.
The whole thing was a fairly complex situation that tends to get reduced to a simplistic soundbite with little connection to what actually happened.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1953/08/04/archives/mossadegh-gets-9...
> (though Mossadegh was appointed by the Shah, per the constitution)
This is the case in almost all parliamentary democracies. The head of state (either the president, the monarch or the viceroy) invites the leader of the largest party or coalition in the parliament to form the government and become the prime minister.
Iran _wasn't_ a parliamentary democracy at the time. It was a constitutional monarchy where an unelected monarch wielded significant political power. As I noted, he had just had the constitution changed a few years prior to increase the political powers granted to him (against U.S. objections, it should be noted).
Does that include when he had fled to Italy in 1953? The reports were he had little desire to go back to Iran, and the CIA and SIS met trying to figure out how to get him to go back to Iran
> the Iranian military were ones who ultimately removed him
That's how it usually happens, the military elements with contact with foreign powers are usually who do in the local nationalists.
There were ~4 days between the Shah fleeing and royalist forces taking power. I supposed if you want to consider those a 4 day interregnum you can.
- Lebanon (as an independent state) has been created in 1920, right after WW1 by the French "colonialists" specifically to draw an enclave of non-muslim minority in the country. It's classic Divide&Conquer strategy.
- The PLO (Palestinian Islamists) did try to set up an Islamic state in the country, but they were aided, or at least encouraged through inaction, by the muslims in the country who felt that the system was unfair.
- Currently the conflict isn't "muslims vs non-muslim". It's much more a conflict between Shia muslims (affiliated to Iran) and Sunni muslims (affiliated to KSA/Gulf). The non-muslims are now a minority and are split more or less evenly across the two camps.
- As of today, there's a lack of national identity, where every region's local lord amasses more power and influence than any "central" government.
It's not as simple as "they were non-muslims, got invaded by muslims and now it's gone bad"
Source: I'm Lebanese. PS: Pedantically, we became independent in 1943.
The Kurds are an exception, arguably should have their own state and would be the most sane partner in the middle east, but the US can't get its shit together to stand up to Turkey. Alas, we routinely screw over the Kurds as they get gassed by Saddam Hussein, ethnic cleansed by Turkey, abandoned to destruction by Russia when they were our best anti-ISIS ally.
Oil money and the wealth inequality that came with it certainly don't help things to engineer functioning democratic states, and then as stated elsewhere, neither does the CIA toppling democratic governments because multinational corps find them inconvenient.
America building "democracy" in Iraq was a telling process. All we cared about was oil and maintaining political control. We didn't care about making the lives of the everyday person better, which is the true fundamental path to a functioning democracy (it's why the USA's is gradually apart after all).
Shadi Hamid has been instrumental in helping me understand the distinction between the two things. Here’s a good example: https://mobile.twitter.com/shadihamid/status/144363599537580.... More generally: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/08/shadi-hamid-on-i...
What (most) Muslims want is something like what America was like in the early days. Puritan society was extremely democratic, insofar as the people did make the rules for society. But it was not liberal democracy—the puritans created public schools for the purpose of socializing children into religion. They also made it a criminal offense to celebrate Christmas: https://www.history.com/news/when-massachusetts-banned-chris...
But which rules? While Islam does have certain leeway for certain things to be left to society to decide, not everything is. You will not find any Muslim who will make it an offense to celebrate Eid for example.
Under President Arafat, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority adopted the 2003 Amended Basic Law, which stipulates Islam as the sole official religion in Palestine and the principles of Islamic sharia as a principal source of legislation. The draft Constitution contains the same provisions. The draft Constitution was formulated by a Constitutional Committee, established by Arafat in 1999 and endorsed by the PLO.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organizat...
You mean the native palestinians who were ethnically cleansed from their homeland and became refugees in Lebanon (and Jordan and Syria)
And Iran was never colonized (Egypt's a bit more complex, though it wasn't simplistically colonized).
Mossadegh wanted a secular independent Iran, England empowered the mullahs and worked for decades to destroy the secular left in Iran (along with the US). Eventually even the mullahs and bazaari turned against western colonialism.
The west also worked against Nasser's secular pan-Arab socialism, including the French/English invasion of the Suez.
This is in the context of India, but does a good job explaining the phenomenon: https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-culture-wars-of-post-colonial...
Turkey and Bangladesh are other good examples of countries where elites tried to impose secularism, and succeeded for a time, but which ultimately failed because the public didn’t want it.
Secularism really is more of a process than a law, you can't exactly legislate a culture into people. On the longer term, you need lots of good intentions sustained over decades, and you need investments in education sector to keep them going.
The effort, run from the mid-1950s through to the late 70s by a unit in London that was part of the Foreign Office, was focused on cold war enemies such as the Soviet Union and China, leftwing liberation groups and leaders that the UK saw as threats to its interests
The campaign also sought to mobilise Muslims against Moscow, promoting greater religious conservatism and radical ideas. To appear authentic, documents encouraged hatred of Israel.
Recently declassified British government documents reveal hundreds of extensive and costly operations.
To that effect, the pictures of modernism you see from the colonies are restricted to a few cities, and a few minority people from those cities. Bulk of the population masses lived in absolute poverty, illiteracy and there wasn't even a glimmer of hope for the future. The pictures misrepresent a non existent past, making it look like when natives were under colonisation, every last nook and corner of the country was overflowing with affluence, modernity and education. The reality is the exact opposite.
Since independence government spending is a lot more uniform and focused towards the benefits of Indians. Building infrastructure, institutions and projects that make sense towards national interests and not to make some European colonial power win WW1/2.
I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case with other former colonies of Europe.
In Latin America, the central extractivist structure was kept after independence, only the owners changed. Now instead of a foreign crown siphoning off the wealth, it was the local owners of the land -- who still sold as much as they could to foreign powers, and spent the rest in petty civil wars against their own people. Another common occurrence was involving foreign powers in local disputes, as the landowners always put their own interests before the interests of the country.
Nowadays it's less overt in most places, but it's still going on.
It's beyond even that. The English spent the nineteenth century deindustrializing India - textiles, steel etc.
Huh? You mean in biblical times?
"That was the time called Beirut Golden Era. And yet, while it was better in various aspects, Beirut has evolved significantly in many more, not only has it survived the destructive war but it has also progressed and become even lovelier today.
Yes, we have issues that need solving, and some are undergoing active solutions, but the golden era was not without issues neither. We just have to see how we have evolved and improved since then, while we continue our collective journey in making our country better and better. God bless Lebanon."
One side effect of the wars is that Lebanese people live much less programmatically and far planning than pretty much any other society out there. They try to enjoy life as much as possible and I believe they rank highest in the world for how much they go to the barber and how much they spend on cosmetics, etc. They care more for looking good to themselves and others to day than to save for tomorrow.
They live like they are forever in a truce thus they do their very best to find the glass half full rather than half empty and all that makes them very friendly, open and beautiful people that do their best at enjoying everything before the next bad thing will hit their country.
It's a cliche at this point to wonder whether the same thing can (or will?) happen in the United States, but I still found myself thinking about it nonetheless while reading the essay.
> The damage from the blast affected over half of Beirut, with the likely cost above US$15 billion and insured losses at around US$3 billion. Approximately ninety percent of the city's hotels were damaged and three hospitals completely destroyed, while two more suffered damage. [...] Windows and other installations of glass across the city were shattered.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/world/middleeast/beirut-e...
Except is was not bound for Somalia but for Mozambique. Still Eastern Africa. What do you think they'd use it for? Mining?
What do you think they'd use it for? Terrorism? That's where I call "Speculation!".
Fine, my own further Wikipedia sleuthing says you're probably right, but "I read a line on the NY Times" after being prompted for it is no proof: https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/a-hidden-tycoon-afri...
There were fewer of the sort of amenities that rich, non-Lebanese celebrities might be drawn to. For example, the author spends a lot of time talking about a fancy hotel, which doubled as a "Yacht and Marina Club", and which is now gone.
But there was still tremendous food all over the place, beautiful architecture, an active street culture, stunning museums, natural vistas, a lively and energetic spirit, and more diversity than I've seen anywhere else on Earth.
And what’s worse is that there’s not much one can do about it. One can preserve what one has inherited, and try to increase it, but others can knock it down much more easily.
1. After World War II, the entire region turned anticolonial and Arab independence movements took off in every country. Some of these efforts were thwarted by the US and Britain, as in the crushing of the pro-democracy government in Iran and the installation of the puppet Shah, and some were far more successful, as with Nasser's Egyptian government.
2. The CIA got in bed with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s after France and Britain were ejected from their colonial holdings in the region (see Suez Canal Crisis, c. 1954) because radical Islamic fundamentalism was viewed by the CIA as a reliable bulwark against the Godless Communist Soviets in the battle for control of the Middle East and North Africa (and more importantly, of their extensive oilfields). A major motivation for this was Egypt's Nasser reaching out to the Soviet Union for support.
3. A quick-and-dirty summary is that Western powers who wanted to retain control of the region turned to a colonial standard, divide-and-conquer, to break up Arab independence movements and install puppet regimes beholden to Washington and Wall Street. At the same time, the Soviet Union engaged in similar behavior and thus the whole region turned into a Cold War proxy conflict zone, with control of the oilfields being the ultimate prize.
The “Golden Age” was one for a (predominantly Christian) upper class that was out of touch (and still is) with the rest of the country.
Source: am Lebanese Christian.
what can 1 USD buy in lebanon?