Why No News From Lebanon?

[primative1]

While on the subject of BLOWBACK, I got to thinking about which events in the past year got me most upset and I zeroed in on last years heroic destruction of Lebanon. What I thought of was how I hadnt heard a single sound bite about anything that has happened there since the bombs stopped falling. Has anyone? Have they succeded in getting power back up or in fixing a single bridge or are people there just sitting in the rubble in the dark?

[dave_p]

1. It's under way, but slow

Lebabon's gained quite a bit of reconstruction expertise in recent decades. Needless to say, most of the foreign aid will again come from Muslim and EU countries, as in the 1990s. Iran's funding Hezbollah's independent reconstruvction efforts, while some of the Gulf States have stepped in too with competing direct donations to communities. The government's been accused of a slow start, but some work's been done: the destroyed Zahrani Bridge near Sidon's due to reopen next week. The effort's been hampered by a shortage of building workers owing to the construction boom in the Gulf following the oil price surge; the cost of building materials has been rising too because of the demand.

[karynnj]

2. I've seen almost nothing in the news

he last significant thing I 've seen was the Boston Globe editorial in January, 2007 by your Senator Kerry. Senator Kerry has mentioned Lebanon in his list of how, in addition to the problems of Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, there are many other crisises in the middle east - none getting the diplomacy needed. Here's a link to the Editorial on Kerry's Senate site. (Kerry and Dodd visited Lebanon in December 2006. I assume that Dodd may have spoken to this as well.)

http://kerry.senate.gov/v3/cfm/record.cfm?id=267395

[Igel]

3. They're not all sitting in rubble in the dark.

In October I e-mailed a few booksellers in Beirut; one only took institutional orders. The other two had no trouble responding quickly, rapidly and easily tracking down the books I wanted that they didn't have in stock (one was a very nice yet pirated edition), processing my credit card payments, or mailing the books. Some of the books had their info on Lebanese publishers' websites which were up and running. Note that this requires that the infrstructure be reasonably intact, and the publishers' warehouses and other bookstores untouched.

My take is that at least some Shi'ite sections were completely trashed and parts of the infrastructure here and there in the center and north were hit; the south was a mess, but most refugees quickly returned; there have been reports that Hezbollah's construction jihad didn't quite turn out as expected over the long run. But even late in the Israeli bombing campaign there two NYT articles that undid most of the NYT's reporting; the NYT was routinely showing pictures of destruction and allowing the inference that everywhere was hit. One article late in the bombing talked about a coffee bar in a Sunni or Xian area; in the background the tv was on, etc., etc., outside through the windows there were unscathed tall buildings ... and the only complaint was difficulty in finding certain imported coffees. Another article was aghast a the bombing of a vehicle in a Christian neighborhood ... the problem is the word *the*--it was the first and only bombing. The point: The amount of destruction varied by area.