Incendiary events reawaken unease for many Lebanese

The theory that there is too much to lose is a mantra in Lebanon, a country in which the private sector, not to mention a huge slab of Gulf money, has bet on stability, writes Michael Karam.

The situation in Lebanon has developed into a sectarian tit-for-tat of violence and abductions. Anwar Amro / AFP

Last week, when the sparks from the Syrian bonfire leapt over the fence and set fire to Lebanon's dry brush garden, I was giving a series of talks at the London International Wine Fair.

One was, rather aptly, entitled "Making wine not war: overcoming the cliché of conflict", the idea being that there is so much more to Lebanon - warmth, generosity, conviviality, and other gooey things that help to sell the idea of good living - than war, discord and hatred.

That morning, the gods reminded me not to push my luck and sent a photo to my BlackBerry of a fire raging the night before in Beirut's upmarket district of Verdun.

The rioting was the result of the shooting on May 20 of the Sunni cleric Sheikh Ahmad Abdel Wahed and his bodyguard after they failed to stop at an army checkpoint in the northern region of Akkar. The mood among the wine producers was further subdued when news filtered through of the abduction of 11 Shia pilgrims, allegedly by the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo.

The situation back home had clearly developed into a sectarian tit-for-tat of killing and abductions.

For those who cared to draw the parallels, it was all reminiscent of 1975 and the early stages of Lebanon's civil war.

I mentioned this to Nayef Kassatly, a bullish young man whose family owns Chateau Ka, a wine brand that has fought off intense global competition and made it on to the shelves of both Marks & Spencer and the Waitrose supermarket chain.

"I'm not worried," he said. "There is too much money invested in Lebanon for it to go under." But later, when the news of the abductions came, the winning smile did betray a hint of fatigue. "What can we do? We work in Lebanon. We have no choice to make it succeed."

The Kassatlys are typical of the Lebanese family-owned company, one defined by hard work, innovation and commitment.

The theory that there is too much to lose is a mantra in a country in which the private sector, not to mention a huge slab of Gulf money, has bet on stability.

The Lebanese, bless them, have no time to consider disaster. I suppose it's a case of why worry about something over which you have no control?

But surely the notion that "too much money has been invested in Lebanon" for it all to go belly up is exactly what people were chanting in the early 1970s, even after the 1969 Cairo accord allowed the Palestine Liberation Organization to launch attacks into Israel from Lebanese soil and light the fuse for conflict.

And, boy, did we have a lot to lose. Back then, the Lebanese pound was virtually a hard currency and the country was riding the wave that created the "Paris of the Middle East" cliché that would set the standard for every subsequent revival.

Back in 1975, as the political parties were handing out weapons and donning black balaclavas, a doomed Hilton Hotel was getting ready to open its doors and cash in on the glamour that Beirut appeared effortlessly to generate.

But the choice cuts of meat and bottles of champagne ended up being consumed by militiamen, and the opening shots of the civil war were fired around the hotels that had weeks earlier represented good times and carefree living.

"We are at another peak of optimism for Lebanon, and sadly I think we are heading for another fall," a septuagenarian Lebanese woman, who has lived in London since those traumatic days, told me over dinner.

"In any case, it is Qatari, Kuwaiti, Emirati and Saudi money that has been invested, and it will be reimbursed by the Americans like it was back in the '70s. After all, what is a few billion to get rid of Hizbollah?"

A Michael Karam is associate editor in chief of Executive, a regional business magazine based in Lebanon