Last week in Beirut, I had lunch with a friend at a restaurant whose USP, apart from serving delicious food, is to have a table-sharing concept as well as the option to sit outside on the street on wooden crates. All very Shoreditch but it breaks the usually stuffy Lebanese mould and is by all accounts doing very well. This was the second time we had been and we noticed that the owner had expanded his business by taking the next-door property. “Just you wait and see,” my friend said. “The Lebanese ... the moment they see someone becoming successful, they drop you like a stone.”
It was harsh analysis, but it was based on more than a grain of truth. Lebanon is a small and intimate country where everyone knows everyone. We know who owns which bank, which car dealership, which hospital and which rooftop bar. We even know who owns the city centre. And the next day, as I took off from Beirut heading back to London, I reflected on my friend’s theory.
And it was then that I had a rare epiphany. You see, up until that moment, I had told anyone who cared to listen that the process of land expropriation that led to creation of the new post-civil war Beirut Central District (BCD) was unavoidable, that Solidere, the company tasked with rebuilding the 191-hectare area, had no choice but to “seize” land and refund landlords with shares. The argument was that this policy would ensure that the process of reconstruction would be holistic instead of piecemeal and reliant on the financial commitment of the individual owners. It would have been a horrible mishmash, I would argue. There was no other way.
This impassioned reasoning was normally deployed in the face of arguments that the late prime minister Rafik Hariri, who created and mandated Solidere in its mammoth task, was creating a playground for his buddies in the GCC and jobs for his cronies at home, in particular Sunnis from his hometown of Sidon. Bottom line, this was not a city centre for the ordinary Lebanese as it once had been.
Hariri had a “build it and they will come” attitude and to be fair in the early days of the BCD – we’re talking 2000 – everybody flocked to the area. Parliament Square on a Sunday was packed with families of all classes, happy to have somewhere to go in a city with very few public spaces, jostling with tourists – Arab and non-Arab – and all having a jolly good time.
In 2005, when Hariri, his former economy minister Bassel Fleihan and 19 other innocent souls were immolated in front of the nearby Hotel St Georges, the area became politicised. The March 8 and March 14 blocs were born in subsequent political upheaval during which the area was swamped by huge public demonstrations. A year later, in 2006, there was an 18-month sit in by the pro-Syrian, anti-Hariri March 8 parties in the area. This turmoil effectively ripped the heart out of the area to the extent that it is now a shadow of its former self during the day and a barbed wire-draped ghost town after dark. And I would argue that it was just bad luck that the area became stigmatised and business owners decided to open in less controversial areas.
That was until my moment of sudden realisation on the Middle East Airlines Airbus. And it went something like this: there really was no reason why the government had to blanket expropriate all the land. It should have given tenants the option to restore their respective buildings by a certain time frame and according to strict building codes. Those who couldn’t do so, either for financial or complicated legal reasons, would have to accept the share option. If this had happened, the process would have become more of a joint venture and we wouldn’t have had the vicious anti-Solidere sentiment that has tarred the whole process with the brush of corruption and self-interest.
Would it have made a difference? Yes, and here is where my friend’s comment about the picky nature of the Lebanese is relevant: those landlords who got back their property would have been invested in making the area work. The BCD would not be seen as the property of one family or, even more toxic, one sect. I wager it would have endured Lebanon’s sad political trajectory between 2005 and 2008. As it was, deep down in the Lebanese psyche, they saw it as the sole preserve of one family and by and large, they have turned their back on it.
Michael Karam is a freelance writer who lives between Beirut and Brighton.
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