What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

https://www.the961.com/this-is-what-beirut-was-like-before-the-war/

by mmastrac • 4 years ago

197 213 4 years ago

rayiner11• 4 years ago

Lots of places in the Middle East were more European like this before the colonial influences weakened and the Muslim majority populations got back more power over their own countries. Egypt and Iran are similar. The nostalgia is somewhat uncomfortable because in some respects things were better because they were better, but in others it’s the perception of things being better because they’re more relatable to Europeans.

james-redwood2• 4 years ago

Lebanon became independent in 1945. Civil war began in 1975, largely as a result of radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon. Lebanon beforehand, it is important to note, was not Muslim majority at all. It was Christian and Druze, and that was the very foundation of the country itself. It was never the country of Muslims in the first place.

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.

rayiner11• 4 years ago

When Lebanon became independent from France it was based on a political structure created by the French. Lebanon’s religious demographics are fuzzy, but the Christian population probably became a minority decades before the civil war.

webmobdev• 4 years ago

An elderly friend, retired, likes to reminisce about his time in the middle-east. He was quite upset when he heard about the conflict in Syria. For him, it was one of the few places that had a vibrant culture in the middle-east, and the beautiful women there (not covered up), added to the cosmopolitan charm of the place.

(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-... ).

kamaal5• 4 years ago

>Lebanon beforehand, it is important to note, was not Muslim majority at all. It was Christian and Druze, and that was the very foundation of the country itself. It was never the country of Muslims in the first place.

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.

campground• 4 years ago

Iran may not have been colonized but their democratic government was overthrown by the US and Britain to prevent them nationalizing their fossil fuel supply.

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.

_alxk4• 4 years ago

largely as a result of radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War

_shadi3• 4 years ago

largely as a result of radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon.

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

finnh• 4 years ago

Iran's decline began when the US overthrew Mossadegh's democratically elected government and installed the Shah, which led to the Ayatollah.

babarock6• 4 years ago

Your description of Lebanon is correct, but incomplete.

- 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.

_nedR2• 4 years ago

a result of radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine

You mean the native palestinians who were ethnically cleansed from their homeland and became refugees in Lebanon (and Jordan and Syria)

azth2• 4 years ago

Lebanon was literally formed by the colonialist West, who used divide and conquer to strategically place people there so that the conflicts keep going.

mytailorisrich• 4 years ago

It was nicknamed "Paris of the Middle East", including because of the French influence. There's also a large Christian population in Lebanon, which I suspect made 'absorbing' European influences easier.

bnralt4• 4 years ago

France didn't control Lebanon for long, less than three decades and never as a colony. These pictures here were taken a couple of decades after Lebanese independence. I imagine the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the resulting turmoil has more to do with the upheaval we see in the region than the Europeans leaving after their relatively brief period of control.

And Iran was never colonized (Egypt's a bit more complex, though it wasn't simplistically colonized).

VictorPath3• 4 years ago

Egypt and Iran are similar

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.

rayiner11• 4 years ago

Secularism is also a western import. Mosdadegh was educated in Switzerland, after all.

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.

_shadi3• 4 years ago

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.

kamaal5• 4 years ago

'Colonial Influences' were exactly what they were - 'Colonial Influences', Here in India, British barely spent money on education, or industrialising the country. Whatever little infrastructure got built, was done to ensure British could efficiently siphon off whatever they were trying to take from here.

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.

TremendousJudge• 4 years ago

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.

gautamdivgi• 4 years ago

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. It’s actually the truth.

VictorPath3• 4 years ago

Here in India, British barely spent money on education, or industrialising the country.

It's beyond even that. The English spent the nineteenth century deindustrializing India - textiles, steel etc.

justinzollars2• 4 years ago

What a limited view. Consider Tyre, very close to Beirut. Before Muslim it was Phoenician, Hittite, Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Persian, Macedonian, Israeli, English, Ottoman, Roman, and now Lebanon. Its had both Eastern and Western Influence (since Alexander). Remember Alexander predates the existence of Islam and Christianity - certainly colonialism. At the time of Beirut's founding its religion was following a god named Baal and Astarte.

dvirsky• 4 years ago

Israeli

Huh? You mean in biblical times?

nemesisj• 4 years ago

I follow the referenced instagram account and I actually find it depressing.

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.

martincmartin3• 4 years ago

The country is in complete deadlock politically - all of the warlords from the civil war just became politicians and then systematically looted the country.

I always wonder why many democracies devolve into politicians just looting the government, whereas others become successful and relatively less corrupt.

kamaal5• 4 years ago

Because voting is just a small part of Democracy. Democracies need strong and independent, judicial, law making and executive branches.

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.

csomar2• 4 years ago

All systems will have a tendency toward corruption. Democracy is really a facade and a political tool and not what runs a country. The bureaucrats in the government are what run a country; and they hold most of the cards. (and they are also very difficult to change or replace).

nonrandomstring2• 4 years ago

Not the best or deepest account, but for the modern reader who can't spare time on Aristotle and a gamut of old beards [1] Acemoglu and Robinson's account is clear and interesting reading [2].

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail

shagmin• 4 years ago

This is a topic I find interesting. Out of any society in the world, in some form or another there always emerges some de facto leaders. And in some places in the modern world they will adopt democracy only so much as they know they can "win" elections and harness goodwill from other democracies. In some places being directly involved with the government is the only way to live with some luxury.

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.

guykdm• 4 years ago

"Lebanese" is a modern invention. Lebanon is a contrived post colonial state with no historical foundations. Those most usually fail horribly.

geraneum• 4 years ago

Million dollar question. I don’t think it’s as clear cut as just these two very distinct groups.

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.

ClumsyPilot• 4 years ago

I always wonder why many democracies devolve into politicians just looting

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.

chadash• 4 years ago

We talk a lot about separation of powers, the constitution, etc. in the US, but until pretty recently, we failed to appreciate the fact that democracy is largely a cultural thing. It works because we believe it works.

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...

munificent2• 4 years ago

I think about this all the time.

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.

JoeAltmaier• 4 years ago

Free elections != democracy. Also respect for institutions and equality before the law. Any part of that weakened, it can go off the rails.

csomar2• 4 years ago

Beirut and Lebanon has to be one of the largest missed opportunities or what-could-have-been situations of the last 100 years.

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.

skippyboxedhero4• 4 years ago

100 years? It was basically a first-world country 50 years ago. The decline in living standards in Lebanon is one of the largest ever (Argentina probably the biggest, Venezuela is the other big one, Lebanon is somewhere around Venezuela).

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).

fezfight4• 4 years ago

And let's say what it is: greed.

nsajko2• 4 years ago

Vague insinuations such as this one always harm the discussion. Why not just communicate clearly?

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.

rendall• 4 years ago

It is obvious what happened, ...it has clearly been engineered to happen this way

Sorry, not clear. Would you mind explaining this li5? I'm pretty ignorant about Beirut and Lebanon

_nedR2• 4 years ago

It is also being ripped apart by external actors - Iran, Israel, France, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United States and I am probably missing others.

ROARosen4• 4 years ago

External actors, hmmm... I believe you mixed that up with internal actors like Hezbolla and others, who have a tight grip on the countries political system.

guelo3• 4 years ago

Every country neighboring Israel is a mess since Israel tries to destabilize them to make them weak so that Israel can be the regional superpower.

ROARosen4• 4 years ago

Last time I checked the leader of Hezbolla, which is part of the government of Lebanon said: "There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel."

Not the other way around.

raincom• 4 years ago

This is what happens, when the goal of politicians is to acquire wealth for ten generations, and the welfare of people becomes secondary. This leads to "brain drain". The only people are left: the old, the weak, those who can't migrate to other countries.

BigHatLogan• 4 years ago

This strikes me as tremendously sad--how a city can go from lively, productive, and engaging to something else entirely in such a short time span. The writer speaks positively about the Beirut of today. I won't pretend to know anything about Beirut, but is it really "lovelier" (author's word) today than it was back then?

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.

quacked• 4 years ago

I think it already is happening in the US, even in cities that are currently considered "nice". There is no overarching ethos that the citizens hold regarding small economies and city design, and so anywhere with a lot of Americans is subject to the centralization of commerce and the development of cookie-cutter, investment-group-owned cheap buildings.

netsharc3• 4 years ago

The date on the top of the article is August 10, 2019. Almost a year later, August 4, 2020, the port explosion happened, probably breaking all the glass of the city. Wikipedia:

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.

petre5• 4 years ago

They should have probably left that wreck of a ship transport its explisive cargo to Somalia or wherever it was going instead of arresting it and storing its cargo. Probably Russian explosives bound for Eastern Africa conflict zones masking as fertilizer.

impendia• 4 years ago

I was there in 2017 and in 2018, and I found Beirut to be a beautiful, amazing city.

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.

zeveb• 4 years ago

It’s so much easier to destroy than to build. That applies to buildings, but it also applies to cultures and civilisations. The work of centuries — even of millennia — can be broken in decades or even years.

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.

epolanski• 4 years ago

One of the things I've learned about Lebanese is that the scars of war are very vivid in society and it changed it for generations.

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.

dakial1• 4 years ago

I thought it was going to be those terrible posts like those "look how Iran/Cuba/etc was much better for western touristic eyes before the uprising/war/revolution!" but at the end the author gives the plot twist.

"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."

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

There are a lot of interesting historical factors that led to the destabilization of the region:

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.

upupandup• 4 years ago

Is lebanon safe to remote work from for visible foreigners?

what can 1 USD buy in lebanon?

mamoul• 4 years ago

It's difficult to work remotely in Lebanon unless you have access to reliable electricity and a solid internet connection. Both of which are unfortunately scarce.

stu2b50• 4 years ago

Unless your form of remote work does not require reliable access to electricity or internet, it would be difficult to work remotely.

spaetzleesser• 4 years ago

Beirut should be a warning for all of us who live in comfortable countries and think things well be like that forever. I remember talking to somebody who grew up in Beirut sometime in the 60s or 70s and she said at that time nobody would have believed that their well developed, prosperous city would descend into chaos only a few years later.

deepdriver2• 4 years ago

Minneapolis is well on its way.

benburleson• 4 years ago

Really? As an American (on the West coast), I had no idea.

ronyfadel2• 4 years ago

Not pictured are the refugee camps and slums that have existed since at least 1948.

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.

brink• 4 years ago

Has there ever been a "great civilization" that didn't also have slums?

ronyfadel2• 4 years ago

It's all about ratios. A large chunk of the Lebanese people lived in poverty (add to that 100,000 Palestinian refugees who arrived in 1948).

dannylandau• 4 years ago

Cool pics. I'm from Israel and would like to visit Beirut, enjoy the food and people, not sure that will ever be possible in the near future.

What Beirut was like before the war (2019)

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