Word: beirutization
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...read more like crime thrillers. A draft version of the first report in October 2005 even named four leading Syrian security officials as suspects. Mehlis also advised the Lebanese authorities to detain four top Lebanese generals who were close to Syria. They have been held without charge in a Beirut prison since August...
...Before I left Beirut last week I sat down with a member of Hizballah's politburo. He didn't look anything like the old Hizballah I knew from the '80s. For a start he asked to meet in the posh Vendome Hotel, in the rooftop restaurant that has a commanding view over the Corniche and the Mediterranean. Clean shaven and carrying a new leather briefcase, he offered me a Cuban cigar as soon as he sat down. He had just come from a class teaching economics...
...That day I had made a windscreen tour of Beirut's Shi'a suburbs. There was construction everywhere, rebuilding after the 2006 34-day war between Hizballah and Israel. Seven- and eight-story apartment buildings were nearly completed, as were the flyovers and cratered roads. It was all paid for by Iran. Anecdotally at least, there apparently was little or no corruption...
...politburo member asked, "People in the Middle East cannot help but compare what we have accomplished in Beirut with America's failed reconstruction of Iraq." He said that it is a lesson to countries on the brink of failure, like Egypt, where so much of Western aid has ended up in the pockets of Mubarak's family...
...experienced the siege mentality firsthand when I passed by Hizballah's "media office" in Beirut's southern suburbs to see if I could photograph the grave of its most recent "martyr," Imad Mughniyah - the Hizballah military commander assassinated in Damascus on February 12. It shouldn't have been a big deal: Mughniyah's pictures line the road from the airport into town. But the lady who ran the office looked at us as if we personally had detonated the car bomb that killed...