Word: beirutization
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...Critics have long warned that by refusing on principle to talk to the likes of Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizballah, the U.S. is restricting its own ability to influence events in a region where those regimes and organizations represent a significant force. As Rami Khouri, editor at large of Beirut's Daily Star, so tartly put it: "Washington is engaged almost exclusively with Arab governments whose influence with Syria is virtually nonexistent, whose credibility with Arab public opinion is zero, whose own legitimacy at home is increasingly challenged, and whose pro-U.S. policies tend to promote the growth...
...Fouad Wehbe sucks on his houka pipe at the Rawda coffee house around the corner from my apartment on Sharia Pakistan in Damascus, the irony of his current plight is not lost on him. Last year, Wehbe, 26, joined thousands of his countrymen on the streets of Beirut to call for an end to Syria's domination of his homeland, and threw a heady, vodka-fueled "Liberation Festival" in his Hamra apartment when they officially withdrew. Then, last Thursday, the graphic designer, his parents and brother paid a cabdriver $2,500 to drive them out of Beirut to the heart...
...Wehbe's hometown of Beirut was, in many ways, a kind of Middle Eastern New York: a vibrant cultural capital where an educated homegrown populace rubbed elbows with a parade of jet-setting foreigners. By contrast, the far more conservative Damascus gives off an Arab-flavored Soviet vibe, from the paranoid residents and omnipresent secret police to the 30-year-old junkers rolling along the streets. The flow of refugees from Beirut to Damascus, therefore, has made for an odd tableau: the normally dreary city is suddenly teeming with sharply dressed Lebanese and foreigners figuring out their next move...
...pick up staples like bedsheets and bottled water, and sign up with the Ministry of Labor for help finding work. (Less lucky are the hundreds of thousands of Syrian migrant workers suddenly back home and jobless - the legion of cheap labor that built the recent wave of pricey new Beirut high-rises, and cleaned the apartments inside...
...They realize that Shia influence is what's at stake, so it's natural for the two parties to come together," said Dr. Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. "All Shia in Lebanon support Hizballah because they believe that the fall of the party means the fall of the entire Shia community...