Michael J.

Totten

Can Beirut Be Paris Again?

Freed from Syrian domination, Lebanons capital could shine.

Before it became the poster child for urban disaster areas in the mid-1970s, Beirut was called the
Paris of the Middle East. With its French Mandate architecture, its world-class cuisine, its
fashionable and liberated women, its multitude of churches on the Christian side of town, and its
thousand-year-old ties to France, it fit the part. Then civil war broke out in 1975 and tore city and
country to pieces. More than 100,000 people were killed during a period when Lebanons
population was under 4 million. The war sucked in powers from the Middle East and beyond
the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel, Iran, France, the Soviet Union, the United States
but no country inflicted more damage than Syria, ruled by the Assad familys Arab Socialist
Baath Party.
Today, the shoe is on the other foot. Syria, not Lebanon, is suffering the horrors of civil war.
With Syrias Bashar al-Assad possibly on his way outor at least too busy to export mayhem to
his neighborswill Beirut have the chance to regain its lost glory?
Before 1975, when Beirut was still Paris, Syria was the unstable place in the region. Indeed, it
was among the least stable countries on earth. During the 1950s and early 1960s, military coups
came as often as Christmas. Not until the Baath Party seized power in 1963 did Syria settle
down, and then only because the Baathists erected a Soviet-style police state that terrorized the
population into passivity.
Hafez al-Assad, father of the current ruler, took power in 1970, and he cleverly figured out that
Syrias inherent instability could be exported to Lebanon. Roughly 10 percent of Lebanons
population is Druze, with the rest divided evenly among Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Shiite
Muslims. The Christians have historical ties to the West dating back to the Crusades; the Sunnis
are backed by much of the Arab world (which, outside Iraq, is overwhelmingly Sunni); the
Shiites patron is Iran, one of only a handful of Shiite-majority countries in the world. Lebanons
three main communities agreed long ago that the best way to prevent one group from lording it
over the others was to have a weak central government and share power. But a country that was
small, divided by nature, and weak by design was easy prey for its totalitarian neighbor.

True, Syria didnt start the Lebanese war, which was sparked in Beirut by clashes between
Palestinian and Christian militias. But the Syrian army invaded Lebanon during the war and
became one of the most destructive belligerents there. After the war ended in 1990, the Syrian
military continued to occupy Lebanon until 2005, when the Cedar Revolution forced it to
withdraw. Even then, Damascus could lay waste to Lebanon from the inside via its violent local
proxies: the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, Amal (another party), and especially the Hezbollah
militia. The Taif Agreement at the conclusion of hostilities had required the disarmament of
every militia in Lebanon, but Assads army, which oversaw the disarmament, left Hezbollah in
placepartly because it was a useful ally in Syrias war against Israel and partly because it could
be used to subdue Beirut if Damascuss new vassal got a little too uppity.
Hezbollah served both purposes after the Syrian armys withdrawal. It started a 2006 war with
Israel that cost more than 1,000 Lebanese citizens their lives, created more than a million
refugees (almost 25 percent of the country), and shattered infrastructure from the north to the
south. And though Hezbollah and its local allies lost the most recent election, theyre in charge
of the government anyway, thanks to a slow-motion takeover that began with their invasion and
brief occupation of West Beirut in 2008.
So it hardly mattered that the Lebanese managed to evict the Syrians in the Cedar Revolution;
Bashar al-Assad, who took power in Syria in 2000, could still rule from afar. But he wont be
able to do that if he loses the war thats currently raging in Syria. The Free Syrian Army is
battling alongside the al-Qaida-linked terrorists of Jabhat al-Nusra to topple the Assad regime,
which has already lost control of huge swaths of the country. The conflict is partly sectarian: the
Assad family belongs to Syrias heterodox Alawite minority, while the rebels, part of the Sunni
Muslim majority, are getting money and guns from wealthy Sunni Arabs in the Arabian
Peninsula. But the war has inevitably dragged in regional politics. Israel has launched air strikes
against Syrian depots to prevent weapons from being transferred to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Russia and Iran are backing Assad to the end, as is Hezbollah. At the time of this writing, the
United States has pledged to increase aid to the rebels, though its not clear what exactly that aid
will be. In a word, Syria has become Lebanonized.
Thats not a brand-new development for the country. Syria before Assad was a playground of
foreign intervention, says Martin Kramer of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Hafez al-Assad turned Syria into a regional player in its own rightoccupying Lebanon,
running his own Palestinian factions, and enabling Hezbollah. But now Syria has reverted to
what it was before: a jumble of clashing interest groups and resentful sects pitted against one
another, all seeking foreign backers who might tip the balance in their favor. In the long view,
fragmented weakness may be Syrias default condition, and the Syria of Assad pre an
aberration.
The obvious analogy is Iraq: both countries were formed as a result of French and British
negotiations after the Ottoman Empires defeat in World War I. Historically, there was never a
state called Syria, says Eli Khoury, the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Levant and cofounder of the

Lebanon Renaissance Foundation. Syria, like Iraq, was wired together with a minority-backed
Baath Party dictatorship. Neither country is an internally coherent nation like Egypt, Tunisia, or
Morocco. Syria and Iraq have so far only been governed by ruthless centralized iron, Khoury
points out. Its otherwise hard to make sense of these places. Or as Jean-Pierre Katrib, a
Beirut-based university lecturer and human rights activist, puts it: I dont see Syria as heading
toward transition. I see Syria as heading toward disintegration.
If that happens, how will it affect Beirut? To answer that question, it helps to understand this
citys strange ethnic geography. During the long civil war, Beirut split apart into mutually hostile
cantons. Christian militias squared off against Palestinian and Sunni ones across a gash known as
the Green Line, which ripped through the center of the city on a northwest-by-southeast axis. To
this day, the city remains divided along that line: the eastern half is almost entirely Christian, the
western half predominantly Sunni. And the southern suburbs are all but monolithically Shiite.
The Christian half of the city sustained less damage during the war than the Sunni half did, and it
is consequently the more French-looking of the two today. Its culture is also more French, since
many Lebanese Christians feel a political, cultural, and religious kinship with France and the
French language that Lebanese Muslims do not. The western side of the city is more culturally
Arab and also, since so many of its buildings were flattened during the war, architecturally bland.
Though the Sunnis there are more liberal and cosmopolitan than most Sunni Arabs elsewhere,
their culture, religion, language, and loyalties are, for the most part, in sync with those of their
more conservative Middle Eastern neighbors.
Still, East and West Beirut seem nearly identical if you compare them with the southern suburbs.
Collectively known as the dahiyeh, which means suburb in Arabic, they are Hezbollahs de
facto capital. The central government has no writ there. Hezbollah provides the security, schools,
hospitals, and other public services. Drive down the streets, and youll see the flags of Hezbollah
and Iran but rarely the flag of Lebanon. The dahiyeh looks and feels like a ramshackle Iranian
satellite, even though you can walk there from central Beirut in an hour. Once known as the belt
of misery, the area is still a slum. Most of the buildings are 12-story apartment towers built
without permits or attention to aesthetics of any kindespecially the French kind. There are
places in East Beirut where, if you try hard enough and squint, you could fool yourself into
believing that youre in France. You could never get away with that in the dahiyeh.
When armed conflict breaks out, the dividing lines among these three parts of Beirut are the flash
points. At one of these, a half-mile south of the city center along the old Green Line, is whats
commonly called the Yellow House, or whats left of it. This once-beautiful row of apartments
and shops was the posh home of some of Beiruts finest before the civil war. Now its a bulletpocked stone skeleton. Though its finally being renovated after decades of sitting in ruin, the
chewed-up facade will be encased in glass and only the interior refurbished. The building will
become a war museum, its husk preserved as a constant reminder that urban civil war is one of
the worst catastrophes that the human race can inflict on itself.

Restoration has also taken place in downtown Beirut. Most of the area has been rebuilt; stone
buildings that delightfully blend Parisian and Ottoman styles have been lovingly restored. But
the area feels antiseptic and fake, as though it had been built yesterday as an imitation of Beiruts
past. It wasnt; the city center simply sustained such heavy damage during the civil war that all
the old buildings had to be completely resurfaced. These buildings are so clean that they seem
unreal, especially compared with the rest of the city, which is chaotic and wild, like most Middle
Eastern and Mediterranean cities. Downtown Beirut seems more pristine than the most pristine
parts of Paris; you get the impression of a Levantine Disneyland.
Then theres a large area, immediately northwest of downtown, that the war razed entirely. It has
been rebuilt from scratch as something called the Souks of Beirutan open-air mall with a hint
of traditional style to remind the visitor of Middle Eastern bazaars. The shops, which tend to be
too expensive not only for most Lebanese citizens but for middle-class Americans like me, cater
to wealthy Gulf Arabs on vacation. The development certainly looks better than the rubble field
it replaced, but most Beirutis feel a bit alienated by it. And it sucked half the merchants out of
downtown: Beiruts economy can sustain only so many high-end restaurants and stores. Theres
such a thing as rebuilding too quickly.
In fact, much of the city may be doing that. In the name of postwar progress, many of Beiruts
most beautiful buildings and even entire streets are being demolished and replaced with highrises. Some of the towers, like those along the citys new waterfront, are outstanding
architecturally; others are generic blocks, little more than vertical placeholders, that are replacing
some of the most charming urban vistas in the Middle East. Construction in Lebanon has
reached an alarming stage where much of the architectural memory of a city like Beirut is being
erased, says Michael Young, the opinion-page editor at Beiruts Daily Star. Where once we
had a relatively charming Mediterranean city, what we now have increasingly is a city of
impersonal high-rises, many of them of questionable architectural value. Everywhere there is
concrete and almost no green space. A graduate of the American University of Beirut adds that
the city is destroying ruins that are over 2,000 years old to build structures that could very likely
be uninhabitable within a year because the political situation could dramatically worsen. By
which he means, of course, that these new buildings could be destroyed by war.
Beirut sometimes looks like what youd get if you put Paris, Miami, and Baghdad into a blender
and pressed PUREE. Gleaming glass skyscrapers rise above French-style villas adjacent to
bullet-pocked walls and mortar-shattered towers. Hip entrepreneurs set up luxury boutiques next
to crumbling modern-day ruins. A Ferrari showroom sits across the street from a parking lot that
was recently a rubble field. Beiruts fabulous cuisine never went away; neither did its high-end
shopping districts, cafs, nightclubs, and bars. But English has eclipsed French as the secondmost-spoken language. None of the new construction looks even the slightest bit French.
Downtown Beirut does have a major selling point: cars are banished from most of it, an
arrangement that provides an island of breathing space in a sea of noise and danger. The rest of
the city is a pedestrian nightmare. Streets are so narrow that cars are often parked on the

sidewalks, forcing everyone on foot into roadways turned into rivers of steel by the worst drivers
in the world, at least outside Albania. Stop signs are regarded as suggestions; the few traffic
lights are obeyed only when traffic is at its busiest, and even then, drivers constantly run red
lights. Now, for the first time in its history, the city is installing parking meters. Parking meters
in Beirut! Theyre as incongruous as a topless bar would be in Saudi Arabia. Nobody takes them
seriously. I recently walked down a street where every parked carone after another, for several
blocks in a rowhad a ticket tucked under its windshield wipers.
Beirut is nevertheless by far the most cosmopolitan, liberal, and even Western of Arab cities. To
an extent, you can chalk that up to the cultural influence of Lebanese Christians and imperial
France. But the Sunni half of town is no less culturally developed than the Christian. Art
galleries, fantastic bookstores, film and music festivals, and even gay barsunthinkable in
Baghdad or Cairoproliferate in both parts of the city.
One reason for this liberality is that Beirut isnt very religious. Its hard to say what percentage
of Beirutis believe in God and take religion seriously, but the bars and clubs are certainly much
more crowded than the churches and mosques. When Lebanese self-identify as Christian, Sunni,
Shiite, or Druze, they arent telling you what they believe; theyre telling you which community
they belong to. Religious sects in the Eastern Mediterranean function as ethnicities, just as they
do in Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia. Each sect has its own history, its own culture,
its own aspirations and fears, and its own constellation of allies and enemies. Beirutis cant drop
all that baggage just by choosing to be secular. During times of armed conflict, you can be killed
for whats printed next to RELIGION on your identity card. At those times, you can find safety
only within the confines of your sect.
Will the sectarian monster ravaging Syria again claw its way to the surface in Beirut? Sunni
Muslims here support the Syrian opposition, by and large, while most of the Shiite community
backs Assad. Hezbollah is now openly involved in the Syrian warwithout anything resembling
an exit planand is taking such heavy casualties that Young, writing for the online magazine
NOW Lebanon, dubbed it Hezbollahs Vietnam. Meanwhile, Lebanese Sunnis in the Bekaa
Valley, near the Syrian border, are giving shelter to their brethren in the Free Syrian Army, and
some are even volunteering as soldiers.
Lebanese Sunnis and Lebanese Shiites are therefore killing each other right now in Syria. It may
be only a matter of time before they stop bothering to cross the border and start killing each other
at home. Its a miracle a war here hasnt already started, says Samy Gemayel, a member of
parliament and the son of former Lebanese president Amine Gemayel. I dont understand it.
And I dont know how long this can last. Because the more people get involved in Syria, the
more people will die in Syria, and the more the grudges will grow, and the more problems well
have on the inside.
The two sides may have restrained themselves because they know that neither can win a war
inside Lebanon. Gemayels father summed up the futility of civil war when Lebanon was

chewing off its own leg in the 1980s: Everyone is against everyone else, and it all keeps going
around and around in circles without anyone ever winning or anything being accomplished.
Khoury concurs. The beauty of Lebanon is that everyone is a minority and no one can kick
anyones ass, he says. Everyone realizes that if they start a war, they arent going to get
anything out of it.
If Assad loses the Syrian war and doesnt take Lebanon with him, Beirut will finally have relief
from the cascade of disasters that have befallen it for the last 38 years. Lebanon would still have
Hezbollah to deal with, of course, but the so-called Party of God would have lost one of its only
two allies in the region. Hezbollah will be cut down to a more realistic size, predicts Mosbah
Ahdab, a former member of parliament from the predominantly Sunni city of Tripoli. They will
still have their weapons, but they cant continue provoking the tens of millions of people who
live around here that theyve been aggressive to all these years. Nadim Koteich, a talk-show
host with Future Television, thinks that Assads fall would be a bigger problem for Hezbollah.
For decades, theyve had this huge stable state behind them, along with a corridor for weapons
coming out of Iran, he points out. They had this enormous machine and all its tools at their
back. It will be a tremendous blow for them when they lose it.
Beiruts economy is in worse shape than Ive ever seen it. Tourism is one of the citys primary
industries, but tumbleweeds blow through the hotel lobbies. Governments all over the world are
issuing terrifying travel warnings about the city. The last two summer tourism seasons were
busts; this summer will make three in a row. Restaurants and nightclubs are closing because they
dont have enough foreign customers and the locals dont have enough money.
Still, the city looks wonderful. The amount of reconstruction is simply astounding. Some of it
looks like Miami, true, but its all superior to anything built in Beirut between the end of World
War IIwhen an abundance of cheap materials and a cratering of aesthetic standards ruined
architecture all over the worldand the end of the civil war. The city made this progress despite
Syrias military occupation, despite Hezbollahs war against Israel, despite the invasion of Beirut
in 2008, despite the global economic downturn that has dragged on for years, and despite the
civil war burning next door in Syria.
A city that could come so far while enduring all those trials should do even better with the Syrian
boot off its neck. Whenever Assads regime is overthrown or reformedand that seems to
happen to all such nasty regimes in due timeBeirut, whether its the Paris of the Middle East or
not, might once again become a great city.
About the Author:
Michael J. Totten is a contributing editor of City Journal. He is the author of four books,
including The Road to Fatima Gate. He is an American journalist who has reported from the
Middle East, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. His work appears in various publications, Web
sites, and on his blog.

His first book, The Road to Fatima Gate, was published in 2011 and was awarded the
Washington Institute Silver Book Prize. In his blog, he also describes himself as an "independent
journalist", while regularly exposing his thoughts in articles which often focus on Middle East
conflicts. He supported the Iraq War, and generally expresses pro-Israeli views on the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. Totten's work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York
Times,\ City Journal, the New York Daily News, The Jerusalem Post, the Daily Star of Lebanon,
Reason magazine, Commentary, LA Weekly, Front Page, Tech Central Station, and the
Australian edition of Newsweek.
In July 2007, Totten traveled to Baghdad to embed with several U.S. Army units before
transitioning to Anbar province and embedding with Marines. In late 2007 he embedded with
Marines in Fallujah, and he embedded again with the Army in Baghdad in late 2008.
Totten won the 2007 Weblog Award for Best Middle East or Africa Blog, he won it again in
2008, and was named Blogger of the Year in 2006 by The Week magazine for his dispatches from
the Middle East