A pair of explosions rocked the Lebanese capital of Beirut last Tuesday, leaving at least 200 people dead and more than 4,000 injured, according to figures supplied by the country’s health minister.
The damage to buildings was so widespread that an estimated 200,000 and 250,000 people have lost their homes, according to Beirut Governor Marwan Abboud.
The cause of the blasts is still undetermined, but Lebanese officials say it was accidental.
Abbas Ibrahim, Lebanon’s internal security chief, said the ferocity of the blasts was caused by the nearby presence of ammonium nitrate—a substance that is a common fertilizer but is also often used in bomb-making—which he said the government had confiscated from a ship in the city’s port several years ago.
According to Al Jazeera’s analysis of public records, “senior Lebanese officials knew for more than six years that the ammonium nitrate was stored in Hangar 12 of Beirut’s port,” and did not act to secure or remove it.
Despite the assessments given by Lebanese officials, some right-wing media outlets indirectly put the blame on the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, repeating reports that it housed some of its explosive material in the city.
Twitter was also initially abuzz with talk of the group’s indirect involvement. In a statement, Hezbollah did not confirm or deny accusations that it was involved. “We extend our condolences to the Lebanese people over this national tragedy,” the statement said.
Israel, which has sparred with Hezbollah in recent weeks and has carried out attacks in Beirut before, deflected blame. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an Israeli official said Israel “had nothing to do” with the explosion.
Not so sure. U.S. President Donald Trump departed from the line being followed by Lebanese officials, giving credence to rumors that the explosion was an intentional attack. He told reporters that U.S. military leaders “[seemed] to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind.”
The explosion adds to a list of crises Lebanon has faced in the last several months. A wave of anti-government protests rocked the country late last year, forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri and threatening to bring down the country’s entire government.
Despite restrictions imposed by the national lockdown, demonstrations have continued, creating an almost untenable situation for the government.
Lebanon is also in the throes of an economic disaster. The Lebanese lira has plunged, losing between 85 to 90 percent of its value since September, which helped to fuel the widespread feelings of discontent that led to the anti-government protests.
The resulting financial collapse has crippled the country’s economy, leading to soaring inflation, unemployment, and poverty. On Monday, Lebanese Foreign Minister Nassif Hitti resigned amid the deepening financial crisis. So how about a little history to better understand what is going on here.
Following World War I, France acquired a mandate over the northern portion of the former Ottoman Empire province of Syria. The French split off the region of Lebanon in 1920 and granted this area independence in 1943.
Since independence, the country has been marked by periods of political turmoil interspersed with prosperity built on its position as a regional center for finance and trade.
The country’s 1975-90 civil war, which resulted in an estimated 120,000 fatalities, was followed by years of social and political instability.
Neighboring Syria has historically influenced Lebanon’s foreign policy and internal policies, and its military occupied Lebanon from 1976 until 2005(remember, it was once a part of Syria).
The Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia and Israel continued attacks and counterattacks against each other after Syria’s withdrawal, and fought a brief war in 2006. Lebanon’s common borders with Syria and Israel remain unresolved.
Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon, where its extensive security apparatus, political organization, and social services network fostered its reputation as “a state within a state.”
Founded in the chaos of the fifteen-year Lebanese Civil War, the Iran-backed group is driven by its opposition to Israel and its resistance to Western influence in the Middle East.
With its history of carrying out global terrorist attacks, it has been designated as a terrorist group by the United States and many other countries.
In recent years, long-standing alliances with Iran and Syria have embroiled the group in the civil war in Syria, where its support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime has transformed Hezbollah into an increasingly effective military force.
As I said, Hezbollah emerged during Lebanon’s fifteen-year civil war, which broke out in 1975 when long-simmering discontent over the large, armed Palestinian presence in the country reached a boiling point.
Under a 1943 political agreement, political power was divided among Lebanon’s predominant religious groups—a Sunni Muslim serves as prime minister, a Maronite Christian as president, and a Shiite Muslim as the speaker of parliament.
Tensions between these groups evolved into civil war as several factors upset the delicate balance. The Sunni Muslim population had grown with the arrival of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, while Shiite Muslims felt increasingly weakened by the ruling Christian minority.
Amid the infighting, Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982 to expel Palestinian guerrilla fighters that had been using the region as their base to attack Israel.
A group of Shiites influenced by the theocratic government in Iran took up arms against the Israeli occupation.
Seeing an opportunity to expand its influence in Arab states, Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) provided funds and training to the growing militia, which adopted the name Hezbollah, meaning “The Party of God.”
It earned a reputation for extremist militancy due to its frequent clashes with rival Shiite militias and attacks on foreign targets, including the 1983 suicide bombing of barracks housing U.S. and French troops in Beirut, in which more than three hundred people died.
Hezbollah now became a vital asset to Iran. Hezbollah bills itself as a Shiite resistance movement, and stated its ideology in a 1985 manifesto that vowed to expel Western powers from Lebanon, called for the destruction of the Israeli state, and pledged allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader.
Hezbollah has developed strong political and social arms in addition to its military operations. It has been a fixture of the Lebanese government since 1992, when eight of its members were elected to Parliament, and the party has held cabinet positions since 2005.
The most recent national elections, in 2018, granted Hezbollah thirteen seats in Lebanon’s 128-member Parliament.
Additionally, Hezbollah manages a vast network of social services that includes infrastructure, health-care facilities, schools, and youth programs, all of which have been instrumental in gaining support for Hezbollah from Shiite and non-Shiite Lebanese alike.
A 2014 report from the Pew Research Center found that 31 percent of Christians and 9 percent of Sunni Muslims held positive views of the group.
At the same time, Hezbollah maintains its military arm. Under the 1989 Taif Agreement, which was brokered by Saudi Arabia and Syria and ended Lebanon’s civil war, Hezbollah was the only militia allowed to keep its arms.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated in 2017 that the militia had up to ten thousand active fighters and some twenty thousand reserves, with an arsenal of small arms, tanks, drones, and various long-range rockets. A 2018 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies called it “the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor.”
Critics say Hezbollah’s existence violates UN Security Council Resolution 1559—adopted in 2004—which called for all Lebanese militias to disband and disarm.
The United Nations Force in Lebanon (UNFIL), first deployed in 1978 to restore the central government’s authority, remains in the country and part of its mandate is to encourage Hezbollah to disarm.
In October 2019, Hezbollah saw itself become a target of mass protests. Government mismanagement and years of slow growth have saddled Lebanon with one of the world’s highest public debt burdens, at 150 percent of its gross domestic product, and hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens disillusioned by the economic slump demanded the removal of what they see as a corrupt ruling elite.
Demonstrators called for the government, including Hezbollah, to cede power to a new, technocratic leadership. The months long protest movement has spanned religious backgrounds, and even Lebanese Shiites have openly criticized Hezbollah. These are the people you now see rioting in Lebanon following the explosion.
Israel is Hezbollah’s main enemy, dating back to Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon in 1978. Hezbollah has been blamed for attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets abroad, including the 1994 car bombings of a Jewish community center in Argentina, which killed eighty-five people, and the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in London.
Even after Israel officially withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, it continued to clash with Hezbollah.Periodic conflict between Hezbollah and Israeli forces escalated into a month long war in 2006, during which Hezbollah launched thousands of rockets into Israeli territory.
Hezbollah and Israel have yet to relapse into full-blown war, but the group reiterated its commitment to the destruction of the Israeli state in its 2009 manifesto.
In December 2018, Israel announced the discovery of miles of tunnels running from Lebanon into northern Israel that it claims were created by Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has attacked Israel with sophisticated anti-ship and anti-armor weapons, which Western officials suspect are supplied by Iran.
Add to all this the fact that Hezbollah is a loyal ally of Syria, whose army occupied most of Lebanon during Lebanon’s civil war.
The Syrian government remained as a peacekeeping force in Lebanon until it was driven out in the 2005 Cedar Revolution, a popular protest movement against the foreign occupation.
Hezbollah had unsuccessfully pushed for Syrian forces to remain in Lebanon, and has since remained a stalwart ally of the Assad regime.
In return for Tehran’s and Hezbollah’s support, experts say, the Syrian government facilitates the transfer of weapons from Iran to the militia.
Hezbollah publicly confirmed its involvement in the Syrian Civil War in 2013, joining Iran and Russia in supporting the Syrian government against largely Sunni rebel groups.
More than seven thousand Hezbollah militants are estimated to have fought in the pro-Assad alliance.
U.S. policymakers see Hezbollah as a global terrorist threat. The United States designated Hezbollah a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
In 2015, the U.S. Congress passed the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act, which sanctions foreign institutions that use U.S. bank accounts to finance Hezbollah.
So let’s go back to the explosion.The port in Lebanon was reduced to a deep crater surrounded by a smouldering wasteland, while buildings close to the point of origin of the explosion are severely damaged.
Windows are broken and walls caved in up to 5miles away, and the blast is heard across Lebanon and more than 200miles away in Cyprus.
Beirut’s governor, Marwan Abboud, estimates that up to $15 billion in damage has been done to the city and that 300,000 homes are damaged, many left uninhabitable.
The rebuilding needs of Lebanon are huge, but so is the question of how to ensure the millions of dollars promised in international aid is not diverted in a country notorious for missing money, invisible infrastructure projects and its refusal to open the books.
The port, site of the explosion that shattered Beirut, the center of Lebanon’s import-based economy, now sits in ruin.
Last Sunday’s international donor teleconference raised a total of $298 million in emergency aid, organizers said.
The conference was hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, who was mobbed last week by tearful victims of the Beirut ammonium nitrate explosion. The people begged him to ensure the corrupt government they blame for the blast that devastated the capital, does not profit from its destruction.
The French presidency said France contributed 35 million.
The head of the International Monetary Fund, which wants an audit of the national bank before handing over any money, was clear: No money without changes to ensure ordinary Lebanese people aren’t crushed by debt whose benefits they never see.
“Current and future generations of Lebanese must not be saddled with more debts than they can ever repay,” IMF head Kristalina Georgieva said during the conference. “Commitment to these reforms will unlock billions of dollars for the benefit of the Lebanese people.”
International leaders, government officials and international organizations participated Sunday in the teleconference co-organized by France and the United Nations to bring emergency aid to Lebanon, including President Donald Trump.
But Macron’s response to the crowd in Beirut and in a later speech there was unusually blunt: The aid “will not fall into corrupt hands” and Lebanon’s discredited government must change.
In the short-term, the aid streaming into Lebanon is purely for humanitarian emergencies and relatively easy to monitor.
The U.S., France, Britain, Canada and Australia, among others, have been clear that it is going directly to trusted local aid groups like the Lebanese Red Cross or U.N. agencies.
“Our aid is absolutely not going to the government. Our aid is going to the people of Lebanon,” said John Barsa of USAID.
But actual rebuilding requires massive imports of supplies and equipment. The contracts and subcontracts have given Lebanon’s ruling elite its wealth and power, while leaving the country with crumbling roads, regular electricity cuts, trash that piles on the streets and intermittent water supplies.
“The level of infrastructure in Lebanon is directly linked today to the level of corruption,” said Neemat Frem, a prominent Lebanese businessman and independent member of parliament. “We badly need more dollars but I understand that the Lebanese state and its agencies are not competent.”
Lebanon has an accumulated debt of about $100 billion, for a population of just under 7 million people — 5 million Lebanese and 2 million Syrians and Palestinians, most of them refugees.
Its electricity company, controlled like the port by multiple factions, posts losses of $1.5 billion a year, although Frem said most factories pay for their own generators because power is off more than it’s on.
“There’s grand theft Lebanon and there’s petty theft Lebanon. Petty theft Lebanon exists but that’s not what got the country in the hole we’re in,” said Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative.
Prior aid, Houry said, ended up as a tool in the hands of the political leaders, who kept their slice and doled out jobs and money to supporters.
“The public is going to be incredibly distrustful of the way this is done, and I think rightly so,” said Frank Vogl, a co-founder of Transparency International and chairman for the Partnership for transparency Fund.
On Saturday, they seized offices of the Economy Ministry, hauling away files they said would show corruption around the sale and distribution of wheat. Lebanon’s wheat stockpile, stored next to the warehouse filled with ammonium nitrate, was destroyed in the explosion.
“We restored the economy ministry to the Lebanese people,” one man called out as they rifled through the desks.
Julien Courson, head of the Lebanon Transparency Association, said the country’s non-profits are forming a coalition to monitor how relief and aid money is spent. He estimated Lebanon loses $2 billion to corruption each year.
“The decision-makers and the public servants who are in charge of these files are still in their positions. Until now, we didn’t see any solution to the problem,” he said.
Speaking at a news conference in which he conspicuously did not appear alongside Lebanese President Michel Aoun, French President Macron said he was approaching Lebanon with “the requirements of a friend who rushes to help, when times are hard, but not to give a blank check to systems that no longer have the trust of their people.”
Now remember what I told you earlier? Lebanon has a governmental system where people of each religious group have a share of power depending on their numbers.
The population is made up of Muslims (54 per cent), Christians (40.4 per cent) and Druze nomads (5.6 per cent) — a nomadic tribe which follows a religion with elements of Islam, Christianity and even Hinduism.
In Lebanon, the president is always a Christian, the prime minister is always a Sunni Muslim, the speaker is a Shia, and the deputy speaker and deputy PM are Eastern Orthodox Christians.
However, even though the Prime Minister is a Sunni Muslim, he is in power with the backing of Hezbollah, which is Shia, and thereby tied directly to Iran and the Iranians use Hezbollah to run their proxy war with Israel and also control Syria.
Thus, the Prime Minister doesn’t really have the power to act on his own, which causes further problems.
So there you have it folks. Are the Lebanese people suffering as a result of the explosion. Absolutely.
Should we provide them aid knowing that Hezbollah, a key part of the Lebanese government, is backing Syria and Iran and could use that money to continue attacks against Israel and our allied forces in Syria?
Callers, what do you think?