A Blast from the Past

 

Decades ago, just before my 13th birthday, my mother remarried. He was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer (U.S. Department of State), and he had just received orders to report to the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Our mid-size passenger ship crossed a very stormy north Atlantic (boy was I seasick) and cruised across the Mediterranean. My first visions of Beirut were of the massive port, a large section of which was a dedicated “free zone” (where goods could be stored without paying import duties), punctuated with the strange melodic sounds of various muezzins (Muslim criers announcing time of prayer) over loudspeakers scattered in the vast city beyond.

Lebanon was both beautiful, filled with very friendly people, and wildly prosperous. There were only few signs of homelessness and poverty. The hustle and bustle of a multilingual commercial hub were everywhere. Lebanon was a former French protectorate, independent since 1943, with a bizarre form of government, one that would come to haunt the country a half century later. It’s called “confessionalism,” which is an attempt to assure fair representation among specified religious groupings, allocating specific elected positions to designated practicing faiths. The Lebanese constitution gave the presidency to a Maronite Catholic (the majority when the constitution was first written, but no longer holding that status), the prime minister position to a Sunni Muslim, speaker of the assembly to a Shiite Muslim and so on. 

The problem stemmed from the political reality that each faith has its share of powerful dominating families (akin to warlords), many with strong overseas connections, including a very looming and interfering Syria, itself a mostly Sunni nation run by a very powerful Shiite autocratic al Assad family. This Lebanese political structure compounded legislative gridlock, mega-corruption and malignant extra-territorial interference. Strife that might have generated a new election and, in many nations, hope for the future, instead simply resulted in the same old/same old as one member of a powerful clique automatically ascended to replace a failed elected official. 

Change became impossible. A violent civil war, assassinations, and unrest continued for well over a decade. Tons of Christians left. More than a few Sunnis joined in the exit. Syria, with backing from its ally Iran, asserted itself. A new ruling party, designated as a “terrorist” group by the United States, rose from the ashes. The Shiite extremist party: Hezbollah. Oddly, because of confessionalism, they were forced to recruit a solitary Sunni (a telecom billionaire) to serve as their prime minister designate, but Iranian supported Hezbollah was in the driver’s seat. The nation was unable to elect a President for eleven months, garbage collection ceased (11 miles of piled discards lined a major highway), and immigrants from the conflict in Syria stormed in, eventually reaching over 20% of the entire population. The economy was in shambles. Power blackouts and water shortages are the norm. And today, particularly after the 2020 port explosion described below, no one really wants to run for a Lebanese leadership office anymore.

Which brings me to the reason for today’s blog, written on August 4, 2021. A sad anniversary with an even sadder backstory. It began in 2013 when a Russian-flagged cargo ship, the “MV Rhosus, carrying agricultural fertilizer with 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate and en route to Mozambique hit a financial snag and docked in Beirut… according to legal documents and Lebanese officials, the Washington Post reported.” FoxNews.com (8/6/2020). The story gets complicated from there: “The Russian ship was held at the port after reporting ‘technical problems’ and inspectors barred it from sailing onwards.

“‘Owing to the risks associated with retaining the Ammonium Nitrate on board the vessel, the port authorities discharged the cargo onto the port’s warehouses,’ lawyers acting on behalf of creditors wrote in 2015, according to the [Washington] Post. ‘The vessel and cargo remain to date in port awaiting auctioning and/or proper disposal.’… The lawyers said the ship was abandoned by its owners after running out of supplies and the crew had to eventually be repatriated back to Russia because of immigration restrictions on a prolonged stay in Beirut… Lebanon’s director of customs, Badri Daher, repeatedly sent letters to the judiciary over the years and warned that the cargo was the equivalent of ‘a floating bomb,’ but the warnings went unheeded.” FoxNews.com. Then, the very highly explosive ammonium nitrate was simply stored in one of the free zone grain silos, where it just sat for years.

Then, on August 4, 2020, it happened. A massive explosion, triggered by a minor fire in a neighboring structure (Hanger 12). “The blast — the third-largest non-nuclear explosion in history — pushed out a fireball miles into the air, followed by a hemispherical shock wave that raced inland for six miles at supersonic speed. It ripped walls off buildings and transformed houses into deadly cyclones of glass shards and wood splinters. It flicked aside cars, trucks and even a lumbering cruise ship like so many marbles. The disaster left more than 200 people dead, thousands wounded and 300,000 homeless.

“The [solid row of huge grain storage] silos, located less than 250 feet from the blast’s epicenter, acted as a shield for the western part of the city, and stayed standing… They still do — barely. Leaning more by the day toward the sea, their disemboweled husks now hang, like the country, in a state of slow-motion collapse. And whether to raze or preserve them has raised urgent questions about how best to remember that Tuesday [8/4/20] evening and its still-unresolved aftermath.” Nabih Bulos writing for the August 4th Los Angeles Times. 

The economic devastation, piled onto an already devastated and dysfunctional Lebanon, was catastrophic. Figures were pointed. International investigation teams (including our FBI) were sent. International aid was requested but resisted in some cases (e.g., France) by reason of the expected corruption. Many believed that the funds necessary to have fixed the issue before the explosion were simply diverted into too many “official” pockets along the way.

“Despite early promises of swift justice for those responsible, months have passed with the investigation all but stalled. Officials have instead tussled over petty jurisdictional issues, shrugged off investigators’ summons and claimed ignorance of basic facts. (‘I didn’t know what ammonium nitrates were’ has become a common interview response.)…

“That feeling of limbo has extended to the silos and their surroundings. The port remains a neighborhood-sized trash pile, a post-apocalyptic diorama of rusted rebar knots and heaps of crumpled containers and vehicle carcasses… When the shock wave smacked into the 48 silos, it vaporized the closest of the three rows of storage cylinders… ‘That was like the front line,’ said Emmanuel Durand, a French civil engineer and silo expert who has spent months analyzing the surviving cylinders.

“The damaged silos disgorged tens of thousands of tons of grain, none of which has been removed from the port as authorities fear an environmental disaster if they dump it in the sea… In the intervening months, subjected to winter rains and the summer’s humidity and heat, the grain has not only rotted but also fermented, with mounds of the stuff generating temperatures in excess of 194 degrees. Its nauseating miasma attracts phalanxes of rats and pigeons; the latter swarm at all hours around the silos’ skeletal remains…

“For all the damage it caused, the blast proved to be only one step in Lebanon’s continued unraveling. Each week since has brought a fresh humiliation, a new obstacle to living a normal life. The Lebanese lira, now one-tenth of its value just two years ago, seems as worthless as Monopoly money. The trappings of a functional state — electricity, traffic lights, fuel — hang by a thread. The government that resigned after the port explosion has yet to be replaced.” Bulos.

So, my home for four plus years lies in seeming perpetual degradation, problems unsolved, devastation yearning for a rebuild, unemployment raging… and then came the pandemic for which Lebanon was woefully unprepared. Lebanon. Broke and unfunded. There, but for the grace of God, go I. We should count our blessings here.

I’m Peter Dekom, and to those of us in the United States, unwilling to mask, social distance or get vaccinated because of political leanings or a notion of inconvenience, I point out how good we have it in this country and how bad it can get when people no longer take responsibility for what’s best for their own nation and the people in it.