The New Nation - Internet Edition

Matein Khalid

IT WAS just another car bomb in Baabda, a Christian suburb of Beirut where the Presidential palace stands, vacant since Emile Lahoud finally ended his term of office. But the bomb claimed a special victim. Francois Al Hajj was no ordinary Lebanese army general.

A Maronite officer who had led his troops in the bloody siege against the terrorists at the Palestinian Nahral Bared refugee camp, General Hajj was also close to Hezbollah and the Aounist Maronites, who supported his bid to succeed Michael Suleiman as army commander if General Suleiman became the next President of the Republic. This was the nineth political assassination since the murder of Rafik Hariri on 14th February 2005 as his motorcade passed the beachfront corniche hotels of Ein Mreisseh.

The German philosopher Hannah Arendt spoke of the "banality of evil" when she witnessed Adolf Eichmann on trial for his role as the apparatchik of Hitler's Final Solution. It is a symbol of Lebanon's pathological politics that the murders of Prime Ministers, journalists, editors, parliamentarians, warlords seem so routine, so inevitable. I feel as if a malign, evil invisible monster straight out of Dali and Goya's surreal nightmares has taken over this beautiful, haunted land I have loved as my own ever since I was a teenager, where I learnt the grisly ballet of life and death as a neophyte journalist, the betrayal and sorrow implicit in the game of nations.

General Hajj, of course, had no shortage of enemies, who ranged from Al Qaeda terrorists to the Intelligence agencies of half a dozen regional states and pro-Syrian Palestinian militias. Yet it is significant that the leaders of the March 14 movement, anti-Syrian politicians like Druze leader Walid Jumblatt or Cabinet Minister Marwan Hamadeh did not immediately blame Damascus for the latest killing, though George Bush once again implied that Syrian "interference" was behind the 25 tons of TNT in a parked car that doomed General Hajj in yet another political assassination carried out with professional precision.

Are Jumblatt and Hamadeh silent because they seek to do a deal with the Baathist regime in Damascus or because they know that General Hajj was targeted because his troops killed 250 terrorists of the Fateh Islam gang during the siege of the camp? After all, the militants of Nahr El Bared included Palestinians, Syrians, Saudis, Yemenis, Iraqis, Chechens, Egyptians, Maghrebis. Does Al Qaeda intend to transform northern Lebanon into another Afghanistan?

My numerous Lebanese friends from Beit Mary to Edgeware Road to the DIFC Gate are certain that the latest car bomb was a political message, a manifestation of what an ex- Phalanist gunman turned merchant banker friend I have known since we were Choeifat schoolboys calls le puissance occult, the sinister men of twilight who write the fate of Lebanon. Was General Hajj was killed because the Americans snubbed Syria at Annapolis, because Siniora refused to give Hezbollah a veto power over UNIFEL's mandate in South Lebanon, because the US and the France sought to investigate the murder of Rafiq Hariri, because the Israelis will not vacate the Golan Heights?. But who knows? Who really knows?

Lebanon will forever be haunted by the ghosts of its own tortured past. The Place de Martyres in downtown Beirut commemorates patriots hanged by the Ottoman Sultanate. But it also overlooks the mosque where Rafiq Hariri and his seven aides are entombed, the Al Nahar building whose owner's son Gibran Tueni and journalist Samir Kassar were murdered in car bombs.

Not far away is the Phoenicia Hotel, with its lovely swimming pool, beige marble lobbies, my favorite Wok- Wok restaurant and the swimming pool that catches the glint of the Mediterranean. Yet dozens of Lebanese pro- government MPs hide for their lives in the Phoenicia, a parliamentary majority systematically reduced to one with a succession of car bombs or ambushes?

I am the first to admit that Lebanon is not a democracy in any normal sense, with its venal warlords and sectarian politics. But this little country was once the only oasis of multiculturism in the Arab world. Yet Lebanese democracy was as fake as the fake Parisian pavement cafes and fake Mandate era mansions in Solidiere's Place de La Etoile. Its Presidents were either murdered or murderers, (in the case of Bashir Gemayel, both!). Lebanon's communal politics are a travesty of the democratic process. I never saw the golden age of Lebanon, never swam at the St George or skiied in Faraya. The Beirut I knew as a young stringer was a hell on earth, a gutted city just overrun and bloodied by Israel's Operation Peace for Galilee.

The Green Line, the museum crossing, the unspeakable horror that happened at Sabra and Chatila (or Damour, Qarantina, Tel Zataar), Beirut was the place where the PLO sailed into the Aegian sunset under Yasser Arafat, where snipers and teenage gunmen killed for the sheer hell of it. Beirut was my city of ghosts.

I appeal to my brothers and sisters in the UAE media not to become numbed by the unfolding tragedy in Lebanon. With every killing, with every car bomb, Lebanon comes closer to Armageddon. Syria, Israel, Iran, the United States and France have exploited the sectarian cleavages among Lebanese for their own selfish ends. Rue Munot and Bir Abed are on different galaxies but a civil war between Hezbollah and March 14 coalition will only plunge Lebanon once again into a second generation of slaughter, exactly as did the confrontation between the PLO and the Phalangists in the 1970s.

Lebanon was once a jewel in the crown of the Levant, a place of such exquisite beauty, of such effervescent and diverse human beings. Yet Lebanese MPs, who could easily save their skin, fly out to Paris or Dubai, hide in a luxury hotel, terrified for their lives. These are brave men and women. They deserve our outrage. But Beirut has bewitched me for life.

Lebanon's ghosts haunt me when I hear Fairuz sing the Hawa Beirut, when the twilight fog shrouds Mount Sanine, when the Mediterranean light silhouettes the Crusader castles of Sidon and Jubeil, when I wander the ancient cedar forests above Bsharre, the same cedars of the Pharoah's naval fleet and the Solomonic temple in Jerusalem. Lebanon deserves to live in all its luminous beauty. Please, please, save Lebanon.

(Matein Khalid is a Dubai-based investment banker and economic analyst)