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 Lebanonâ??s population was under 4 million. The war sucked in powers from the Middle East and beyondâ??the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel, Iran, France, the Soviet Union, the United Statesâ??but no country inflicted more damage than Syria, ruled by the Assad familyâ??s Arab Socialist Baath Party.
Today, the shoe is on the other foot. Syria, not Lebanon, is suffering the horrors of civil war. With Syriaâ??s Bashar al-Assad possibly on his way outâ??or at least too busy to export mayhem to his neighborsâ??will Beirut have the chance to regain its lost glory?
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