Finn is slightly less hungover than I am (a little less sheik your bootie and champagne on her end) so she has offered to share our adventures visiting the world’s oldest city and major political leader, General Aoun. Photos to come. Internet incredibly slow here so uploads are laborious.
Today we recovered from our 2-4am nightclub festivities and travelled to Byblos to get a sense of history prior to indulging in the real-time politics in our hour with the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) party.
When I say history, I am speaking of perhaps the oldest inhabited city in the world. The archaelogical sites alone were worth a week of exploration. The relics on display included Neolithic 5th MILLENIUM BC items, a temple from the 4th millenium BC, Roman, Greek and Egyptian sites as well as a Crusader era castle. Byblos made its money not from the export of murex, but rather from the ancient cedar forests. They were not cognizant of the time it takes to replenish their forests, and sowed the seeds of their own destruction. Our visit to the archaelogical site had an interesting sound track… Friday is the holy day for muslims and the humble Sunni mosque next door with the large loud speakers regaled us with the call to prayer, then 45 minutes of chanting music, then an hour or so of the sermon, which was sprinkled with only a few words that we recognized… America and Israel. I wish we could have understood it all.
We re-entered the modern era as we went through five military checkpoints of increasing strength while climbing the hill to the home of General Michel Aoun, the 70+ year old leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, which represents the majority of the Christians. The General gave us an hour of his time and answered our questions well and we got yet another angle on the complex political world of the Middle East. The General went to Washington in 2005 and outlined what he thought it would take to get Hezbollah (Shia fighters trying to help the Palestinians get their land back in Israel among other things) to lay down their arms. Washington didn’t believe it was possible, but when he achieved a negotiated agreement in February 2006, and formed a political partnership between Hezbollah and the FPM, they turned away from him and would not engage. We have a copy of the agreement , which upon first read makes great sense as a peaceful means of getting them to lay down their arms. Biden and Hillary did not reverse the policy on their last trip here and continue to paint the General and his associates as the devil…
The General did very well in elections, growing his strength in Parliament significantly. Hezbollah also won every seat in which they had a candidate, however the General’s allies lost enough of the Christian seats that he will not control the government even though he has the largest single block of seats. We have heard from many sources about how those seats were lost… Vast amounts of money USD $700+ million was offered by the Saudis and spent by Harriri and others to protect the Sunni seats. They flew in overseas Lebanese from all over the world (gratis) to vote and paid up to $2000 per vote locally in the contested districts. (Two thousand dollars does not always go far in the country–spent that much in a 10 minute jewelry stop….) It will be interesting to see how the election observers report all of this. There was no violence at the polling station, but there was much that happened in violation of the law.
Beirut-or-Bust 