Battling Over Beirut

The nature of the crisis between the government and opposition that began in early December was recognizable thanks to the nature of the battlefield: Beirut’s downtown area, the jewel in the crown of the late Rafik Hariri’s reconstruction program, and premier symbol of the capital’s conceit to be a cosmopolitan business center for the region. In descending on the city center, managed by the Solidere company, the opposition, led by Hizbullah, sent several messages. For the mainly poor Shiites forming the bulk of the effort to bring down the government of Prime Minister Fouad Seniora, it was partly a class thing: Solidere is as much ours as anybody else’s, the demonstrators seemed to be saying, whether we are poor or not. But the tactic also included a hefty dose of blackmail, with demonstrators warning Seniora that the downtown area, so central to his and Hariri’s efforts to attract capital to