LETTER FROM BEIRUT:The global financial tsunami is not expected to lay waste to Lebanon, writes Michael Jansen
THE BREEZE blowing in from the Mediterranean is cool. Sunday traffic is light in the normally congested streets leading to the corniche along the seafront. The wide pavement is filled with walkers and joggers, men in shorts, T-shirts and headbands; women in trousers and jackets. Boys on rented cycles whip round and round like puppies chasing their tails.
Optimistic fisher-folk, buckets at their heels, stand at the rail, long poles in hand, lines in the foaming water rolling against the rocks. Vendors dispense juice and sandwiches.
Opposite the blasted and battered St George's Hotel, a bronze sculpture resembling a bouquet of furled flags marks the site where a bomb slew former premier Rafic Hariri in 2005. A statue of a young, slender Hariri gazing out to sea stands on a platform further along.
Below the hotel, once Beirut's best, yachts tethered to docks ride the pitching sea. Several are huge floating palaces like those at Cannes or Monte Carlo. The sole slim sailboat is a masted swan among stout motorised ducks.
Beyond the marina is a fenced stretch of sand and scrub, a sign proclaims "Jardin Président Rafic Hariri". Lebanon has had many martyrs since independence in 1943.
A billionaire businessman and politician, he made his mission the resurrection of the commercial heart of the city devastated during Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war. Tall yellow cranes hang over the buzzing and thumping construction cityscape where skeleton blocks are shrouded in green fabric.
Completed buildings boast shops stocked with the latest fashions from Paris and London and cheerful cafes. Trees in elegant clay pots adorn balconies at Park Avenue Luxury Apartments. Beautifully reconstructed traditional houses are arrayed in paint in the colours of the rainbow. But hiding in narrow, crooked alleyways are bullet-pocked, crumbling buildings where the poor dwell in flats with geraniums flowering in rusted tins on verandas.
Hariri-land unites Christian east Beirut and Muslim-Christian west Beirut. The solid middle-class lives elsewhere and commutes to jobs in offices, shops and the banks guarded by uniformed men from private security firms.
Across town near the airport, the Shia Dahiya is an even more impressive construction site. Here Hizbullah is rebuiling blocks of apartments, shops, and offices destroyed during Israel's devastating 33-day bombardment in 2006. The rubble of flattened buildings is long gone; shell and bullet holes have been erased.
Great square holes for foundations and parking garages are bound in yellow tape bearing the words, "Divine Victory", referring to Hizbullah's defeat of Israel. Hizbullah's own contractors are rebuilding with funds provided largely by Iran. Chaotic traffic is directed by Hizbullah wizards in mufti wielding wands.
Lebanon is at peace with itself, for the time being. In May, army chief Michel Suleiman was elected to the presidency seven months after his predecessor stepped down. Weeks later, warring factions formed a unity government to prepare for next spring's parliamentary elections.
Lebanon is also at ease with its neighbour Syria, which last week formally recognised Lebanon as a separate, sovereign state and promised to dispatch an ambassador to Beirut by the end of the year. Twelve thousand UN soldiers keep the peace on the border with Israel.
And the global financial tsunami is not expected to lay waste to Lebanon.
The central bank has sandbagged with tight regulations the country's commercial banks and financial institutions. Banks are solid, sound. Lebanese hold that banking is too important to be left to cowboy speculators like those who have broken the banks in the west. So far, $73 billion in deposits has flowed into Lebanon this year. The figure is expected to rise to $80 billion by the end of 2008. Properties valued at $4 billion have been sold in Beirut and the mountains.
However, the Lebanese will not emerge from the global crisis unscathed. The middle-class has lost millions of dollars in US and European shares and insurance policies. The Beirut stock market is volatile. Remittances from expatriates could be cut because they simply cannot afford to send money to their relatives here.
Gulf and Saudi investments may also fall due of the collapse of the price of oil.
Lebanese working in the Gulf may lose their jobs and come home. Tourists may stay away. But Lebanon, the quintessential country of entrepreneurs, will survive because it is resilient and adaptable.