Beirut blast: Tragedy reveals incompetence and absence of leadership
The Beirut blast had to make some think a military crisis had been sparked. It’d be in nobody’s interests to admit it now.
The sequence of events that led to Beirut’s devastating explosion is of immense importance to Lebanon’s immediate future.
We can be fairly sure that the official version is to some extent correct. There is no doubt that 2700 tonnes of exploding ammonium nitrate, as was said to have been stored at the port, could be responsible for the blast that shook the city. Two questions remain, however: why was it there? And what was the first explosion, which set off the ammonium nitrate?
The first has one easy explanation: incompetence. Sloth operates at every level of Lebanese decision-making, in part caused by the stasis that afflicts the body politic: nobody knows who is in charge. That comes down to sectarian power-sharing. “We don’t have a dictatorship like Syria,” runs a frequent complaint. “We have 18 dictatorships.” That is a reference to the 18 recognised sects in Lebanon, each of which has carefully delineated rights and responsibilities.
That leaves national matters, such as who is responsible for safety and security in the port, in the hands of the proverbial committee that created the camel. But there is more than incompetence at the port. The most powerful of Lebanon’s factions is Hezbollah, reckoned by many, and certainly Israel, to keep weapons dumps across Beirut, as well as to have oversight over what comes in and out of the country. Tonnes of ammonium nitrate is a useful addition to anyone’s arsenal. That leads to the second question, the cause of the first fire. The authorities have not been forthcoming.
A deliberate attack, even by some faction or enemy unaware of the ammonium nitrate, would change the outlook for Lebanese, even regional, peace and security. It would be in nobody’s interests to admit it now.
In the longer term, perhaps, these two questions are overshadowed by a third issue, which applies whatever answers can be found: the viability of the state of Lebanon.
In a free market world, its free-wheeling society could make its own rules, whatever the government got up to, whatever insults and threats the sectarian leaders were exchanging.
Now, though, harsh decisions have to be made: about finances, Hezbollah’s role in the state, relations with the US, the Gulf, Syria and myriad geopolitical crises that swirl around the Middle East.
Will any, or all, of the leaders have their billions of dollars taken off them to pay the country’s debts? Will ordinary people stand for their bank accounts to be pillaged instead – the solution that seems to be under way? Will some outside trigger tip the country into a military crisis to match its political and economic ones?
There can have been few residents of Beirut who, when the blast ricocheted through their homes, did not think that the trigger had been fired. There may be some relief that the explosion is being agreed to be an accident. But is incompetence of this grotesque and lethal calibre any better?
The Times
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