What distinguished Beirut from its surroundings during the years prior to the outbreak of the Lebanon war in 1975 was its carefree gaiety, its multicommunal pluralism, its multilingual overlappings, the creative entrepreneurial vitality of its people, and a bustling intellectual and entertainment culture. To exist and flourish, all these had as their necessary prerequisite a proven and unique track record of Lebanese freedom in an otherwise historically freedom-starved part of the world. For Beirut to revive, it is this freedom which needs to be restored and nurtured. Giving precedence to physical and material reconstruction of the city, over the restoration and rejuvenation of Lebanon’s eclipsed freedoms is placing the cart before the horse.

But even on the economic and architectural fronts, priorities are jumbled. The grand reconstruction schemes focus almost exclusively on downtown Beirut’s destroyed commercial center, leaving the outlying parts of the city and the rest of the country virtually untouched. The concept of rebuilding the downtown caters exclusively to the country’s prewar strengths in trade, finance, and service sectors, while neglecting totally the other vital components of an economy, namely industry and agriculture.

Grandiose schemes, with little regard for the cost, seem intent on reproducing an amalgamated Hong Kong-Jeddah hybrid in the middle of downtown Beirut and calling it reconstruction. The result consists of three alternating materials—glass, steel, and marble—arranged neatly into impersonal high-rises, where concrete meets asphalt at right angles with nothing green in between, except maybe the odd palm tree. It is a world of constant acquisition, clinched deals, enormous sums. The finer aspects of high culture—aesthetics, atmosphere, something as delicate as archaeology (not to mention Lebanon’s indigenous tradition and fragile edges)—have yet to be addressed.

Showcase projects such as the new sports stadium (inaugurated in July 1997), convention center, enlargement of Beirut airport, and upgrading of the Beirut-Damascus highway received all of the scarce funds, while badly needed improvements in the crumbling infrastructure (e.g., electricity, telephones, sewage, drainage, and roads) of the capital and other towns and villages were pushed further down on the list of government priorities. Serious attention to these essentials did not commence until the spring of 1995.

The urgent issue in Lebanon today is how can the country regain its political independence, territorial sovereignty, and personal and communal freedoms that are the true sources of its distinctiveness. All the rest will follow naturally in the wake of success on these fronts.