Tag: Travels

A lot can drastically change in the world during the course of a few of weeks. When we travelled to Hezbollah dominated Baalbek from Beirut less than a month ago to see the famous Roman ruins, the political party cum militia cum social services agency was still actively represented in the Lebanese parliament, and the country enjoyed a relatively “stable” government. Today, as I write this post, the country is reeling from the aftermath of Hezbollah’s withdrawal from parliament that dissolved the government. For such a tiny country, the politics of Lebanon are bewildering, and attempting to understand the motives behind the numerous political groups and the compromises and objectives of the main coalitions is an academic undertaking in its own. I wrote the post on Baalbek slightly out of chronological order because I knew that there was a high probability towards the middle of January that a UN Investigations Tribunal would implicate Hezbollah as responsible for the assassination of late Prime Minister Hariri and that it would result in the collapse of effective government in Lebanon. I figured it would be most appropriate to discuss my time in “Hezbollah country” at a period that Hezbollah had a significant amount of exposure in the news once again.

Modern Lebanon is a living contradiction. Knowing about Hezbollah’s presence and influence in this region, a visitor to the Bekaa Valley might expect an entirely different scene; one filled with armed balaclava-clad insurgents roaming the roads, yielding swords and kidnapping tourists. However, aside from the noticeably poorer, more neglected conditions of the surrounding villages in comparison to those seen in Beirut’s most posh neighborhoods, and ignoring the numerous Hezbollah banners, statues, and pictures of leader Hassan Nasrallah and the Ayatollahs of Iran, you would not really know that you were in the stronghold of what is considered by the West to be an extremist, terrorist organization.