Detonation in the port of Beirut
Photo: Mikhail Alaeddin / picture alliance / dpaThe port was still burning. Bleeding injuries stumbled through the slowly sinking, acrid smoke of the heaviest explosion Lebanon’s capital Beirut had ever experienced when Interior Minister Mohamed Fehmi made a memorable statement on Tuesday evening: Highly explosive ammonium nitrate had been stored in the port, he said. Why has the dangerous substance been in close proximity to the city center for years? The Lebanese should ask this question to the customs authorities!
But isn't the interior minister responsible for overseeing them? Someone asks sarcastically on Twitter.
He would be. But at the same time it hardly matters who is responsible for something in the cabinet. Who runs the government. What courts decide (if they ever decide) what the law prescribes. Because what looks like a state with its machinery of rules, morality and control is only its pretense. Power over Lebanon lies elsewhere, in the hands of the princes, it can hardly be called otherwise. Old and new warlords, magnates, untouchable as leaders of their faith groups: Hezbollah general secretary Hassan Nasrallah and Amal chief Nabih Berri for the Shiites; Druze leader Walid Jumblat; President Michel Aoun and head of the Forces Libanaises Samir Geagea for the Maronite Christians; Ex-Prime Minister Saad Hariri for the Sunnis. They are all politicians, but cannot be removed from power by elections. They make sure that their favorites rule.
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