Did Lebanon exist? The answer is that, as of this week, there is much less evidence of it. The archive of the state news agency (ANI) was raided in the early hours of Monday – if not before – in what has been described as “a crime of national dimension” by the Information Minister, Ziad Makari. The history of the Country of the Cedars, from 1961 to this part remains blurred, if not erased, pending clarification.
Although Makari would later affirm that “there is a copy”, there are not many Lebanese willing to believe it. It is unknown at the moment who would have commissioned the robbery and who has executed it. He has not revealed that a ransom has been requested and although an extortion attempt cannot be ruled out, it does not seem that money is the main motive.
Political intent seems more likely, taking into account that the archive documents -like surely no other- key episodes in the recent history of Lebanon and the Middle East, such as the fifteen years of civil war (many of whose protagonists are still active) or the Israeli occupation.
Possible political motive
The agency archive is the most comprehensive record of the civil war or occupation
The raid on the offices was discovered by the employees of the news agency – the Lebanese equivalent of EFE – upon returning to work on Monday morning. They would have found themselves with a forced door in the basement that houses the archives and would have immediately reported it to a general (the army is perhaps the least partisan institution, in a country undermined by caciquismo and sectarianism).
It should be said that ANI’s headquarters are not located in an isolated and vulnerable building in Beirut, but in a highly protected building, which houses two ministries (including Information). To make matters worse, it is next to the Ministry of the Interior and is right in front of the Central Bank. All this in the central Sanayeh neighborhood of Beirut.
It would therefore be a highly professional precision coup with excellent intelligence sources, or a coup carried out from within, the same week that the Director General of Security, considered close to Hizbullah, retires.
French project
The blow to the photographic heritage occurs a few months after the announcement of its digitization
It so happens that, precisely since last year, a project to digitize the Lebanese photographic heritage has been underway with the support of France. But it is not clear how far that work had progressed.
In Lebanon, although peace is preserved, poverty is also multiplying. The meager public salaries in Lebanese pounds, as well as the high prices of transport, have meant that many civil servants do not even bother to go to work. Citizen security has also suffered, with fewer police officers.
A Lebanese managed to take a breather this Sunday in Tripoli, in the north of the country, with the celebration of Zambo, the local carnival, presumably transplanted more than a century ago by an emigrant who wanted to return from Brazil to what one day would be, briefly, the Switzerland of the East.
The reduction of expectations does not seem to have an end since 2019. Not surprisingly, the currency has lost 95% of its value. So for many of the Lebanese who have not yet emigrated, the present is harrowing and the future uncertain. And the last straw is knowing that not even memory was safe.