Customer Reviews

Warlords And Merchants: The Lebanese Business And Political Establishment

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I was looking for the most recent account of the events of Lebanon with a socio-economic background and a historical overview. The book by Dr Kamal Dib was the answer for my search. It is 350 pages long with statistical annexes and an index of keywords. It covers a rarely visited angle of Lebanese politics and economics: the families and warlords who rule the country and prevent attempts to modernize the state and reflect the wishes of the highly educated population. Lebanon has seen it all: wars, assissinations, corruption, political turmoil, and massacres. yet its reslilience is demonstrated in the miracle rise of Beirut from the ashes in 1990 and the subsequent reconstruction and development. Dib's book is never boring, filled with anecdotes yet academic and factual. I would recommend it to university students, academics, business people and policy makers in government and in think-tanks.

Lebanon has been an arena of struggles among the United States, Russia, Syria, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinians, etc. Books have focused on these struggles so often that observers and readers fail to recognize the important role played by the Lebanese elites themselves in the affairs of their own country. Dr. Dib captured the essence of Lebanon's own warlords and merchants who cater to the political class regardless whether policies or activities are in the best interest of their country or not. This seminal work covers and analyzes Lebanon from 1900 to 2003. The Arabic edition published in Beirut is now a best seller and comes under the title "Umaraa al-Harb wa tujjar al-haikal". This book is important for university students, researchers and policy makers.

As Marius Deeb from Johns Hopkins University wrote, Dib, an economist by profession, has written an interesting book, especially with respect to the economy and business practices of Lebanese merchants and bankers. The author's survey of how the Lebanese banking sector emerged from the 1940s onwards is outstanding. The role of the powerful Intra Bank in the Lebanese banking sector and the financial crisis that engulfed it in 1966 are fully covered. Dib claims that the Lebanese political establishment plotted against Intra Bank, which had become by then the largest bank in Lebanon (with assets and reserves amounting to 56 percent of that of the whole Lebanese banking system's total) because it was predominantly owned and run by Christian Palestinians.

Despite the Intra Bank crisis, Lebanon's economic golden age continued until 1974. The lira, its mighty national currency, survived the first decade of the war in Lebanon and collapsed only in 1985. The author traces the destruction of the Lebanese economy as a result of the wars that overwhelmed Lebanon from 1975 until 1990. He also provides a very useful statistical appendix.

The political dimension of this book leaves much to be desired, however, as Dib either misinterprets events or simply omits them. He fails to explain the reasons for the fall of the Lebanese currency, in particular the political factors. He has no clue why battles raged between the various factions nor why leading politicians and major religious figures were assassinated. Finally, he hardly mentions that the Assad regime in Syria waged its terrorist war against the Lebanese polity for three decades.