Another Hot Summer in Lebanon

Somehow it wouldn't quite feel like summer in Lebanon if there weren't electricity cuts. Right now there are six-hour rotating blackouts every day all over the country except for Beirut (where outages are less frequent.) The problem this year isn't so much the hot weather, which quadruples power use, or Israeli attacks on power stations, the cause of last summer's blackouts. The culprit this year is Fatah al Islam, the militant group that is STILL holding out against the Lebanese army in a pitched battle up north that has lasted over 10 weeks.

The cuts began when ships carrying fuel oil balked at making deliveries to the Beddawi power station, one of the country's largest, which is located close to Nahr al Bared, the Palestinian refugee camp where the fighting rages. So close, in fact, that Katyusha rockets fired by Fatah Al Islam hit the power station earlier this month, and repair crews haven't been able to reach the the site.

The fact that the militant group is still capable of such disruption, limited though it may be, is pretty stunning considering the Lebanese army deployed every available resource against what started as a couple hundred jihadis. (There a far fewer now.) Every couple of days, the army announces that it is "tightening the noose" around the group, or preparing for the final assault, only for the conflict to drag out longer. As one friend put the situation in perspective, the Normandy invasion didn't last this long.

Fatah al Islam is heading for the Jihadi Hall of Fame in part because they were better prepared and better equipped than the army, with night vision goggles, surveillance equipment, tunnels, booby traps, anti-aircraft guns, and a apparently a whole lot of food, water and ammunition. It also helps that they are fanatical murderers.

Except for the power cuts, and the dent in tourism, the country by now has accommodated itself rather well to the ongoing crisis. After all, Lebanon has seen much worse. With no more bombs going off in the capital (for now) all the extra security has become part of the scenery, and inevitably, a marketing opportunity.

A Beirut shopping mall launched a billboard campaign titled "Detect the Lowest Prices" featuring sexy babes deploying security equipment in non-standard ways: a blonde with a metal detecting wand giving a pat down to a man's inner leg, a bikini bombshell with a bomb sniffing device, and kinkiest of all, a long pair of legs in a miniskirt uses a car bomb detecting mirror to peek up a mannequin's skirt. Fatah al Islam would disapprove.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut