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REBUILDING LEBANON: Detroiters pick up after Mideast war

By Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press
Posted on Wednesday October 25, 2006

BINT JBEIL, Lebanon—The sun glints off the dust of a crushed town as Mike Kobeissi takes one last look. Three months ago in this village, his wife and three children were trapped for six days in a cramped hotel basement while bombs exploded around them.

At one point, they were convinced they were going to die.

Kobeissi of Bloomfield Hills snaps photos of the hotel building. It somehow escaped a direct hit, while the homes around it are crumbled heaps of concrete and metal. And he moves on.

The 44-year-old construction engineer has a plan, laminated and tucked in his briefcase, to help restore his native county, which suffered more than $3.5 billion in damage this summer during a conflict between Israel and the Lebanon-based militia Hizballah. In the fighting, 162 Israelis died, 43 of them civilians, while 1,191 Lebanese died, most of them civilians.

But Kobeissi doesn’t brood over the past.

“I’m a person who likes to build,” Kobeissi said, eyeing the rubble of southern Lebanon. “It’s sad to know some didn’t make it … but I feel like it’s time to rebuild.”

Across metro Detroit, thousands of residents like Kobeissi with roots in Lebanon are working to repair a tattered country. The members of a Dearborn mosque, the Islamic Center of America, raised more than $2 million at a dinner last month. On Oct. 15, hundreds gathered at a Dearborn banquet hall named after the Lebanese city of Byblos to raise roughly $10,000 for needy students. Others wire money back home to fund the rebuilding of family houses.

The challenge of rebuilding

Local efforts are mirrored on a national level. The U.S. government has committed $230 million for the country. And last month, President George W. Bush announced the formation of the U.S.-Lebanon Partnership Fund, a nationwide effort endorsed by the U.S. State Department that is headed by four businessmen, including Bloomfield Hills entrepreneur Yousif Ghafari, chairman of the Dearborn-based engineering and architectural firm Ghafari Associates.

This week, the fund started asking the private sector for money to rebuild Lebanon in a series of appeals it hopes will raise more than $100 million, Ghafari said.

In the Jewish community, fund-raising is under way to help rebuild parts of northern Israel hit by Hizballah rockets during the 34-day conflict, which started in July after Hizballah crossed the border to kidnap two Israeli soldiers. The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit has raised $15 million for Israel.

Southeastern Michigan, because of its sizable Arab-American communities, has a unique relationship to the Middle East compared with other metro areas. Kobeissi’s plan, titled the Liberty Concrete Institute, is to build two facilities in southern Lebanon that would manufacture concrete and teach Lebanese about the basics of masonry. For two weeks this month, Kobeissi traveled across Lebanon, talking with government and business leaders about his proposal.

To Kobeissi, his proposal is not just about rebuilding homes, bridges and roads but also about improving the image of his adopted country, the United States. It’s a goal shared by the U.S. government, keen these days on winning over the hearts and minds of the Arab and Muslim worlds during a turbulent time in the region.

Arab Americans in Michigan say they want to play an important role in that, because, if the United States doesn’t succeed, other countries and factions hostile to American interests could fill the vacuum.

“I was born there, but I’m also an American citizen,” Kobeissi said. “And so I feel this is kind of my duty now … by helping my native country, I can also help the image of my second country. This is our chance to show them how great the U.S. is.”

That will be a challenge.

Anti-American sentiment runs high in some parts of Lebanon, especially those heavily damaged in the recent conflict. (“Made in the U.S.A.” reads one red banner in front of a bombed-out neighborhood in south Beirut.) Moreover, corruption and political infighting in Lebanon’s government keep away some wary investors.

This month some Lebanese Americans came away frustrated after meetings with political leaders during a trip organized by the Dearborn-based American-Arab Chamber of Commerce.

“The political rhetoric that’s happening in Lebanon is discouraging investment,” Nasser Beydoun, 41, of Dearborn said in a meeting Oct. 2 with Lebanon Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, the country’s top Shi’ite government leader. “And it’s hampering Lebanon’s ability to move forward. We think Lebanon should be the jewel of the Middle East … but the political situation in Lebanon is frightening Lebanese-American companies.”

Unanswered questions

Abdul-Ghani Mekkaoui, 45, an engineer for a Livonia contracting firm, had considered plans to rebuild Lebanon. But after hearing concerns from leaders and residents in Lebanon about future wars, he changed his mind.

“There needs to more stability before people can have faith in going back and investing money in Lebanon,” Mekkaoui said this month after returning from Lebanon. “All I hear right now is division.”

Lebanon’s political system is fractured along religious and sectarian lines: Druze, Shi’ite, Sunni and Christians are the major groups. In this summer’s conflict, Israel hit Shi’ite areas hard; Hizballah is a Shi’ite group. But other parts of the country also were hit, including Alma El Shaab, the Christian town where Ghafari grew up. Bridges, ports, highways, fuel stations, schools and tens of thousands of homes were destroyed.

Ahmad Chebbani, the head of OMNEX Accounting and Tax Services in Dearborn who visited Beirut this month with the chamber, also worries about corruption. “Will the funds go to the right sources? Who’s going to be managing the money?” he asks.

Those questions remain unanswered for now.

Meanwhile, some Arab and Muslim countries in the region are bypassing the government and funding Lebanon’s reconstruction directly, presumably in an effort to gain influence with residents. Qatar, for example, is spending $300 million to rebuild Bint Jbeil, a town that thousands of metro Detroiters have roots in.

The town was hit especially hard during the conflict, with much of it reduced to dirt. The Lebanese government hasn’t done much to help, according to some residents.

“Forget about the Lebanese government,” said Hussein Wassef, 47, who owns a restaurant in Bint Jbeil. “Nobody came to this area. Nobody. They don’t ask, they don’t come here. Nobody sent even a piece of bread.”

Wassef said his home was damaged in air strikes, and his Tahreer Restaurant lost more than $15,000 in meat and other spoiled food products.

“Only the Qatar people, the Saudi, the Kuwaiti people, all from outside, the Iranians, the Syrians,” are helping people in south Lebanon. “But the Lebanese government, forget it.”

Across town, a $1.5-million civic center largely funded by Dearborn residents was under construction. Now, it is a heap of smashed bricks and exposed metal rods. Workers were about to pour concrete on the second floor when bomb strikes demolished the site, Beydoun said. Across the street, his cousin’s clothing and toy stores were destroyed.

But Beydoun and others don’t know if they will be rebuilt. “There’s really no clear-cut plan on what is going to happen here,” Beydoun said.

That confusion is echoed among some Lebanese Americans, who say that while they will give money now for immediate relief, they’re reluctant to start pumping too much money into southern Lebanon.

Big promises

Government leaders promise accountability in reconstruction.

“There are some shortcomings,” Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, the top Christian leader in the government, said in a meeting with Lebanese Americans from metro Detroit. “There should have been better management.”

But “the damage is very big,” Lahoud added. “You can’t in one day do everything … we’re coming out of a war.”

Despite the challenges, Kobeissi is determined to forge ahead with his plan.

He is a soft-spoken man with an upbeat temperament. Even after visiting the site where his family was nearly killed, he harbored no ill will, just a strong determination to turn tragedy into hope. On Oct. 12 he met in Beirut with U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman to discuss possible funding for his plan.

“If we succeed with this project, five years from now, there will be a person in south Lebanon, sitting in a house that the U.S. helped to build,” Kobeissi said. “He’s going to look at the concrete blocks and think, ‘Thanks to the U.S., I have my house again.’ ”