Lebanon Savors Revived Festival, End to Travel Ban

BAALBEK, Lebanon â€”  In the end, it all came together Wednesday like a grand orchestral crescendo that said: Lebanon is back.

Here in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, erstwhile base for terrorists and dungeon for American hostages such as Terry Anderson, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich performed beneath the ancient Corinthian columns of the Temple of Jupiter, keeping a promise made 22 years ago to play at the revival of the war-interrupted Baalbek Festival of culture.

On the same day came news long hoped for by many friends of Lebanon: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced that she will let the 10-year ban on travel by U.S. citizens to Lebanon expire today.

Although Albright also warned Americans about continuing dangers from terrorists, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri exulted at what he termed a “vote of confidence� by the Clinton administration.

On what should have been a joyful day, two suicide bombers next door in Israel were a sobering reminder that long-term stability remains a dream here as long as the question of peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors is unresolved.

Nevertheless, the coincidence of the Baalbek Festival and the lifting of the U.S. travel ban provided two formidable symbols of peace and hope here. And in a country still traumatized by the memory of 15 years of civil war that killed 150,000 people and wrought more than $25 billion in damage before ending in 1990, such milestones are savored.

Slowly, after a five-year rebuilding campaign launched by the multibillionaire prime minister, the old institutions are coming back.

One of the most beloved is the Baalbek Festival. In its earlier incarnation from 1956 to 1974, it drew world-class international artists such as Miles Davis, Herbert von Karajan, Rudolf Nureyev, Ella Fitzgerald and the Alvin Ailey and Paul Taylor dance companies for a summer-long celebration of the arts, staged alluringly amid Baalbek’s stunning 2,000-year-old Roman ruins.

After its long hiatus, a shortened version of the festival reopened last Thursday. Supporters came from as far as London and Paris to attend, and the 2,300 tickets were sold out for each of four nights of performances, which ended Wednesday. “When we walked into opening night,� said festival executive committee member Nazek Yared, “we had tears in our eyes.�

During the bleakest days of the civil war, she remembered, she and other organizers used to gather occasionally in their blacked-out apartments, just to reassure one another that the festival would still exist.

Yared recalled that when the summer 1975 festival, which would have featured South African singer Miriam Makeba, was canceled because of fighting, she thought it was a “skirmish� that would be over in a few months.

There are other symbols of rebirth as well. Last year, the Commodore Hotel reopened, its bullet scars plastered and painted over and its accommodations far more plush than what war correspondents recall.

Traders have been trading again on the Bourse, giving impetus to Beirut’s ambition to regain its historic role as the financial hub of the Middle East. Roulette wheels spin at the capital’s Casino du Liban, which after a $50-million refurbishment is drawing in high rollers from Europe and the Persian Gulf region.

And the American University of Beirut has a new American president who now, thanks to the lifting of the travel ban, will be able to take his post.

Even Pope John Paul II has been here, drawing crowds in spring in the hundreds of thousands and welcomed warmly by Muslims and Christians alike in a country that had been synonymous with sectarian strife.

Last month, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah was here, his presence amounting to a royal decree telling Arabs it is safe to return to Lebanon to vacation and to invest (although the famously austere Abdullah probably would not approve of Beirut’s lavish night life featuring un-Islamic scanty fashions, gambling, dancing and drinking).

Yet very little in Lebanon is exactly as it was before the war.

Christians, who are about 30% of the population, no longer are the dominant political group; many have emigrated. Most important, Lebanon has ceded at least part of its sovereignty and security to its larger Arab neighbor Syria, whose troops were the decisive factor in ending the years of bloodshed by private militias and various foreign sponsors.

And the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which the Israeli government says is an essential buffer zone to protect its northern towns from aggression by Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas, leaves that part of the country in the grip of a stubborn low-boil conflict.

News that Albright was lifting the travel ban spread like wildfire by radio and word of mouth.

“It’s great,� said Mohammed Safah, a laborer polishing his employer’s late-model car in downtown Beirut. “It is an evidence of peace.�

“I hope that when the Americans come here, they will change their negative ideas about Lebanon,� said news vendor Mohammed Abul Hassan. “They think we’re all terrorists because their government is controlled by Zionists. But when they come, they’ll know it is safe.�

While praising the U.S. decision, Hariri suggested that Albright’s continuing emphasis on terrorist dangers was misplaced. “Americans visiting here can feel comfortable,� he said. “We are expecting many, many people to come here.�

One veteran Lebanese journalist, who asked not to be identified, said he does not expect a rush of Americans, and that he would not yet advise American friends that it is safe for them here. “There are some extremists in the country who do not conceal--they publicize--their hatred of the Americans,� he noted.

He said that Sobhi Tufaili, a Shiite Muslim sheik who was the leader of Hezbollah when it was seizing U.S. hostages in the 1980s, is still around and is trying for a comeback. As recently as this month, Tufaili threatened publicly to “kill the Americans� for the ongoing U.S. support of Israel.

While that may be an empty threat, out of step with the times, the journalist said it could not be discounted entirely. “This question of security is conditional on other things,� he said, “and one of the main conditions is the U.S. policy in the Middle East.�

Robert Pelletreau, the former U.S. assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs, was among the many voices in the United States arguing for a lifting of the travel ban, which for the past 10 years has been routinely renewed every six months.

In an article published a week ago in several Arab newspapers, Pelletreau said Lebanon had taken “significant steps in the economic, political and security spheres� and that it was now time to let Americans “exercise their own judgment about travel, as they currently do with respect to visiting . . . numerous other states where conditions are unsettled.�

Pelletreau also noted that the ban on travel has prevented U.S. businesses from participating in the multibillion-dollar contracts to rebuild Lebanon. European companies have taken the biggest deals to reconstruct the country’s roads and bridges, the devastated central district of Beirut and the telephone network and electricity grids countrywide.

Hariri stressed that U.S. businesses and investors are still welcome.