Hizbullah spends millions to rebuild southern suburbs

The Daily Star ^ | March 24, 2009 | Rita Daou

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BEIRUT: Salam Hassoun is thrilled by the new flat Hizbullah has built for her to replace the one Israeli bombs destroyed during the 2006 summer war. The war ravaged Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hizbullah stronghold that includes the teeming neighborhood of Haret Hreik, where a mammoth Hizbullah-orchestrated reconstruction drive is under way.

The deafening explosions of Israeli bombs have been replaced by the grinding cacophony of earth-movers and cement mixers contracted to rebuild 241 of the 282 buildings destroyed in the bombing.

The project, dubbed Waad (pledge in Arabic), has won the heart of Hassoun but has also raised a storm of political dust between Hizbullah and the government, whose authority in the southern suburbs has lagged for decades.

"I used to dream of an apartment where the living room was separated from the dining area and where the kitchen would be much bigger, and Waad gave me that," Hassoun told AFP during a Hizbullah-organized tour of Haret Hreik.

"May God protect [Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan] Nasrallah. He has kept his promise," she said from her ninth-storey flat in one of several spanking new towers.

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