Tag Archives: Lebanon

A Hint of Freedom in Lebanon

19 Sep

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A hint of freedom? That’s the headline from my visit this week to Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, and a day spent traveling the country’s fabled Bekaa Valley. 

I participated as a technologist and media person in the festival ‘Un Vent de Liberté’ an extraordinary convening marking the centenary of  L’Orient-Le Jour, the leading French-language news organization in the country. 

Our contribution, highlighting recent research from Center for News, Technology & Innovation – CNTI to the gathering, which also featured a conversation with Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and a fireside chat by former French president Francois Hollande, focused on Artificial Intelligence and its impact on society in general and the Mideast in particular. 

More on that below.

But first, a word about this ‘hint of optimism’ — a key takeaway from many conversations with political and government officials as well as diplomats, NGO leaders and journalists. Good ones.

Relative stability in the Lebanese coalition government combined with progress in disarming the Iranian-backed Hezbollah military is leading to sentiment that if things are not yet substantially improved, at least they have stopped worsening.

While anyone familiar with global affairs and the Mideast particularly would be wise to be cautious, the current feeling of tentative hope is an important change and noteworthy step forward.

Prime Minister Salam said as much in the brightly chandeliered and exceptionally air-conditioned reception room of Grand Sérail, the Ottoman Palace that is his headquarters. Lebanon’s still relatively new premier told us he quit heading The International Court of Justice in The Hague seven months ago to return to his native Lebanon to lead its multi-faith, multi-cultural government because of a ‘window of opportunity (to achieve) reforms’ to assure Lebanon’s success. Former French Premier Hollande joked that he came to Beirut to learn ‘how to operate in a successful governing coalition’, a teasing reference to France’s choppy political waters.

While the visit was ‘extraordinary’ — a word so often used it almost always is a trite exaggeration —  here, I’d argue, it is not.

And it would be wonderful if it could simply become ‘ordinary’ to travel to Lebanon and its countryside, especially to the strikingly beautiful Bekaa (whose dry brown hills and flat plain recall California’s Central Valley) and the remarkable temples of antiquity at Baalbek, larger physically and in some ways better preserved than Athens’ Parthenon. 

I won’t diminish potential riskiness; beyond the checkpoints manned by the Lebanese army, Hezbollah remains a visible and potent political and civic force particularly in the Bekaa. Obviously there is the overlay of the Gaza conflict. During the days preceding and following our visit, Israeli warplanes bombed suspected Hezbollah strongholds on the foothills that run alongside the Bekaa, as well as Nabatiyah in the Shouf Mountains to the south.

Dangers, both perceived and genuine, caused the festival to be postponed several times in the past years. This year actually marks the news organization’s 102nd year, but let’s not quibble: Any news organization is celebrating over a century longevity is a remarkable achievement, and a reflection of the strength of CEO Nayla De Freige and team. Still, nothing and no one presented any risk to our small group, who were among just a handful of visitors we saw in Bekaa.

Back to the AI panel, because developments in global technology are widely recognized at the center of this fragile optimism. While panel leader French newsman and L’OlJ board director Ludovic Blecher cited widespread agreement that enthusiasm surrounding AI and its impact is hyped, there was also agreement – as well as many questions — about the profound impact on economics, business and civic society. 

Fellow panelist, American University of Beirut Computer Science Professor Fatima Abu Salem made the point that the absence of verifiable and trustworthy ‘big data’ in the region is an important factor that can diminish and imperil the value of AI and its large language models in the Lebanon and more widely in the global south.

Artificial Intelligence, she said, thus cannot be any sort of panacea for nations that need to make progress on fundamental building blocks of inequality access to technology and resources. This, she added (and I agree) is an under appreciated problem. Moreover, when the core learning data is suspect, the output will also be suspect.

Innovation expert Kristen Davis spoke of her experience as de-mining NGO APOPO  begins to explore AI as an accelerant to its ‘hero-rat’ mine-detecting rodents. Kristen made the point that AI has the prospect of improving lives in the region, if it is deployed intentionally and used wisely.

On behalf of CNTI, I presented our most recent #Briefing:AI Literacy and Communication which focuses on the intersection of AI and Journalism. To me, it seems inevitable that AI – regardless of its hazards – will offer opportunities both for cost reduction and revenue growth. It is a genie that will be impossible to return to a ‘bottle.’

There is much more to say, and I will find a way to say it. But I left Beirut and Lebanon with a greater appreciation of the strides made thus far and the work ahead to make the ‘hint of freedom’ a firmer reality.

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The Looming Sunni-Shia Battle

25 Apr

It’s an old habit, but I like to visit into far-off places at times of big change. (This was an especially useful talent to have in my days as a foreign correspondent, but also keeps life interesting now).

I just returned from a longish trip to the Mideast including Lebanon and Turkey and this post is mostly about the perspective one gets from such travel. As a telecom and technology executive, I was fascinated to see up-close the powerful role mobile and social technology are playing in the popular uprisings currently shaking so much of the Arab world. And it was so interesting – and invaluable – to meet and speak with to speak with so many people who are using new mobile technology to create a new landscape in the region.

Just over the past week, unrest in Syria left over a hundred people dead and underscored a widening of the popular uprisings that have already occurred this year (in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Tunisia and Libya) to Lebanon’s neighbor to the East. There surely is more upheaval to come.

I spent much of the past week in Lebanon, traveling from the southern Shuf Mountains to the northern city of Tripoli. I had a memorable time seeing a beautiful, diverse country that is rebuilding and seems on the move despite all the obstacles stacked against it.

In contrast to the impression one has from afar, Beirut today and its suburbs nowadays are a bustling hive of construction sites, highway projects and a busy international airport. Years of civil war have left deep scars of course, and opened the door for such rivals as Dubai to eclipse Beirut as a regional center. But with such awe-inspiring construction projects as the center-city Solidere redevelopment site – one of the largest engineering projects in the world – it is possible to imagine Beirut once again becoming the ‘Paris of the Mideast.’

Of course, the outward appearance of modernity and economic progress may prove fragile, as it has so many times before by intervention from its neighbors and internal civil strife.

To say it’s a complex neighborhood is a deliberate understatement.

Regardless, one principal impression stays with me after 10 days spent in the region:

The coming fault line of conflict in the Mideast will be within the “neighborhood” of Islamic Arabia itself, and it will NOT principally be a battle of Islam with the rest of the world. The United States and the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa are not at the center of this reformation. Nor is the Palestinian-Israeli issue the key. In fact, this isn’t even principally a battle involving nation-states.

Rather, the confrontation is shaping up as a battle for the soul of Islam – between extremist Shia and Sunni groups.

The Arab uprisings of 2011 in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and now Syria have thus far not illustrated this in the early rounds. But I have a hunch we will see the Sunni-Shia extremist conflict emerging soon as a central narrative in the so-called Arab Uprising of 2011. When? It may be a while, because so many institutions of post-authoritarian regimes need to be rebuilt. But there is very little question it is coming, and in some places possibly soon.

How can this be? Many of the worst repressive regimes kept “bottled up” the worst kinds of the religious conflicts among the two main strains of Islamic faith. Now, as these regimes crumble, the prospects for more openness and democracy increase, but so do the possibly of internal civil war.

The principal Shia action groups on the list are very familiar: Iran, Amal, and of course Hezbollah (which in Lebanon these days seems as much the huge force it is in the mainstream of political life, with visible signs of its power plastered all over, especially in the south, not at all a marginalized splinter group it is sometimes portrayed outside the country). On the Sunni side, the names are less well-known to non-Mideast experts but no less lethal. Perhaps the most terrifyingly brutal are the extremist fighters belonging to the Salafi orthodox Sunni sect, who claimed responsibility for the brutal murder of a pro-Palestinian Italian activist kidnapped and murdered in Gaza while I was traveling here.

In Syria, there is a scenario in which Syrian strongman Bashar Al Assad losing his grip on the country, and setting up a conflict between Sunni majority in the country, and the Shia and Alawite minority who have dominated the political landscape for 40 years. In the region, Christians, Druze and other religious minorities all fear becoming caught in the cross-fire. Such a shift in the balance of power in Syria could put Hezbollah and Iran on the defensive, and then usher in a new period of realignment in the region.

Despite the West’s strong interests and involvement in the region, the heart of the issue is essentially local in nature. It does not revolve around Washington, London, Beijing or other world capitals. Which may be worth remembering as the calls for global action, especially for the U.S., escalate.

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