Sudan Tribune
14 November 2009
Ethiopia’s ministry of mines and energy this week announced that it has discovered more than 40 tonns of gold deposit in two sites in the western parts of the country.
According to Ethiopia news agency, A British firm has found 23 tons of gold deposit at a local area known as Tulu-Kapi, some 450 Km west of the capital near the border to Sudan. While a Saudi company discovered 18 tonns of gold deposit at Lege-Dembi locality.
When extraction is began from the new mine sites, Ethiopia’s annual income from the sector is said to jump to 1.7 Billion US dollar a year from what it is now, only USD105 Million.
However this will cost Ethiopia 200 million dollars to extract and process it within a period of 5 to 10 years.
Currently there are some 44 companies engaged in gold exploration. Statistics by the national bank indicates that the nation has earned 450.5 million dollars from exports of some 48 tons of gold over the past 10 years.
Studies indicate that Ethiopia’s mineral resources still remain unexploited. Geological surveys indicate that there is an estimated 500 tonns of gold deposit across the horn of Africa’s nation.
14 November, 2009
Inmates in Rwanda fake testimony at ICTR to get released from jail.
13 November 2009
Arusha: A defence witness claimed before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Thursday that inmates in Rwanda make false statements against accused persons tried in Arusha in order to get released.
Led in his examination in-chief by American defence counsel Peter Robinson, witness code-named ‘’16’’ to protect his identity, alleged that a group of about 40 detainees at Ruhengeri prison, including himself, were advised by the Rwandan officials to falsely accuse the former leaders as part of the condition to get released.
He added that without implicating the former authorities, their confessions would not be accepted.
The witness was testifying in the defence of the former Secretary General of the Rwandan presidential party (MRND), Joseph Nzirorera.
Mr. Nzirorera is jointly tried alongside two other senior MRND leaders, including its ex-president, Mathieu Ngirumpatse and the vice-president, Edouard Karemera whose defence case has already been completed.
He asked the Chamber, presided by Judge Denis Byron, ‘’not to give any credit to these statements I made before the Ruhengeri prison authorities and to the ICTR investigators in 2002 because I made them under duress’’.
He mentioned names of about ten witnesses to have been forced under such circumstances.
The witness, who was convicted in Rwanda for his involvement in genocide and sentenced to 20 years in prison, would continue with his testimony on Monday. He is the tenth defence witness out of the expected 55.
Nzirorera and his two co-defendants are charged mainly with crimes committed by members of their party. The Prosecution has indicted them for their superior responsibility as top officials of the MRND, the party then in power under President Juvenal Habyarimana.
Arusha: A defence witness claimed before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Thursday that inmates in Rwanda make false statements against accused persons tried in Arusha in order to get released.
Led in his examination in-chief by American defence counsel Peter Robinson, witness code-named ‘’16’’ to protect his identity, alleged that a group of about 40 detainees at Ruhengeri prison, including himself, were advised by the Rwandan officials to falsely accuse the former leaders as part of the condition to get released.
He added that without implicating the former authorities, their confessions would not be accepted.
The witness was testifying in the defence of the former Secretary General of the Rwandan presidential party (MRND), Joseph Nzirorera.
Mr. Nzirorera is jointly tried alongside two other senior MRND leaders, including its ex-president, Mathieu Ngirumpatse and the vice-president, Edouard Karemera whose defence case has already been completed.
He asked the Chamber, presided by Judge Denis Byron, ‘’not to give any credit to these statements I made before the Ruhengeri prison authorities and to the ICTR investigators in 2002 because I made them under duress’’.
He mentioned names of about ten witnesses to have been forced under such circumstances.
The witness, who was convicted in Rwanda for his involvement in genocide and sentenced to 20 years in prison, would continue with his testimony on Monday. He is the tenth defence witness out of the expected 55.
Nzirorera and his two co-defendants are charged mainly with crimes committed by members of their party. The Prosecution has indicted them for their superior responsibility as top officials of the MRND, the party then in power under President Juvenal Habyarimana.
DynCorp, not Blackwater, working in Pakistan: Malik.
Daily Times
14 November 2009
By Tahir Niaz
Denying presence of US security agency, Blackwater (Xe Worldwide) in the country, Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Friday said a few personnel of US security company DynCorp have been allowed to work in Karachi to provide security to US personnel present in Afghanistan.
Addressing the National Assembly, Malik said DynCorp had been working in Afghanistan for security purposes and was committed to abide by Pakistani laws.
However, he said the company officials travelled under a security cover provided by Pakistani agencies from Pakistan to the Afghan border, adding that they were not allowed to stay in Pakistan.
The interior minister said no foreigner was allowed to carry and display weapons without a licence, adding that security agencies had been instructed to take action against those violating the law.
14 November 2009
By Tahir Niaz
Denying presence of US security agency, Blackwater (Xe Worldwide) in the country, Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Friday said a few personnel of US security company DynCorp have been allowed to work in Karachi to provide security to US personnel present in Afghanistan.
Addressing the National Assembly, Malik said DynCorp had been working in Afghanistan for security purposes and was committed to abide by Pakistani laws.
However, he said the company officials travelled under a security cover provided by Pakistani agencies from Pakistan to the Afghan border, adding that they were not allowed to stay in Pakistan.
The interior minister said no foreigner was allowed to carry and display weapons without a licence, adding that security agencies had been instructed to take action against those violating the law.
EU soldiers to help Somali troops in Uganda.
BBC News
13 November 2009
The European Union is expected to endorse plans to send troops to help train up to 2,000 Somali soldiers, according to an EU official.
Under the plan, up to 200 EU troops will train Somali military personnel in Uganda in a bid to broaden engagement in the crisis-hit state.
A decision is expected to be taken at a meeting of EU ministers next week.
The move comes on the heels of a request by the Somali government to help build a 6,000-strong police force.
"Once this is approved, which we expect is going to happen during the (EU) council then we will be launching the real planning," said Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
"We think that this is a very good contribution to the global approach that the European Union has in order to tackle the Somali problems and all of its impact."
The training plan is expected to last for roughly a year and will be carried out in two or three phases.
The move by the EU is expected to complement efforts made by France, Djibouti and Uganda who have all committed to training Somali troops.
13 November 2009
The European Union is expected to endorse plans to send troops to help train up to 2,000 Somali soldiers, according to an EU official.
Under the plan, up to 200 EU troops will train Somali military personnel in Uganda in a bid to broaden engagement in the crisis-hit state.
A decision is expected to be taken at a meeting of EU ministers next week.
The move comes on the heels of a request by the Somali government to help build a 6,000-strong police force.
"Once this is approved, which we expect is going to happen during the (EU) council then we will be launching the real planning," said Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
"We think that this is a very good contribution to the global approach that the European Union has in order to tackle the Somali problems and all of its impact."
The training plan is expected to last for roughly a year and will be carried out in two or three phases.
The move by the EU is expected to complement efforts made by France, Djibouti and Uganda who have all committed to training Somali troops.
13 November, 2009
Mbeki: No war in Darfur.
News 24
12 November 2009
There is no war in Darfur, and the people who are saying so, are doing it to justify their own political agendas.
This was how former President Thabo Mbeki expressed his opinion on the situation in Sudan during an address at the University of Pretoria's Faculty of Law on Wednesday evening.
He did acknowledge that there is currently a "low-intensity war" in Western Sudan, the region where Darfur is located.
Darfur is a "refugee camp" spread out over an area larger than Gauteng, and according to the African Union (AU), it houses 2.7 million people who've fled onslaughts by their own government. These people are living in conditions of extreme hardship.
Mbeki is heading up an AU delegation negotiating a peace treaty in Sudan. He is currently doing everything within his power to prevent Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir from being arrested and tried on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Mbeki, who declared last year that "there is no crisis in Zimbabwe", said he had recently spent 30 days in Darfur, "and there is no war".
He took exception to the fact that the UN Security Council has not accepted the AU's recent report on the current situation in Darfur.
'Own reality'
"They're extremely upset because we didn't deliver a report stating that a bloody war was taking place. There is still a low-intensity war going on, since there has been no peace agreement yet. People who allege otherwise, are creating their own convenient and self-justifying reality," he said.
Mbeki also advised Africa to reconsider its relations with the G8 countries (the US, Britain, Italy, France, Japan, Canada, Germany and Russia), and rather to turn to China.
"Western countries are becoming increasingly concerned about China's growing presence in Africa."
He said China has already established that it is positive towards Africa. In this regard, he referred to the building of the Tanzam railway line between Tanzania and Zambia.
"China isn't the gogga, - I think the English for that is 'monster' - that many would suggest they are," said Mbeki.
12 November 2009
There is no war in Darfur, and the people who are saying so, are doing it to justify their own political agendas.
This was how former President Thabo Mbeki expressed his opinion on the situation in Sudan during an address at the University of Pretoria's Faculty of Law on Wednesday evening.
He did acknowledge that there is currently a "low-intensity war" in Western Sudan, the region where Darfur is located.
Darfur is a "refugee camp" spread out over an area larger than Gauteng, and according to the African Union (AU), it houses 2.7 million people who've fled onslaughts by their own government. These people are living in conditions of extreme hardship.
Mbeki is heading up an AU delegation negotiating a peace treaty in Sudan. He is currently doing everything within his power to prevent Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir from being arrested and tried on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Mbeki, who declared last year that "there is no crisis in Zimbabwe", said he had recently spent 30 days in Darfur, "and there is no war".
He took exception to the fact that the UN Security Council has not accepted the AU's recent report on the current situation in Darfur.
'Own reality'
"They're extremely upset because we didn't deliver a report stating that a bloody war was taking place. There is still a low-intensity war going on, since there has been no peace agreement yet. People who allege otherwise, are creating their own convenient and self-justifying reality," he said.
Mbeki also advised Africa to reconsider its relations with the G8 countries (the US, Britain, Italy, France, Japan, Canada, Germany and Russia), and rather to turn to China.
"Western countries are becoming increasingly concerned about China's growing presence in Africa."
He said China has already established that it is positive towards Africa. In this regard, he referred to the building of the Tanzam railway line between Tanzania and Zambia.
"China isn't the gogga, - I think the English for that is 'monster' - that many would suggest they are," said Mbeki.
Africa: African Oil, Gas, Minerals Trade and Finance Conference opens.
The Chronicle
Daniel Nonor
10 November 2009
The 13th UNCTAD's African Oil, Gas, Minerals, Trade and Finance Conference, takes off toady in Bamako, Mali with focus on the critical role information can play in the natural-resource sector.
The theme of this year's conference is "Natural resources development: capturing value from information."
The conference ends on the 13th of November.
High-level officials of African governments, investors, executives from small and large petroleum and mining firms, bankers, law firms, and environmentalists participating in the conference will discuss how information helps reduce exploration risks, saves time during new exploration, and can achieve high recovery rates when new technology is applied to formerly abandoned sites.
Owners of resources also can benefit extensively from good information in terms of marketing and in making decisions - more thorough data can prove valuable in negotiations and in strengthening the policy-making capacities of host country governments.
Speakers at the opening session the afternoon of 10 November will include Amadou Toumani Touré, President of Mali; Fradique de Menezes, President of Sao Tome & Principe; Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of UNCTAD; Chakib Khelil, Minister of Energy and Mines of Algeria and President of the Council of African Ministers of Energy (CAMEN); Houlin Zhao, Deputy Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union; Ahmed Ibrahim Elham, Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy of the African Union Commission; Gabriel Dansou Lokossou, Executive Secretary of the African Petroleum Producers' Association; Mbaranga Gasarabwe, United Nations Development Programme Resident Representative and United Nations Resident Coordinator for Mali; and Antonio M.A. Pedro, Director of the UN Economic Commission for Africa's Sub-Regional Office for West Africa.
Over 400 participants from more than 30 countries are expected to attend the meeting, including 22 African government ministers for energy and mining.
African countries possess great stores of geosciences data existing from pre-independence times which have often gone unused for lack of knowledge or appreciation of the inherent value of the information.
Other information has gone unused because either governments have not obtained copies of what is available or, when information exists in the archives, it has not been properly catalogued or organized in a usable way.
Among other things, the conference will highlight the potential value of archived information. One expected outcome of the event is an initiative aimed at reinforcing the capacities of host countries to capture untapped value from already existing information can optimize natural resource development and management.
Daniel Nonor
10 November 2009
The 13th UNCTAD's African Oil, Gas, Minerals, Trade and Finance Conference, takes off toady in Bamako, Mali with focus on the critical role information can play in the natural-resource sector.
The theme of this year's conference is "Natural resources development: capturing value from information."
The conference ends on the 13th of November.
High-level officials of African governments, investors, executives from small and large petroleum and mining firms, bankers, law firms, and environmentalists participating in the conference will discuss how information helps reduce exploration risks, saves time during new exploration, and can achieve high recovery rates when new technology is applied to formerly abandoned sites.
Owners of resources also can benefit extensively from good information in terms of marketing and in making decisions - more thorough data can prove valuable in negotiations and in strengthening the policy-making capacities of host country governments.
Speakers at the opening session the afternoon of 10 November will include Amadou Toumani Touré, President of Mali; Fradique de Menezes, President of Sao Tome & Principe; Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of UNCTAD; Chakib Khelil, Minister of Energy and Mines of Algeria and President of the Council of African Ministers of Energy (CAMEN); Houlin Zhao, Deputy Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union; Ahmed Ibrahim Elham, Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy of the African Union Commission; Gabriel Dansou Lokossou, Executive Secretary of the African Petroleum Producers' Association; Mbaranga Gasarabwe, United Nations Development Programme Resident Representative and United Nations Resident Coordinator for Mali; and Antonio M.A. Pedro, Director of the UN Economic Commission for Africa's Sub-Regional Office for West Africa.
Over 400 participants from more than 30 countries are expected to attend the meeting, including 22 African government ministers for energy and mining.
African countries possess great stores of geosciences data existing from pre-independence times which have often gone unused for lack of knowledge or appreciation of the inherent value of the information.
Other information has gone unused because either governments have not obtained copies of what is available or, when information exists in the archives, it has not been properly catalogued or organized in a usable way.
Among other things, the conference will highlight the potential value of archived information. One expected outcome of the event is an initiative aimed at reinforcing the capacities of host countries to capture untapped value from already existing information can optimize natural resource development and management.
12 November, 2009
Puntland president held meetings with US officials in Nairobi.
Garowe Online
11 November 2009
The president of Somalia's Puntland State government has held meetings with US foreign Affairs officials led by US Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger.
The meeting, which was held in US Ambassador’s residence in Nairobi on Monday, was focused on cooperation between Puntland and US in social welfare, fight against piracy and insecurity in Puntland state.
Several US foreign affairs officials are in Nairobi to assess the security situation in the Horn of African nation and American assistance to the fragile UN-backed Somali government.
Puntland President Abdirahman Mohammed Farole and his delegation have also held talks with US Congressman Donald M. Payne who is the Chairman of the House Sub-Committee on Africa and Global Health under the aegis of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Situation in Somalia particularly Puntland was the focal point of the meeting, which was held in Nairobi’s Intercontinental.
Payne praised Puntland state for its efforts to fight the piracy menace in the region and passing the budget, which he termed as important step for realisation of development in the region.
The meeting between Payne and Puntalnd president is a follow up to the Farole’s recent visit to US, which allowed the international community to directly cooperate with Puntland.
President Farole is scheduled to meet with Somali government officials, Diaspora Puntland and Somali Diaspora.
11 November 2009
The president of Somalia's Puntland State government has held meetings with US foreign Affairs officials led by US Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger.
The meeting, which was held in US Ambassador’s residence in Nairobi on Monday, was focused on cooperation between Puntland and US in social welfare, fight against piracy and insecurity in Puntland state.
Several US foreign affairs officials are in Nairobi to assess the security situation in the Horn of African nation and American assistance to the fragile UN-backed Somali government.
Puntland President Abdirahman Mohammed Farole and his delegation have also held talks with US Congressman Donald M. Payne who is the Chairman of the House Sub-Committee on Africa and Global Health under the aegis of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Situation in Somalia particularly Puntland was the focal point of the meeting, which was held in Nairobi’s Intercontinental.
Payne praised Puntland state for its efforts to fight the piracy menace in the region and passing the budget, which he termed as important step for realisation of development in the region.
The meeting between Payne and Puntalnd president is a follow up to the Farole’s recent visit to US, which allowed the international community to directly cooperate with Puntland.
President Farole is scheduled to meet with Somali government officials, Diaspora Puntland and Somali Diaspora.
10 November, 2009
GEORGIAN OFFICIAL: TBILISI WAITING FOR PENTAGON TO EXPAND MILITARY ASSISTANCE.
Giorgi Lomsadze and Molly Corso
11/09/09
EurasiaNet
As the US Marines train Georgian troops for service in Afghanistan, questions remain about whether or not the US coaching is helping the Georgian army to tackle defense challenges closer to home. One Georgian government official told EurasiaNet that White House interest in good relations with Moscow has so far delayed any broader assistance.
But a series of warnings from Moscow has only heightened Georgian interest in such assistance. On November 5, Russian military intelligence chief Alexander Shliakhturov claimed that Tbilisi’s determination to re-seize control of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, recognized by Moscow as independent states, could lead to fresh conflict between Russia and Georgia.
Shliakhturov’s claim follows an allegation by Federal Security Service chief Alexander Bortnikov that Georgia is allegedly working with Al Qaeda to disrupt Russia’s predominantly Muslim North Caucasus.
On November 9, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed into law amendments that would allow the Russian military to take action wherever Russian citizens are considered at risk from attack. Most residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are Russian passport-holders.
Georgian defense officials have scoffed at the Kremlin’s claims, but have said that they are taking Moscow’s grumblings seriously.
Some Georgian officials, who asked not to be named, told EurasiaNet that the Georgian military is preparing to defend Tbilisi against potential attack and is replenishing defensive gear destroyed during last year’s war with Russia. Details of the new defense strategy, however, remain both in the works and under wraps.
Giorgi Kandelaki, deputy chairperson of the parliamentary foreign relations committee, said that Georgia’s "allies" are helping the country to improve its defense capabilities, but to varying degrees of involvement. He refrained from specifying the participants or their roles in the reforms.
Some Georgian government insiders say that so far diplomacy has taken precedence over military assistance in relations between the US and Georgia. A Georgian official with insight into US-Georgian defense ties told EurasiaNet that the Pentagon is waiting for a go-ahead signal from the White House before extending the scope of its assistance to Tbilisi. The official, who asked not to be named, claimed that Washington is hesitant to go the whole hog in helping to rebuild the Georgian army since the US is now caught between its commitment to Tbilisi and its desire to mend fences with Moscow.
The official said that the Georgian government expects Washington to come up with final decisions on how to proceed with assisting Georgia after US President Barack Obama’s administration completes its ongoing foreign policy revisions.
Pentagon officials were not available for comment.
For now, many Georgian military analysts are left to read between the lines. "I know that there have been some measures taken to improve the anti-tank and anti-air defense tools, but it is hard to judge the effectiveness of these measures, essentially given that defense officials have been reshuffled so many times since the war," said Irakli Aladashvili, a Tbilisi-based military analyst and editor of Arsenal, a defense magazine.
Georgia’s defense minister has been replaced twice since the war; the latest minister, 28-year-old Bacho Akhalaia, served as a deputy defense minister during the conflict.
Within Georgia, President Mikheil Saakashvili has emphasized overhauling the military, but strong expectations - both within political circles and in the general public -- nonetheless exist that both the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will support Georgia both militarily and politically should conflict break out again.
The Pentagon has promised to help Georgia improve its defense capabilities, and both US and NATO commanders and trainers have shuttled back and forth to Tbilisi since the 2008 war with Russia.
For now, though, the assistance appears to hinge on targeted, battalion-level training for overseas deployments, not on the overhaul of an entire military system.
"These exercises teach Georgian soldiers how to engage insurgents and terrorists, who do not have artillery or some other major military hardware, but they learn nothing about what to do when confronting a massive force armed to teeth with tanks and airplanes," Aladashvili said in reference to recent training exercises with the US Marines.
Visiting US commanders shy away from commenting on the combat-readiness of the Georgian army or from saying if there is more to US assistance than training for NATO’s Afghanistan operations. The Georgian Ministry of Defense also seems reluctant to elaborate about its cooperation with Washington. Phones at the ministry’s press office went unanswered for days. On the ministry’s website, a section tagged "Reforms" has no information available.
Until a clear line of action becomes public, Tbilisi is concentrating on publicity to boost damaged public confidence in the army, commented analyst Aladashvili.
Television stations, reporting on October 30 from the scene of war games just outside Tbilisi, extensively described how Georgian soldiers, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with US Marine Corps instructors, successfully took over a mock enemy cache and overpowered dummy Taliban fighters, performed by smiling American and Georgian servicemen.
Kandelaki told EurasiaNet that the US cooperation is essential for displaying Georgia’s commitment to its allies. [Giorgi Kandelaki formerly worked as an editorial associate for EurasiaNet.org.]
But it is unclear if the US will reciprocate the way the Georgians would like to see.
"One thing I can tell you for sure is that our American friends are fully aware of Georgia’s defense needs and challenges," Kandelaki said. "We hope to continue cooperation in a low-profile, non-politicized way, but we do not want this to become a bargaining chip in Russia’s foreign policy."
Editor's Note: Giorgi Lomsadze is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi.
11/09/09
EurasiaNet
As the US Marines train Georgian troops for service in Afghanistan, questions remain about whether or not the US coaching is helping the Georgian army to tackle defense challenges closer to home. One Georgian government official told EurasiaNet that White House interest in good relations with Moscow has so far delayed any broader assistance.
But a series of warnings from Moscow has only heightened Georgian interest in such assistance. On November 5, Russian military intelligence chief Alexander Shliakhturov claimed that Tbilisi’s determination to re-seize control of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, recognized by Moscow as independent states, could lead to fresh conflict between Russia and Georgia.
Shliakhturov’s claim follows an allegation by Federal Security Service chief Alexander Bortnikov that Georgia is allegedly working with Al Qaeda to disrupt Russia’s predominantly Muslim North Caucasus.
On November 9, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed into law amendments that would allow the Russian military to take action wherever Russian citizens are considered at risk from attack. Most residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are Russian passport-holders.
Georgian defense officials have scoffed at the Kremlin’s claims, but have said that they are taking Moscow’s grumblings seriously.
Some Georgian officials, who asked not to be named, told EurasiaNet that the Georgian military is preparing to defend Tbilisi against potential attack and is replenishing defensive gear destroyed during last year’s war with Russia. Details of the new defense strategy, however, remain both in the works and under wraps.
Giorgi Kandelaki, deputy chairperson of the parliamentary foreign relations committee, said that Georgia’s "allies" are helping the country to improve its defense capabilities, but to varying degrees of involvement. He refrained from specifying the participants or their roles in the reforms.
Some Georgian government insiders say that so far diplomacy has taken precedence over military assistance in relations between the US and Georgia. A Georgian official with insight into US-Georgian defense ties told EurasiaNet that the Pentagon is waiting for a go-ahead signal from the White House before extending the scope of its assistance to Tbilisi. The official, who asked not to be named, claimed that Washington is hesitant to go the whole hog in helping to rebuild the Georgian army since the US is now caught between its commitment to Tbilisi and its desire to mend fences with Moscow.
The official said that the Georgian government expects Washington to come up with final decisions on how to proceed with assisting Georgia after US President Barack Obama’s administration completes its ongoing foreign policy revisions.
Pentagon officials were not available for comment.
For now, many Georgian military analysts are left to read between the lines. "I know that there have been some measures taken to improve the anti-tank and anti-air defense tools, but it is hard to judge the effectiveness of these measures, essentially given that defense officials have been reshuffled so many times since the war," said Irakli Aladashvili, a Tbilisi-based military analyst and editor of Arsenal, a defense magazine.
Georgia’s defense minister has been replaced twice since the war; the latest minister, 28-year-old Bacho Akhalaia, served as a deputy defense minister during the conflict.
Within Georgia, President Mikheil Saakashvili has emphasized overhauling the military, but strong expectations - both within political circles and in the general public -- nonetheless exist that both the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will support Georgia both militarily and politically should conflict break out again.
The Pentagon has promised to help Georgia improve its defense capabilities, and both US and NATO commanders and trainers have shuttled back and forth to Tbilisi since the 2008 war with Russia.
For now, though, the assistance appears to hinge on targeted, battalion-level training for overseas deployments, not on the overhaul of an entire military system.
"These exercises teach Georgian soldiers how to engage insurgents and terrorists, who do not have artillery or some other major military hardware, but they learn nothing about what to do when confronting a massive force armed to teeth with tanks and airplanes," Aladashvili said in reference to recent training exercises with the US Marines.
Visiting US commanders shy away from commenting on the combat-readiness of the Georgian army or from saying if there is more to US assistance than training for NATO’s Afghanistan operations. The Georgian Ministry of Defense also seems reluctant to elaborate about its cooperation with Washington. Phones at the ministry’s press office went unanswered for days. On the ministry’s website, a section tagged "Reforms" has no information available.
Until a clear line of action becomes public, Tbilisi is concentrating on publicity to boost damaged public confidence in the army, commented analyst Aladashvili.
Television stations, reporting on October 30 from the scene of war games just outside Tbilisi, extensively described how Georgian soldiers, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with US Marine Corps instructors, successfully took over a mock enemy cache and overpowered dummy Taliban fighters, performed by smiling American and Georgian servicemen.
Kandelaki told EurasiaNet that the US cooperation is essential for displaying Georgia’s commitment to its allies. [Giorgi Kandelaki formerly worked as an editorial associate for EurasiaNet.org.]
But it is unclear if the US will reciprocate the way the Georgians would like to see.
"One thing I can tell you for sure is that our American friends are fully aware of Georgia’s defense needs and challenges," Kandelaki said. "We hope to continue cooperation in a low-profile, non-politicized way, but we do not want this to become a bargaining chip in Russia’s foreign policy."
Editor's Note: Giorgi Lomsadze is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi.
General James Kazini Killed in Kampala.
BBC News
10 November 2009
Editor's Note: For what it is worth, Gen. Kazini's 2nd wife has reportedly confessed to the murder. Another source claims Gen. Kazini planned to run for parliament in 2011.
Uganda's former army chief James Kazini has been killed at his girlfriend's flat in the capital, Kampala.
A BBC correspondent claims Maj Gen Kazini died after being hit on the head with an iron bar during a brawl.
An army spokesman claimed he had been a victim of domestic violence. His girlfriend has been arrested.
He was sacked as army chief in 2003 after UN accusations that he plundered resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo when leading operations there.
He was in charge of Ugandan troops who clashed with their Rwandan counterparts in the eastern Congolese town of Kisangani in 1999.
The BBC's Joshua Mmali in Kampala says many people are shocked by the manner of his death.
Last year he was found guilty of corruption - charges unconnected to the Congolese allegations.
He went to jail, but was out on bail and facing further charges of subversion at the time of his death.
Denials
Allegations against Maj Gen Kazini were first made in two United Nations reports, at a time when Uganda had a heavy military presence in eastern DR Congo, supporting the rebellion against President Laurent Kabila and later against current President Joseph Kabila.
Although Maj Gen Kazini was withdrawn from DR Congo in 2001, the Ugandan government protested his innocence and appointed him acting army chief.
The government nevertheless set up a judicial commission of inquiry into the UN allegations.
As a result of the inquiry, the government recommended that action be taken against Maj Gen Kazini, and he was removed from his post as acting head of the army in 2003.
An army spokesman claimed at the time that Maj Gen Kazini's removal from office was unconnected with the UN accusations, and that he was being sent for further training.
Last year he was found guilty of causing the army financial loss, charges that stemmed from irregularities in the army payroll.
He was most recently facing charges that he disobeyed a presidential order, when he was army chief, not to transport large numbers of troops at one time.
Such actions can raise suspicion of coup plotting, our reporter says.
10 November 2009
Editor's Note: For what it is worth, Gen. Kazini's 2nd wife has reportedly confessed to the murder. Another source claims Gen. Kazini planned to run for parliament in 2011.
Uganda's former army chief James Kazini has been killed at his girlfriend's flat in the capital, Kampala.
A BBC correspondent claims Maj Gen Kazini died after being hit on the head with an iron bar during a brawl.
An army spokesman claimed he had been a victim of domestic violence. His girlfriend has been arrested.
He was sacked as army chief in 2003 after UN accusations that he plundered resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo when leading operations there.
He was in charge of Ugandan troops who clashed with their Rwandan counterparts in the eastern Congolese town of Kisangani in 1999.
The BBC's Joshua Mmali in Kampala says many people are shocked by the manner of his death.
Last year he was found guilty of corruption - charges unconnected to the Congolese allegations.
He went to jail, but was out on bail and facing further charges of subversion at the time of his death.
Denials
Allegations against Maj Gen Kazini were first made in two United Nations reports, at a time when Uganda had a heavy military presence in eastern DR Congo, supporting the rebellion against President Laurent Kabila and later against current President Joseph Kabila.
Although Maj Gen Kazini was withdrawn from DR Congo in 2001, the Ugandan government protested his innocence and appointed him acting army chief.
The government nevertheless set up a judicial commission of inquiry into the UN allegations.
As a result of the inquiry, the government recommended that action be taken against Maj Gen Kazini, and he was removed from his post as acting head of the army in 2003.
An army spokesman claimed at the time that Maj Gen Kazini's removal from office was unconnected with the UN accusations, and that he was being sent for further training.
Last year he was found guilty of causing the army financial loss, charges that stemmed from irregularities in the army payroll.
He was most recently facing charges that he disobeyed a presidential order, when he was army chief, not to transport large numbers of troops at one time.
Such actions can raise suspicion of coup plotting, our reporter says.
08 November, 2009
Beirut is back… And it's beautiful.
By Carole Cadwalladr
The Observer
8 November 2009
A whole new road system has been built from Beirut airport to the city centre since the last time I visited. What's more, there are new, exciting roadside accessories. "Oh my God!" says my friend Anna. "What's that?"
"It's a traffic light," I say although it's somewhat self-explanatory. "You're not stopping, are you?" says Anna. "Oh don't be so ridiculous! As if anyone's going to pay any attention to that!"
She has a point. We lived in Beirut for eight months back in 1995, a time when there were not only no traffic lights, there were also no road signs, no speed limits, no traffic police, and, indeed no apparent traffic laws. None.
Our friend Khaled's means of negotiating jams was to take his gun out of his glove compartment, strap it to his under-arm, and if the traffic was really bad, wave it around a bit.
As it turns out, the lights are a mixed success: some people stop, some people don't. A very Lebanese solution. You can do what you want, but you may have a super-charged Lebanese yuppie ram you in the back. Ah, yes, the memories come flooding back. It's that signature Beirut cocktail of adventure and excitement – with just a hint of sudden death.
Fourteen years ago, Anna and I wrote the first post-civil-war guidebook to Lebanon. I don't think either of us have felt the same about anywhere since: Beirut looms over our lives like… well, like the kind of psychotic ex-lover who you worry might strangle you in your sleep.
But it's thrilling to be back. We cruise along the seafront Corniche, and around the reconstructed downtown. On Martyrs' Square, Beirut's Ground Zero, the southernmost point of the old Green Line that divided Muslim West Beirut from Christian East Beirut, we reel at the sight of a Virgin Megastore and practically faint when we see a Dunkin' Donuts. Although – thank God! – the hulking Holiday Inn with its bullet holes and bomb craters is still there, as derelict and abandoned as ever.
It's beautiful, Beirut, beautiful and ugly and pock-marked and damaged and glamorous and unstable and exciting and just a bit mentally unhinged. It's the Elizabeth Taylor of the Mediterranean. Or it would be if you replaced the words "alcohol" with "Israel" and "a string of unsuitable marriages" with "15 years of civil war".
And like a hardened celebrity hack, I've learnt the hard way not to be taken in by its appearance. Because Beirut is back. Again. It's having a moment. Another one. There are two spanking new hotels – Le Gray, a sister hotel to the feted One Aldwych in London and Carlisle Bay in Antigua, has just opened; and that seal of international luxury approval, a Four Seasons, is opening soon. What's more, this year the New York Times nominated it its number one destination in the world.
Yadda, yadda yadda. Talk to the hand… I've spent the past 14 years telling people how great Lebanon is. How vast the mountains and sublime the food and empty the ruins and friendly the people and cool the bars. And periodically they've even believed me. And then news breaks out. There's always too much news in Lebanon: 2005 when prime minister Rafik Hariri got blown up by a car bomb; 2006 when Israel subjected the country to a month-long bombardment, blowing up the airport, highways, bridges, electricity sub-stations, and killing some 1,000 or so people; winter 2008, when Hezbollah gunmen took to the streets.
Could reports of a new dawn really be true this time? I hope so, I really do, but I worry that I'll jinx it somehow. I said the same when our guide came out in 1996, when we did a new edition in 1998, and when I returned to see the south after the Israelis pulled out in 2000.
And I'm not the only one. When I talk to Nehme Abouzeid, the publisher of Time Out Beirut, he starts telling me about the record-breaking forecasts for next summer, and then has to interrupt himself: "I mean, if everything stays the same... We always have to say that in Lebanon, because you never know. God willing..."
He speaks from experience: he started publishing Time Out in the spring of 2006, with a brand new office, a new editor, new staff. And then the Israeli bombardment began. "It just came out of nowhere. No one was expecting it. I was in Switzerland at a meeting where I'd just been telling people how, even at the height of the war, the airport never closed. And then came the news: the airport was closed. It was so shocking. Particularly for the youngsters, I think. The war was just something that their parents talked about. They'd never had any experience of it."
The magazine closed for two years, but it's back now, presiding over a nightlife scene that the recent unpleasantness seems only to have enhanced.
We wander through Gemmayzeh – which in our time had been an atmospheric but entirely ramshackle quarter, and has now become Beirut's Shoreditch, stuffed full of trendy bars and huge 4x4s disgorging chic young things – and then head up the hill to a bar called Centrale.
To get to it, we go down a jasmine-lined, floodlit walkway into a bombed-out building encased in wire, up inside an industrial wood-panelled lift, and out into a long, narrow, metal tube, one of whose walls had been removed to give a view over the Beirut skyline. Maybe I've caught a touch of Lebanese hyperbole but it just seems to be the most amazing bar in the world.
"Do bars like this exist in London and it's just that we don't go to them?" asks Anna as we sip our perfect cocktails and gaze on the perfect people. It seems unlikely, and, anyway, in London they'd be stuffed with Hoxtonites with annoying haircuts, whereas the Lebanese are beguiling, fluent in three languages, English, French and Arabic, often in the same sentence. "Bonsoir habibi, how's it going?" is their version of "Hello".
It's so impossibly glamorous, Beirut. The people so cosmopolitan. The nightlife so sophisticated. There's nowhere else like it in the Middle East, invigorated as it is by its sizeable diaspora, who fly back from London and Paris and Sydney and LA, with a thriving gay scene (although homosexuality is officially illegal), a free press, and an urban fashion code that encompasses everything from micro skirts to full-length abaya and veil.
Khaled shows up in his latest 4x4, which has the size and manoeuvrability of a tank, and whisks us around the city.
"That's the Skybar," he says. "Where a bottle of Cristal champagne costs $10,000 and they deliver it to your table with fireworks to make sure that everyone knows. People don't bother to drink it usually.
"That's White's – probably the most exclusive nightclub. See the cars outside.Look at those Ferraris. You know the popular thing right now? Plastic surgery loans. My secretary got a pair of new breasts with one. You know there are 10 million plastic surgery procedures a year in Lebanon? And we have only four million people!"
But then showing off is in the Lebanese DNA. Khaled wears the biggest Rolex you'll ever see or "Lebanese travel insurance" as he used to call it. "You can cash it in anywhere in the world."
He's probably right. Khaled always seemed to us to be Lebanon personified, enterprising, clever, brilliant at business. Like most of the Lebanese he's a "businessman" – something involving mobiles phones, possibly, I've never quite caught the details. Anna and I once watched him try to negotiate a 20% discount off a suit in Selfridges. "Khaled," I said, "in England, we have what is known as a price." Needless to say, he got the discount.
It's so flashy, so very un-PC. In a shop in the chi-chi suburb of Achrafiyeh, I spot a stuffed polar bear for sale. A stuffed baby polar bear. And Gordon Campbell Gray, the hotelier behind Le Gray, tells me about going out for dinner and being offered bluefin tuna. "I said, 'Isn't that an endangered species?' And the host leaned over and whispered, 'Not here'."
But, oh God, the food! It's the food of your dreams, the apotheosis of all Middle Eastern cuisine, made from only the freshest ingredients, beautifully presented, and served in the kind of abundance that suggests it might be your last meal on earth. At the end of dinner with Khaled there seems to be more food left on the table than when we started (including a platter of little birds, roasted in pomegranate molasses, complete with their heads and little beaks, and a plate of raw liver so fresh it's practically quivering).
"In Lebanon," says Khaled, leaning back and spreading his arms out in an expansive fashion, "we have everything. We have the Mediterranean. We have classical ruins. We have..."
"Religious extremists," I say. "Armed militiamen."
"Exactly. If you want religious extremists, we have religious extremists. If you want mountains, we have mountains. If you want lingerie shows on the ski slopes of Mount Lebanon, we have lingerie shows. We have everything. Everything."
It's true. They do. Even Beirut manages to be all things to all people. We leave the flashy bars of downtown and head south, but we get lost and end up in Haret Hreik, the suburb where Hezbollah had its headquarters, flattened in 2006. We drive down an avenue that's strung with the portraits of "martyrs" – the unmistakeable "heroic"-style photographs of dreamy-looking young men and women who've gone to their maker.
The old boast about Lebanon used to be that you could swim and ski in the same day. But even more astounding is that you can swim and tour Hezbollah country in the same day. We spend a day driving to Baalbeck to see, again, the amazing Roman ruins ("How many visitors today?" I ask. "Ten," the guardian replies. And these, bear in mind, are some of the finest Roman ruins anywhere in the world). And then through the hot, dry Bekaa, not so much a valley as a high-altitude plain, with its Hezbollah flags and roadside effigies of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, waving his machine gun in the direction of Israel. And then through the military checkpoints and over Mount Lebanon, on a high and lonely pass where Bedouin graze their sheep.
In one direction, there's the Mediterranean, in the other Syria. And then it's down through lush, cloudy orchards, the villages of the Christian heartlands, with shrines to the Virgin Mary on every corner until, finally, we reach the tiny port of Batroun, where there are women in bikinis lounging on the beach.
It seems impossible that this is the same continent, let alone the same country, just an hour or so apart. The mystery isn't why the Lebanese tried to kill each other for 15 bloodthirsty, murderous years; it's why they finally stopped.
I meet Gordon Campbell Gray on the roof terrace of his hotel, Le Gray, and it seems sure to be a huge international hotel hit, a Wallpaper* sensation... if everything stays the same. God willing, etc, etc. Elections were held in Lebanon in spring, and it still hasn't got a government. Squashed up against Syria and Israel, its constitution delicately balancing the rights of 17 different religions, its destiny has always been at the mercy of greater Middle Eastern politics. "How many years are you behind schedule?" I ask Campbell Gray.
"Oh God, years. We were very close to opening when the Israelis started bombing. It was very difficult to crank it back up after that."
"Everybody assumed he'd pull out," Nehme Abouzeid tells me. "It's quite amazing that he hasn't." And when I repeat his comments to Campbell Gray, he says, "I know! I'm quite the accidental hero. Of course, I was just too stupid to think about pulling out. It didn't even occur to me."
But then Campbell Gray has been through the same sort of Lebanese love affair that Anna and I have. Rapt adoration, mostly; interspersed with moments of appalled horror. "The social snobbery is just something else, isn't it? I mean even the nationality of your help is a status thing." He came out for a weekend in the mid-90s and just fell in love with the place. "Oh it was just wonderful. It was so beautiful but such a mess. There were all those security checkpoints yet it felt quite safe. And the people were incredible."
And he has persevered with the project against all odds. "You know every week we get asked to open a hotel somewhere but this is where I wanted to do it. It really is just the most exciting city on earth. It's not perfect. That's what makes it, I think. You can wander around at two in the morning, quite safe, and I leave my car unlocked, but there's still an edge, isn't there?"
There is. Even with Dunkin' Donuts and TGI Fridays. In 1995, they'd just started bulldozing the ruins of the old downtown. Solidere, a private company owned by former prime minister Hariri, bought the entire area and was hell-bent on total transformation. We watched ancient, decrepit, bullet-riddled Mandate-era mansions being pulled down, and worried that they were going to turn the place into a new Dubai. But the restoration work is impressive. Street after street of hand-carved stonework, beautifully restored mosques and churches, and floodlit Roman ruins and new fountains and designer boutiques bursting forth all over.
And if the new "souks" are just another shopping mall, and there are too many luxury apartment blocks for my taste, at least the people have come back. In the evening, promenading families eating ice creams come out, and women in the streetside cafes smoke nargilehs.
It's outside the Solidere zone that the real horrors are happening: the last surviving seafront mansions are being torn down to make way for marble skyscrapers. And in lovely Jbeil – or Byblos – just up the coast, with its Crusader castle and Phoenician fishing port, they've bulldozed the beach! A flashy private "beach club" has been built right on top of it.
But then this – backhanders, corruption, uncontrolled development – is as much a part of the Lebanese way as roasting songbirds and driving backwards at speed the wrong way down the hard shoulder. It's a beautiful country, blessed by the gods, yet cursed by them too. As I write this, a week after I return, it still doesn't have a government. But Beirut is back. And the New York Times is right: it should be your number one destination. All things being well. God willing, etc etc. Or as we say, touch wood.
Essentials
FLIGHTS
BMI (0844 848 4888; flybmi.comcorrect) has a direct daily service to Beirut from London Heathrow from £403.
WHERE TO STAY
The Albergo (00 961 1 339797; relaischateaux.com/albergocorrect) is probably the most characterful place to stay in Beirut. Bedrooms are beautifully decorated with Ottoman-era antiques, and the rooftop bar is one of the nicest in the city. A four-night break costs from about £400. If you want to combine a city break in Beirut with a beach holiday, the hotels in Ramlet el-Baida, just north of the downtown area, are the best bet, with the Movenpick Hotel and Resort (00 961 1 869666; moevenpick-hotels.comcorrect) the pick of the crop. Le Gray (00 961 1 972000; legray.comcorrect) is the newest and slickest hotel on the scene. Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000;coxandkings.co.ukcorrect) offers four-night breaks at Le Gray from £1,095, including flights and private transfers. The Four Seasons (fourseasons.com/beirutcorrect) is due to open later this year.
GUIDE BOOKS
A Hedonist's Guide to Beirut by Ramsay Short is a couple of years old but is the still the best one around. There are no good, up-to-date guides to the rest of the country – or any in print that take you off the beaten track. The 1998 edition of our book, Traveller's Survival Kit: Lebanon, will help you find out-of-way spots. Better still is Bruce Conde's 1959 See Lebanon.
BEYOND THE CITY
One way to get out into the countryside is to go with with one of the new hiking groups springing up in Lebanon. A good bet is Vamos Todos (vamos-todos.comcorrect), which organises adventure trips catering for different abilities and fitness levels all over the country.
The Observer
8 November 2009
A whole new road system has been built from Beirut airport to the city centre since the last time I visited. What's more, there are new, exciting roadside accessories. "Oh my God!" says my friend Anna. "What's that?"
"It's a traffic light," I say although it's somewhat self-explanatory. "You're not stopping, are you?" says Anna. "Oh don't be so ridiculous! As if anyone's going to pay any attention to that!"
She has a point. We lived in Beirut for eight months back in 1995, a time when there were not only no traffic lights, there were also no road signs, no speed limits, no traffic police, and, indeed no apparent traffic laws. None.
Our friend Khaled's means of negotiating jams was to take his gun out of his glove compartment, strap it to his under-arm, and if the traffic was really bad, wave it around a bit.
As it turns out, the lights are a mixed success: some people stop, some people don't. A very Lebanese solution. You can do what you want, but you may have a super-charged Lebanese yuppie ram you in the back. Ah, yes, the memories come flooding back. It's that signature Beirut cocktail of adventure and excitement – with just a hint of sudden death.
Fourteen years ago, Anna and I wrote the first post-civil-war guidebook to Lebanon. I don't think either of us have felt the same about anywhere since: Beirut looms over our lives like… well, like the kind of psychotic ex-lover who you worry might strangle you in your sleep.
But it's thrilling to be back. We cruise along the seafront Corniche, and around the reconstructed downtown. On Martyrs' Square, Beirut's Ground Zero, the southernmost point of the old Green Line that divided Muslim West Beirut from Christian East Beirut, we reel at the sight of a Virgin Megastore and practically faint when we see a Dunkin' Donuts. Although – thank God! – the hulking Holiday Inn with its bullet holes and bomb craters is still there, as derelict and abandoned as ever.
It's beautiful, Beirut, beautiful and ugly and pock-marked and damaged and glamorous and unstable and exciting and just a bit mentally unhinged. It's the Elizabeth Taylor of the Mediterranean. Or it would be if you replaced the words "alcohol" with "Israel" and "a string of unsuitable marriages" with "15 years of civil war".
And like a hardened celebrity hack, I've learnt the hard way not to be taken in by its appearance. Because Beirut is back. Again. It's having a moment. Another one. There are two spanking new hotels – Le Gray, a sister hotel to the feted One Aldwych in London and Carlisle Bay in Antigua, has just opened; and that seal of international luxury approval, a Four Seasons, is opening soon. What's more, this year the New York Times nominated it its number one destination in the world.
Yadda, yadda yadda. Talk to the hand… I've spent the past 14 years telling people how great Lebanon is. How vast the mountains and sublime the food and empty the ruins and friendly the people and cool the bars. And periodically they've even believed me. And then news breaks out. There's always too much news in Lebanon: 2005 when prime minister Rafik Hariri got blown up by a car bomb; 2006 when Israel subjected the country to a month-long bombardment, blowing up the airport, highways, bridges, electricity sub-stations, and killing some 1,000 or so people; winter 2008, when Hezbollah gunmen took to the streets.
Could reports of a new dawn really be true this time? I hope so, I really do, but I worry that I'll jinx it somehow. I said the same when our guide came out in 1996, when we did a new edition in 1998, and when I returned to see the south after the Israelis pulled out in 2000.
And I'm not the only one. When I talk to Nehme Abouzeid, the publisher of Time Out Beirut, he starts telling me about the record-breaking forecasts for next summer, and then has to interrupt himself: "I mean, if everything stays the same... We always have to say that in Lebanon, because you never know. God willing..."
He speaks from experience: he started publishing Time Out in the spring of 2006, with a brand new office, a new editor, new staff. And then the Israeli bombardment began. "It just came out of nowhere. No one was expecting it. I was in Switzerland at a meeting where I'd just been telling people how, even at the height of the war, the airport never closed. And then came the news: the airport was closed. It was so shocking. Particularly for the youngsters, I think. The war was just something that their parents talked about. They'd never had any experience of it."
The magazine closed for two years, but it's back now, presiding over a nightlife scene that the recent unpleasantness seems only to have enhanced.
We wander through Gemmayzeh – which in our time had been an atmospheric but entirely ramshackle quarter, and has now become Beirut's Shoreditch, stuffed full of trendy bars and huge 4x4s disgorging chic young things – and then head up the hill to a bar called Centrale.
To get to it, we go down a jasmine-lined, floodlit walkway into a bombed-out building encased in wire, up inside an industrial wood-panelled lift, and out into a long, narrow, metal tube, one of whose walls had been removed to give a view over the Beirut skyline. Maybe I've caught a touch of Lebanese hyperbole but it just seems to be the most amazing bar in the world.
"Do bars like this exist in London and it's just that we don't go to them?" asks Anna as we sip our perfect cocktails and gaze on the perfect people. It seems unlikely, and, anyway, in London they'd be stuffed with Hoxtonites with annoying haircuts, whereas the Lebanese are beguiling, fluent in three languages, English, French and Arabic, often in the same sentence. "Bonsoir habibi, how's it going?" is their version of "Hello".
It's so impossibly glamorous, Beirut. The people so cosmopolitan. The nightlife so sophisticated. There's nowhere else like it in the Middle East, invigorated as it is by its sizeable diaspora, who fly back from London and Paris and Sydney and LA, with a thriving gay scene (although homosexuality is officially illegal), a free press, and an urban fashion code that encompasses everything from micro skirts to full-length abaya and veil.
Khaled shows up in his latest 4x4, which has the size and manoeuvrability of a tank, and whisks us around the city.
"That's the Skybar," he says. "Where a bottle of Cristal champagne costs $10,000 and they deliver it to your table with fireworks to make sure that everyone knows. People don't bother to drink it usually.
"That's White's – probably the most exclusive nightclub. See the cars outside.Look at those Ferraris. You know the popular thing right now? Plastic surgery loans. My secretary got a pair of new breasts with one. You know there are 10 million plastic surgery procedures a year in Lebanon? And we have only four million people!"
But then showing off is in the Lebanese DNA. Khaled wears the biggest Rolex you'll ever see or "Lebanese travel insurance" as he used to call it. "You can cash it in anywhere in the world."
He's probably right. Khaled always seemed to us to be Lebanon personified, enterprising, clever, brilliant at business. Like most of the Lebanese he's a "businessman" – something involving mobiles phones, possibly, I've never quite caught the details. Anna and I once watched him try to negotiate a 20% discount off a suit in Selfridges. "Khaled," I said, "in England, we have what is known as a price." Needless to say, he got the discount.
It's so flashy, so very un-PC. In a shop in the chi-chi suburb of Achrafiyeh, I spot a stuffed polar bear for sale. A stuffed baby polar bear. And Gordon Campbell Gray, the hotelier behind Le Gray, tells me about going out for dinner and being offered bluefin tuna. "I said, 'Isn't that an endangered species?' And the host leaned over and whispered, 'Not here'."
But, oh God, the food! It's the food of your dreams, the apotheosis of all Middle Eastern cuisine, made from only the freshest ingredients, beautifully presented, and served in the kind of abundance that suggests it might be your last meal on earth. At the end of dinner with Khaled there seems to be more food left on the table than when we started (including a platter of little birds, roasted in pomegranate molasses, complete with their heads and little beaks, and a plate of raw liver so fresh it's practically quivering).
"In Lebanon," says Khaled, leaning back and spreading his arms out in an expansive fashion, "we have everything. We have the Mediterranean. We have classical ruins. We have..."
"Religious extremists," I say. "Armed militiamen."
"Exactly. If you want religious extremists, we have religious extremists. If you want mountains, we have mountains. If you want lingerie shows on the ski slopes of Mount Lebanon, we have lingerie shows. We have everything. Everything."
It's true. They do. Even Beirut manages to be all things to all people. We leave the flashy bars of downtown and head south, but we get lost and end up in Haret Hreik, the suburb where Hezbollah had its headquarters, flattened in 2006. We drive down an avenue that's strung with the portraits of "martyrs" – the unmistakeable "heroic"-style photographs of dreamy-looking young men and women who've gone to their maker.
The old boast about Lebanon used to be that you could swim and ski in the same day. But even more astounding is that you can swim and tour Hezbollah country in the same day. We spend a day driving to Baalbeck to see, again, the amazing Roman ruins ("How many visitors today?" I ask. "Ten," the guardian replies. And these, bear in mind, are some of the finest Roman ruins anywhere in the world). And then through the hot, dry Bekaa, not so much a valley as a high-altitude plain, with its Hezbollah flags and roadside effigies of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, waving his machine gun in the direction of Israel. And then through the military checkpoints and over Mount Lebanon, on a high and lonely pass where Bedouin graze their sheep.
In one direction, there's the Mediterranean, in the other Syria. And then it's down through lush, cloudy orchards, the villages of the Christian heartlands, with shrines to the Virgin Mary on every corner until, finally, we reach the tiny port of Batroun, where there are women in bikinis lounging on the beach.
It seems impossible that this is the same continent, let alone the same country, just an hour or so apart. The mystery isn't why the Lebanese tried to kill each other for 15 bloodthirsty, murderous years; it's why they finally stopped.
I meet Gordon Campbell Gray on the roof terrace of his hotel, Le Gray, and it seems sure to be a huge international hotel hit, a Wallpaper* sensation... if everything stays the same. God willing, etc, etc. Elections were held in Lebanon in spring, and it still hasn't got a government. Squashed up against Syria and Israel, its constitution delicately balancing the rights of 17 different religions, its destiny has always been at the mercy of greater Middle Eastern politics. "How many years are you behind schedule?" I ask Campbell Gray.
"Oh God, years. We were very close to opening when the Israelis started bombing. It was very difficult to crank it back up after that."
"Everybody assumed he'd pull out," Nehme Abouzeid tells me. "It's quite amazing that he hasn't." And when I repeat his comments to Campbell Gray, he says, "I know! I'm quite the accidental hero. Of course, I was just too stupid to think about pulling out. It didn't even occur to me."
But then Campbell Gray has been through the same sort of Lebanese love affair that Anna and I have. Rapt adoration, mostly; interspersed with moments of appalled horror. "The social snobbery is just something else, isn't it? I mean even the nationality of your help is a status thing." He came out for a weekend in the mid-90s and just fell in love with the place. "Oh it was just wonderful. It was so beautiful but such a mess. There were all those security checkpoints yet it felt quite safe. And the people were incredible."
And he has persevered with the project against all odds. "You know every week we get asked to open a hotel somewhere but this is where I wanted to do it. It really is just the most exciting city on earth. It's not perfect. That's what makes it, I think. You can wander around at two in the morning, quite safe, and I leave my car unlocked, but there's still an edge, isn't there?"
There is. Even with Dunkin' Donuts and TGI Fridays. In 1995, they'd just started bulldozing the ruins of the old downtown. Solidere, a private company owned by former prime minister Hariri, bought the entire area and was hell-bent on total transformation. We watched ancient, decrepit, bullet-riddled Mandate-era mansions being pulled down, and worried that they were going to turn the place into a new Dubai. But the restoration work is impressive. Street after street of hand-carved stonework, beautifully restored mosques and churches, and floodlit Roman ruins and new fountains and designer boutiques bursting forth all over.
And if the new "souks" are just another shopping mall, and there are too many luxury apartment blocks for my taste, at least the people have come back. In the evening, promenading families eating ice creams come out, and women in the streetside cafes smoke nargilehs.
It's outside the Solidere zone that the real horrors are happening: the last surviving seafront mansions are being torn down to make way for marble skyscrapers. And in lovely Jbeil – or Byblos – just up the coast, with its Crusader castle and Phoenician fishing port, they've bulldozed the beach! A flashy private "beach club" has been built right on top of it.
But then this – backhanders, corruption, uncontrolled development – is as much a part of the Lebanese way as roasting songbirds and driving backwards at speed the wrong way down the hard shoulder. It's a beautiful country, blessed by the gods, yet cursed by them too. As I write this, a week after I return, it still doesn't have a government. But Beirut is back. And the New York Times is right: it should be your number one destination. All things being well. God willing, etc etc. Or as we say, touch wood.
Essentials
FLIGHTS
BMI (0844 848 4888; flybmi.comcorrect) has a direct daily service to Beirut from London Heathrow from £403.
WHERE TO STAY
The Albergo (00 961 1 339797; relaischateaux.com/albergocorrect) is probably the most characterful place to stay in Beirut. Bedrooms are beautifully decorated with Ottoman-era antiques, and the rooftop bar is one of the nicest in the city. A four-night break costs from about £400. If you want to combine a city break in Beirut with a beach holiday, the hotels in Ramlet el-Baida, just north of the downtown area, are the best bet, with the Movenpick Hotel and Resort (00 961 1 869666; moevenpick-hotels.comcorrect) the pick of the crop. Le Gray (00 961 1 972000; legray.comcorrect) is the newest and slickest hotel on the scene. Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000;coxandkings.co.ukcorrect) offers four-night breaks at Le Gray from £1,095, including flights and private transfers. The Four Seasons (fourseasons.com/beirutcorrect) is due to open later this year.
GUIDE BOOKS
A Hedonist's Guide to Beirut by Ramsay Short is a couple of years old but is the still the best one around. There are no good, up-to-date guides to the rest of the country – or any in print that take you off the beaten track. The 1998 edition of our book, Traveller's Survival Kit: Lebanon, will help you find out-of-way spots. Better still is Bruce Conde's 1959 See Lebanon.
BEYOND THE CITY
One way to get out into the countryside is to go with with one of the new hiking groups springing up in Lebanon. A good bet is Vamos Todos (vamos-todos.comcorrect), which organises adventure trips catering for different abilities and fitness levels all over the country.
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