Aug. 6 marked the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. This year, sadly, the commemoration of that event has been overtaken by another tragedy. Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, the cosmopolitan heart of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean civilizations, is now facing the aftershocks from a massive explosion on Aug. 4 that many are calling “Beirut-shima.”
A city once serenaded as the Paris of the Middle East, “a mosaic of diverse cultures, and faiths,” in the unforgettable words of Leila Fawaz, a chronicler of Lebanon’s many resurrections, is now rubble.
Andy Tyas, a professor of blast protection engineering at Sheffield University, described the detonation of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, stored for years in a warehouse near the port, and the equivalent to 1,000 to 1,500 tons of TNT — as “unquestionably one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, far bigger than any conventional weapon.”
How much larger?
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast or MOAB, nicknamed “the Mother of All Bombs” — the most powerful conventional weapon in the U.S. military’s arsenal — has an explosive yield equivalent of 11 tons of TNT. At merely 11 tons of TNT — not 1,000 to 1,500 tons — that bomb is so devastating that the U.S. military refrained from using it as part of its “shock and awe” campaign in the Iraq war.
In fact, at around 10% of the intensity of the Hiroshima bomb (15 kiloton yield), the explosion in Beirut is comparable to a tactical nuclear weapon.
In an interview with France 24, Marwan Abboud, the governor of Beirut, gave voice to the shock:
“Beirut is a city that is in ruins. It is almost as if it has been struck by a nuclear bomb.”
The short- and long-term challenges triggered by the explosion in the Lebanese capital are immense, and they require a comprehensive and coordinated international humanitarian response across virtually every sector: health and environment, food and housing, infrastructure and economy, politics and security.
The current death toll stands at over 159 people, with 6,000 injured and over 300,000 people left homeless — refugees in their own city.
Half the houses in Beirut are either partially or completely destroyed. Three major hospitals have been demolished. The port of Beirut is entirely destroyed, the silos — which contained 85% of the city’s grain — are gone.
The streets are covered in glass, debris is falling off buildings. The predominantly Christian neighborhood of Gemmayzeh, with its historic churches and buildings, is in ruins. So too are the mosques and minarets of Quarantine, a poor neighborhood near the port.
Hanging over everyone are the environmental implications of the orange plume — air, ground and water pollution. Not just the ominous specter of the toxic nitrogen dioxide gas, but, as in New York with 9/11, the toxic chemical particles released from the combustion of carcinogenic building materials.
Beirut-shima is not hyperbole. It’s real — destruction on a scale that summons all our humanity.
Without a massive and decisive humanitarian intervention, the explosion in Beirut can trigger the collapse of the Lebanese state — a chain reaction as lethal as the collapse of the Syrian and Iraqi states.
The governor could not imagine Beirut’s reconstruction, estimated to cost as much as $15 billion. As he admitted, “Lebanon cannot deal with such a catastrophe. In fact, I don’t think any country would know how to deal with such a crisis.”
The people do. They are not only picking up the rubble, one home and one street at a time, but demanding an end to systemic and structural corruption — the rotten legacy of the sectarian abyss exposed by the crater.
Lebanon’s cabinet resigned on Monday. In a televised address, Prime Minister Hassan Diab declared that “I have discovered that corruption is bigger than the state and that the state is bound by this system, and that it is not possible to confront it or get rid of it.”
With Lebanon paralyzed, much of the world in the grip of a pandemic, and an epidemic of personal and national narcissisms undoing the very idea of our common humanity, nothing can be easier than forgetting Beirut.
Why not consign the fate of Beirut, as we have Hiroshima, to the historical oubliette? In an age in which technology generates distance and distraction, why not surrender our humanity to tycoons and tyrants who not only shatter our attention, but also our intentions and connections, leaving our love for and obligations to one another as broken as the shards of glass on the streets of Beirut?
Another day, another news cycle …
What if Beirut is a test of our commitment to the simplest common denominator binding us as humans: our vulnerability in a world that can collapse in an instant?
But what if there is an alternative to hopelessness and helplessness in the face of global shocks and national crises — and that is setting our intention, focusing our attention and directing our love in the service of each other’s humanity?
What if Beirut is a test of our commitment to the simplest common denominator binding us as humans: our vulnerability in a world that can collapse in an instant?
And what if Beirut offers us a chance to reimagine ourselves, not as a divine sects and warring nations created in the image of an almighty God but witnesses to the marvel and participants in the miracle of creation, no matter how fragile, flawed and fleeting its manifestations?
Surely, there is no better way to honor the Beirut casualties — as well as the memory of Hiroshima — than guarding the spirit of humanity manifest in the unity of life. If the survivors of Hiroshima teach us anything, it is that love is more powerful and life more resilient than the shadow of death and destruction cast upon the children of Beirut.
Just as the world embraced New York after 9/11, we the people, in all our many iterations as citizens, families, unions, corporations, nonprofits, foundations, faiths and governments — both in Utah and beyond — can hear and respond to the prayers of millions of Christians, Muslims and Jews whose hearts and homes lie crushed in a crater of chaos and confusion, their dreams extinguished under the rubble of a corrupt and collapsing world. In this, their hour of despair, let us assert our collective humanity certain in the power of love to hold us and the people of Lebanon, the mosaic of life, together as one.
Amir Soltani is the producer and co-director of “Dogtown Redemption,” a PBS documentary on race, class and homelessness in America. Avais Ahmed is chairman of the Utah Muslim Civic League.