LONDON -- While the lights go out and buildings collapse in one great European city -- the Serbian capital, Belgrade -- some 1,500 km to the east, in another once war-ravaged metropolis, a glittering reconstruction obliterates the recent past.
This is modern Beirut, the heart of Lebanon, which only a decade ago was a smoking ruin. Once in history it was part of the same empire (Byzantine and later Ottoman) as Serbia, despite the distance between them. But today, as the Serbian nation goes down, the Lebanese are struggling to rise up from a hideous civil war.
The shell-holed tower blocks are being bulldozed, the burned hotels refurbished or replaced, and in the center of the city, where violent factional fighting in the 1980s flattened hectares of markets, shops, offices and docks, a vast new project of careful restoration and spacious amenities, internationally financed, is nearing completion. Even a few enthusiastic tourists, led by the intrepid Japanese, are back.