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Hezbollah gains clout in Lebanon _ but at a cost  

AITA AL-SHAAB, Lebanon - In this dusty village on the front lines of Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed guerrilla group looks as strong as ever. But even as it reaches the zenith of its power in Lebanon, Hezbollah is generating new perils along the way.

Tales of heroism by Hezbollah fighters still make the rounds in Aita al-Shaab, the streets are adorned with portraits of the group's "martyrs," and yellow Hezbollah flags fly from lampposts. Villagers, still rebuilding from the devastation of the war, profess unswerving devotion to the Shiite Muslim group and its charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

"I am 90, but if they ask me to fight Israel, I will," said Hassan Marai, a tobacco farmer.

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• Smoking ban on AUB's campus sees lax compliance 

Since May 15, AUB has officially been a smoke-free campus except for designated areas. But despite the move and recent public smoking bans in Turkey and across the EU, AUB students - and the rest of Lebanon - show no sign of stopping any time soon.

According to a 2007 Gallup poll, 41 percent of Lebanese said they'd smoked the day before. Only the Turks smoked more.

"It's in the culture. Everyone smokes, the classiest people smoke, the politicians smoke," says Rony Qiameh, a Lebanese-Canadian student at AUB. "The cigarette is probably the only thing that connects the high class and the low class." . . .

Makhoul believes that the ban will eventually become accepted and something of a non-issue. "They had a problem enforcing no smoking in classrooms. Now it's accepted university wide that smoking is not allowed in classrooms."

Despite the inevitable complaints that will follow any attempt to restrict their smoking, some students aren't particularly bothered by the ban.

"This is a minor problem in the Middle East right now," Qiameh says.

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• Southerners say they have no choice but to make living cultivating tobacco 

SOUTH LEBANON: "We are not exporters of diseases. If we had alternative crops we would get rid of tobacco cultivation," cultivator Hassan Tirani told The Daily Star on Thursday, while he was selling his annual tobacco harvest to the Tobacco Regie in Nabatieh. "We are accused of selling products that have negative effects on human bodies," he said. "We do not intend to harm people at all. Provide us with alternatives and we will stop practicing tobacco cultivation."

Tirani said tobacco cultivation "is tiring but not rewarding."

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• Philip Morris to help curb cigarette smuggling in Lebanon 

Lebanon signed a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday with the giant tobacco company Philip Morris to help end tobacco and cigarette smuggling into the country.

Philip Morris plans to train the Lebanese Regie company, a government controlled entity which hold a monopoly in the production of tobacco and import of cigarettes, to detect counterfeited cigarettes.

Finance Minister Jihad Azour said the agreement with Philip Morris will boost the confidence of companies in Lebanon and turn the country into a regional business hub.

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Poisoned by war, Lebanon reaps meagre harvest 

In the field bordering the remnants of his home, Amin Akel Saad points to skeletal tobacco plants pushing up out of land burnt by Israeli bombs.

"Look at this field, Israeli planes dropped 30 bombs on it," said the elderly man. "Seventy years of work destroyed." . . .

Cultivated by generation after generation, tobacco provides a living to some 16,000 families in Lebanon, mainly in the country's south.

The state tobacco company, which maintains a monopoly, "buys 5,200 tonnes a year, at eight dollars per kilo," says Nahla Slim, the firm's communications officer.

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• Weak regulations block efforts to reduce tobacco usage 

Some 20 percent of Lebanese schoolchildren aged 13-15 smoke tobacco products at home, while nearly 60 percent of the same group regularly puff on a narguileh (or water pipe), according to a survey conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2005. . . .

"One of the major factors in young people taking up smoking is the seductive factor, wanting to be cool," said Noshka Boustani, coordinator of Tobacco Free Initiative, a localnon-governmental organization. "Young people start out of curiosity or because of peer pressure at school."

The survey, which was the second of two undertaken by the WHO, showed that while cigarette consumption remained constant between 2001-05, narguileh usage rose substantially - to 58 percent - despite a WHO-backed awareness campaign during the same years. According to anti-smoking activists, much of the effect of the awareness campaign was offset by the absence of legislation to limit advertising for tobacco products.

Seventy-seven percent of the children surveyed in 2005 reported exposure to anti-smoking campaigns, but 88 percent reported exposure to "pro-smoking cigarette ads" on billboards.

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• Lebanese teenagers can't stay away from the hooka 

- A study conducted by the American University of Beirut in collaboration with the World Health Organization, showed that more than 60 percent of Lebanese teenagers are smokers.

The 2005 study found that more than 80 percent of youths, aged between 13 and 15, who are current smokers use the nargileh water pipe, towards which parents tend to tolerate more than cigarette smoking. . . .

"The increasing trend of nargileh use among young people is alarming, and rapid action is needed," said Dr. Rima Afifi-Soweid, who conducted the study in collaboration with researchers at the WHO.

According to Dr. Afifi-Soweid, kids who promise their parents that they will not smoke are much more likely to fulfill their commitment than those who do not.

"That's an easy and cheap intervention we could encourage," she said at a recent symposium on smoking held at Issam Fares Hall.

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International Tobacco and Cigarettes Company fosters strong ties amongst team members  

In keeping with its ongoing aims to foster strong ties amongst all its team members, the International Tobacco and Cigarette Company (ITC) recently organized a two day trip for its employees to the coastal city of Aqaba.

The trip, which took place between the time periods of March 30th and March 31st 2007, granted ITC team members an opportunity to build strong social ties with one another.

During the two day trip, attendees enjoyed a number of team building activities In addition and they brainstormed different ideas to gain market share and expand their marketing campaigns.

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• Smugglers attack Lebanese army near Syrian border 

Gunmen fired on a Lebanese army post near the border with Syria, the first such incident since troops deployed last month to control the frontier, the official National News Agency reported on Friday.

It said the shooting took place overnight in the Wadi Khaled area . . .

The Lebanese army has beefed up its presence on the Syrian border to prevent arms from reaching Hizbollah as demanded by a U.N. Security Council resolution . . . Smugglers use the Wadi Khaled area to transport items such as cement, diesel and tobacco across the border.

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Lebanese Town Full of Hezbollah Fighters 

Wheat fields were partially harvested, sheep and goats grazed in the stubble. Fields of tobacco stretched into the distance, the big leaves waving in the breeze.

Every telephone pole in the town of 8,000 was flying a yellow Hezbollah flag, windows were plastered with posters of the militant group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. The main street was lined with alms boxes requesting donations for widows.

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Lebanon Village Now Wasteland After War 

AITA AL-SHAAB, Lebanon (AP) -- First came the tanks. Then came the warplanes. Then came the bulldozers. A monthlong Israeli assault and weeks of fierce ground combat between Israel and Hezbollah fighters have reduced this once-vibrant tobacco farming village and Hezbollah stronghold to a wasteland of rubble, scorched trees and unexploded bombs - a snapshot of the destruction the 34-day war wrought across southern Lebanon.

In this village from which Hezbollah guerrillas launched the July 12 raid into Israel that ignited the war, there is no electricity, no running water and no talk of reconstruction. Most of Aita al-Shaab will likely have to be torn down to be rebuilt.

"This has set us back 100 years," . . .

Tobacco fields have been withered or burned, and sandwich shops and hair salons obliterated. The stench of dead animals - horses, cattle, sheep - rises from underneath the destruction.

"Just about everyone in this village is a farmer," said Srour's brother, 67-year-old Ali Abed. "Our animals are dead now."

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• Lebanon war claims tobacco crop as well, farmers say 

Their villages have been bombed and relatives killed. In addition, the farmers of south Lebanon say war with Israel has cost them the tobacco crop that is their livelihood.

Across the south, green fields have gone untended since Israel's war with Hizbollah erupted on July 12. Although most fighting ended last week, farmers say the crop is spoiled because it has been left unpicked for too long.

"A war of one month has ruined the crop of one year," said Sameh Shalhoub, who farms tobacco around the village of Qana, where an Israeli attack killed 27 civilians.

Tobacco farming supports 14,000 families, or around 100,000 people, in the rural south, an official from the state's tobacco authority said.

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With no money to flee, farmer's family in Dhaira, Lebanon, lives in fear  

The Shi'ite militia Hezbollah has little support in this Sunni Muslim village. Like many of the villages in the border valley, however, Dhaira has taken a beating from Israeli and Hezbollah positions that command the heights on either side.

Tobacco farmer Abou Najeh, 54, said he has remained in the village just a few hundred yards from the Israeli border with his 10 children because he didn't have $100 to charter a taxi to safety earlier in the conflict.

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A Night of Death and Terror for Lebanese Villagers 

already been gone.

But leaving southern Lebanon now is dangerous. The two extended families staying in the house that the Israeli missile struck — the Shalhoubs and the Hashims — had discussed leaving several times over the past two weeks. But they were poor — most worked in tobacco or construction — and the families were big and many of their members weak, with a 95-year-old, two relatives in wheelchairs and dozens of children.

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A Frantic Rush Overwhelms a Lebanese Border Town 

Here in Rmeish, a Christian town less than a mile from the Israeli border, refugees living in garages, storefronts, churches and schools begged for food, water and medicine on Friday. . . .

Scenes of desperation flashed across an exquisite landscape of blue water, tobacco fields, banana plants and goats. . .

In a nearby garage, a large extended family sat on plastic chairs, waiting for salvation. An old man in a white crocheted cap lay on a mat under a ceiling hung with drying tobacco leaves. He needed medicine.

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