And the deficit can only grow this year: "Iran would provide Hezbollah with an 'unlimited budget' for reconstruction." Now, this will be really unpopular with neoliberal reformists!
<blockquote>August 16, 2006 The Overview Hezbollah Leads Work to Rebuild, Gaining Stature By JOHN KIFNER
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 15 — As stunned Lebanese returned Tuesday over broken roads to shattered apartments in the south, it increasingly seemed that the beneficiary of the destruction was most likely to be Hezbollah.
A major reason — in addition to its hard-won reputation as the only Arab force that fought Israel to a standstill — is that it is already dominating the efforts to rebuild with a torrent of money from oil-rich Iran.
Nehme Y. Tohme, a member of Parliament from the anti-Syrian reform bloc and the country's minister for the displaced, said he had been told by Hezbollah officials that when the shooting stopped, Iran would provide Hezbollah with an "unlimited budget" for reconstruction.
In his victory speech on Monday night, Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, offered money for "decent and suitable furniture" and a year's rent on a house to any Lebanese who lost his home in the month-long war.
"Completing the victory," he said, "can come with reconstruction."
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While the Israelis began their withdrawal, hundreds of Hezbollah members spread over dozens of villages across southern Lebanon began cleaning, organizing and surveying damage. Men on bulldozers were busy cutting lanes through giant piles of rubble. Roads blocked with the remnants of buildings are now, just a day after a cease-fire began, fully passable.
In Sreifa, a Hezbollah official said the group would offer an initial $10,000 to residents to help pay for the year of rent, to buy new furniture and to help feed families.
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Hezbollah's reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network — as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well — was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage.
"Hezbollah's strength," said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese American University here, who has written extensively about the organization, in large part derives from "the gross vacuum left by the state."
Hezbollah was not, she said, a state within a state, but rather "a state within a nonstate, actually."
Sheik Nasrallah said in his speech that "the brothers in the towns and villages will turn to those whose homes are badly damaged and help rebuild them.
"Today is the day to keep up our promises," he said. "All our brothers will be in your service starting tomorrow."
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Hezbollah men also traveled door to door checking on residents and asking them what help they needed.
Although Hezbollah is a Shiite organization, Sheik Nasrallah's message resounded even with a Sunni Muslim, Ghaleb Jazi, 40, who works at the oil storage plant at Jiyeh, 15 miles south of Beirut. It was bombed by the Israelis and spewed pollution northward into the Mediterranean.
"The government may do some work on bridges and roads, but when it comes to rebuilding houses, Hezbollah will have a big role to play," he said. "Nasrallah said yesterday he would rebuild, and he will come through. " . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Defense Minister Elias Murr said Tuesday that the government would not seek to disarm Hezbollah.
"The army is not going to the south to strip the Hezbollah of its weapons and do the work that Israel did not," he said, showing just how difficult reining in the militia will most likely be in the coming weeks and months. He added that "the resistance," meaning Hezbollah, had been cooperating with the government and there was no need to confront it.
Sheik Nasrallah sounded much like a governor responding to a disaster when he said, "So far, the initial count available to us on completely demolished houses exceeds 15,000 residential units.
"We cannot of course wait for the government and its heavy vehicles and machinery because they could be a while," he said. He also cautioned, "No one should raise prices due to a surge in demand."
Support for Hezbollah was likely to become stronger, Professor Saad-Ghorayeb said, because of the weakness of the central government.
"Hezbollah has two pillars of support," she said, "the resistance and the social services. What this war has illustrated is that it is best at both. <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/16/world/middleeast/16hezbollah.html></blockquote>
Being the Kremlin of international Shi'ism doesn't come cheap. But Tehran has to spend on reconstruction of Lebanon, for the same reason that Caracas has to spend on many things in Latin America and the Caribbeans. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>