By Lysandra Ohrstrom Daily Star staff Wednesday, July 19, 2006
BEIRUT: Israel switched gears in its military campaign against Lebanon Monday and Tuesday, launching a series of debilitating air strikes against privately owned factories throughout the country and dealing a devastating blow to an economy already paralyzed by a week of hits on residential areas and crucial infrastructure.
The production facilities of at least five companies in key industrial sectors - including the country's largest dairy farm, Liban Lait; a paper mill; a packaging firm and a pharmaceutical plant - have been disabled or completely destroyed. Industry insiders say the losses will cripple the economy for decades to come.
"I think the picture will be much worse than we can possible imagine when the whole thing ends, but the direct damage from yesterday's attacks to the industrial sector alone will take years to recover from," said Wajid al-Bisri, the vice-president of the Lebanese Association of Industrialists (LAI).
"So many of these factories were barely functioning before," he added, "because of local obstacles to production like high energy costs and labor."
Due to broken lines of communication to the affected areas, the full extent of the material and human damage was still unknown when The Daily Star went to press. However, up to 15 factories have been hit, according to some estimates.
Bisri confirmed that a plastics factory in Tyre, a tissue paper factory in Sidon, a paper mill and a medical supply company in Beirut's southern suburbs and Liban Lait in the Bekaa were all almost completely destroyed. Bisri declined to give the companies' names.
Former LAI president Jacques Sarraf said he was aware of two plastics factories in the South and one in the Bekaa that had suffered extensive damage.
"There is nothing strategic about these targets, we need the industrial sector to rebuild this country," he said.
"But Israel is the enemy and they are doing everything they can to destroy the country, economically, socially, politically."
At a Monday meeting the Council of Industrialists issued a statement asking that the international community intervene and negotiate a cease-fire and an immediate end to Israel's blockade of Lebanon, which has made casualties out of all companies, directly targeted or not.
Sami Salmad, the owner of Transmed, a Lebanese company that distributes imported consumer goods, lost $10 million worth of merchandise when his warehouse went up in flames following Israel's fourth consecutive strike against a fuel depot at Rafik Hariri International Airport Saturday.
"Tell me when this craziness will stop and I'll tell you how long it will take for me to recover," said Salmad
Ralph Sayed, owner of American Garment Industry International, a local textile exporting company, said that as long as he has access to fuel he would be able to stay running for about three or four weeks using stockpiled raw materials.
He said the blockade will bury him in the long run, however. He is understaffed because most of his Syrian workforce left at the onset of the bombing, and transport costs have skyrocketed since he now has to move goods to Syria by truck instead of plane - an increasingly time-consuming, arduous, and expensive journey.
"All this we can handle, but the worst scenario is customers will no longer make orders because they'll think we won't be able to fill them," said Sayed.