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FEATUE: Some Lebanese sick of political advertising

A poster of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah hangs on a building in Beirut, Lebanon, on March 31. PHOTO: AFP

Hours after Hezbollah commander Imad Mughnieh was killed, huge billboards with stencils of his burly face or a photo of him in battle fatigues were printed and ready to display all over Lebanon.

Pictures of this man on the US Most Wanted list are among the first images to greet visitors to the country, lining the road from the airport to downtown Beirut.

Farther inside the capital, assassinated former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, on his own or flanked by his son and political heir Saad, looks down from larger-than-life posters adorning city buildings.

The picture changes again in the northern town of Bsharre, this time with vast signs showing Christian leader Samir Geagea. In the eastern Bekaa region, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and other Shiite leaders are the poster of choice.

Images of political players — dead or alive — are omnipresent in Lebanon. They are plastered on bridges, electricity poles, cars and just about every standing structure in a battle of the billboards mirroring the deep political divide that has paralyzed the country for more than a year.

“The political crisis allows for this sort of advertising and there are many messages you can spread much faster on billboards than through political speeches,” said Mohammed al-Amin, managing director of Impulse, which rented Hezbollah the billboard space for the Mughnieh campaign.

Energy that once went into recruiting militiamen now fuels advertising firms run by the parties themselves, which like the fighters of the 1970s and 1980s have carved their own niche in Beirut and elsewhere to bombard citizens with this modern weapon.

One of these is Ressalat, an organization funded by Hezbollah that handles advertising and cultural events for the militant group.

Like any advertising company, Ressalat’s creative director Mohamed Noureddine and his team hunkered down after Mughnieh’s killing in a car bombing in Damascus in February to come up with a sophisticated campaign.

“We came up with a stencil of him so that people can remember him like they do Che Guevara,” Noureddine said. “This guy sacrificed his life and it is his right to be recognized and for people to see his picture.”

Al-Amin said for the Mughnieh campaign Hezbollah rented the entire network of billboards along the airport road and within the group’s stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut at a cost of at least US$100,000.

But the advertising war is not to everyone’s liking. It is seen by some as a stain on the country’s image and as a constant reminder of the tense political situation.

“The first thing that visitors see on arrival in any country is the airport and the road leading to town, which are a sort of calling card,” Tourism Minister Joseph Sarkis said.

“But unfortunately in recent years, with Hezbollah becoming more powerful politically and the fact that the road leading to the airport is in an area they control, we have started seeing ads that glorify the resistance and pictures of Hezbollah leaders and martyrs,” he said.

He said while the group had a right to express its views, the airport road was not the proper place for it.

“Such publicity is not in tune at all with what a tourist would like to see on arrival in Beirut,” Sarkis said. “These are not exactly very welcoming images.”

Sarkis said that although the government could order that posters and billboards put up illegally be torn down, it had chosen to look the other way pending an improvement in the political situation.

That would not be soon enough for many Lebanese, who are tired of being bombarded with images of political leaders at every turn.

“All these posters and images make for a very ugly environment,” one physician who lives in Beirut said.

“They are just a sign that we are an under-developed country with people subservient to a group of political families,” he said.
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