In the six years since the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate had arrived in Beirut’s port and been offloaded into Hangar 12, repeated warnings had ricocheted throughout the Lebanese government, between the port and customs authorities, three ministries, the commander of the Lebanese Army, at least two powerful judges and, weeks before the blast, the prime minister and president.
No one took action to secure the chemicals, more than 1,000 times the amount used to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
The disaster-in-waiting was the result of years of neglect and bureaucratic buck-passing by a dysfunctional government that subjugated public safety to the more pressing business of bribery and graft.
Perhaps nowhere is that system more pronounced than at the port, a lucrative prize carved into overlapping fiefs by Lebanon’s political parties, who see it as little more than a source of self-enrichment, contracts and jobs to dole out to loyalists, and as a clearinghouse for illicit goods.
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