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Rumours of impending conflict can wreak a particular type of havoc This is not as physically manifest as the brutality of war, but less tangible, less spectacular There are no destroyed buildings or dead bodies; rather, the spectre of war casts its shadow over economic statistics and mental health reports   People often think journalists are endowed with a special prescience ‘When do you think the war will happen?’ I am regularly asked in Beirut Last September the question hung upon whether the US would bomb Syria, whilst lately the concern has been to do with the prospect of civil war as the Syrian conflict impacts Lebanon In the years following the 2006 war between Hizbullah and Israel, I would be asked: ‘Do you think Israel will invade this summer?’ And a long-term staple asked frequently throughout the years: ‘What do you think of the situation?’ When I moved to Beirut in 2002, such instability was less apparent The Israelis had recently left with their tails between their legs after eighteen years of occupation in Southern Lebanon Damascus was in control and keeping the squabbling Lebanese factions from each other’s throats Beirut was in the midst of a construction frenzy; tearing down bullet-riddled and shelled out buildings to rebuild after the sixteen-year civil war Those Lebanese who had moved abroad during the war years were increasingly returning, and there was a degree of stability The Syrian occupation itself was not particularly discernible, especially in Beirut It was within national politics that Syrian control was manifest and in certain corrupt practices – for example, the skimming of profits generated by state institutions like Casino du Liban The stifling of free speech was another aspect of this control, as no criticism of Damascus was allowed in the media In 2002, when I was cutting my teeth as a journalist at Lebanon’s only English language newspaper, The Daily Star, an editor warned me what was taboo: ‘No Syria, no human rights, no homosexuality’   If you kept your head down, the problems of daily life were less to do with politics and more to do with