BEIRUT — Hours after Hizbullah commander Imad Mughnieh was killed, huge billboards of his burly face stenciled like the iconic Che Guevara portrait or a photo of him in battle fatigues were printed and ready to display all over Lebanon.

Pictures of this man on America’s 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, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah and other Shi’a 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 paralysed 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,” Mohammed al-Amin, managing director of Impulse, which rented Hizbullah the billboard space for the Mughnieh campaign, said.

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, a Hizbullah-funded organization that handles advertising and cultural events for the militant group.

Like any ad firm, 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 Hizbullah 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 100,000 dollars.

Across town at Allied Advertising, which handles publicity for the ruling March 14 coalition, managing director Karim Diab also has a special team that enters crisis mode if a political figure is assassinated or a political event needs to be commemorated.

“Unfortunately whenever anybody dies we work,” Diab said. “Every time someone is assassinated we automatically begin a campaign so that the person’s blood is not spilled in vain.

“We want that person to be in the minds of people.”

The team has been kept busy since the February 2005 assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri and a slew of other murders and political events that have shaken Lebanon and also left it without a president since November.

Depending on the area, the photos on display reflect the country’s protracted crisis which has pitted the Western-backed government against the Hizbullah-led opposition backed by Syria and Iran.

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,” said Tourism Minister Joseph Sarkis.

“But unfortunately in recent years, with Hizbullah 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 Hizbullah leaders and martyrs.”

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

“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.”

He 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,” said one doctor who lives in Beirut. “They are just a sign that we are an under-developed country with people subservient to a group of political families.”

Reprinted from Middle East News.