The contempt that Lebanon’s political and financial elite have shown for the rest of its 6 million citizens is returned in spades – and rightly so. Their corruption, lust for power and incompetence have run an already troubled country into the ground. The currency has been devalued by 90% – still not enough to reflect its slide in full. Inflation is in triple digits. Public services have collapsed; without hiring a private generator, households can expect only an hour or so of power a day. Shortages of drinking water have contributed to disease outbreaks, including the first cholera cases for decades. Parents are sending their children to orphanages because they cannot feed them. A growing number of citizens have resorted to armed robbery as the only way to extract their own deposits (now vastly reduced in real terms) from banks when they desperately need to pay for basic services such as healthcare.
This is one of the most severe economic collapses seen internationally since the 1850s, and it is taking place in a highly volatile environment. The World Bank has called it “a deliberate depression … orchestrated by [an] elite that has long captured the state and lived off its economic rents”, while poor and middle-class people bear the burden of the crisis.
Lebanon’s problems are longstanding. Corruption, violence and incompetence dogged the years following the civil war; Iran, Saudi Arabia and others duel for influence via their proxies. Political jockeying and outright violence play out within as well as between sectarian communities. But the challenges have dramatically worsened in recent years. Those at the top essentially ran a giant Ponzi scheme – propping up the currency by attracting dollars through absurd interest rates for investors. In 2019, an austerity plan designed to balance the budget without impinging on elite interests triggered vast protests demanding root-and-branch reform. Covid halted them, and also compounded the desperate economic picture. Then, on 4 August 2020, a mammoth explosion at Beirut’s port – one of the largest non-nuclear blasts ever seen – killed more than 200 people and injured thousands. The disaster encapsulated the state’s failures, and some hoped it might force a broader reckoning. But the investigation is dead in the water after the prosecutor-general released all suspects last month.
The International Monetary Fund and others have demanded reform before handing over cash. But those at the top cannot agree on a president, and attempts to replace the caretaker government appear to have ground to a halt. There seems even less prospect of them agreeing to reform, which they see as essentially ceding power and privilege. Many are essentially warlords who probably calculate that they can thrive even if Lebanon slides into conflict again, as some now fear could happen.
Outside parties have been part of the problem, not the solution. As the economist Nadim Shehadi observed of a recent summit in Paris: “The whole world seems to have a say in the election of a president in Lebanon.” Emmanuel Macron has drawn anger for promising the population to act on their behalf – then conspicuously failing to follow through. One small step forward would be for the UN Human Rights Council to launch a fact-finding mission on the port blast, as sought by bereaved relatives and civil society groups, despite cynicism about its prospects. The bigger changes that Lebanon’s people require look, for now, impossibly remote.
