Cassandra Voices

Tag: Lebanon

  • Lebanon: 5,000 Kilometres Away

    Beirut, Mar Elias, 26 November, 7pm.

    Despite the cold wave that hit the city this week (8 degrees Celsius is equivalent to 0 in the Mediterranean), my mother and sister left all the windows and doors open, to prevent the worst. They are – as I type – sitting in my sister’s room in the middle of the apartment. They moved away from the balconies, from the saloon, where chandeliers could fall on their heads. They sat there with a heater and they said they were praying. Praying? I come from a family that does not pray. Well, my sister has started a tradition lately. Transmission in my family is inverted it seems….

    We talked for 15 minutes and then, short of words, I stayed there. I’ve been 45 minutes on the phone, not talking anymore, just in the background, just listening, tele-transporting myself to the house, trying to be present for them, for the neighborhood, for my childhood, for my upbringing, for myself in fact, in silence. A phone call to hear silence, and to witness a bombardment. Waiting with them, for the bombardment. To add some absurdity to the absurdity, I do not want them to wait alone, so I am waiting from afar with them on the phone. Waiting for the sound.

    My mother and sister are also waiting for my other sister, who is blocked in the Hamra traffic. Since the evacuation order was issued an hour ago, people ran off and are acting according to the “safety” measurement. An urban nightmare. My mother and sister are 600 metres away from a location listed as a targeted spot, as part of a list of targeted spots. My mother and sister believe and trust that they are okay and that they will be okay and that everything will be alright.

    They asked me to hang up as my brother needs to talk to mother. I had to hang-up.

    I am 5000 kilometres away, yet I do not feel that I am okay nor do I feel that I am alright. Actually, I do not share their opinion. I am scared, just like last October, when I was scared when the tension started. I am scared like last November, when two monsters were threatening to “Flatten Beirut, like [they] are flattening Gaza”. I am not a geopolitical expert; I have good sensors though. My skin is full of those. I feel events, people and situations (precisely the reason why I am geographically away from Mar Elias at the moment). And what my mother and sister are living now, I also feel it so acutely. My mother’s tone of voice betrays her stoic words. This lady saw it all, she is strong but her voice is shaking. She cannot fake it any longer… I feel ashamed to be away and that she has to see more, more of it, more of the same. Shame. I returned to Beirut in 2018 and had my share until mid-2024. So all I can do is call back and stay on the phone.

    –  Please let me stay with you, do not hang up.

    I am a scared mother, I am scared. I am scared just like we had to hide in the corridor for long nights in 1989 when the “East-West” War was on. When, for some reason, we were stuck in a corridor despite being totally outside the “East-West” logic. I am scared just like in 1990, during the War of Liberation, when we had to run, father and I, from Verdun up-hill home, using walls as our only shelter, moving like lizards, from wall to wall until we reached home, when his forty-five-year-old body was hiding mine of 5 years old. It is striking how I can still remember his body twitching.  I am scared, just like in 2006, when our house was shaking like an autumn leaf because of its proximity to the southern suburb area.

    –   Mama, how do you feel? What did you eat for lunch?
    –   I cooked green beans and rice, and …

    Mother’s voice is cut, muted for a moment; it agonizes for seconds.

    –  Mama! Are you okay?
    –  I am okay. I think something blew off… the floor shook a bit.
    –  Mama, are you okay?
    –  Yes, yes, I am fine… It is done, it’s over. “That was it!”, she adds in a reassuring tone, as if nothing happened, not to scare me. 

    Then I hear the cry she tames. But I hear it. She swallows it, as she is so good at hiding emotions, suffocating them. I learned a bit of that from her. At least, only when it comes to crying… for the rest I am very explicit. I feel the silent water in my eyes, flooding water as silent as hers.

    Silence.

    That was it: the promised, announced, planned and advertised attack on my mother’s area. Not Hezbollah’s area, not a single-one-of-them area – I will forever refuse such a takeover of my area, as it is simply my mother’s area. That swallowing of something in her throat felt like a violent mutilation. I witnessed my mother’s breath cut by the IDF. My mother who had to silently watch the Israeli soldiers hiding in her parking lot, during the civil war when they entered Beirut West, and specifically our neighborhood, and regularly visited Ali Alwan from the Murabitoun – a collaborating spy. 1981. My mother, whose home office got hit by their bombing, when they were looking for Yaser Arafat, who was located a few buildings away. 1982. My mother, who is not knowledgeable of any military artillery, had a Milan (Missile d’Infanterie Léger Antichar) hitting her roof, and therefore she knows all about Milan missiles. Mother is an expert in Milan missiles actually. She recognizes those, as every militia man went up to observe it under her guidance, before collecting it from her place. She dealt, however, with the dusty remains of the aftermath alone.

    Then she remembered I am still here, as I remained silent and was only capable of writing frenetically. She overcame her emotions, with an unusual sharing of details:

    –  Lily, I am glad you are away. The air is polluted, dusty, black powder on all surfaces here. You cannot touch a surface. You cannot breathe well. Every day, I thank God for being alive and for you being away.

    –  Well, mama I know how cumbersome I am to you…

    –  No, you wouldn’t have been able to run. You wouldn’t have taken it.

    –  I cannot run anymore as much as I did since the Explosion, mama. Also, I am not only a runner… it is not the only activity I live for….

    –  Lily, water is scarce and cleaning your 15 meters’ balcony every day and planting bulbs and seeds weekly wouldn’t be easy… you would not have really dealt with the rationing …

    –  You didn’t tell me that last time we spoke.

    –  Do you really need to know everything? You’re tiring, you always want to know everything….

    She has been actually lying, since I left she has been lying. She avoids telling me whatever goes wrong. I always discover the truth later.

    Then she screams: “Nathalie, do not step on the balcony! Stay inside”.

    –  Lily, we need to take a phone call; someone is calling us.

    She hangs up on me for the second time.

     

    Dublin, Portobello, 26 November, 6pm.

    I feel alone and lonely and utterly sad. I am in an early time zone, and I feel left behind, not only in space but also in time. I do not want to be there; she is perfectly right. My nervous system would not be up to it. She knows her kids well, despite the opacity and the thick curtains of hidden emotions we built between each other, her and I. She is tougher and so are my sisters. Maybe because I left at 22. They never left. She never left, she never left Lebanon, never left Mar Elias. It’s her hood, that made it ours, as per our matriarchy.

    I called again in ten minutes. They didn’t even talk to me; they opened the line and continued conversing. Nathalie tells mother: “The ceasefire has been announced”. My sister should be delusional. A ceasefire while we just got “raped”? How is that possible?

    I open my news channels. “Israel approves ceasefire deal with Lebanon, continues to heavily strike Beirut and various areas”, Beirut Today.

    It’s surreal.

    Middle East Eye (MEE) reports: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said his war cabinet had approved a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon that will pause fighting for 60 days. He promised that Israel’s war on Gaza will continue. US and Arab officials told Middle East Eye that under the agreement, Israeli forces will withdraw from south Lebanon. Hezbollah has agreed to end its armed presence along the border and move heavy weapons north of the Litani River, the sources said. The Lebanese army is expected to deploy in south Lebanon, with at least 5,000 troops set to patrol the border area along with an existing UN peacekeeping force. An international committee, including the US and France, will be established to supervise the implementation of the ceasefire agreement and UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the last major war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. Hezbollah is yet to comment on the deal. US President Joe Biden will speak later on Tuesday. A senior US official told MEE that Israel will not be granted the right to attack Lebanon based on any suspicious movements”.

    I have not been sleeping well. I have been sleeping either little or lightly. I’ve also been having nightmares, night sweats and uneasy mornings. Last night, I slept light and little. I was late and have a deadline tonight. David, a recently made friend, texts: “Phibsborough this evening, we can listen to traditional music, do you want to join? “Music? The Irish’s best skill… I have not eaten yet, I had a work meeting. I am hungry, I also need to pee, and work and sleep early if I can, but the silence is heavy. Irish Music. It is like finding evidence of God when one was just doubting the concept. My eyes are itching. I scrub my eyes, bite my nails’ skin, it tastes salty. My eyes should be salty. I want water on my body and water in my eyes.

    I finally stand and walk in circles, something I often do when lost in my own cage of thoughts… I start looking for eye drops. I need eye drops for sensitive eyes and maybe to be around people making music. Because it’s been months of sonic booms, thunder of bombardments, knocks of explosives, bursts of war tokens, and ongoing buzz, yet all I need is music. My ears feel a deep, deep silence though: a silence similar to a soundless bombing. I imagine that I am deaf. What if I became deaf for real? The silent break in my mother’s voice swallowing the attack, absorbing the shock, stayed in a cochlear space in my body, more profound than any sound I have ever heard.

    It is silent peace time, and time for traditional Irish lyre…

    Feature Image: Moment Israeli strike hits building in Beirut’s southern suburbs | AFP

  • Lebanon: Domestic Considerations May Prove Decisive to Hezbollah

    Media coverage of the war currently unfolding in Lebanon describe Hezbollah as an “Iranian-backed” group, and frame the conflict as one between them and Israel. In this reading, little attention is given to Lebanon beyond Hezbollah, nor that Hezbollah, for all its links to Iran, is first and foremost a Lebanese group embedded in Lebanon’s sociopolitical fabric. As Michael Young at the Carnegie Middle East Centre also points out, while Hezbollah’s military superiority enables it to act unilaterally, and undermine the Lebanese state at any given moment, the armed group must still weigh into consideration its relations with other domestic actors, both allies and adversaries, in order to secure its longer-term presence in Lebanon.

    War with Israel will strain these relations. Israel’s brutal response has already killed over 2,000 people, displaced over a million, and destroyed homes across Lebanon. Israeli atrocities will likely breath fresh life into the Lebanese resistance, birth a new generation of Hezbollah fighters, and contribute to an even greater level of anti-Israel sentiment across Lebanon. But simultaneously, the damage inflicted on Lebanon will make many call into question Hezbollah’s unilateral course of action in launching rockets into Israel since October 7th last year.

    So far, the only material result of these attacks has been to bring harm to Lebanon, with no obvious benefit to the Palestinian cause beyond the symbolic show of solidarity with Hamas. And Lebanon has enough problems as it is. The country continues to suffer in the wake of a gargantuan economic collapse that has hollowed out state institutions, and sent poverty rates spiralling over the past five years.

    Criticism of Hezbollah is valid, but should not be allowed to reinforce Netanyahu’s narrative that Lebanon has been “kidnapped” by Hezbollah, or that if Hezbollah were out of the picture, a process of normalisation could begin between the two countries. While it is true there are some political actors in Lebanon who secretly harbour a desire for normalisation, most notably the Christian far right, it is equally true that Palestinian solidarity, and an appetite for anticolonial resistance against Israel, extends beyond Hezbollah to wider Lebanon.

    The opening years of Lebanon’s Civil War in the mid-1970s showed this. A pro-Palestinian coalition of Lebanese groups led by Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt formed an alliance to challenge the Christian far right who were trying to expel the Palestinians from Lebanon. It is also worth noting how today, US-led funding for the Lebanese army is deliberately limited, with no supply of the sort of weaponry that could render them a match for Israel. It may be argued that the non-state position of resistance to Israel is inevitable, given the West’s unconditional support for Israel would never allow the Lebanese army to assume such a position, even if it enjoyed a democratic mandate to do so.

    Domestic criticism of Hezbollah and opposition to Israel are not mutually exclusive. Over the past decade, Hezbollah’s revered status as the resistance to Zionist aggression has depreciated. The group’s stances towards various events in Lebanon and Syria have exposed them as being part of a corrupt political establishment that it so often claimed to stand apart from. Hezbollah’s decision to enter the Syrian Civil War in support of the Assad regime was hugely controversial and pitted it against Sunni Islamist opinion both in Lebanon and regionally. Indeed, news of Hassan Nasrallah’s death prompted scenes of jubilation in Idlib, the last holdout against the Assad regime in post-war Syria.

    Mass Protest Movement

    More recently, in 2019, when a hugely optimistic mass protest movement erupted in Lebanon demanding an end to the country’s corrupt sectarian system, Hezbollah intervened decisively against the protestors, denouncing the movement as a plot by foreign embassies trying to destabilise Lebanon. In late 2019 and into 2020, Hezbollah-affiliated gangs were commonly seen confronting street protestors in Beirut, thuggishly trying to intimidate them off the streets.

    Hezbollah’s thuggery was made visible once more in 2021, when a prominent Hezbollah critic and civil society activist Lokman Slim was found murdered in his car in South Lebanon. The judicial case into the killing failed to make any progress, reflecting a culture of impunity that Hezbollah enjoys in Lebanon.

    Hezbollah impunity was the focus of heated criticism in the aftermath of the massive explosion at the Beirut port in 2020, which came about when thousands of tons of fertiliser exploded in a warehouse, killing over 200 people and causing heavy damage to much of the capital. Many believed that the suspicious presence of such a fertiliser which can been used to make improvised explosives, was somehow linked to Hezbollah operations. The unexplained failure of repeated bureaucratic efforts to remove the dangerous material from the port, hinted at opaque Hezbollah interference, possibly linked to Syria. The group was the first to publicly reject calls for an international investigation into the port explosion, further placing them under suspicion and above the law.

    Because of the port’s location in the city, the explosion did most damage to Christian neighbourhoods in East Beirut. This circumstance helped stir up anti-Hezbollah sentiment among Lebanese Christians. This is significant because one of Hezbollah’s major domestic allies since the mid-2000s, has been a Christian party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM). The alliance with the FPM was informally articulated through the Mar Mikhael Agreement, that effectively gave Hezbollah political cover and greater legitimacy for their armed presence in Lebanon.

    The FPM’s longtime leader Michel Aoun became president of Lebanon in 2016, further securing Hezbollah’s position. But his presidential term ended in 2022, and he is yet to be replaced as political power brokers, including Hezbollah, fail to agree on a successor. Lebanon’s current presidential vacuum is casting uncertainty toward Hezbollah’s place within domestic politics.

    Meanwhile the FPM have been heavily criticised by other Christian parties including the Lebanese Forces, for aligning themselves with Hezbollah and failing to protect Christian interests, as the devastation from the Beirut explosion served so well to demonstrate. With parliamentary elections scheduled for 2022, the Lebanese Forces sought to capitalize on anti-Hezbollah sentiment and courted Christian voters frustrated with the FPM’s passive collaboration with Hezbollah. This meant adapting a bullish attitude towards Hezbollah, particularly in relation to the Beirut explosion.

    Funeral of the Hezbollah members killed in the clashes.

    The Tayouneh Incident

    Tensions came to a head in October 2021 with the Tayouneh Incident. Hezbollah and its allies organised a protest to the Ministry of Justice in Beirut against the Beirut Port investigation. The protesters consisted of Hezbollah and its allies’ Shia’ supporters from South Beirut, many of whom were armed. When the crowd reached a major junction called Tayouneh, demarcating where Christian East Beirut begins, a segment of the protesters entered adjacent neighbourhoods and were fired on by Christian gunmen positioned in surrounding high rises, most likely affiliated with the Lebanese Forces.

    Street fighting ensued all afternoon, with six Hezbollah-affiliated gunmen killed. The incident put Beirut on a knife edge with many fearing the outbreak of a new civil war. The location of Tayouneh was ominously symbolic. It was here that a Christian militia attack on a busload of Palestinians in 1975 set in motion Lebanon’s fifteen year long civil war.

    The parliamentary elections went ahead in 2022. The FPM lost seats, and the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces made substantial gains, becoming the country’s largest Christian party. This, combined with the presidential vacuum, means the political cover that Hezbollah enjoyed under the Mar Mikhael agreement is no longer in place.

    Fast forward to current events and none of these political considerations seem immediately relevant. Israel has now brought the war to Lebanon and the country for the foreseeable future is locked into Hezbollah’s war of resistance. But Hezbollah has been hit hard. Its’ military strength, carefully accrued over decades, has been severely depleted.

    Some estimate that about half of the Lebanese group’s arsenal of rockets and missiles have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, though it is hard to be sure. Since early summer, a string of senior Hezbollah commanders have been killed by Israel, including the party’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah on 27 September. To kill Nasrallah, Israel dropped 80 American-made ‘bunker busting’ bombs, weighing 2,000 pounds each, on Hezbollah’s underground command centre in the heart of South Beirut.

    The attack shook the whole capital, levelling six residential buildings and leaving a massive crater of rubble, with Nasrallah and others dead and buried underneath. This devastation came just as Hezbollah was reeling from Israel’s attack on their communication systems, as hundreds of pagers and walkie talkies used by Hezbollah operatives, simultaneously exploded killing approximately 32 people, including children.

    A Rainy Night in Saifi – Luke Sheehan and Nadim Shehadi in conversation

    Infiltration

    Within the space of a few weeks, Israel has shown how devastatingly extensive their infiltration of Hezbollah has been over the past few years. Until now, analysts tended to emphasise how Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War enabled the group to expand and increase its strength. Now commentators are pointing out how the group may be over-extended.

    A recent article in the Financial Times pointed out how the need for more recruits in Syria, collaboration with corrupt Syrian officers, and Russian intelligence likely provided Israel with opportunities to better infiltrate the group. There are also rumours of an Israeli-planted Iranian spy who has gained close access to Hezbollah in recent years and potentially played a role in the killing of Nasrallah. The Israeli attack was based off real-time information regarding the former leader’s whereabouts. The use of AI in satellite and drone footage to detect Hezbollah locations, and of sophisticated surveillance systems like Pegasus have also likely played a part in giving Israel the clear upper hand over their rival.

    While Hezbollah may be weakened, they likely retain significant strength. An Israeli ground invasion will meet dogged guerilla resistance from thousands of determined and well-trained Hezbollah fighters with substantial, albeit depleted, firepower. Hezbollah are well dug in. Bogging down IDF soldiers in endless guerilla warfare will help them change the narrative that so far has gone against them.

    This narrative may play a part in shaping the Hezbollah that emerges out of this conflict. A major question will be Iran’s ability to support Hezbollah’s military recovery. Hezbollah relies on its military superiority within Lebanon to coerce other Lebanese actors into forming political arrangements that favour Hezbollah.

    Events in recent years have, however, destabilized these arrangements and brought Hezbollah and Lebanon to an uncertain political juncture. Now, the war with Israel threatens Hezbollah’s military superiority. Together these developments raise uncertainty as to how Hezbollah will emerge from this conflict and whether they will be able to retain their dominant political position in Lebanon once the dust settles. Such domestic considerations may ultimately prove more decisive to Hezbollah decision-makers than the current confrontation with Israel.

    Feature Image: Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, May 2023

  • Lebanon’s Perfect Storm

    On Friday 14th of February Lebanon commemorated the fifteenth anniversary of the brutal assassination of former prime minister, Rafic Hariri. On the eve of the commemoration, the current prime minister, Hassan Diab, lamented how, in Hariri’s absence, ‘Lebanon lacks the regional and international presence to save us from crisis.’

    Diab was brought in to lead a new government following mass demonstrations that began in October of last year. He has been tasked, no less, with pulling Lebanon back from the brink of economic collapse.

    Yet the formation of a new government has done little to assuage public anger. Events in the capital, Beirut on Tuesday 11th of February made this abundantly clear.

    By mid-morning downtown the Lebanese capital was bracing itself as parliamentary deputies gathered for a vote of confidence on the newly-formed government. Protesters were also assembling at various locations around the city in an attempt to disrupt the vote.

    Waving flags, many pre-empting what was to come with helmets and gas-masks, the protesters were articulating a widely-held view that, regardless of what happens in parliament, the new government is a sham, cooked up by the same rotten elite that protesters have been demonstrating against for months.

    Twitter and other social media were aflame, with digitally savvy individuals using hash-tags ‘like no confidence!’ ‘Tuesday Rage!’ ‘Lebanon Rises!’, to thread together the assembled masses, while urging everyone ‘to meet us on the streets’, as videos showed busloads of citizens converging on the capital.

    Water Cannons

    Expecting trouble, security forces had erected concrete barriers the previous day, blocking off major approaches to Parliament Square. Meanwhile, protesters gathered around the barriers.

    One girl sat atop a slab, waving a Lebanese flag, while a water cannon sprayed either side of her creating a rainbow effect. Others pulled down segments of the wall only to be met by further barrages from water cannons barring their way.

    Elsewhere protesters disrupted traffic towards parliament. En route, one deputy had his car surrounded by protesters chanting ‘thief thief thief!’

    Other parliamentarians had eggs thrown at their convoys, while one had stones hurled at him by a protester, smashing his car window and then striking his head, forcing him to divert to a nearby hospital for medical attention. Yet he made it to the parliament in the end, battered and bruised but there to vote.

    Pro-regime Thugs

    But anti-government protesters weren’t the only ones out on the streets. Groups of pro-regime thugs, sent out by their political bosses, zipped about town protecting harangued deputies and hampering the protesters.

    On scooters these hired hands roamed from one flashpoint to the next, seeking confrontations with what seemed implicit approval from the security forces – themselves willing to give occasional beat downs to isolated protesters getting under their skin.

    https://twitter.com/carolinebeyloun/status/1227190644290080774

    Meanwhile, as the toxic whiff of tear gas was spreading downtown, the barricaded parliament was slowly filling up. But numbers were still lacking for the quorum required to begin the two-day session.

    Eventually the parliamentary Speaker, Nabih Berri – widely regarded as thug-in-chief – decided to commence proceedings, despite the small numbers, leading to allegations on the streets of constitutional trickery.

    Embed from Getty Images
    House Leader Nabih Berri (right) pictured with Walid Joumblatt (centre) and Yasser Arafat (left) in 1982.

    Either way, the session began and after nine hours, the vote was held prematurely, quashing any hopes of it being derailed. The new government won, as expected, while the protesters licked their wounds outside: three-hundred-and-fifty people having been injured over the course of the day.

    Lebanese of All Stripes

    The day’s events demonstrated to many people that the revolution has been sold short; as one observer put it: ‘while the Prime Minister speaks to a half empty-parliament about the importance of the right to protest, security forces were throwing tear gas and beating people up outside.’

    Indeed, Tuesday the 11th was the 118th day of a revolution that began on October 17th of last year, triggered by a proposed tax on WhatsApp that inspired national outrage.

    The streets have been filled with Lebanese of all stripes, saying with one voice: ‘the political class, every last one of them, must move aside, taking their corrupt, decades-long mismanagement with them, and give us our country back.’

    The local and international media dared to believe that something truly special was happening in Lebanon. For the first time in living memory a unified political voice that transcended sectarian divisions seemed to be exploding into life.

    During the early days there really was something special in the air. Streets were buzzing with revolutionary optimism; mass rallies crowded the streets, with a distinctly festival-like-atmosphere attracting children and families.

    Sunni-dominated Tripoli, Lebanon’s largest northern city, long tarnished by a Salafist reputation, went from being perceived as Beirut’s neglected cousin, to ‘the bride of the revolution’, following memorable demonstrations. Suddenly Tripoli felt a lot closer to Beirut.

    Embed from Getty Images
    An early demonstration in Tripoli turned into a rave that went viral across the country and reset the city’s image. 

    Sectarianism

    Inspired by such scenes, protesters organised a human chain the length of the country. Up and down Lebanon, demonstrators stood hand-in-hand along the coastal highway. Stretching from north to south in a powerful gesture the message was clearly anti-sectarian, saying ‘We are not Christian, Sunni, Shia, Druze. We are Lebanese.’

    Embed from Getty Images
    Demonstrators form a human chain on the 11th day of revolution.

    In Lebanon political representation is still based on a confessional quota system that renders governance a power-sharing puzzle between sectarian groups. Governments are patched together through tenuous coalitions predicated on back-door deal, widely seen as an impediment to addressing deep structural problems.

    All the while, Lebanon has been careering towards an economic abyss. After a decade of economic stagnation, with foreign remittances drying up and Saudi money deserting a country increasingly seen as an Iranian orbit, the collapse has come into plain view.

    The corrupt ineptness of the ruling elite has been called out by an enraged public, watching on in horror as the country’s potential is squandered by politicians, who hide behind the excuse of sectarian power-sharing.

    In reality they have pilfered from the state coffers in order to maintain patronage networks, without regard the wider public interest. Thus protesters say: ‘Shame on them.’ Indeed, nowadays politicians are likely to be refused service in restaurants or are jeered if they enter fashionable bars.

    The foreign minister’s humiliation at a Davos panel discussion stirred jubilation back home, with replays giddily shared online. A wave of hostility towards the political elite, regardless of sect, is in full swing.

    Banking Crisis

    The public outcry is not surprising. Spiraling national debt dwarfs national GDP, as the government digs itself deeper into a deeper whole of debt, in turn selling these off to Lebanese banks, thereby threatening ordinary people’s savings.

    In October banks closed suddenly and remained shut for two weeks. People were unable to withdraw dollars from ATMs. Slowly it became apparent that the banks were running on empty, through acute shortages of U.S. dollars, the currency which is pegged to the Lebanese lira.

    This led the banks to impose capital controls to prevent a run. Meanwhile the Central Bank failed to step in to regulate the situation, leaving individual banks to do so on an ad hoc basis. Then rumours (since confirmed) began to circulate that the ruling class were transferring billions abroad,[i] fuelling suspicion that the banks and politicians were in on the act.

    Among ordinary people there are fears that the days of the lira being pegged to the dollar are numbered, causing deposits to plunge in value.

    On a daily basis panicked customers engage in furious arguments with bank staff who refuse to release dollars, while on the black market the lira’s value is collapsing. Smashed up ATMs and banking outlets are a familiar sight, and sign of the growing anger.

    Embed from Getty Images
    Vandalized bank fronts in Beirut and elsewhere are have become a common sight.

    Ongoing Crisis

    The dollar shortage has driven up prices on everyday items, and workers are being laid off; tourism has ceased to a trickle; butchers’ sales are said to be down by 50%; the young talk increasingly about emigrating; malls and high streets are empty; migrant workers crowd outside their embassies attempting to flee a country where the currency crisis makes it almost impossible to send money home.

    Now economists predict that the country will sink into a pit of poverty that will bring a lost decade, where college graduates will become street sellers and refugees will go even hungrier than they already are.

    So amidst these increasingly severe conditions, the tone of protest has shifted from optimism to anger. While the early success in dislodging the former government was celebrated, the protesters demand for a technocratic government without political ties has not been met. The new government tasked with enacting reforms continues to co-exist with the vested interests that appointed it.

    Embed from Getty Images
    Renewed protests shifted in tone with more aggression from protesters and security forces.

    Yet reforms are essential if the government is to unlock the financial assistance that international players like the IMF could offer. A cliff-edge is imminent with interest on a Eurobond due to be paid next month and politicians arguing about whether to cough up. This has triggered rumours that there’ll be nothing left over to pay the salaries of civil servants.

    Whatever happens in the short term, it seems as if life is only going to get harder for ordinary Lebanese before there is any sign of improvement.

    [i] Naharnet Newsdesk ‘Hammoud Replies to Berri: All Lebanese Banks Transferred Funds Abroad’ Naharnet February 7th, 2020, http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/268948-hammoud-replies-to-berri-all-lebanese-banks-transferred-funds-abroad