What is happening in Lebanon
Michele Scarpa's analysis
The country is like Vesuvius in the famous eruption of Pompeii in 79 AD immortalized in the description of Pliny the Younger: a volcano that is exploding with unpredictable and, above all, unimaginable effects and repercussions until recently. Its mythical banks are largely insolvent, the lira has collapsed, unemployment is skyrocketing, fuel and food are scarce, and half of Lebanese live below the poverty line. The drama is such that the World Bank has stated that the Lebanese crisis can be placed among the top 3 crises globally in the last 150 years.
Middle Eastern Switzerland is therefore one step away from bankruptcy.
Now all that remains is to invoke Saint Charbel, patron saint of the country, to save Lebanon. The Saint "will not let Lebanon collapse" and we must seek in him "the miracle of our salvation from this total collapse": this is the wish of the Maronite Patriarch Béchara Raï who now sees only in the Patron (and in the help of the Monetary Fund International) the way out of this drama. While waiting for the intervention of the IMF, it is better to invoke intensely St. Charbel.
A popular Lebanese saying goes: "Make sure you say your prayers, or you will go through hell twice, in Lebanon and in the afterlife." Such a tragic representation of Lebanon makes us reflect, especially if we consider that the country was, until a few years ago, an envied model for currency stability, economic dynamism and quality of life. The Lebanese model was summarized in specialized think tanks as "a country of marked political instability but of extraordinary financial stability".
Why have we come to this point?
The crisis in the country of cedars has remote roots in history and always moves on a complex of internal and external reasons.
From the external point of view, the absence of a guarantor of the stability of the country, which was until the decade before Syria, the increase in Iranian influence through the Hezbollah (opposed by all means by Israel) but, above all , the presence of one and a half million Syrian refugees who are unlikely to be able to return to Syria and are therefore destined in the medium to long term to destabilize the number of confessional groups, which are already critical.
Consider that in the second post-war period the Christian-Maronites were the majority of the Lebanese population while now it is to be considered a minority compared to the Muslim components.
However, the most critical element of the crisis is to be identified at the endogenous level, that is, in the organizational architecture of the state. The Lebanese political system is blocked by its collusive sectarian structure of a system of corruption and structural clientelist interests. It is the Lebanese paradox: a multi-faith state, with great potential, land of famous intellectuals and financial stability that survived the long civil war but, at the same time, a state weakened by sectarianism, by economic and social imbalances, by ever deeper divisions in society (also Maronite Christians are internally divided regarding the alliances to be pursued) and widespread corruption. The Lebanese constitution born following the 1989 Ta'if agreements should have overcome the rigid division of state offices between religious denominations, instead it reproduced the same system based on the division by faith. The electoral law, which provides for a rate of parliamentary seats in favor of each religious community, also aggravates the extremely complex picture. The electoral law is decisive for understanding that, despite the Maronite Christian President Aoun having called the richest man in Lebanon to form a government, the billionaire Najib Mikati, there will be no real change of pace in Lebanese politics.
Let's rewind the film of the last few months and start from the moment when the scenario changes.
After the fall of the Diab government, whose final blow was the tremendous explosion at the port of Beirut on 4 August 2020 , Lebanon finds itself with an interim government as neither Adib nor Saad Hariri managed to form a new government. In particular, after Adib's brief attempt, from October to July, the Sunni Hariri failed for different reasons but, above all, because Hariri saw the solution of the Lebanese crisis in a technical government that would overcome the cross-party vetoes while for Aoun the the solution is that of an entirely Lebanese political path.
On July 15 of that year, with the words "may God protect Lebanon", Hariri renounces the post and opens the way for Mikati. The new prime minister in charge is on paper a good compromise because he will try to compose a government that is as less ideological as possible and in addition he finds the favor of France which with President Macron is actively working to save the country. Mikati, however, is not a novelty for Lebanese politics, twice prime minister and accused in 2019 of having made illicit gains through real estate loans, it is the embodiment of that system against which people have been demonstrating in the streets for years shouting "killun y ' ane killun ”or“ everyone means everyone ”. Everything has the flavor of "everything changes so that nothing changes": like each of the previous governments, the solution proposed by politics is always to pursue one's own interests rather than a real change loudly demanded by the people and of which the country has desperate need.
What solution then?
Obviously the most logical way would be that of institutional reforms but the knot to be solved is in who should (or can) do them. More and more observers now see the only possibility in the intervention of the international community: if you are unable to get out of the quagmire with your own strength to avoid bankruptcy you have to delegate the task to others. The identification of external actors is fundamental since the large states protectors of the country's confessions move on the small Lebanese state: the Shiites have Iran as their reference, the Sunnis historically linked to the Gulf monarchies are now beginning to be paid attention to by Turkey while the Maronites are historically protected by France with Israel careful outside observer. So that Lebanon does not find itself torn apart again in bloody interconfessional wars as in the past, it is appropriate to seek a solution that respects what Patriarch Béchara Raï calls "active neutrality" which must combine pluralism, dialogue and the removal of interference from other states. The Patriarch's dream was relaunched by France which promoted an attempt at a solution through the international conference on Lebanon on 4 August 2021. Whatever the solution to help Lebanon, the speed and effectiveness of the action count: for to hang up on the initial metaphor, the risk that the volcanic materials and the incandescent ashes released with the explosion of the Lebanese volcano are about to fall back to the ground and cover Lebanon, as it was for Pompeii, is concrete.
The question that political analysts ask themselves at this point is whether the current crisis can act as a detonator and transform Lebanon into a new battlefield between the powers that have its fate in their hands and that have already recently fought in Syria. .
We will see it at the conclusion of the work of the international conference sponsored by the French, preceded by a succession of non-reassuring statements and warnings, such as that of the Israeli Defense Minister, Benny Gantz, who said verbatim "We will not allow the social, economic and political crisis in Lebanon it becomes a threat to Israel's security ”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/cosa-sta-succedendo-in-libano/ on Wed, 04 Aug 2021 05:45:54 +0000.