What’s Next for Lebanon Following the Catastrophic Blast?

posted on: Aug 12, 2020

BY: John Mason/Arab America Contributing Writer             

Huge protests in Beirut, both before and after the catastrophic blast of August 4 have been demanding a new government. Most currently, government ministers are resigning and international donors have agreed to support the crisis, but are insisting that the aid be administered through local organizations—not the government. The sustained protests over months have underscored the unity of Lebanon’s sects that the entire ruling class and its sectarian politics must go.

The Beirut Blast – accident or not – points to corruption and negligence as its cause 

Bizarre ideas have sprung up around the blast, including U.S. President Trump’s that it was a result of terrorism. In the context of Lebanon’s decline into a state of helplessness, perhaps statelessness, such ideas tend to obscure the fact that corruption, tribalism, and sectarian division are what underlie the country’s mess.

Trying to link the shocking explosion in Beirut to equivalent bombings around the world seems to be the new game du jour. One metaphor that Foreign Policy invokes is the Chernobyl nuclear plant meltdown in Soviet Russia. If we’re just using a government’s “gross incompetence, endemic corruption, and negligence,” then the equivalence holds. However, when we look at complications of this analogy based on the respective forms of government, Soviet dictatorship vs. the theoretical Lebanese multiparty republic, then the differences are stark. Such geopolitical differences between former Soviet Russia and present-day Lebanon simply confuse the matter.

In both cases, the results were national catastrophes, comparable in terms of both the number of deaths, hospitalizations, and socioeconomic dislocation. Beirut has been declared a disaster zone, with responses from many foreign government relief services, including France, the UN, International Monetary Fund, and the U.S. More than 200 deaths are attributed to the two blasts that ripped through the city on the evening of Tuesday, August 3d. Thousands were injured and innumerable residents went missing or are unaccounted for. The homeless are counted at more than 300,000, about 10% of Beirut’s population. Complicating the rescue, relief and rebuilding effort is that all of this destruction has occurred in the midst of COVID-19, which had already pushed Beirut’s hospitals to their limits.

Prior to the blast, Lebanon was already in poor economic shape, with most families struggling just to get by. Refugees from the war in Syria account for 30% of the country’s population, burdening an already overtaxed situation. One report, according to Foreign Policy, suggests that “By the end of the year, we will see 75 percent of the population on food handouts, but the question is whether there will be food to hand out.” Food prices have risen 247%, which will only grow with the destruction of Beirut’s port, the country’s main entry point for food and supplies.

Lebanon—a country with a rich history and culture – overtaken by ethnoreligious factionalism and corruption 

Lebanon is partly a product of the French, which had a colonial mandate over the region of present-day Syria and Lebanon. During that mandate, a French-like government was formed in 1926, but one structured along religious lines, Christian and Muslim, including Sunni and Shia. That system replaced one that had favored Christians. Unwritten conventions resulted in the distribution of national leadership positions by religion, by which the Presidency was held by a Maronite Christian, the premier a Sunni, and speaker of the National Assembly a Shia. The Islamist political and military party, Hezbollah, has more recently become an important power broker alongside the sectarian rulers, though tending to align with the Christian leadership. The overall political system based on a sectarian government became corrupted over the years and ultimately became totally dysfunctional. As a result of the blast, Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced on Monday his resignation along with the entire Cabinet.

Despite dysfunctionality in the Lebanese government, the society and culture were able to flourish to the point that Beirut became known as “the Paris of the Middle East.” Public education was well-developed, reaching most of the population, and achieving broad-based literacy rates. In time, however, much of the educational role, however, had become the responsibility of religious groupings, rather than the government. Prior to the civil war, which began in 1975, public schools were more prevalent, but following that war, private schools were fulfilling about 2/3ds of the country’s education needs. While a large middle class evolved, religious and kinship ties tended to disguise this seeming sense of well-being. At the same time, the government did little to reduce the socioeconomic dislocation in the country caused by the civil war and government ineptitude.

Any overview of Lebanon’s history and culture would be remiss without mentioning the country’s long succession of Mediterranean cultures, including Phoenician, Greek, and Arab peoples. Its historic sites of Baalbek, Byblos, and Tyre are renowned. French culture has influenced Lebanon, mostly the Christian segment of the population. Some Christian families even today are more fluent in the French language than they are in Arabic. Lebanese music and the arts have reemerged intact from the long civil war and its cuisine is well known by neighboring Arab countries and around the world. Lebanese singer Fairuz, for example, continues her reputation as a favorite songstress, and modern writers, including Georges Shehade and Hanan al-Shaykh, continue in the footsteps of Kahlil Gibran. The continuation of the country’s music and literary traditions is illustrative that not all of Lebanon as we know it is dying.

Foreign Policy prediction is that “The only political system the country has ever known is collapsing, and it’s never coming back.” That system included many of the warlords who had fought and survived the civil war, which ended in 1990. They simply exchanged their militia uniforms for suits and grabbed what they could of Lebanon’s “fragile postwar state.” From there, it was all downhill for the Lebanese citizens, who suffered from the widespread sectarianism and kleptocracy of the political elite. Perhaps best described by academic Fawaz Gerges, in an Associated Press article, “the main question is whether the Lebanese people will collectively rise up and say ‘enough is enough,’ which would mean implementing a new electoral process, a new government and a new system of governance.” In this respect, the mass protests would have to continue, even taking years to rid the system of the elites. Gerges continued, “It’s a choice between death or renewal through struggle.”

Sources

“The Beirut Blast Is Lebanon’s Chernobyl–Negligence and corruption have caused a devastating disaster,” Foreign Policy, 8/5/2020

“Lebanon as We Know It Is Dying,” Foreign Policy, 8/05/2020

Lebanon, Government, and Society, Encyclopaedia Britannica

“Will Beirut’s blast be a catalyst for change?” Associated Press, 8/7/2020

“Lebanese government in crisis as ministers resign after explosion,” Washington Post, 8/10/2020

John Mason, PhD., who focuses on Arab culture, society, and history, is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. He has taught at the University of Libya, Benghazi, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and the American University in Cairo; John served with the United Nations in Tripoli, Libya, and consulted extensively on socioeconomic and political development for USAID, the UN, and the World Bank in 65 countries.

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