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The Future of Conflict: Lebanon

August 5, 2019 | Expert Insights

Background

Lebanon’s political leaders, upon gaining independence in 1943, established a political system that they thought would provide proportional representation to the country’s three main religious groups. Despite this, unresolved sectarian disputes culminated in a 15-year civil war which included Israeli and Syrian military interventions, killing more than a hundred thousand people. Although Syrian forces withdrew from the country in 2005, an armed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, a Shia-led Lebanese political party and military faction, caused further destruction in Lebanon in the following year. 

Tensions between Sunni groups and Hezbollah have been rising since then. Meanwhile, Lebanon went without parliamentary elections for almost a decade, a leadership gap from 2014 to 2016.

Analysis

The recent past has seen Lebanese politics seemingly become a proxy battleground for Saudi Arabia and Iran, which provide support to Sunni PM Saad Hariri and Hezbollah respectively. For instance, the Saudi Arabian government allegedly held Hariri under house arrest and attempted to coerce him into resigning as PM during his visit to the oil-rich nation in November 2017.

To make matters worse, the spillover from the ongoing Syrian civil war has resulted in Lebanon hosting more than 1.5 million refugees, bringing cross-border trade to a standstill and dampening the country’s tourism industry.

With regards to the economy, Lebanon currently has the third-highest ratio of debt to the domestic product in the world. This is a direct result of the refugee crisis as well as gross mismanagement, debt, and widespread corruption, due to which one-third of the population lives below the international poverty line ($1.90/day). At one point, there seemed to be a lot of faith in Lebanon’s flexible economy, which relies on remittances from abroad and people’s general ability to innovate. More recently, however, the country’s economic future has begun to look very uncertain. Growth rates have sunk from 8% before the Syrian war, to 1%; the budget deficit has skyrocketed, with Lebanese debt passing the $80 million mark last year. 

The primary structural challenges to Lebanese stability and security are not only economic but also ecological. Pollution is rampant, with burned and dumped trash destroying the natural environment as well as contaminating clean water. Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk failed to find a permanent solution for trash collection owing to corruption. Due to this, people continue to burn toxic trash near urban areas and dump rubbish into coastal landfills and even into the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, electricity cuts are commonplace, thus leaving the poorest households in the country with neither cooling options in the summer nor any sort of heating in the winter.

Assessment 

  • Lebanese policymakers should implement specific reforms to stabilise the economy in the short term. 
  • We feel that providing immediate assistance to the Ministry of Environment and other public bodies is of the essence to help avert an environmental disaster.
  • There is an additional need to strengthen the state’s ability to address the crisis in the form of aid to underfunded civil society groups that promote environmental protection, recycling and conservation. 
  • The public should rally behind Raya al-Hassan, the first female interior minister in any Arab country. Her push for the sorely needed anti-corruption measures and an overhaul of Lebanon’s endemic trash removal problems, is exactly what the nation needs at the moment.

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Image Source - AFP Photo