The collapse of Lebanon is the indicator of a crisis in the Arab world – Rami Khouri

Those who plunged the last dagger into the already battered body of Lebanon were the same people who should have revived it and revived the role of this people in the Arab world.

President Michel Aoun did not accept the government proposed by the prime minister designate Saad Hariri. The latter resigned a few minutes later, the culmination of a drama that has lasted for nine months. Immediately both the value of the fragile national currency and the hopes of the population to put an end to the daily miseries that plague every aspect of their life collapsed.

Once again the Lebanese people are collectively holding their breath today, waiting for another long political crisis that will involve the leaders of the main parties, whose absolute domination has devastated the country in recent years. But these leaders seem determined to continue their selfish game of maintaining power at all costs.

This cycle of strife between sectarian and selfish politicians has intensified since the current crisis began two years ago. But political stalemates such as the “wall to wall” confrontation between Hariri and Aoun, which suspended government activity, have occurred regularly in recent decades.

The slow collapse of government activity, the economy and daily life as we know it throughout Lebanon – especially in the big cities where most people live – is proof that today we are not just witnessing a political crisis between two. ideologically opposed people.

Rather, we are facing a deeper crisis of statehood which is not only tragic for Lebanon, but also affects other Arab countries in a similar way. It is time to acknowledge the structural flaws of the Lebanese state system and of other countries in the region, which have made us hit such a low point.

How to destroy a state
The cost of the crisis has become clear to every Lebanese family, excluding customers, business partners, security personnel and employees of the ruling oligarchic elite. In addition to the Sunni leader Hariri and the Maronite Christian leader Aoun, this elite includes the president of the house Nabih Berri, the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, and some less powerful men who nevertheless participate in the fatal political game Lebanese with the same determination and the same catastrophic results.

They are all male, many of them are aging, most of them have inherited their position from family or associates, and each has provided the Arab world with the most spectacular example of how to destroy a once dignified state, and plunge its five million inhabitants into despair and poverty.

The news that arrives every day from Lebanon describes a constant suffering of families. Electricity has practically disappeared, which means air conditioning, internet, refrigerators and elevators only work sporadically. Gasoline is hard to find and more expensive with each passing week. The price of food constantly increases while the value of the lira decreases at the same rate. Essential medicines for infants or the elderly are almost unavailable. Drinking water is provided irregularly. And the banks that hold life savings have become inaccessible territory.

Even when it is possible to withdraw cash, the exchange rate set by the Central Bank means that the depositor actually gets about twenty percent of the value of his original deposit. The school system is mostly in free fall, and new decent jobs do not exist.

More and more essential businesses only accept cash dollars, which are out of reach for most ordinary Lebanese. More and more people are surviving by resorting to collective canteens, almsgiving, loans, growing their own food in their ancient mountain villages, or engaging in barter-based economic activities.

Those who can emigrate do so as quickly as possible, but most cannot. The result is millions of angry, frustrated, frightened and helpless Lebanese and refugees who feel so vulnerable and humiliated that they struggle to articulate their pain in words. Many have been reduced to a state of dehumanization, and feel treated like animals by their own political and national leaders.

This extreme situation is very dramatic because it is not the consequence of the war, but the result of the mismanagement, corruption and contempt of the ruling elite for the well-being and rights of citizens.

The current crisis, as confirmed by the Hariri-Aoun show last week, is the sign of the convergence of different crises (political, economic, fiscal, banking, energy, environmental), all due to the bad or non-existent decision-making processes of the elite power that has controlled Lebanon since the end of the civil war in 1990.

The truth, however, is that this elite has controlled the state for much longer, indeed for most of the past century. The current collapse not only reflects the selfish incompetence of the ruling elite; it also reveals the unsustainability of the very sectarian structure of the Lebanese state.

It is important to keep in mind the chronology of an entire century, from 1920 to the present, as it reveals several threads that are contributing to the weakness and slow implosion of the Lebanese state and economy.

Many of the factors contributing to this situation can be traced back to four dynamics, all of which unraveled over the course of the last century: 1) the delayed consequences of the colonial decisions taken by Europeans around 1920, which gave rise to many Arab states; 2) the consequences of the Arab-Israeli conflict (also a century old); 3) the lack of genuine citizen participation in the decision-making process or in the attribution of political responsibilities in the Arab states; 4) the continuous interference, in Arab countries, of neighboring or foreign powers, which make the sovereignty of states a commonly accepted fiction.

Over the past hundred years these four dynamics have brought us to a point where Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Yemen and Libya, to name but the most obvious cases, have experienced severe national suffering, bringing the state to its knees and citizens to despair or emigration.

Across the Arab world, a common situation is emerging that today also affects Lebanon: the majority of citizens are poor, vulnerable and politically powerless, while governments and state institutions increasingly keep the anger and rebellion of citizens under control through, more than anything else, military and security measures.

Lebanon was born in the regional turmoil of the creation of independent Arab states after 1920. And today it is imploding in the context of the continuing pressures of dysfunctional state activity, its own and other neighboring Arab territories, due to the same quartet of causes dating back to a whole century ago.

Lebanon reminds us that the affirmation of stable, democratic, productive and truly sovereign Arab states is still an elusive goal.

(Translation by Federico Ferrone)