It is not a secret: Lebanon is no longer the Switzerland or the Paris of the Middle East and its collapse could be irreversible if the current trends remain. Recovery depends on how we handle three major challenges. First, the country needs to restore its image and regain trust and confidence in itself; then there is the question of Hezbollah’s arms, which can only be resolved politically; and, most importantly, Lebanon needs to bring back its role in the region.
There are many places that have never recovered after losing their role. In the 19th century, Alexandria and Smyrna were the richest cosmopolitan ports in the Mediterranean, but 20th-century nationalism did away with that. They lost their role and their reputation and never fully recovered. The fortunes of cities like Ma’an in southern Jordan change according to their role too, such as whether the Hajj caravans from places such as Istanbul, Damascus, Cairo and Jerusalem would stop there on their way to Makkah and if it remains as an intersection of major trade routes. Other examples are when a drug cartel takes control of a Latin American country or Daesh takes over a city like Mosul.
What happened to Lebanon is a combination of all the above. Its role as a refuge for both capital and talent from the region created the economic prosperity that ended with the 1975 civil war. After 1990, Rafik Hariri’s plan was to recover that role, betting on turning Beirut into a main hub for the boom that would result from the Middle East peace process. That bet was lost and instead we saw increased control by Hezbollah and the Syrian regime. Hariri was assassinated in 2005 and it took another 15 years to fully dismantle his system through further assassinations, wars, paralysis and isolation. A new role remains an immense challenge and it is not clear how anyone can help.
The image problem is the most difficult one. There is an almost total lack of trust in the country’s system and its institutions. This started with the revolts of 2015 and 2019 and got worse after the financial collapse and the Beirut port explosion.
The revolts were preceded by a political crisis and an almost complete paralysis of the system, which lasted more than 29 months between 2013 and 2016. This meant no presidential elections, no parliamentary elections and a caretaker government with limited powers. The country gradually fell apart, with services stopping and power vacuums emerging as a result of the impossibility of making appointments in key sectors like the judiciary and the army. Added to that were the fallout from the Syrian war next door and the isolation and boycott from Lebanon’s main economic partners in the Gulf.
It felt like a body in a coma, with its vital functions shutting down one after the other. Part of that disintegration was the odorous garbage piling up in the streets and this triggered what became the “You Stink” revolt against the political class. The economy kept on getting worse, even after a compromise ended the political deadlock and resulted in the election of Hezbollah’s candidate Michel Aoun as president.
The image problem is the most difficult one. There is an almost total lack of trust in the country’s system and its institutions
Nadim Shehadi
Economic stagnation, plus a failure to deal with forest fires and the proposed imposition of a tax on WhatsApp voice calls, triggered another revolt in October 2019, again against the political class. Protesters used the slogan “all means all” and it was in this atmosphere that a series of defaults came one after the other. The central bank defaulted on the banks, the banks defaulted on the depositors and the government defaulted on its foreign debt without any arrangements to deal with the consequences.
Despite all the warnings that preceded the Beirut port blast, it is still not clear how it happened, with the investigation that followed also paralyzed. The most powerful nonnuclear explosion ever recorded was enough to seal the fate of the political system and any hope of recovering confidence. It is also not clear how anyone could help with that even if the root causes can all be traced to Hezbollah’s actions.
This brings us to the final challenge, which is Hezbollah’s arms. Its control over the country has dragged it into one war after another without anyone else having a say in the matter. A chronology of everything Hezbollah has done to Lebanon, along with its intervention in Syria, its role in Iraq and its training of the Houthis in Yemen, gives an idea of the scale of the problem. It also helps explain the loss of Lebanon’s role and the problem of trust in a political class that failed to contain it.
Hezbollah’s control over the country has dragged it into one war after another without anyone else having a say in the matter
Nadim Shehadi
Hezbollah is, at the same time, a local problem and one with two regional dimensions. Locally, it gets its power through its hegemony over the Shiite community. Regionally, it is part of the phenomenon of Shiite revival and the export of the Iranian revolution. The second regional dimension is the legitimacy it derives from war with Israel.
In 1983, Israel had an agreement with the Lebanese government to withdraw from the region it occupied in south Lebanon. Known as the May 17 Agreement, it was voted for almost unanimously by parliament and would have led to an end of the state of war with Israel. What later became Hezbollah was, in collaboration with the Syrian regime, behind the abrogation of the agreement, extending the Israeli occupation for another 17 years. Since then, every time Hezbollah has been in trouble, it regains legitimacy either by provoking a war with Israel or by threatening one.
There is no military solution to the local dimension of the Hezbollah problem. Ultimately, it is a battle of narratives with a political and even a theological dimension, the outcome of which could also impact the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ role in Iraq and Yemen. The Lebanese system is partly to blame, as it provided the freedom for the movement to grow in the same way it allowed the Palestine Liberation Organization to take control in the late 1960s. The IRGC even has its roots in the interaction of Iranian political exiles and the PLO in Lebanon during the civil war.
I must end this piece on an optimistic note. The current war with Iran and the participation of its proxies in Iraq and, especially, the Houthis in Yemen highlight more than ever the regional dimension of Lebanon’s Hezbollah problem. It should bring about a regional collaboration to resolve it. The battle of narratives with Hezbollah is political and internal in Lebanon. It is also not clear how anyone on the outside can help. On its own, no amount of aid or reform can help. The battle of narratives is on three fronts — dealing with Hezbollah, regaining trust and recovering a role for the country — which are interrelated.
Nadim Shehadi is an economist and political adviser. X: @Confusezeus
Nadim Shehadi is an economist and political adviser. He has held positions in academia and think tanks in Europe and the US. He ran a program on the regional dimension of the Middle East Peace Process at Chatham House.