A debt crisis, ailing banking sector, and falling currency coupled with runaway inflation, burgeoning poverty, and unemployment with a refugee problem. Add to this, the strain of dealing with a pandemic and an incompetent and corrupt political class.
This is what Lebanon, a country in West Asia, looked like when a massive explosion rocked its capital city Beirut on 4th of August 2020, killing 200, injuring 6,000 and rendering a quarter of a million people homeless.
Founded in the wake of the fall of the Ottoman Empire post World War One, the state of Lebanon was established and placed under the French mandate in 1920. It remained a French colony till it attained independence in 1943. Since then, the country has been marked by periods of political turmoil interspersed with prosperity built on its position as a regional center for finance and trade. From 1975-1980, it witnessed a bloody civil war among the different religious militias. An estimated 120,000 people were killed in this war. Simultaneously, Syria and Israel invaded and attacked the country in 1976 and 1982, respectively, establishing a military presence and influencing the domestic as well as foreign policies.
The civil war resolved in 1990 after a power-sharing agreement, known as the Taif agreement. This was a huge achievement for this is a region where civil wars and conflicts were not necessarily resolved. The agreement disarmed all sectarian militias except for the Shia Muslim’s Hezbollah that was fighting a war against Israel at the southern border. Lebanon’s government was designed to provide political representation to all the religious groups, with its three largest
being Christian Maronites, Sunni Muslims, and Shiite Muslims.
The number of seats in parliament is split between Christians and Muslims and proportionally divided among the different denominations within each religion. Government posts and public-sector positions are also divided among the majority sects with the President always being a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni and the Speaker of Parliament at Shia. At present, Muslims account for 61.1% of the population (30.6% Sunni, 30.5% Shia) with 33.7% Christians.
This arrangement transformed the militias into political parties and the erstwhile warlords into suit-adorning politicians: corrupt, incompetent to govern, and influenced by their vested interests and foreign backing. This has stymied the political institutions and made the nation dependent on a handful of sectarian leaders who usually inherited rule from their fathers. Lebanon is deeply embedded in the West Asian region, being heavily influenced by the geopolitics of the region. An estimated 350,000 Lebanese ex-pats live and work in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait. Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Syria have all vied for influence and control in this country through their proxies and support for local politicians.
Shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Hezbollah – a Shiite political party and militia was created and funded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) under General Qassem Soleiman in Lebanon. Billed as a Shiite resistance movement, it enshrined its ideology in a 1985 manifesto that vowed to expel Western powers from Lebanon, called for the destruction of the Israeli state, and pledged allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader. It also advocated for an Iran-inspired Islamist regime but emphasized that the Lebanese people must have the freedom of self-determination.
After the civil war ended, Hezbollah, unlike other militias, was not disarmed. It is called “a state within a state” owing to a vast network of social services including health-care facilities, schools, and youth programs. This in turn has been instrumental in garnering support for Hezbollah from Shiite and non-Shiite Lebanese alike. It has also been touted as the “world’s most heavily armed non-state actor” and is designated as a terrorist organization by several nations.
Tehran has used Hezbollah as a proxy to help support its cause in the region by providing military support to Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and keeping Israel’s ambitions in check. They have also trained and armed the Houthi rebels of Yemen, much to the anger of Saudi Arabia – Iran’s main regional rival.
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