The contempt that Lebanon’s political and financial elite have shown for the rest of its 6 million citizens is returned in spades – and rightly so. Their corruption, lust for power and incompetence have run an already troubled country into the ground. The currency has been devalued by 90% – still not enough to reflect its slide in full. Inflation is in triple digits. Public services have collapsed; without hiring a private generator, households can expect only an hour or so of power a day. Shortages of drinking water have contributed to disease outbreaks, including the first cholera cases for decades. Parents are sending their children to orphanages because they cannot feed them. A growing number of citizens have resorted to armed robbery as the only way to extract their own deposits (now vastly reduced in real terms) from banks when they desperately need to pay for basic services such as healthcare.
This is one of the most severe economic collapses seen internationally since the 1850s, and it is taking place in a highly volatile environment. The World Bank has called it “a deliberate depression … orchestrated by [an] elite that has long captured the state and lived off its economic rents”, while poor and middle-class people bear the burden of the crisis.
