Bad times have visited Lebanon before, but the Lebanese have never been as tested and humbled as they have been recently. On Tuesday, the Lebanese caught a glimpse of the apocalypse, which came by way of decades of political dysfunction; a diabolical culture of criminal negligence and corruption; and economic plunder of resources and public assets by an entrenched, lawless coalition of feudal political families, former and current warlords, and new oligarchs. This corruption culminated in the explosions that flattened Beirut’s whole port area and caused severe damage within a 5-mile radius. The port’s huge grain silo suffered the brunt of the blasts, leaving part of it standing like an ancient ruin signifying the hulk of a bygone civilization. The dead will be in the hundreds, and the wounded already exceed 6,000. The reverberations from this man-made earthquake will continue to be felt for many years to come.
Lebanon is a remnant of its fading past. By now, the country’s tale of woe, which brought it to this nadir, is well known. The veneer of economic prosperity centered on a glitzy Beirut could not hide the rot that afflicted every facet of life in a country that imports more than 80 percent of its needs and produces very little worthy of foreign currency. Years of economic mismanagement, endemic corruption, overspending, indebtedness, and outright plunder of financial resources by the dominant powers with the complicity of a compromised banking sector led to the collapse of the Lebanese lira, which has lost more than 80 percent of its value since last October. By the time of the Beirut explosions, Lebanon had become a Weimar Republic on the Mediterranean.
