Dancing at the Foot of a Volcano: Bad Governance, Corruption, and Ecological Disaster in Lebanon

Dancing at the Foot of a VolcanoBad Governance, Corruption, and Ecological Disaster in Lebanon Charif Majdalani (bio) Beirut Translation from the French "Through a sort of grating irony," writes Charif Majdalani, Lebanon "remains a sort of model but in the negative sense of the term, because it concentrates in itself all the problems of the contemporary world." Will it someday regain its role as a positive model? For almost a century, and despite the multiple conflicts that have punctuated its recent history, Lebanon has always been considered a model in its management of the confessional and religious diversity of its population. Held up as an example of peaceful coexistence between the multiple practitioners of Christianity and Islam, the Lebanese system of governance was even considered by Pope John Paul II as a "message" at a time when all countries made up of ethnic and religious mixtures were descending into conflict and division. Lebanon is made up of a multitude of religious communities (eighteen officially) and multiple layers of migratory waves from all over the world (Armenians, Russians, Greeks, Palestinians, Kurds, Syrians, Iraqis, etc.) and has thus succeeded in persisting amidst the turmoil of history—enduring despite moments of existential crises, civil wars, and political divisions. On several occasions its model almost fell apart, and the country nearly broke apart, in particular because of the different ways in which each community declared its identity, depending on its positioning in history and geography. To put it simply, Christians have always seen, wanted, and conceived of Lebanon as a country linked to the West and different from its Arab environment, while Muslims have always valued and desired it as being anchored in the history of the Arab world. These differences—added to more specifically political questions such as the sharing of power between communities End Page 38 and the inadequacies of each confessional group's various visions of the country—inevitably led to dangerous upheavals and successive political crises, notably in 1958 and then during the violent civil war from 1975 to 1990. The fact remains that these successive crises, wars, and today's economic crisis have not succeeded in shaking the foundations of the country or endangering its very being. Too small to be divided up, too rich and diverse to be absorbed by its neighbors, Lebanon therefore continues to exist by a sort of permanent miracle. But while its history remains punctuated by existential crises, the country of today has also recently experienced problems of all kinds linked to a disastrous public affairs policy pursued by dizzyingly corrupt political elites, to problems of migration from neighboring countries, to economic and ecological problems. Through a sort of grating irony, this country remains a sort of model but in the negative sense of the term, because it concentrates in itself all the problems of the contemporary world: problems of governance, of links between political powers and the world of finance, hyperliberal temptations, migration issues, of managing urban issues, and, finally, of severe environmental degradation. It is obvious that all these problems are interconnected. To untangle them and understand the ecological crisis and its consequences in a country like Lebanon, it is necessary to very quickly summarize the current political and economic situation in the country. At the end of the civil conflict that pitted the various religious and confessional communities against one another between 1975 and 1990, the more or less reconciled warlords and militia leaders became politicians and took the reins of the country, bringing to power with them their entourages and members of their staffs. Formed into a true political oligarchy, for thirty years (from 1990 to 2020) these leaders took control of the state, developing together an entirely clientelist and mafia-like system of government. They took advantage of the country's immense reconstruction project and of the gigantic financial windfall that caused the money to flow in to brazenly enrich themselves and to establish corruption as a system of governance, with the guilty consent of a powerful caste of arrogant bankers. During the thirty years separating the end of the civil war from the economic crisis and the collapse of 2020, this oligarch plundered and shared with its...