Lebanese Passports for Sale to Corrupt Syrian Oligarchs

In his waning years and up to his last minute in power, Michel Aoun continues to sap the foundations of Lebanon. 

He now is an ally of Syria and Iran, two countries sanctioned by the world for terrorism and war crimes, after he once declared (in the late 1980s) that he was going to bring down Damascus over the head of his former enemy, the Syrian dictator Hafez Assad, father of current dictator Bashar Assad. Right now, with the assistance of his US-sanctioned son-in-law Gebran Bassil, Aoun has shoved his head way up Assad's rectum, Syrian gastrointestinal pestilence notwithstanding, and has endorsed the hijacking of his own government by the Iranian militia Hezbollah.

In a latest threat to Lebanon's very existence, Aoun apparently was prepared to sell 4,000 "golden" Lebanese passports at a price of up to 100,000 Euros each, according to the highly reliable French newspaper Libération. The money he stood to make from this transaction aimed in all likelihood at lifting Gebran Bassil out of his financial miseries under crippling US sanctions for corruption. 

The worst aspect of this is that the passports were going to 4,000 high-ranking, wealthy and equally corrupt Syrian oligarchs and their families, which not only counters the sanctions imposed on them (by allowing them to travel freely on Lebanese passports), but it also grants Lebanese citizenship to powerful Syrians who are by every measure avowed enemies of Lebanon. 

Meanwhile, children born to Lebanese mothers married to non-Lebanese fathers are denied Lebanese citizenship (while those born to Lebanese fathers and non-Lebanese mothers automatically receive Lebanese citizenship). Not only is this indicative of a patriarchal, discriminating political and social culture in this country, but the argument of ultra-religious dinosaurs and sectarian political bigots against granting citizenship to children born to Lebanese mothers is that doing so would add large numbers of Palestinians and Syrians (who are 99% Muslim) to the demographic composition, which itself is the basis of the political distribution of power in the country. 

But apparently, the Christian president Michel Aoun has no problem granting Lebanese citizenship to Syrian and Palestinian Muslims who "donate" more than 100,000 Euros into his wallet. Before him, other Christian presidents (Elias Hrawi, Emile Lahoud, and Michel Sleiman) also tilted the demographics of the country by granting citizenship to multitudes of wealthy and/or corrupt Arab Muslims. No wonder that when they retire, these monsters retire in lavish palaces, having abundantly cashed in on their "service", yet continue to claim to protect the "rights of the Christians". Typical Lebanese individualism with not a care for collective responsibility, per the Lebanese proverb, "After my sheep, let no grass grow", equivalent to  French "Apres moi le deluge" [After me the flood] or roughly in English "Devil may care".

Given the magnitude of Aoun's lies and what he continues to do to his own country, Aoun will go down in history as a traitor to his country.