Lebanon on the Brink

IMF warns Lebanon at 'very dangerous moment' 

For decades, Lebanon's militant civilian organizations both inside and outside the country  warned the international community that the Mafia nowadays in power was itself the maker of the 1975-1990 civil war, that it amnestied itself of the war crimes and crimes against humanity it committed, then was backed into power under the Syrian occupation by crooks in the international community (Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, George W Bush, Jacques Chirac, among others). The international community was driven by either political stupidity, intellectual jaundice, simple cowardice in the face of regimes like the Syrian Assad regime and Islamic terrorism, or was simply trading Lebanon to appease the Muslim Arabs and keep siphoning cheap Arab oil.

Money in the billions was knowingly poured into the corrupt pockets of the ruling establishment as aid to Lebanon. Year after year, we reminded the world of its obligation to support genuine grassroots agents of change, and back a new generation of educated economists, scientists, jurists and others in order to lift Lebanon out of the morass of ultra-religiosity, tribalism, feudalism and sectarian identities. But it was all "blowing in the wind". Convenience, just as the French are doing today, drives Western posture vis-à-vis Lebanon: "Let's put a temporary lid and get 'stability' for a while at any cost". So they bribe the ruling Mafia into hurriedly signing half-ass deals, without a shred of due diligence, like the Taef Agreement (1989), the Doha Agreement (2008), and other similar band-aid solutions which they know provide only a temporary reprieve and do not address the fundamental structural problems of the country.

To address these fundamental problems requires imagination and courage, neither of which it seems is available in the minds of western decision-makers and definitely not in the minds of the feudal-religious-tribal cabal in power today.

So when we hear a visiting International Monetary Fund delegation Thursday saying that Lebanon is "at a very dangerous moment",  and criticizing slow progress on reforms needed to unlock billions in loans, we are not surprised, neither should the IMF and other international instances like the UN and its various agencies or the global West (US, France, etc.) be surprised. For decades they had many opportunities, including two major uprisings by a desperate Lebanese population (2005 and 2019) demanding real change, but each time - like right now - the "convenient" and "I have no time for this Lebanese crap" attitude leads again to pushing for a temporary respite, only for the problem to surge back in another decade or so. 

Right now, in the midst of the stalemate over the presidential election, there are several good candidates - successful civilians from the educated, professional, non-sectarian segments of Lebanese society. Yet, the international community, including perfidious France, is trying to impose a "compromise" feudal president with a "compromise" sectarian government, a tune that has never worked in the past and which in fact has led the country to its present demise. The Lebanese people are NOT asking the international community for money, like the ruling class is doing. We are asking the international community to do one of two things:

1- Either endorse, with diplomatic pressures, good marketing, and protection the advent into power of representatives from that educated, professional, non-sectarian segment of Lebanese society, which is standing against the ruling feudal-tribal-sectarian class, since this is the only long-term solution for the new generation of Lebanese;

2- Or fuck-off and get off our backs. Refuse to provide any assistance so long as the current ruling class remains in power. Name the corrupt politicians, investigate them, shame them... instead of sending envoys to negotiate with them.

Corrupt Lebanon and the IMF reached a conditional agreement in April 2022 on a $3-billion-dollar loan needed to save the country's economy, in free fall since 2019. But nearly a year after Beirut signed the agreement, these corrupt officials have yet to enact the substantial changes required to kick-start the 46-month financing program.

"We think Lebanon is at a very dangerous moment, at a crossroads," said Ernesto Ramirez Rigo, the genius head of the IMF delegation in Beirut, warning that continued "policy of inaction is going to leave Lebanon in a never-ending crisis .... Time has gone by. It's almost a year since we have reached an agreement," lamented poor Ernesto, as he urged the corrupt leaders to implement the reforms swiftly, knowing that the corrupt do NOT want, will NOT, and canNOT reform themselves. So why does the IMF continue to negotiate with thieves, criminals and murderers?

In September the IMF had already condemned Beirut's "very slow" progress on implementing these reforms. "The country is in a significant crisis. One would have expected a lot more in terms of implementation," Nobel Prize for Intelligence candidate Ramirez Rigo said. How does he expect more reforms from the same corrupt people his institution and allied institutions have backed for decades, knowing they were stealing the money and were not willing to do any reform? 

Why do these things take geological time in Lebanon? Years go by while the cesspool continues to ferment in this vicious cycle of "collapse-aid to the corrupt who steal the aid-leading to collapse, etc.". Why is it that Sri Lanka got assistance from the IMF and reformed itself within a few weeks after its Chinese-infected economy collapsed? I think we all know the answer: Since it has no resources, Lebanon is a sideshow, a toy country where as long as the economic-financial stakes don't matter, all the protagonists around the globe play a risk-free game: Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, France, Turkey, Russia, the US, etc... Except the Lebanese people who have been tormented for five decades by this dynamic between an indifferent international community and a barbaric ruling class. Lebanon is like Afghanistan, minus the turbans and the burkas. Every asshole country around the world has a hypothetical interest in this finch's ass of a country that has no resources to offer them.

Lebanon's meltdown has pushed most of the population into poverty while the political elite, backed by the international community for decades and widely blamed for the country's financial collapse, has failed to take action. Since last year, the country has had no president and only a caretaker government, amid persistent deadlock between rival factions -- while the country plunges deeper into a crisis dubbed by the World Bank as one of the worst in recent global history.

Ramirez Rigo said any solution for Lebanon must include an adjustment of fiscal policies, address banking sector losses and strengthen anti-corruption measures. Lebanese banks have imposed draconian withdrawal restrictions -- essentially locking depositors out of their life savings. "Adjustment"? "Address losses"? "Strengthen anti-corruption measures"? I think qualifiers like "radical, in-depth, complete makeover, upside-down, inside-out, revolutionary, etc...." are more appropriate. The Lebanese people have had it with temporary dainty measures. If the primary interest of Europe and the West in "assisting" Lebanon is to prevent hundreds of thousands of refugees from taking the sea and land routes to Europe and the West, the half-ass tiptoe measures the IMF and its consorts are proposing will lead to an even worse civil war that will drive millions of people into refugeedom. 

Just like the International Court of Justice has, within a year of his invasion of Ukraine, issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin (who inspires Lebanon's rulers with his macho criminality, except they don't have nuclear weapons), we want the international community to go after everyone of the petty little dictators who control this tiny tormented country and who have stashed their money in Europe and the West !! It should be really easy to do so. After 20 years of proceedings, the Special Tribunal of Lebanon in the Hague found two lowly individuals "associated" with Hezbollah guilty in the 2005 killing of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, himself an imposing part of the corrupt establishment. But the cowardly justice of STL did not frankly name Hezbollah and Syria themselves as the operators behind the guilty individuals. Fear of terrorism? Cowardliness? Avoidance behavior? Who the hell knows. The two guilty individuals remain free under the protection of Lebanon's Hezbollah government itself, which in principle should arrest them and hand them over.

Lebanon has been hijacked and kidnapped by a cabal of sectarian blood-thirsty feudal merchants of death who keep the Lebanese people herded inside tightly-controlled religious concentration camps. We implore the international community to deal with real agents of change and not with the traditionalist feudal criminal warlords whom it should track and prosecute. This is no time to, again, make deals with the fox over whether it should continue to guard the hen-house: It is time to shoot the goddam fox and liberate the hens.