Lebanon, small Mideast country mired in tragedies

Written by Candy Megia on

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EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / A wounded man is helped as he walks through debris in Beirut’s Gemmayzeh district following a twin explosion at the port of Lebanon’s capital on August 4, 2020. – Two huge explosion rocked the Lebanese capital Beirut, wounding dozens of people, shaking buildings and sending huge plumes of smoke billowing into the sky. Lebanese media carried images of people trapped under rubble, some bloodied, after the massive explosions, the cause of which was not immediately known. (Photo by Marwan TAHTAH / AFP)

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Lebanon, a small multi-confessional country which endured a devastating 15-year civil war, has often been caught in the crossfire of regional conflicts.

The tragic explosions at Beirut port on Tuesday struck with the country mired in its worst economic crisis for decades, marked by the collapse of its currency and angry popular protests.

Lebanon has had more than 5,000 cases of coronavirus, with 65 dead.

Between Israel and Syria

Lebanese army soldiers fire an anti-aircraft gun at Israeli jets flying over Beirut 15 April. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah said it would stop firing rockets on northern Israel if the Jewish state halted its five-day offensive in Lebanon.
AFP PHOTO (Photo by HASSAN IBRAHIM / AFP)

The civil war raged between 1975 and 1990, with Lebanon under Syrian domination for two decades until its troops withdrew in 2005.

Lebanese political institutions have long been paralysed by discord between pro- and anti-Syrian camps.

In 2013, the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah announced it was fighting alongside the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, further dividing the Lebanese political scene.

Iran-backed Hezbollah is the sworn enemy of Israel, against which it fought a month-long war in 2006.

A picture taken from the town of Ghajar on the Israeli side shows smoke from Israeli shelling covers the Lebanese town of Al-Majidiyah on the Lebanese border with Israel on January 28, 2015. Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah claimed responsibility on Wednesday for an attack against a military convoy in an Israeli-occupied border area on January 28, 2015. At least four Israelis were wounded, sparking a cross-border firefight. AFP PHOTO / JALAA MAREY (Photo by JALAA MAREY / AFP)

The Syria conflict has sporadically spilled over into Lebanon, with several attacks rocking the capital Beirut and other regions.

The most visible impact of the Syrian war in Lebanon, a country of around 4.5 million people, has been the influx of an estimated 1.5 million refugees.

Lebanon and international organisations have on several occasions sounded the alarm over the economic and social burden posed by the massive inrush.

Multi-confessional

Picture taken on February 7, 1991 at Ain Qana showing Lebanese army soldiers entering the town after years of militia domination. Since 1975 this region was out of the Lebanese army control. (Photo by Nabil ISMAIL / AFP)

The country with the cedar tree stamped on its flag is one of the Middle East’s smallest, covering an area of about 10,000 square kilometres (3,900 square miles).

Flanked to the west by the Mediterranean, it shares borders with Syria and Israel.

Lebanon is considered relatively liberal in a generally conservative region, but religion remains all-important.

Picture taken 13 April 2000, which marks the anniversary of the outbreak of Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil shows, shows Hadiqat as-Samah, or the Garden of Forgiveness, in downtown Beirut. The site is located near Martyr’s Square, once the green line which served as the great divide between the Christian eastern and the mostly-Muslim western sectors of the Lebanese capital. (Photo by RAMZI HAIDAR / AFP)

A crucible for 18 religious communities, its governance has been dictated by a power-sharing deal between the main sects.

Lebanon is a parliamentary republic, with a 128-member house evenly split between Muslims and Christians.

In line with the “national pact” dating from independence from France in 1943, the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim.

Colossal debt

Lebanese activists demosntrate along with former employees of the American University Medical Center outside the hospital in the capital Beirut, on July 20, 2020, after they were dismissed from their jobs last week as part of a series of sweeping layoffs planned for the American University of Beirut and its medical center to cope with a severe recession resulting from Lebanon’s economic and financial crisis. (Photo by JOSEPH EID / AFP)

For the first time in its history, Lebanon announced in March it was defaulting on its debts.

According to ratings agency Standard and Poor’s (S&P), it is sagging under a debt of $92 billion, equal to nearly 170 percent of its gross domestic product, one of the highest debt ratios in the world.

In May, Lebanon launched negotiations with the International Monetary Fund aimed at securing crucial aid, under a plan to rescue the economy adopted by the government. Talks have since stalled.

Since October 2019, Lebanon has been rocked by mass protests against what is seen as a corrupt and incompetent political system.

The country lags in development in areas such as water supply, electricity production and waste treatment.

A welcome lifeline for Lebanon came in 2018, when aid pledges worth more than $11 billion were made at a Paris conference.

But the pledged money has been blocked due to a lack of promised reforms.

Nearly half of Lebanon’s population now lives below the poverty line and 35 percent are out of work, according to official statistics.

© Agence France-Presse