By Julian McBride
Post-civil war Lebanon can be described as a series of calamitous events impacting a people who are already no stranger to being taken advantage of by their political system, as the civil war and subsequent three-decade Syrian military occupation had the combined consequence of eliminating all progressive resistance, creating a mass exodus of the best and brightest, and leaving those who were the most corrupt to govern the state.
Many of these officials have taken advantage of Lebanon’s sectarian-based political system in order to remain in power indefinitely, reaping individual rewards from divisive rhetoric while rendering the polity ever more unstable. The country has now reached a critical point due to the excessive mismanagement of public funds, an issue which is accelerating a potential state collapse – a possibility that has already been flagged by various international organizations.
Lebanon was regarded as a global economic powerhouse in the wake of independence from France, as global financiers invested heavily in the Lebanese banking system from the 1950s to early 1970s. During this time, Lebanon had one of the highest HDIs in the Middle East, and it was a viewed as a premier economy in the Middle East, but the cracks in the system were always visible for those who looked closely.
The Lebanese economy was heavily dominated by Maronites, which represented half of the population at the time, and were a grouping heavily favored by the…
