by Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer

Beirut: Lebanon has long stood out as the black sheep of the Middle East, mainly because it absorbed rather than shunned Western cultural values, at a time when the Middle East was being colonised by Britain and France in the early part of the 20th century.

Beirut, its capital, was known in its golden age as “the Paris of the Middle East”. Both Muslims and Christian Lebanese attended English and French schools and universities. These institutions helped transform the small country’s abilities to act as a window for both East and West.

But why exactly has Lebanon’s identity developed so drastically different from that of its Arab neighbours? First, Lebanon’s unique geographical position has placed it at the crossroads of civilisations.

Secondly, its people’s openness to outsiders.

Throughout its history, Beirut has been destroyed and rebuilt at least seven times from the period of the Phoenicians 3,000 years ago, followed by the Romans and, more recently, to Arab conquerors who first came to these shores around 1400AD.

By Ryan Suto - Business Insider

Like other longstanding American relationships in the Middle East, the ties between Washington and Riyadh have nothing to do with human rights or democracy. The alliance rests mostly on two key factors: natural resources and regional stability.

First, in addition to being the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, the House of Saud is the custodian of a singular holy resource: oil. Saudi Arabia’s role as the largest exporter of the crucial fossil fuel, as well as its cultural and political influence over other six other Arab OPEC members, makes friendship with the kingdom a valuable, and seemingly indispensable, asset for a fuel-thirsty superpower.

Second, in the Cold-War era, maintaining a balance of power between Western allies such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and Soviet allies such as Iran and Syria, was central to US policy in the region. Making overt advances in non-aligned countries like Egypt or through intermediary forces, such as supporting Saddam Hussein against Iran, was our preferred method of balancing Soviet influence in the region.

In this context, retaining Saudi Arabia as a proxy for Western influence in the Arab world was an easy policy decision. Without American patronage, the Saudis might have turned to Russia. Further, although Saudi Arabia has no formal relations with Israel, unlike Egypt after the Camp David Accords, the Saudis have never used state force against Israel, making the kingdom more palatable to Washington.

worldbank.org

The Syrian crisis and refugee influx into Lebanon are putting an unprecedented amount of social and economic pressure on Lebanon’s public education system. Out of a population of 1.5 million Syrian refugees, almost 500,000 are children of school age (3–18 years). The protracted nature of the Syrian crisis and the immense demand for schooling have strained the quality of public education, too.

In response, Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE), launched the Reaching all Children with Education (RACE) initiative in 2013 to improve access to formal education for Syrian refugees and underprivileged Lebanese—both objectives that have the strong support of the international community.

As a longstanding partner of the Government of Lebanon (GoL), the World Bank has been expanding its support to the education sector. Prior to the onset of the Syrian crisis, it supported the US$40 million Second Education Development Project. In 2015, the World Bank approved a US$32 million Emergency Education System Stabilization Project; and now the Bank will also approve the US$224 million Support to Reaching All Children with Education 2 program (S2R2).
This support includes an exceptional US$100 million of concessional financing from the International Development Association (IDA) to address the education sector’s immediate needs and create the foundations for longer-term recovery. IDA funds are normally only made available to the world’s poorest countries.