by arabnews.com — ZAID M. BELBAGI — There was a time when Lebanon’s “Zuama,” or confessional-come-political leaders, held sway in their respective communities. Their role in providing access to opportunities, amenities and basic provisions was central to their support. They were free to politic in Beirut, becoming billionaires in the process, while their supporters muddled through the developmental challenges that are part of any emerging economy. In 2019 this changed, as the Lebanese people took to the streets to voice their opposition to a worsening state of affairs. As the government made only cosmetic changes the Lebanese pound slumped, and just when many people thought the former “Paris of the East” had reached the brink, the global pandemic broke the back of the country while its effete elites looked on from their mountainside second homes. The middle class had been cocooned in luxury apartments surrounded by imported foreign domestic staff, living to almost European standards. Now, however, they find themselves bartering for food and kitchen appliances.

The artificial development of Lebanon’s economy following the Civil War has come unstuck. The Lebanese pound has fallen to a sixth of its previous value, exacerbating the problems faced by the working class, whose modest savings are now worth a pitiful amount. With clinics closed because doctors’ salaries have gone unpaid, importers of medical supplies have gone bust and lifesaving drugs are hard to come by at a time when a health care crisis has taken hold. For those that still have jobs and are being paid, minor procedures cost more than a month’s wages. The cost of basic groceries is almost as crippling. With inflation spiraling out of control and a likely famine on the horizon, the average Lebanese citizen awaits even more challenging times. The current situation has completely shattered the veneer of progress that followed the Taif Agreement that brought the country’s bitter Civil War to an end in 1990. As bullet holes were plastered over, a construction boom gave the impression of a newly confident state.

by albawaba.com — Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe’s ex-manager Mohammad Waziri was arrested earlier this week for stealing $4 million from the artist. In May, Wehbe filed a lawsuit through her attorney in Egypt against Waziri, accusing him of withdrawing around $4 million from her account. She had previously singed a general power of attorney for […]

by france24.com — France’s visiting foreign minister on Friday pledged €15 million ($17 million) in aid to Lebanon’s schools, which have been hit hard by the country’s economic meltdown. France will not abandon Lebanese youth, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters as he visited a school in Mechref, south of Beirut, on the third and final day of his trip to Lebanon. The French financial assistance will go to a network of over 50 French and Francophone schools in the country. The announcement comes a day after Le Drian scolded Lebanon’s leadership for failing to take the measures he said are necessary to save the country from collapse. Lebanon’s education sector has been hit hard by the crisis, with schools forced to let teachers and administrators go and many facing the risk of closure. Parents, struggling to pay private school fees, are increasingly enrolling their children in already overcrowded public schools.

‘On the verge of the abyss’

The economic crisis has impacted almost all facets of life in Lebanon, a small Mediterranean country long considered a middle-income state. Since last year, unemployment has risen and poverty deepened, as foreign currency dried up and the local currency tumbled to lose more than 80 percent of its value against the dollar. Le Drian, who arrived here late Wednesday, said France could only help Lebanon face the crisis if Lebanese officials do their part, urging them to introduce much-needed reforms. Le Drian is the first senior Western official to visit the struggling country. In stern public messages, he urged Lebanese officials to go through with an audit of the country’s central bank, reform a bloated and highly indebted electricity sector, and maintain an independent judiciary. France is the former colonial power in Lebanon and has previously organised conferences that pledged assistance to Lebanon but demanded reforms to the public sector and governance. “Lebanon is on the verge of the abyss. But there are ways on the table to fix this,” he said Friday during a visit to a school in Mechref district.

by Timour Azhari — .aljazeera.com — Beirut – French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has said Lebanese politicians are preventing the disbursal of much-needed aid to the crisis-hit country by failing to implement solutions “that have already been known for a long time”. “France is ready to fully mobilise alongside Lebanon and to mobilise all of its partners, but this requires serious and credible reform measures to be implemented. Concrete actions are long-overdue,” Le Drian said during a joint news conference with Lebanese Foreign Minister Nassif Hitti on Thursday. In Beirut on a two-day official visit, Le Drian likened potential French and international aid to Lebanon to divine intervention. “You may be familiar with the French expression, ‘help yourself and God will help you.’ What I want to say to officials in Lebanon today is: ‘Help yourself and France and its partners will help you’,” he said.

The international community has over the last 20 years pledged nearly $24bn to Lebanon for economic aid and development projects at four donor conferences. The most recent conference in 2018 saw pledges of $11bn, conditional on reforms to the country’s ailing electricity sector, modernising laws and reducing the country’s public debt. Little progress was made and Lebanon is now sinking into a deep crisis characterised by currency depreciation, steep inflation, rising poverty, unemployment and growing instability. The government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab, appointed by the country’s establishment after a massive anti-government uprising toppled his predecessor in October, is seeking some $20bn in aid – half from the International Monetary Fund and half from international donors rallied by France. But the government has faltered with little popular support and negotiations with the IMF have been impeded by disagreements and political bickering. Protesters “took to the streets to mark the thirst for change, to mark the desire for transparency, the fight against corruption, and better governance of a whole people. Unfortunately, this appeal has so far not been heard,” Le Drian said.

by arabnews.com — LEILA HATOUM — BEIRUT: On Jan. 18, 1984, Dr. Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut (AUB), stepped into a hallway leading to his office on the sprawling campus in the Lebanese capital. It was a rainy Wednesday morning. The civil war had been raging in the country for nine years. Suddenly two armed men appeared, as if from nowhere, and opened fire on 52-year-old Kerr. He was shot twice in the back of the head and died instantly. The killers fled and were never identified. In a telephone call to news agency AFP, the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO), a Shiite militia backed by Iran, claimed responsibility for the killing. It cited the US military presence in Lebanon as the reason. American soldiers were part of a four-nation peacekeeping force created in 1982 during a US-brokered ceasefire between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.

Speaking to Arab News from southern California, Kerr’s widow, Ann, recalled that terrible day, the events of which remain fresh in her memory after 36 years. “The grief is an ongoing thing,” she said. “You live with the loss and the loss assumes a place in your heart.” Ann met her husband while they were both students at AUB in the 1950s. She was on a study trip from Occidental College in Los Angeles, he was studying for a master’s degree in Arabic studies. To them, AUB “represented the best of what the US had to offer,” Ann said. Her husband, an American citizen, was born and raised in Lebanon and educated in the US. His parents had taught at AUB, so it was close to his heart. He returned to Lebanon on many occasions, eventually taking up further studies and teaching assignments at the university. An authority on the Middle East and the Arab world, in 1982 he was offered the job of president at the prestigious institution. Ann blames Iran and Hezbollah for his murder, as the IJO is said to have been the forerunner to Hezbollah, which was formed in 1985. “It is pretty clear that (Hezbollah was responsible) because in those days they were targeting visible westerners (such as) journalists and professors,” she said. “You might remember that David Dodge was kidnapped before Malcolm was assassinated.”

by arabnews.com — NAJIA HOUSSARI — BEIRUT: The Lebanese government has hired Alvarez & Marsal, a New York-based professional services firm, to carry out a forensic audit of central bank accounts since 2015 amid claims finances have been mismanaged in the corruption-plagued country. Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni asked for a week to prepare documents to sign the contract for the audit, which could take between three and six months. Lebanese President Michel Aoun has called for an audit since March, following the country’s first-ever default on a $1.2 billion eurobond payment. The process will attempt to identify the cause of the financial and monetary crisis and the level of foreign exchange reserves.

A Ministry of Finance source told Arab News that the finance minister “submitted a list of six companies so the Cabinet can choose one to conduct the forensic audit, after refusing to contract Kroll because of its alleged links with Israel, with whom Lebanon is at war.” The source added: “The Cabinet voted for Alvarez & Marsal, although the cost of contracting the firm is higher than the cost of contracting Kroll. It will have a crew in Lebanon consisting of two directors and nine associates at a cost of $2.2 million, while Kroll’s financial offer amounted to only half a million.”

by thenational.ae — Sunniva Rose — One of the handful of historic buildings in downtown Beirut to have survived the 1975-1990 civil war, the school of Saint Anne of Besançon, may not open again in September. A quarter of its usual 800 students have not enrolled yet. “We keep changing scenarios to adapt to the situation. We are living day by day” said its director, Sister Myrna Farah. Compounded by confinement measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Lebanon’s worst-ever economic crisis threatens the survival of the country’s private schools, where 70 per cent of Lebanese children study. With the government increasingly struggling to provide basic services such as electricity, Lebanese schools, and particularly French-speaking ones, are placing their hopes in former colonialist power France. French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who arrived in Beirut on Wednesday evening for a 36-hour visit, is expected to add detail to previous announcements made by the French government about Lebanon’s education sector. “I hope that [his visit] will alleviate the financial blockade that we are under,” said Sister Farah, referring to the cash crisis that forced local banks to limit access to the dollar since November. Earlier this year, French president Emmanuel Macron said that France would support Christian francophone schools in Lebanon, which represent 11 per cent of the country’s 2,854 schools, as part of a regional support programme.

Additionally, 53 schools accredited by the French Ministry of Education will receive interest-free loans and emergency scholarships for non-French families, depending on their needs. Lots of families, even those comparably well-off compared to most in Lebanon, are hoping to receive help. Nayla, who declined to give her family name, has not paid the fees for her two children’s last quarter at school yet. “It’s not that I don’t have the money, but I’m just so worried about the situation” she said, breaking down as she spoke on the phone. “We don’t know what will happen. I spend my time trying to buy cheap meat and beans to freeze. I’d rather keep the money for the basics,” she added. In June, inflation hit 90 per cent, and analysts expect it to worsen. “The economic collapse is happening in an exponential way,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre. “What comes out of it cannot be predicted, but what we can predict is greater inflation and that the lira will continue to deteriorate,” she added. The local currency has lost over 80 per cent of its value on the black market since September. The rapid deterioration of living conditions shocked Sister Farah.

by thenational.ae — Sunniva Rose — The American University of Beirut should have better managed the firing of 850 staff members last Friday, the president of Lebanon’s most prestigious university said in a letter to staff and students. Private security and members of the Lebanese military were posted around the AUB Medical Centre as the staff were given letters ending their employment and escorted out, many of them in tears. Now, the institution’s president, Fadlo Khuri, has said the “exceptionally difficult” week could have been better managed. “The reality is that letting this many people go from the AUB family was never going to be easy,” Mr Khuri wrote. “The manner of departures, especially at AUBMC, could and should have been better handled, and some confusion and pain could have been avoided.” Employees organised a protest outside the medical centre on Monday afternoon.

Pictures on social media showed protesters holding banners that read “I won’t leave” and “I will not accept this humiliation”. Protesters read out the annual salaries of Mr Khuri and other top AUB officials, which they said added up to nearly $1 million a year, while visibly upset former employees broke down in tears. On Friday, interviews with the former employees went viral on Lebanese social media. “My mother has cancer. My brother died,” a sobbing woman said. “I had nothing but this institution. What will I do now?” The layoffs took place amid large numbers of army and riot police, causing outrage on social media. Some Twitter users called the university’s management “cowards”.

PARIS (Reuters) – Former Nissan Motor Co Ltd Chairman Carlos Ghosn took a swipe at his old employers in a newspaper interview on Sunday, calling the Renault and Nissan results “pathetic”, driven as much by a lack of joint leadership than the COVID-19 pandemic. Ghosn, who was also the chairman of Mitsubishi Motors Corp, was […]

By Nisan Ahmado — voanews.com — WASHINGTON – New U.S. sanctions targeting the Syrian government appear to also undermine Hezbollah in Lebanon. Experts say the measures are alienating Hezbollah from its political allies in Lebanon and weakening its usage of state institutions to assist the Syrian regime. The sanctions, introduced on June 17 and known as the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, have been described by the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah as an “economic war” that aims at “starving both Syria and Lebanon.” He has called on the Lebanese government to ignore them. While the sanctions may not be devastating for Hezbollah, they could deter other parties in Lebanon’s governing coalition from following the Iran-sponsored group’s wish to improve ties to Bashar al-Assad’s administration, according to Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute. “Hezbollah has been calling the Lebanese government to normalize Lebanon’s relations with the Assad regime,” Ghaddar told VOA. But, he said, none of Hezbollah’s allies “wants to challenge Caesar Act, especially when there are negotiations going on with the international community to salvage the country from its devastating economic crisis.” Hezbollah has been classified by the U.S. as a terrorist organization since 1997. The group is sanctioned under the 2014 Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act, which prevents entities associated with Hezbollah from gaining access to international financial and logistics networks and blocks its ability to fund global terrorist activities. The U.S. Treasury earlier this year announced further sanctions, blacklisting 15 Hezbollah-affiliated entities in Lebanon.

Political control

 Lokman Slim, a Beirut-based analyst, told VOA that Hezbollah has been working for years to strengthen its infiltration of the Lebanese state and army by weaving a network of alliances across the Lebanese multi-sectarian spectrum. The group’s control over the political scene in Lebanon reached its peak in 2016, when it successfully backed Michel Aoun, a Maronite Christian and head of the Free Patriotic Movement party, to become president. However, the group’s allies are now starting to distance themselves from Hezbollah to guarantee their political survival, said Slim. “When Hezbollah’s main ally (Shia) speaker Nabih Berri champions the defense of the banking sector, and when voices from within the Free Patriotic Movement, the party of President General Michel Aoun, start calling into question the feasibility of blindly following Hezbollah, and when Patriarch Rahi, the highest Christian authority in Lebanon, calls on the U.N. to help Lebanon assert its neutrality, we can’t say that Hezbollah is in its glory days,” he said.