BEIRUT—After 13 months of political paralysis, Lebanon finally has a new government, the first since former Prime Minister Hassan Diab resigned along with his entire Cabinet after the Beirut port explosion of August 2020, which killed over 200 and devastated the capital city.
The new administration is led by Lebanon’s richest man, billionaire Najib Mikati, who previously served as prime minister from 2011 to 2014, and for several months on an interim basis in 2005. He was sworn in earlier this month, and his government received a vote of confidence in Parliament on Monday.
His government is technocratic, its ministers supposedly nonpartisan specialists—although Cabinet portfolios have still been allocated under the country’s longstanding confessional system, whereby the country’s various religious groups share power. Mikati will have his work cut out for him, as Lebanon faces an economic depression described by the World Bank as one of the world’s worst since the 19th century. Indeed, the country could soon become a failed state. To some, it already is.
“This government is no different to the old government,” Mustafa Dillal, a 77-year-old retiree, said with a laugh when I asked him if Mikati will solve the crisis. “It is the same criminals.” Dillal, who comes from Mikati’s hometown of Tripoli, said the value of his savings has collapsed over the past two years due to hyperinflation. “I used to be a rich man,” he told me. “Now, what I have is not enough to buy food or clothes.”
A deep economic crisis has caused the value of the currency, the Lebanese pound, to fall by 90 percent since 2019. Long pegged at 1,500 pounds to the dollar, it now trades between 15,000 and 20,000 pounds to the dollar on the black market, depending on the economic outlook of the day. Food prices have shot up by 550 percent since August 2020, and many basic essentials are in short supply—medicine, bread and, perhaps most importantly, fuel, with drivers lining up for hours outside gas stations in traffic jams that stretch for miles.
The depression has pushed poor Lebanese even deeper into poverty, and the middle class has effectively collapsed. A recent report from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia found that 82 percent of Lebanon’s population—double the 2019 figure—are now living in “multi-dimensional poverty,” defined as a household lacking one or more of the following elements: a stable income, access to housing, health care or education.
Hilal Khashan, a professor of politics at American University Beirut, told me that the roots of Lebanon’s crisis lie with the sectarian power-sharing deals that underpin each successive government, including Mikati’s. “In 1943, Lebanese sectarian politicians—also established businesspeople—created an unaccountable political system,” he said. “Their primary interests were financial, and the wellbeing of the Lebanese people mattered very little to them. They constructed a weak state by design—not accident—by removing the political prerogatives that generally belong to the state and delegating them to key sects.”
Over the decades, most Lebanese politicians have “behaved irresponsibly with the single aim of pursuing their business interests,” Khashan added. Mikati himself was charged with corruption in 2019, alleged to be illicitly profiting from subsidized housing loans. To many people in Lebanon, the system that created this crisis—an oligarchical state where economic and political power is hoarded by an insular group of elites—has not changed, and they doubt that this system can ever reform itself, let alone the country.
The roots of Lebanon’s crisis lie with the sectarian power-sharing deals that underpin each successive government, including Mikati’s.
Still, there are some early signs of hope. After Mikati’s government was formed, the International Monetary Fund agreed to grant Lebanon $1.13 billion in Special Drawing Rights, which will alleviate the central bank’s shortage of foreign exchange reserves. The new government has also been welcomed by the international community, most notably France, whose efforts to buttress global support for the bankrupt country have long been contingent on the establishment of a government capable of implementing political reforms.
Yet the infusion of funds from the IMF will only last so long, with significant challenges remaining. Speaking after Parliament approved his government earlier this week, Mikati reiterated his commitment to resume negotiations with the IMF on a bailout deal, calling the talks a “necessity, not a choice.” Speaking to reporters after the first meeting of Cabinet, Lebanon’s information minister, George Kordahi, said that Mikati had told the new administration that “people are looking for actions, and are not concerned anymore about talks and promises.”
Even as he tries to tackle the country’s economic crisis, Mikati will face significant foreign policy challenges. Tensions rose along the border with Israel in August, as Israeli soldiers exchanged fire with militant groups based in Lebanon, although no casualties were reported. Ties between the two neighbors remain at risk of further deteriorating, especially given the situation in the Palestinian territories. A fragile truce between the Israeli army and the militant factions that control Gaza is barely holding, and there has also been an upsurge of violence in the occupied West Bank.
Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed Shiite armed group and political party, will also continue to pose a headache for Mikati’s administration. Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, recently arranged for the country to import fuel from Iran, the first shipments of which arrived last week. While badly needed, the fuel was sourced without authorization from the Lebanese government and in potential violation of U.S. sanctions, with Mikati decrying the move as “a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty.” Yet the government could do nothing to stop it, underscoring Hezbollah’s position as the true power-holders in the country. In a speech shortly after the fuel deal was announced, Nasrallah projected an air of defiance, saying, “We could have got a whole fleet of vessels … but we didn’t because we don’t want to aggravate anyone.”
It was telling that rather than impose sanctions on Lebanon, the United States helped broker a deal for Lebanon to receive natural gas shipments from Egypt via Jordan and Syria. At the moment, Lebanon seems happy to accept help from anyone. But as tensions between the West and Iran continue to rise, it could find itself stuck in the middle.
Perhaps most pressingly, Mikati will need to manage growing public anger in Lebanon directed against the political class over desperate living conditions.
This anger was perhaps best exhibited by Boutros Taraf, a middle-aged man I met at a demonstration in Beirut last month to mark the first anniversary of the Beirut port explosion. Taraf was pushing a mock guillotine through the crowds, even though he conceded that it might be seen as a tad extreme.
“We should not use such symbols,” he admitted. “But with such corrupted people you cannot use liberalism. You have to be tough. You have to be able to get rid of them.” Lebanon’s rulers, he continued, “destroyed our country. They destroyed our Beirut.”
As the plight of almost all Lebanese grows increasingly dire by the day, such calls for fundamental change will likely only grow louder.
Barnaby Papadopulos is a freelance journalist. His work has been featured in Foreign Policy, Slate, HuffPost, Middle East Monitor, VICE and The New Internationalist, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter at @BarnabyPap.
