...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...must be willing to implement some real changes in order to get international funding assistance, according to the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa vice president.
"Lebanon needs to help itself, so that we can help it," said Ferid Belhaj in an interview with Bloomberg on Friday. "Unfortunately, as of right now, Lebanon has not been interested, willing or able to help itself."
Aid talks with the International Monetary Fund have stagnated after disputes with commercial lenders and the central bank, the country’s largest debt holders. The Lebanese government resigned in the aftermath of a massive explosion in Beirut last August, and has been running the country in a caretaker capacity as efforts to form a new administration have stalled.
The annual inflation rate reached a record high and food prices soared by around 400% in December, highlighting the dramatic impact on consumers and businesses of the country’s worst financial crisis in decades.
"It is a tragedy," Belhaj said. "What we are trying to do in Lebanon is go around the government systems and try to help the people directly, through unconditional cash transfers because when you look at Lebanon today, we are getting to close to 50% poverty."
Last month, Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri
...Second son of Rafik Hariri, the Leb PM who was assassinated in 2005. He has was prime minister in his own right from 2009 through early 2011. He was born in Riyadh to an Iraqi mother and graduated from Georgetown University. He managed his father's business interests in Riyadh until his father's assassination. When his father died he inherited a fortune of some $4.1 billion, which won't do him much good if Hizbullah has him bumped off, too....
said the likelihood of forming a new government is looking more attainable and that there was an opportunity for a breakthrough, but there has been little hope to rectify the path of an economy that’s been battered by a raft of measures to control a spike of coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
cases.
For the international lender, this is "a call for all Lebanese decision makers to really get their act together, from the central bank governor, to the president to the prime minister and everybody in between," Belhaj said. As of right now, "I don’t see any glimmer of hope."
#Cartoon| Amjad Rasmi pic.twitter.com/eHvb2GUzTw
— Asharq Al-Awsat English (@aawsat_eng) April 4, 2021