Lebanon in the grey zone
A year ago, Lebanon made international headlines again and again following the outbreak of the Thawra (revolution in Arabic) last October, which brought out exalted crowds determined to protest against the deterioration in living conditions, the rise in prices, the exponential unemployment rate and, especially, a novelty not seen until then in Lebanese culture, to protest against a dominant sectarian political structure that has governed the country since its independence from the French protectorate in 1943.
Lebanon, which was once described as the Switzerland of the Middle East thanks to the glamour of its nightlife in ostentatious casinos and dance halls, was unprecedented in a region dominated by religious puritanism, The powerful muscle of its banking sector, once the spearhead of the booming economy, and the Mediterranean landscapes dotted with snow-capped mountains, made it a coveted luxury destination for Hollywood celebrities and the international arts world in the 1950s and 1960s. A friendly face of a tiny country nestled between the Mediterranean Sea and the mountains of anti-Lebanon, a natural border with the rest of the region. The hidden side of the bucolic Mediterranean paradise so fertile for tourism, investment and banking was dominated by the rivalry led by the sectarian-religious elites that ended up ruining a prosperous country after seventeen years of civil war (1975-91).
Since the armistice following the Taif agreements signed in the town of the same name in Saudi Arabia in 1991, little has changed in terms of politics, maintaining the same system based on power sharing according to the representation of the religious confession.
Since then, despite the naturalised political instability that characterises the country of the Cedars, Lebanon has always overcome each and every difficulty with astonishing resilience and overcoming of its people.
Until last October the banking sector was the country's main industry thanks to decades of confidence on the part of foreign investors, mostly the rich neighbours of the Persian Gulf, and the sending of millions of dollars by the expatriate population, the Lebanese being one of the world's most numerous diasporas.
As the banking industry was one of the main pillars of the economy, it managed to maintain a considerable standard of living and consumption by the wealthy middle and upper classes of society.
The surprise shocked the nation and investors at the end of 2018 due to the lack of liquidity of the Lebanese Central Bank, Banque du Liban, which shattered the foundations of the supposedly all-powerful Lebanese financial sector, degenerating months later into a deep economic crisis without precedent in the country's recent history.
The origin of the crisis is due to many reasons, from uncontrolled financial speculation promising investors high interest rates in exchange for depositing their savings in Lebanese banks at the cost of paying for them by selling highly toxic financial products to third parties, to the bursting of a voracious real estate bubble, The impact of the war on neighbouring Syria and, in particular, the state's insolvency, which is consumed by cases of corruption and institutional nepotism, which is incapable of dealing with the debt contracted with the private banking sector, are determining factors. Therefore, for the springtime, what was once the prestigious Swiss bank in the Middle East is languishing, threatening the total collapse of the nation.
As it is to be expected, the financial insecurity severely impacted the health of the national currency, the Lebanese Lira (LBP). As an effect of the economic swings, the constant devaluation of the currency until it collapsed in historical peaks last month with respect to the international reference scale, the US dollar, the central axis of the economy and the main currency in each and every one of the financial operations from the most important to the domestic economy.
As a result, inflation is taking a heavy toll on the population, driving prices sky high and sometimes tripling the value of the most basic consumer products such as food and medicines. Worse still, when no more difficulties could be faced, this year of horribilis, which was hit by the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, has seen the Lebanese Central Bank restrict capital to the population by setting a maximum expenditure per person and family per month, in other words, a fully-fledged corralito.
Too many coincidences for Lebanon in a region of the world considered highly volatile, a chessboard in the game of geostrategic interests between the major powers.
The official version, and so far the whole mob of speculations that are opened daily by the Lebanese news, the one that makes the most sense is the irresponsibility and negligence on the part of the port authorities in the storage of highly dangerous chemical products. Specifically 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, among others, which have been grossly overcrowded in installations which are not only unsuitable for such goods but are also in a state of considerable deterioration. The fact that for many it was a terrible surprise, for others it was more than predictable since since 2016 the bales with the chemical content coming from a transport vessel called Rhosus of Moldavian flag which docked in the port of Beirut on its way from Georgia to Mozambique were guarded there. During its passage through Lebanese waters due to serious technical problems, the ship was forced to ask for help from the national authorities, who, once they were helped, and accused of the insecurity it generated for navigation, decided to immobilise the ship and the merchandise. Shortly afterwards, without any claim from the shipping company, it was forgotten by Lebanese customs, which temporarily stored it in a supposedly safe installation in section 12 of the industrial port of Beirut.
Several platforms and port employees from the time of the event reported to the government authorities with disregard for the danger posed by the presence and more so in the appalling conditions of Ammonium Nitrate, a chemical generally used to produce agricultural fertilizers and also in the manufacture of explosives. In fact, it is not the first time that this substance has been used for such purposes. It is worth remembering the car bomb attack after the deflagration of this compound attributed to an operating group belonging to Lebanese Hezbollah to the Argentine Jewish cultural centre, the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) on 18 July 1994 in Buenos Aires. That incident resulted in the loss of 85 people, over 300 injured and considerable damage to the premises and surroundings and was considered the worst terrorist act in Argentine history. Another tragic episode involving this substance was the terrorist attack perpetrated by Timothy McVeingh in 1995 on a federal building in Oklahoma City (USA) with a powerful explosive device made of ammonium nitrate.
These are some of the precedents that illustrate the extreme danger of such compounds and their capacity for malicious purposes.
The grey zone is a term derived from geostrategic studies that defines a region characterised by political instability, an instability that prevents the consolidation of full peace, but does not even declare war; it describes a volatile territory in a constant state of alarm disputed by third parties, where the powers in foreign territory elucidate differences over control and hegemony of the region.
It is hard to believe that with such a dark past Ammonium Nitrate was underestimated in the worst ways by piling up in a rusty hangar, the truth is that section 12 of the port epicentre of the explosion, has been the focus of international investigations having as origin and destination the port of Beirut related to illicit and covert traffic, on the one hand, of weapons and on the other of psychoactive substances under suspicion intended to cover the military expenses of God's armed arm in Lebanon, this being officially the only political force still armed from the time of the Lebanese civil war.
As for the military muscle of the Shiite Islamist organisation, it is interesting to note the repeated denunciations by the Hebrew state whose intelligence services discovered, through spy satellite photographs, the construction of Iranian high-precision missile factories on Lebanese soil; specifically, the information was published in the Israeli media last year asserting the existence of the installations in various parts of the country, highlighting the importance, owing to their size and scope, of the town of Nabi Sheet in the eastern Bekaa valley. What the investigation did not reveal was the origin of the raw material for the manufacture of such sophisticated military devices.
Since the last presidential elections, the coalition that emerged between historically ill-advised neighbours, the political organisation led by former Maronite Christian general Michel Aoun, the current president of the republic thanks to the support of Hezbollah, opened the door to the the pro-Iranian government has become part of the executive, being an organization labeled as a terrorist by the international community.
Criticism and opposition from the rest of the national political forces and the international community have not ceased to come in order to force a break with the agreement that emerged in 2016 with the intention of isolating the Islamist formation in parliament.
First, because of the instability in the international political and financial sphere caused by the government coalition between these unpopular partners, and second, because it is well known that the pro-Iranian organisation exercises control over customs and key infrastructures of the Lebanese state such as borders, ports and airports, accusing it repeatedly of being the financial recipient of the profits generated rather than the Lebanese public finances.
In other words, a second possible reading from a geostrategic viewpoint would point to all the events suffered by the exhausted Lebanese population in this 2019-2020 period as a calculated and premeditated operation aimed at dynamiting and suffocating the government agreement that brought God's party into government and therefore the extension of Iran's influence in the region through the Shiite organisation.
As the president of the republic stated from the outset, alluding to the possibility of foreign interference as the cause of the major deflagration suffered in the port of Beirut on 4 August 2020.
The hybrid war is another important concept that is known in the literature of strategic studies and defines a type of war that takes many forms. Conventional warfare as we knew it in this new era of globalisation is tending to disappear according to a multiple set of operations of different natures. That is, a silent war carried out in the economic, financial and political fields, computer piracy and even fortuitous attacks such as orchestrated acts of terrorism.
The economic constraint that the former Switzerland of the Middle East is suffering these days as a result of the financial crisis, aggravated by international pressure in the face of the refusal to grant more loans, the refusal of financial aid by historic allies and donors such as the United States, France and the Persian Gulf neighbours, and the stagnation of the urgent financial rescue talks with the IMF on condition of deep structural reforms that would fully affect the interests of the party of God, The protests, which were originally spontaneous, have been led by opposition groups opposed to the government in order to break the alliance between the two governing political forces and thus remove the obstacles to international aid that would put an end to the financial debacle. The war waged in the economic field is a response to the asphyxiation of the state to the point of economic exhaustion of the partners of the executive to the point of indirectly forcing them to accept the conditions of the IMF, the political cost of which would be to put an end to the influence of God's party in the country's financial affairs.
To all these economic drawbacks we must now add the immeasurable destruction suffered both in the port and in the city of Beirut itself, the inoperativeness of the facilities cutting off one of the main sources of resources for the control exercised at the borders.
The phenomenon of war and the manifestation of force in Lebanon is such a normalised resource that the instrumentalisation of fear and the memory of former ghosts for political purposes is not constantly surprising. This is not the first time that the pro-Iranian organisation has used in its discourse the constant clashes on the southern border with the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) patrols as a fuel for the narrative of fear of invasions by the Hebrew state such as those suffered in the past.
In July the international media gave little coverage to the attacks inflicted on each other by the two forces, hostilities which add to the long list of incidents in the struggle between the powers in the region in recent years, particularly numerous since 2019 following the death of several members of the armed wing of the Lebanese Shiite organisation operating in Syria at the hands of Israeli intelligence operations.
It is no secret that the Lebanese Shiite organisation is an uncomfortable presence for the state of Israel in Syria, as it has considerably increased its military presence in border areas over the past year. In this tug-of-war of silent provocations, the succession of incidents following the air strike perpetrated by the Israeli air force during the night of 20 July on installations adjacent to Damascus International Airport is particularly noteworthy. During the operation Kamal Mohsen Jawad, an important member of the Lebanese Party of God who in turn held a prominent position in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (Pasderan), was killed.
According to Hebrew media, the deceased was the main link and responsible for sending weapons via Syria between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Lebanon, yet another incident that adds to the chapter of hostilities this year.
As expected, revenge was not long in coming. On 27 July the commandos of the pro-Iranian organisation attacked an Israeli armoured vehicle with portable anti-tank missiles in the southern Lebanese town known as the Shab'a Farms, which was patrolling the northern border. In response a brief exchange of rockets took place between the two, one of which hit a house in the Lebanese town of al-Habariye, with no reported victims on either side.
At the press conference called by the Hebrew government following the event, the Israeli media portrayed a determined defence minister, Benny Gantz, instructing IDF troops to reinforce the borders and, in the event of defence against larger-scale aggression, to attack severely key Lebanese infrastructures if Hezbollah's armed wing persists in its escalation of hostilities against Hebrew troops and people living near the border. Statements which place all the responsibility for the actions of the pro-Islamic pro-Islamic organisation on the whole of the Lebanese state were made in the not too distant case of the punitive operation carried out by the Israeli Defence Forces on Lebanese soil in July 2006 as a result of the kidnapping of several Israeli soldiers patrolling the border by members of the armed wing of God. That episode ended in a short-lived war by means of a fortnight-long air campaign of selective bombing accompanied by a ground incursion in order to neutralise the in situ bases used as platforms with which the armed group was conducting ballistic attacks against the populations located on the other side of the border.
The huge explosion in Beirut on 4 August was the result of a regrettable accident caused by the negligence of the authorities or the result of a calculated foreign operation whose authorship is currently unknown.
The deflagration marked a before and after in this long-suffering year 2020 for the country of the Cedars, the cradle of Mediterranean civilisation. For the time being, the results of the tragedy and its cost in national politics have led to the fall of the government as a whole and the defection of Prime Minister Hassan Diab, a member of the 8 March alliance, a political party with a pro-Syrian orientation and therefore close to Tehran's interests.
Although his resignation is more than significant in terms of unblocking the situation in which Lebanon finds itself, the fact is that for the time being it does not carry any real weight in the field of international politics, as it is in the pacts established by the forces represented in parliament that power is really forged and structured in the Lebanese political system, Not only in the formation of the government, but for this to happen it will be necessary to wait for new elections to be called or for the proposal to form a new technocratic executive to calm the turbulent waters in which Lebanon is being dragged and make all the forces in the very complicated and intricate Lebanese political system as happy as possible.