Their failures have provoked popular, occasionally violent, protests that have continued despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Its elites have yet to chart a way out of a crisis that they created themselves over the years. ![]() Lebanon’s post-war political order may have reached its limit as its economy implodes. ![]() to lessen pressure on Hizbollah while trying to engage the movement in the reform agenda. What should be done? Even as it conditions funding of major development projects on substantive IMF-proposed reforms, Europe should expand urgently needed humanitarian aid, seek to improve transparency and civil society involvement in its projects, and urge the U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which also targets Hizbollah, is further complicating matters. Yet their calls on Lebanese elites to undertake thoroughgoing economic and political reforms have gone unheeded, accelerating the downward trend. Why does it matter? Lebanon’s donors cannot countenance the country becoming a failed state. These politicians have driven the country to the brink of ruin, as the banking sector collapses and COVID-19 spreads faster. What’s new? The devastating blast in the Beirut port on 4 August 2020 was only the latest, and most terrifying, sign of the political bankruptcy of Lebanon’s ruling elites.
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