A year after Beirut blast, Lebanon tumbles from one crisis to another
BEIRUT: On August 4, 2020, a fire at the Beirut port ignited one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. It disfigured the city, took more than 200 lives and shattered Lebanon’s psyche.
The blast was felt as far away as Cyprus, and the destruction is hard to fathom. But if one thing can outweigh what happened to Lebanon that day, it is what hasn’t happened since.
Not one culprit has been put on trial, jailed or even identified. Families of the victims have received no visit, apology or explanation from those at the top.
The reforms demanded by donors who flew to the wounded country’s rescue are a dead letter, and a new government promised last September has yet to materialise.
With a tailspinning economy, a health sector ravaged by Covid-19 and a future stunted by an intensifying brain drain, Lebanon was already well on its way to collapse before last August 4.
Yet the cataclysmic blast that shocked the world and sowed the kind of devastation caused by wars and natural disasters did not mark the end of the free fall. “We thought that was rock bottom. How could it get worse?” Rima Rantisi, a lecturer at the American University of Beirut, remembers of the immediate aftermath.
“What became clear to me then, and which I have to remind myself of every day, is that the people who run the country are criminals and murderers - period,” says Rantisi.
After defaulting on its debt last year, Lebanon can barely provide citizens with two hours of electricity a day, and cannot afford the fuel to power generators.
Once known as the “Switzerland of the Middle East”, Lebanon now has all the trappings of a failed state. Those old enough to know often argue that the current crisis is tougher than the 1975-1990 civil war.
Bernard Hage, best known by his moniker “Art of Boo”, has chronicled Lebanon’s shocking decline in hundreds of cartoons collected in a recently released book. “Imagine a poorly equipped psychiatric hospital managed by madmen...” begins the back cover blurb.
“I really see it now as a dystopia, it’s the only word I have to describe Lebanon... It’s your worst nightmare and you have no control over it,” says Hage.