FROM TRASH TO TAX, LEBANON PROTESTS AT A TURNING POINT
Mass rallies in 2015 failed to ignite a national uprising, but today the whole country is taking to the streets, writes James Haines-Young
In the summer of 2015, Beirut was drowning in rubbish.
The only landfill site for Beirut and Mount Lebanon – an area where nearly 50 per cent of the country’s 4.5 million people live – was closed.
The life of the Naameh dump had been extended several times. Eventually the population said enough was enough.
Despite being warned for months, the government did not have a plan about what to do the day after the dump closed. Soon after the gates were shut, the main waste contractor suspended collections and over the next few days, the streets filled with rubbish.
Communal bins in neighbourhoods overflowed, whole streets became blocked with rubbish and in the summer heat, the stench was overpowering. The crisis, which lasted months and still has not been fully resolved, sparked protests.
With thousands on the streets by mid-August that year, the clashes with the police started. Water cannon were used, riot police swung their batons and in one standout moment, a soldier in central Beirut fired into the air above the crowd.
Although the protests carried on in some form for years, the mass rallies petered out after a few weeks.
The government had announced a series of measures condemned by experts and analysts over their lack of feasibility and environmental impact but the waste was collected and the movement faded.
What came next for activists trying to drive the movement forward – led by a group calling itself YouStink – was soul-searching. Why had they failed to ignite a national movement able to effect real change?
That is not to say that the movement failed.
Many of those who came together to plan, organise and rally, built connections. New organisations and civil society monitoring groups formed in the throngs on the streets.
When Lebanon went to the polls for the first time in nine years in May 2018, new civil society parties that can arguably trace their origins and momentum back to the YouStink movement and the 2015 protests, ran dozens of candidates. Paula Yacoubian, who ran with My Nation’s Coalition, won in Beirut.
But a single, pivotal moment of the 2015 protests was so different from what is happening on the streets of Beirut today, where people are protesting up and down the country, from all walks of life and from all sects, political parties and creeds.
As the 2015 protests peaked in August and the clashes with the police intensified, protest organisers called for those taking part to clear the streets. The suggestion was that thugs had infiltrated the demonstrations to fight with the police.
The perception was divisive. A protester who identified himself as Ali told The New
York Times on August 29 that rumours of infiltrators instigating violence were a case of “bourgeois protesters mislabelling fired-up working-class teenagers as thugs”.
That comment went to the heart of a major dynamic of the 2015 movement – class.
While the organisers called on the working class in Beirut districts such as Tariq Al Jadidah or Dahieh to join them, the perception for many was of a movement led by middle-class intellectuals.
At the height of the protests, the rallies did become more inclusive and the demands broadened to issues about corruption, an ineffectual ruling class and electricity cuts – the same issues that have driven people to the streets today.
But the issue of class and inclusiveness remained. The protests were centred on Beirut and, bar a few smaller rallies elsewhere, they failed to ignite the nation.
Today, the situation could not be more different.
A group of activists trying to map the scale of the four days of growing rallies by locating social media posts and reports shows the scale. These protests are nationwide, in almost every town, city and village. Motorways across the country are closed.
In Sunni-majority areas posters of their political leader, Prime Minister Saad Hariri, have been torn down. In Shiite areas, the offices of Hezbollah and Amal have been attacked. Christians tore down posters of President Michel Aoun.
This time around, the protesters have no leaders. No one is calling on the nation to gather in Beirut or take to the streets of Tripoli, Nabatiyeh or Baalbek. Lebanon and its people have simply had enough.
At the time of the 2015 protests, Lebanon was in the middle of a 29-month presidential gap – a period between May 2014 and October 2016 when Lebanese politicians failed to select a new leader.
Many of the country’s problems, the politicians said, were because the highest office in the land was vacant. Let us fix that, they said, and we can solve all our problems. Today, that is not the case. The sitting Cabinet formed within 10 months of last May’s election – not that long by Lebanon’s standards – and President Michel Aoun is halfway through his term.
Yet the stagnation continues. Lebanon is on the brink of financial collapse and is short of US dollars, a major issue in a country that pegs its currency to the greenback and where you can spend interchangeably between that and the Lebanese pound.
ATMs no longer dispense dollars, banks are limiting their withdrawal and everyone from petrol importers to bakers are warning about shortages.
At a 2018 aid conference for Lebanon, $11 billion (Dh40.39bn) in favourable loans and grants were offered to fix the intermittent electricity supply, build usable fast internet and repair ageing roads.
Yet, more than 18 months after the money was offered, the government has failed to pass the reforms needed to be able to access it.
Then came the 2020 budget proposal. To fix the dire financial situation, the government’s answer was more taxation.
One proposal on Thursday was to tax WhatsApp calls. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
One protester interviewed on Lebanese TV on Thursday night said it felt like the government was trying to tax the people for everything they do rather than fixing corruption and mismanagement.
What the government gave the people was a remedy for the situation that encapsulated years of financial mismanagement and the people used it as a rallying point – a driver to talk about years of unemployment, non-existent services and crony capitalism. The timing for the government could not have been worse. When the WhatsApp proposal came, the public was already angry about a different problem but with arguably the same causes – wildfires.
As Lebanon’s civil defence battled huge blazes from the Chouf region to the northern border, the government admitted that three multimillion-dollar firefighting helicopters had not worked in years because no one had budgeted for their maintenance.
The government had no blueprint for what to do, having never implemented anything like a national emergency plan for wildfires.
The two issues collided and the streets quickly filled.
And so, from across the country – from those who have been protesting regularly to those who have never joined a demonstration – the nation erupted.