As Lebanon’s crisis deepens, lines for fuel grow, medicine scarce

BEIRUT >> As she sat in the sun in her Mini Cooper inching her way through a long line of cars to get gas, Lynn Husami, 23, tried to use her time well. She had a phone meeting with the adviser of her master’s thesis, called a friend and played video games on her Nintendo Switch.

But after four hours, she recalled, she still had not reached the station, was drenched in sweat and needed a bathroom. But she feared losing her place in line if she went searching for one.

“I’m hopeless. I’m angry. I’m frustrated,” she said, summing up the feelings of many Lebanese about the financial collapse that has turned once-routine errands into nightmares that fill their days and clean out their wallets. “It is getting worse and we can’t do anything about it. I don’t know how we can fix all of this.”

Lebanon is suffering through a financial crisis that the World Bank has said could rank among the world’s three worst since the mid1800s in terms of its effect on living standards. Its currency has lost more than 90% of its value since fall 2019, and unemployment has skyrocketed as businesses have shut down. Imported goods that were once commonplace have become scarce.

The double blow of the pandemic and the huge explosion in the Beirut port nearly a year ago that killed about 200 people and heavily damaged the capital has made what was already a bad situation much worse.

That has created a sense that the country is coming undone, as all but the wealthiest Lebanese now spend their days sweating through frequent blackouts, waiting in fuel lines that wrap around city blocks and running from pharmacy to pharmacy to search for medicines that have disappeared from shelves.

The gross domestic product of the small Mediterranean country of about 6 million people plummeted by about 40%, to $33 billion last year from $55 billion in 2018, the last full year before the crisis began, the World Bank said. Per capita income also fell by about the same percentage during that period, leaving more than half of the population poor.

Such severe economic contractions are usually “associated with conflicts or wars,” the World Bank said on May 31. But Lebanon’s crisis was caused by extensive deficit spending by the government that left it deeply in debt and by unsustainable monetary policies that finally collapsed, leaving the banks largely insolvent and the value of the currency plunging.

So far, the country’s fractious political system has failed to offer more than whack-a-mole solutions to whatever the most immediate crisis appears to be: raising the prices of subsidized bread, reducing electricity production and subsidizing imports of fuel, medicine and grain to the tune of about $500 million per month from the central bank’s dwindling reserves.

Last week, the parliament passed a law to spend $556 million on a ration card program for poor families, although it remains unclear how it will work and how the state will pay for it.

The current Cabinet resigned nearly a year ago after the Beirut port explosion. But it continues to serve in a caretaker capacity, which its members say does not give them the authority to make sweeping policy decisions as the country’s political parties bicker over the makeup of a new government.

In announcing the resignation of his Cabinet in August, caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab blamed Lebanon’s many problems on a “system of corruption” that is not only “deeply rooted in all the functions of the state,” but in fact “bigger than the state” and so powerful that the state “cannot confront it or get rid of it.”

As the crisis has accelerated, the Lebanese have been forced to adapt in painful ways: climbing stairs because elevators lack power, cutting out meat or skipping meals because food prices jumped, and wasting large parts of their days just to keep their cars moving.

Those with foreign passports or marketable skills are rushing to leave the country.

Before the crisis, Ahmed al-Aweineh, 31, had been on the path to a comfortable life in Beirut, with a job as a pharmacist at a private hospital and a teaching position at a university.

One recent morning, he arrived near dawn to get gas and waited in line for four hours, making him late for work.

His pharmacy often lacked blood pressure medications and even painkillers and antibiotics, he said, something that had never happened before.

So he had accepted a new job in the United Arab Emirates, where his salary would be 10 times higher and he would not have to wait to fill his tank, he said.

“I have a good job and a position at the university, but as for life, you just can’t live here,” he said.

The currency crash has made it more expensive for traders to import medications and subsidy payments from the central bank aimed at keeping medication coming in have been delayed, causing the shortages.