With Lebanon facing economic and social collapse, Church leaders are asking the West to step up for both the country and the entire Middle East region.
“Lebanon is basically a failed state,” explained Fr. Benedict Kiely, founder of the Nasarean.org, a charity dedicated to helping persecuted Christians in the Middle East. “The question is what will happen next,” he weighed, as other powers in the region, and beyond, vie for influence over a country in desperate financial need.
But while a situation that often sends refugees to Europe worsens, the West is ignoring Lebanon. “The Middle East is off the radar,” Kiely said. “If Lebanon collapses, it will be a loss for the entire region,” he added. Lebanon is the last peacefully pluralistic country in the Middle East.
Lebanon is asking for help. Cardinal Béchara Rai, Patriarch of Antioch and head of the Maronite Church, issued a formal memorandum to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres calling for an urgent summit on the crisis facing Lebanon. At the beginning of February, the Vatican sent Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the secretary for relations with states, to visit the country.
Lebanon has been in one of the worst financial crises in history since its banking system imploded two years ago. Reuters reports that a proposed government plan to salvage the banking system will only further devalue the currency and the savings of ordinary Lebanese. The country is also experiencing an acute power and fuel shortage. Electricity is only available a few hours a day and gas prices are exorbitant. As a result, many Lebanese are leaving their homeland. Kiely estimates the crisis of emigration from Lebanon is worse than that of Syria, whose refugees are already numbering millions in Lebanon and Europe.
“Everyone who can is leaving,” he said. “People will only stay if they think they have a chance to work.”
Professionals are often welcomed into other countries because of their credentials. Australia, Canada, and some Gulf states are essentially recruiting Lebanese by offering visas for those with professional qualifications. It’s a double-edged sword though. While emigrants send much needed money back to family in Lebanon, their exodus further weakens the country by brain drain.
The situation in Lebanon is also having repercussions in neighbouring Syria, according to Kiely. Until its own crisis set in, Lebanon supplied much of Syria’s stock of basic goods. Now, Syria is facing its hardest winter yet, with fuel, medicines, even food and water in short supply and very expensive.
Kiely shared a sadly eloquent image of the direness of the situation: cats are dying in the street, a sign of how little sustenance is available. Felines are the Middle East’s beloved pets and are usually fed with food scraps from households, but now there are no leftovers. The United Nations estimates that 60% of Syrians are facing severe hunger, the highest rate since civil war broke out twelve years ago.
According to Kiely, Middle East refugees, particularly Syrians, desire to stay in their country, or return if they have left, but they need the right conditions to do so, namely security and work. As the regime of Bashar al-Assad has regained its grip on most of Syria, the hot war has calmed, but the economic sanctions imposed by the European Union and other countries in 2016 simply continues the conflict by economic means, with millions of civilian casualties.
Kiely warns that the West has forgotten about Syria and Lebanon to their own detriment. Without international support to rebuild, or safe pathways of immigration, people will continue to arrive illegally on Europe’s shores while international influence in the region will be left to Russia, Iran, and China. More than a question of moral or immoral regimes, the reality of the political loss and the suffering of the Syrian and Lebanese people matter the most, he argues.
