Lebanon unraveled: the current political and human challenges

Aurélie Daher. That’s right, the pres­i­den­cy had been vacant since Novem­ber 2022, when the term of anoth­er Aoun, Michel, came to an end. The Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Lebanon is not elect­ed by uni­ver­sal suf­frage, but by Par­lia­ment, and in prac­tice, MPs for­malise through their votes the choic­es made out­side the cham­ber by a mul­ti-con­fes­sion­al oli­garchy of var­i­ous ide­o­log­i­cal per­sua­sions. How­ev­er, this oli­garchy has been unable to agree on a can­di­date. For two years, the gov­ern­ment had been in a state of lim­bo, unable to take new deci­sions in a series of con­texts where the exec­u­tive would have need­ed real room for manoeuvre.

The elec­tion of Joseph Aoun as head of state and the appoint­ment of Nawaf Salam as head of gov­ern­ment have put insti­tu­tion­al action back on track. This dou­ble appoint­ment has raised high hopes in many quar­ters. The most opti­mistic have placed a series of ambi­tious expec­ta­tions on the two men. These include a clean-up of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic insti­tu­tions, start­ing with the bank­ing sys­tem, which has been held respon­si­ble for the ter­ri­ble cri­sis that hit the coun­try in 2019. The end of the influ­ence of a par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal class and the dele­git­imi­sa­tion of Hezbol­lah’s armed mis­sion are also among the hopes pinned on the new team.

A few ini­tial bat­tles with real poten­tial for impact have been won, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of bank­ing sec­tor reform. How­ev­er, Lebanon remains trag­i­cal­ly depen­dent on exter­nal aid for its recov­ery, and the delay in secur­ing sig­nif­i­cant sup­port in this area remains, at the end of spring 2025, a major obstacle.

The recon­struc­tion of the parts of Lebanon affect­ed by the Israeli war in autumn 2024 has not yet begun. The region­al con­text is not help­ing, as the coun­try still lives under the threat of the Israeli army, which sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly hin­ders any ini­tia­tive to reha­bil­i­tate the affect­ed areas. Through its diplo­mat­ic action, Tel Aviv is rely­ing on the US-Sau­di duo – under whose de fac­to tute­lage Beirut has been placed since the sign­ing of last Novem­ber’s cease­fire – to block sup­port ini­tia­tives from ‘unap­proved’ gov­ern­ments. For exam­ple, Iran and Iraq have offi­cial­ly offered to cov­er the costs of recon­struc­tion. But both Israel and Sau­di Ara­bia are pre­vent­ing the Lebanese gov­ern­ment from accept­ing these pro­pos­als, keen to deprive the two major Shi­ite coun­tries in the region – and Hezbol­lah by exten­sion – of pop­u­lar­i­ty gains among the Lebanese people.

The episodes of vio­lence orches­trat­ed by Israel are also dam­ag­ing the Lebanese econ­o­my by deal­ing a severe blow to tourism (a key source of income) and both domes­tic and for­eign investment.

This is one of the blind spots in the opti­mistic nar­ra­tive. Many of those who are ultra-enthu­si­as­tic about the ‘new era’ presided over by the Aoun-Salam duo ignore very real soci­o­log­i­cal data, either through igno­rance of the sit­u­a­tion on the ground or because they refuse to acknowl­edge it. Their inter­pre­ta­tions over­look the fact that the insti­tu­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the var­i­ous com­po­nents of polit­i­cal life does not reflect their respec­tive weight with­in soci­ety. We have a “conso­ci­a­tion­al” sys­tem, in which seats in Par­lia­ment are allo­cat­ed to com­mu­ni­ties accord­ing to quo­tas set in 1990, when their rede­f­i­n­i­tion was crit­i­cised, even at the time, as outdated.

Thir­ty-five years lat­er, the Shi­ite com­mu­ni­ty, which has grown steadi­ly since Lebanon’s cre­ation in 1920, now rep­re­sents more than half of soci­ety. Yet it has to con­tent itself with 27 seats out of a total of 128, or 20% of the leg­is­la­ture. By way of com­par­i­son, Chris­tians of all denom­i­na­tions and ide­olo­gies hold 50% of the seats, despite rep­re­sent­ing at most a third of the total population.

The fact is that, despite the destruc­tion and human tragedies that have pri­mar­i­ly and essen­tial­ly tar­get­ed Shi­ites, the major­i­ty of them – not to men­tion a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of oth­er com­mu­ni­ties – still place their trust in the par­ty, espe­cial­ly in a con­text where Israel con­tin­ues to strike Lebanon at will, with­out the Lebanese army being able to do any­thing about it.

Last Feb­ru­ary, the mas­sive turnout (around 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple) at the funer­al of for­mer Hezbol­lah Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Has­san Nas­ral­lah, who was assas­si­nat­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2024, and the munic­i­pal elec­tions in spring 2025, in which Hezbol­lah achieved excel­lent results, are clear illus­tra­tions of the par­ty’s con­tin­ued popularity.

This is the hope of all Lebanese, but not all indi­ca­tors point in this direc­tion. Israel, for starters, has total free­dom to attack Lebanese ter­ri­to­ry, its pop­u­la­tion and its infra­struc­ture. The pre­text of pre­vent­ing Hezbol­lah from regain­ing pow­er is fal­la­cious, as the Israeli army tar­gets civil­ians, build­ings and eco­nom­ic cen­tres alike. This is a major obsta­cle to the coun­try’s gen­uine recovery.

In the same vein, US-Sau­di tute­lage is a con­tra­dic­tion in terms of the stat­ed objec­tive of restor­ing the sov­er­eign­ty of the Lebanese peo­ple in the man­age­ment of their inter­nal affairs, which under­mines the gov­ern­men­t’s cred­i­bil­i­ty. The gov­ern­men­t’s refusal to con­trol pub­lic expres­sion, which is cur­rent­ly dom­i­nat­ed by the far right led by for­mer mem­bers of the Lebanese Forces (LF), the most vio­lent Chris­t­ian mili­tia in the his­to­ry of the civ­il war (1975–1990), is con­tribut­ing to the ten­sion between com­mu­ni­ties. Indeed, the LF, which inter­prets the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion as a ‘return to its glo­ry days’, is ener­get­i­cal­ly spread­ing unabashed, some­times open­ly vio­lent, anti-Shi­ite racism in sev­er­al media out­lets (L’Ori­ent-Le Jour, MTV, etc.), sab­o­tag­ing efforts to build bridges between reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties and at the nation­al level.

Com­mu­ni­ties’ con­cerns are also fuelled by the refugee issue, which has been at a stand­still for years. Today, the num­ber of refugees in the coun­try is esti­mat­ed at a ratio of 1 (refugee) to 2.5 (Lebanese). In par­tic­u­lar, there are cur­rent­ly at least one mil­lion, and pos­si­bly one and a half mil­lion, Syr­i­ans liv­ing in the coun­try. More than 300,000 pro-Assad refugees have arrived since Decem­ber 2024, fol­low­ing the fall of the regime, exac­er­bat­ing an already acute human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. This is with­out the sig­nif­i­cant return of anti-Assad refugees, who have been present since the ear­ly 2010s. Some Shi­ite and Chris­t­ian groups in Lebanon see the lat­ter as poten­tial sym­pa­this­ers of vio­lent Wah­habi groups affil­i­at­ed with the Syr­i­an regime in Dam­as­cus, par­tic­u­lar­ly those respon­si­ble for the mas­sacres in north-west­ern Syr­ia in March. This has cre­at­ed an atmos­phere of wide­spread suspicion.

The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has yet to come up with an effec­tive plan to help Lebanon man­age this sur­plus of refugees, who pose major eco­nom­ic, social, polit­i­cal and secu­ri­ty chal­lenges. In con­clu­sion, no, the sit­u­a­tion in Lebanon is far from rosy, and the road to a ‘bright new chap­ter’ is still long and winding.

Interview by Alicia Piveteau