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