A country still in crisis: Lebanon three years on from Beirut blast

The head of Lebanon’s central bank has stepped down after 30 years in the job, leaving the country in a deepening state of crisis.

Riad Salameh had been a “poster child” for the economic resurgence that helped Lebanon out of 15 years of civil war in the years after 1990, said Al Arabiya News.

But he is now widely seen as being responsible for soaring inflation and the currency losing 98% of its value, and left his job “under a cloud of investigation and blame”, said France 24.

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His departure, on the eve of the third anniversary of the Port of Beirut blast that killed more than 200 people, is just one of the challenges facing the embattled nation.

An economy at rock bottom

The current financial crisis began in 2019 when “the value of the Lebanese pound plummeted and inflation soared”, said the BBC. Since then, the country has been “in the midst of one of the world’s most prolonged and acute economic crises”, with more than 80% of the population living in poverty, added the broadcaster.

The crisis has “pulverized” the Lebanese pound and “wiped out the savings” of many Lebanese, as the banks “ran dry of hard currency”, said France 24.

Salameh has been criticised for borrowing new money to pay existing creditors, a policy that has been compared to a Ponzi scheme. He rejects the comparison, but Alarabiya News said Lebanon is now “nothing more than a spoiled trust-fund baby that refuses to go to work and to acknowledge that living on the past glories does not make a nation”.

Lebanon’s government and politicians “have not taken any measures to mitigate or alleviate its impact on the population”, wrote Dalal Mawad in The Guardian, in an extract from her book, “All She Lost: The Explosion in Lebanon, the Collapse of a Nation and the Women Who Survive”.

“Nothing has been done”, she added, “no reforms, no structural changes, no meaningful change of power and no accountability.” The World Bank put it more formally, describing the economic situation in Lebanon as one of the worst crises in the world since the 19th century, with “deliberate inaction” to blame.

A political stalemate

Politically, Lebanon is in stalemate. The Mediterranean country has been without a president for nine months, and its government has been running in a limited caretaker capacity for a year.

In June, Lebanon’s parliament failed for the 12th time to elect a president and “break a political deadlock that has gripped the country for months”, said Al Jazeera.

A bloc led by Hezbollah withdrew after the initial round of votes, preventing a second round of voting. This thwarted a bid by their rivals to elect a top International Monetary Fund official as president and meant continued deadlock.

Consequences of the blast

On the eve of the third anniversary of the catastrophic explosion in Beirut’s port that killed 235 people and damaged more than half of the city, Amnesty International criticised an “unacceptable lack of justice, truth and reparation”.

The authorities “have had three years to investigate what caused the devastating explosion in Beirut’s port and to hold those suspected of criminal responsibility to account”, said a spokesperson, but “to this day, absolutely no one has been held responsible for the tragedy”.

The domestic investigation into the blast has been suspended since December 2021, due to a series of legal challenges filed against judges involved in the case by politicians who have been targeted by the investigation.

In March, the United Nations Human Rights Council expressed concern that the investigation had been “hampered by systemic obstruction, interference, intimidation, and a political impasse”.

Writing for Foreign Policy, David Schenker, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said there is a “pervasive culture of impunity” in Lebanon.