Macron, Back in Beirut, Gives Lebanese Leaders a Warning on the Need to Reform

by Hugh Fitzgerald

The French President, who has been the foreign leader most involved in pushing for reforms of the Lebanese political system, is back in Beirut to pressure the Lebanese leadership to make haste with those “reforms,” which may help bring the country back from the brink of economic ruin. His visit is described here.

French President Emmanuel Macron has warned Lebanese politicians they risk sanctions if they fail to set the nation on a new course within three months, stepping up pressure for reforms in a country collapsing under the weight of an economic crisis.

So far there has been no sign of reforms. The cabinet resigned en masse in mid-August, only to be replaced by a caretaker cabinet consisting of the same kind of permanent fixtures in the Lebanese political machine as were those they replaced. The President, Michel Aoun, announced he would not be resigning, however, because as “the father of my people” he chose to nobly stay on, out of a sense of duty. Everyone had a good laugh over that. In his years in office, Michel Aoun, a Christian ally of Hezbollah, has managed to amass a fortune of $90 million, and has watched proudly as his son-in-law, former Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, has acquired $50 million for himself.

Just a day before Macron arrived for his second visit to Beirut, the Lebanese politicians managed to agree on a new Prime Minister, Mustapha Adib, whose candidacy Macron had pushed. No doubt they wanted to name him before the French President flew in, in order to give the illusion of progress. Adib has been a professor of law and a diplomat (currently posted to Germany); this history suggests that he may indeed be outside the usual political class. On the other hand, Adib has been a political protégé of Nijab Mikati, the richest man in Lebanon, with $3.3 billion, and given how that kind of money is made in Lebanon, one has reason to be wary.

Visiting for the second time in less than a month, Macron marked Lebanon’s centenary by planting a cedar tree, the emblem of a nation that is facing its biggest threat to stability since the 1975-1990 civil war.

“It’s the last chance for this system,” Macron told POLITICO in an interview while traveling to Beirut on Monday. “It’s a risky bet I’m making, I am aware of it … I am putting the only thing I have on the table: my political capital.”

Macron said he was seeking “credible commitments” and a “demanding follow-up mechanism” from Lebanon’s leaders, including a legislative election in six to 12 months.

Should they fail to shift direction in the next three months, he told POLITICO, punitive measures could be imposed, including withholding bailout money and sanctions on the ruling class.

Macron hasn’t spelled out what “credible commitments” he wants. But since corruption is a colossal problem, here are some suggestions that he may not have thought of.

First, there should be total transparency about the wealth of government officials, including cabinet members, members of Parliament, and the officials of major parties.. That includes tax records, bank statements, the value of all real estate owned – to be reported publicly every year. If a cabinet minister making $75,000 a year is living in a four-million dollar house, or has millions in the bank, and has no explanation for this, the public has a right to know. How exactly did President Aoun make his $90 million? Or Gebran Bassil his $50 million? We’re all ears.

Second, there is rampant nepotism in Lebanon, as in so many Middle Eastern countries. An anti-nepotism law is needed, so as to avoid such scandals as the President’s son-in-law being appointed Foreign Minister. The hiring of powerful politicians’ relatives — their extended families — for government sinecures needs to end. Politicians will have to report the names of any relatives who have been placed in such government jobs. Term limits, too, would be a good idea, to force out the sclerotic warlords who, representing their own sects – Shi’a, Sunni, Christian, Druze — for decades have peopled the political landscape. Investigative journalists should be encouraged to keep politicians sufficiently scared to be honest.

Another kind of reform has to do so with Hezbollah, which is now more powerful than the Lebanese Armed Forces. No state should be expected to tolerate a huge armed force within its territory, answerable not to the government but only to its own leaders who are – like Hassan Nasrallah — in thrall to another country. Lebanon is the only country in the world where this state of affairs is permitted. The government should call for the disarming of “all military forces in Lebanon except for the Lebanese Armed Forces.” This is directed, of course, only at Hezbollah, that need not be named. Everyone will understand. The Christian armed forces – the South Lebanon Army, the Lebanese Forces — disbanded decades ago. The government decree should go something like this: “All weapons should be turned over to the LAF (Lebanese Armed Forces); small arms and artillery will be kept by the LAF, while missiles and rockets will be destroyed. The Lebanese Armed Forces will again be the only armed force in the country.” Hezbollah will naturally refuse to comply – at first — and hope, as it has so often, to brazen it out. But that is where the foreign donors like Macron come in. They will refuse to release any funds to Lebanon until Hezbollah has complied with the order to disarm. The fury of the Lebanese people at Hezbollah — for helping to cause their ruinous financial straits in the first place, for being responsible for the Beirut blast, and now, by refusing to give up its weapons, it is preventing a possible rescue by foreign donors — will be impossible to contain. Waves of street protests, not only by Christians and Sunnis but also by the large numbers of Shi’a who, since Hezbollah last fall suppressed those protesting against government mismanagement and corruption, and especially since the Beirut blast for which it was entirely responsible, have come to see Hezbollah as a threat to their well-being.

Lebanese politicians, some of them former warlords who have overseen decades of industrial-scale corruption, face a daunting task with an economy in meltdown, a swathe of Beirut in tatters after the Aug. 4 port blast and sectarian tensions rising.

Hours before he [Macron] arrived on Monday, a new prime minister was designated, Mustapha Adib, following a consensus among major parties forged under pressure from Macron over the weekend.

Macron said he would use his weight to press for the formation of a new government. Without reforms, funds pledged at a 2018 donor conference in Paris would not be released, he said.

At that April 2018 donor conference, $10.2 billion in loans, and $860 million in grants were pledged to help Lebanon with its reconstruction. including damage from the war with Israel started by Hezbollah in 2006, and to help it with housing and other infrastructure for the 1.5 million Syrian refugees now living in the country. But that money has still not been delivered. The donors are waiting to see if Lebanon’s political class can reform itself.

Macron visited Beirut in the immediate aftermath of the port explosion that killed more than 190 people and injured 6,000.

Macron said in Beirut that the international community must stay focused on the emergency in Lebanon for six weeks and that he was ready to help organize an international conference, in coordination with the United Nations, in mid to late October.

“I am ready to host it in Paris,” he said.

Aside from the 2018 Donor Conference, Macron also held a smaller conference in August 2020 on emergency aid for Lebanon after the Beirut blast. Donor countries pledged $300 million in aid, a most disappointing sum given that the Beirut blast caused $10-$15 billion in damages. And instead of staying focused on Lebanon, that “international community” Macron likes to invoke has turned its attention back to the pandemic, and the deaths, economic calamities, and sky-high unemployment the coronavirus has everywhere caused. And in the Middle East, attention has quickly switched from Lebanon to the UAE’s normalization of ties with Israel. Macron is very determined, but with the woes of Lebanon multiplying, he’s got a lot on his plate.

Macron, in Beirut at the end of August, engaged in some symbolic acts before getting down to the business of lecturing his hosts on the need for meaningful reform.

Earlier, Macron planted a cedar sapling at a forest reserve in the mountains northeast of Beirut. The Elysée palace said this was to show Macron’s “confidence in the future of the country.”

The French air force display team flew overhead, leaving smoke trails of red, white and green, the national colors of Lebanon whose borders were proclaimed by France 100 years ago in an imperial carve-up with Britain. It gained independence in 1943.

It was not an “imperial carve-up” of the Ottoman Empire in 1920; France took possession of Lebanon as the holder of a League of Nations mandate, not to seize the territory for itself; its solemn task was to bring Lebanon to the point where it was ready for independence. And this is what the French accomplished by 1943.

Macron, who has been at the center of international efforts to press Lebanese leaders to tackle corruption and take other steps to fix their country, began his trip late on Monday by meeting Fairouz, 85, one of the Arab world’s most famous singers whose music transcends Lebanon’s deep divisions.

Fairouz is an Eastern Orthodox Christian. Visiting her in her icon-filled apartment was not only a tribute by Macron to a celebrated singer, but reminded Lebanese of the Christian contribution to the culture of the country.

He was greeted by dozens of protesters outside her home with placards reading, “No cabinet by, or with, the murderers,” and, “Don’t be on the wrong side of history!”

The “murderers” in this case refer to those responsible for the Beirut blast on August 4 – that is, the members of Hezbollah. Everyone now knows that the explosion took place in Hanger 12, where 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrates had been haphazardly stored by Hezbollah and kept there for six years. Hangar 12 was controlled exclusively by Hezbollah; no others were allowed near it. And it was in Hangar 9, also controlled by Hezbollah, where the initial fire and explosion took place among the weapons stored there by the terror group.

Macron toured the devastated Beirut port [as he had earlier in August] and met President Michel Aoun for a centenary reception. He will also meet Lebanon’s main factions.

Lebanon’s economic crisis is rooted in decades of state corruption and waste that landed the state with one of the world’s heaviest public debt burdens.

Lebanon’s debt to GDP ratio is 160%, the second highest in the world. As for “corruption and waste,” his host President Michel Aoun is a perfect embodiment. As noted earlier, he’s now worth $90 million, despite never having earned more than $150,000 a year as president; his son-in-law Gebran Bassil, formerly the Foreign Minister, has also done well, on an even smaller salary; he’s now worth $50 million. While they and other politicians have prospered, Lebanon’s economy has collapsed. They are merely the latest stewards, and enablers, of that ruin.

Since October, the currency has collapsed and depositors have been frozen out of their savings while the real value of those deposits has collapsed in a paralyzed banking system. Poverty and unemployment has soared in a nation that already hosts the world’s largest number of refugees per capita.

The Lebanese lira has lost 85% of its value since last October. Banks have put strict limits on withdrawals. 55% of Lebanese now live below the poverty line. Unemployment is over 40%.

“Today everything is blocked and Lebanon can no longer finance itself,” Macron said, adding that the central bank and banking system were in crisis and an audit was needed.

“There is likely money that has been diverted. So we need to know the truth of the numbers, so that judicial actions can then be taken.”

Macron wants to subject the Lebanese banks to outside auditors, to find out just how much money has been “diverted” to politicians and others who have been helping themselves — using all kinds of chicanery, including unsecured loans made by the banks to powerful friends — to the bank deposits of ordinary Lebanese, who with the collapse of the currency find themselves, so recently members of the middle class, now pushed into poverty. Some Lebanese, the value of whose life savings have shrunk by 85%, are now eating only every other day.

There are two interrelated tasks for a new Lebanese government.

The first is to maximize the financial transparency of politicians. Banks should be routinely audited by non-Lebanese, preferably European, auditors. Politicians, including those in the cabinet and in Parliament, as well as party officials, should be required to file annual financial reports, including their tax returns, their bank accounts foreign and domestic, the value of all their property in and outside Lebanon. Any attempt to hide or undervalue assets should be promptly investigated and if confirmed, the offender should be barred from political office. These are draconian measures, but the political corruption in Lebanon demands them.

Politicians should also be required to report any members of their extended family who are now working for the government. The kind of work these relatives perform – are they sinecures or legitimate employment? — and the salaries they receive, should also be reported and made public. This won’t end the now rampant nepotism, but it will cut it down to size, reduce it to manageable proportions. Few politicians will want it known that they’ve provided jobs for a dozen or two of their relatives, while the ordinary Lebanese must endure an unemployment rate of over 40%.

The second is to curb the power of Hezbollah. It would be good if Macron and the other heads of potential donor governments collectively demanded that Hezbollah be disarmed. They can point out that no other country in the world is forced to tolerate a non-governmental armed force that is stronger than the nation’s own armed forces; Lebanon should not continue to be the lone exception. And Macron should use the carrot of aid promised at that 2018 conference ($10.2 billion in loans, $860 million in grants) as the stick of aid withheld: Lebanon should not expect any money, loans or grants, from donors until Hezbollah has turned in its major weaponry to the government, especially that armory of 150,000 missiles and rockets with which Hezbollah threatens to drag Lebanon into a war with Israel that the Lebanese do not want. Without those missiles and rockets, that threat is eliminated.

Though Hezbollah will be exceedingly reluctant to comply, it may find it necessary to do so. For if on top of everything else it has done to damage Lebanon (for example, by starting that 2006 war with Israel), including its responsibility for the August 4 Beirut blast, it is now the reason that desperately needed aid is not delivered, it will have made the whole Lebanese population, except for its own members, into a permanent enemy. Hezbollah can still exist, as a political party, like Amal, representing Shi’a interests in the government, but not as an army with more conventional weaponry than 95% of the world’s armies.

For President Macron, that advice is no doubt enough. The French president has a hard slog ahead of him. And so, alas, does Lebanon.

First published in Jihad Watch here and here.