A Year After The Blast, Paris Of The Middle East, Lebanon, Is An Economic, Political And Social Wreck

“Since last August 4, people in Beirut have lived as though every day is their last day– and every day resembles August 4. It’s the cumulative pain of that day extending through this whole year, the impact of what we have been living through every day since that day,” says Shirine Jurdi executive member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Lebanon Section and the International Board MENA Regional Representative, and a Stop Killer Robots Campaign Team leader in Lebanon. Jurdi is part of the Permanent Peace Movement (PPM) Secretariat MENAPPAC, Regional Liaison Officer of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).

On August 4, 2020, at 6 pm local time, 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, stored illegally at a warehouse in the port of Lebanon’s capital city, Beirut, detonated into a ravaging blast that nearly razed the capital city’s harbor where 80% of the country’s food imports entered. The blast wrecked 160 schools, half of the city’s healthcare centers, killed over 200, injured over 7,000 and displaced 300,000 people.

The World Bank puts the total value of the damage at nearly $4.6 billion–the cost of recovery and reconstruction by the end of this year alone will be up to $2.2 billion. The report cites long-term structural vulnerabilities: “low-grade infrastructure—a dysfunctional electricity sector, water supply shortages, and inadequate solid waste and wastewater management—as well as weak public financial mismanagement, large macroeconomic imbalances, and deteriorating social indicators.”

One year later, the displaced are still living in temporary shelters or with family and friends. Electricity blackouts last over 22 hours amidst hot summer days while running water is scarce. The UN Women’s 2020 report found that the total collapse of the Lebanese government and economic infrastructure affected 51% of “female-headed households” suffering from reduced access to food, first aid and reproductive health services with increased risk of homelessness and gender-based violence 

“There is a lack of truth, justice, and accountability–which families of the victims have been calling for every day for the last year. But the road to the truth is hard to find. This corrupt, orchestrated political system has a way of protecting one another. If one party tries to expose the other, there’s a lot of finger-pointing and then coverups,” says Jurdi frustrated.

One year later, Lebanese officials responsible for neglecting the illegal storage of highly flammable chemicals have neither taken responsibility nor been punished. The jury is still out on the actual cause of the blast. Local organizations call for an independent investigation as the country plummets into total dysfunction with over 562,527 Covid-19 cases being treated in clinics with inefficient medical supplies and equipment. Children are dying–some because of lack of medicine and others losing future dreams, while Jurdi points out how her 10-year-old nephew, Keenan Atallah, refers to his country as “crazy Lebanon.”

The World Bank report on Lebanon puts the economic crisis as the “largest (and most persistent) negative impact” with prolonged economic depression. A triple digit inflation has inflicted half of the country with deep poverty levels–including over a million Syrian refugees, compounded by some 250,000 domestic workers majority of whom are women from Ethiopia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. With no labor law protections, and abandoned by their employers, the homeless domestic workers hope to return home–while few NGOs funded repatriation flights, many remain abandoned.

While the Lebanese government has become totally inept, the Lebanese people have taken it upon themselves to secure the future of their country. Jurdi explains how those with expertise in international law are helping guide others to push forward the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)–a norm agreed at the UN since 2005, mandating that the sovereignty of the state is not a privilege but a responsibility. There are efforts into pushing those responsible to the international court of justice, to be held accountable. There are many other routes to gain momentum within the international community, but Jurdi explains, the hindrance is uniting as a people behind one approach–while dealing with the daily struggles to survive.

The high levels of government corruption brewed into the “October Revolution” in 2019–triggered by taxes on gasoline, tobacco and $6 tax on free VoIP services such as WhatsApp. For nearly 300 days, protestors rocketed Lebanon into a socio-political crisis–hundreds of thousands demanded justice and the resignation of corrupt politicians. Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned, vice president of the American University of Beirut, Hassan Diab, replaced him and resigned in August 2020 following the explosion in Beirut.

Lebanese have been aware of how the “unjust political confessional system leads politicians to power-share amongst themselves robbing the vast majority of the population of their rights,” Jurdi explains, while Lebanon’s social corruption-based structure, leads each community to depend on their own resources for survival.

Survival, Despair And A Hope For A Better Future

Among many international organizations providing aid to Lebanese survivors, is the all-volunteer Sweden-based non-profit, A Demand for Action (ADFA) advocacy group which protects Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Armenians and other minorities throughout the Middle East. At the start of the pandemic, with the Lebanese government already on a downward spiral, ADFA volunteers distributed pandemic prevention public education messages via social media, providing food, water, and protective materials to over 600 families and 800 refugee families. Soon after the August 4^th Beirut blast, ADFA continued its food distributions to over 1,000 blast survivor families, providing 700 Lebanese school children with backpacks–and continues to provide food and supplies to the needy.

The blast left 43-year-old businesswoman, Zeina khatib Dana unconscious amidst the rubble of her office where she and her husband work. Waking up to “a black and red fog” in her totally demolished office, she pulled her unconscious husband and employees from under the aluminum and shattered glass rubble. Searching for a way out, stepping on and over “glass and dead bodies” unaware of what had happened, she made it out and walked to a local hospital. With multiple fractures on her skull, ribs, face and hands–her displaced neck made it difficult for her to breathe.

Some 200 stitches on one side of her face, head, and across her body, and six non-cosmetic surgeries later–all paid out of pocket–Dana’s severe concussion has left her immobile. Her three children are now feeding and taking care of her and her husband. Before the blast, Dana was an energetic woman, she says, with a full schedule as a businesswoman and a mother to three children.

“We lost a lot of things in our life, but thank God we are all alive. The ministry of health hasn’t even asked about our status as I continue to suffer from related health problems. I want justice for a better Lebanon, and for our children,” says Dana.

The 75-year-old Vera Naour is “grateful to God for still being alive.” The catastrophe of the blast, she says, united people across Lebanon, attesting to the care Lebanese people have for each other’s well being.

“Beyond the political leaders, there’s nothing more beautiful than the Lebanese people,” Naour’s four-member family includes her grandson. “What we lived through is the hardest thing–we can’t erase it from our minds. We lived through the 1975 civil war, never left our precious country–but this explosion totally changed our psychological well being.”

The slightest of sounds–even a door closing–startles Naour. It’s a pity Lebanon has reached this level of economic misery, she says, comparing the Lebanese to orphans living in “a dire state of existence caused by the elites and government officials.” She appreciates the helping hands from across the world, and the Lebanese civil society organizations rebuilding damaged houses, but angered at how the government’s indifference has led to widespread poverty, hunger, and total disruption of lives.

“Shame on the Lebanese government, the ruling villains who sold our country without blinking. The suffering we live through is unfathomable. In the blink of an eye, our entire world turned upside down. The bloodshed we witnessed, fleeing our homes. We have zero psychological wellbeing–unimaginable images don’t leave our memory,” Naour is optimistic that the love of God and country will pull the Lebanese people through this misery. “Do they think they’ll transfer our blood money to the other world with them? May God never forgive them.”

 And as Jurdi joins millions of Lebanese who lived through the trauma of the past year, she admits she knows, just as all the Lebanese people, “what it is to say my heart aches.”