By Silvain Roch in Paris
Lebanon was a country already on the brink of a political implosion, through a combination of a runaway coronavirus crisis, an unprecedented economic crisis and a political crisis linked to a system of cronyism, corruption and confessionalism. But this week’s explosion in the port of Beirut has added massively to the suffering of the Lebanese people and threatens to make the political crisis deeper, as horror at the death is overtaken by rage over why it happened in the first place.
Two explosions ravaged the port and the surrounding neighbourhoods. The port itself is utterly devastated: what was a busy transport hub has been reduced to a sea of rubble. For miles around, there is not a single pane of glass that remains intact. Even kilometers away there were serious injuries. The scenes in what used to be a busy port are indescribable. Not only the port, and ships in it, but three local hospitals were destroyed. If the exact circumstances of this disaster are yet to be determined, it seems clear at least that thousands of tonnes of ammonium nitrate were the fuel of the second and more devastating explosion, felt as far as Cyprus, 200 kilometers away.
Total deaths likely to reach 200
At present the death toll is near 140, but with many more still missing, that is likely to reach upwards of 200. There are more than 5,000 injured; those Beirut hospitals that still function are overwhelmed and some of the injured have been sent to other cities. Rescuers are trying to find more victims in the rubble of destroyed buildings.
What was probably an accident – although the possibility of a targeted explosion at a nearby Hezbollah weapons depot cannot be completely ruled out – adds to the misery in which the country has been plunged for many months.
This explosion clearly shows the deplorable situation in which the population has been plunged. First of all, it is incomprehensible why such a large amount of ammonium nitrate was stored in a busy port area in this way. It is an extremely powerful explosive and is ignited by contact with fire or high temperature, the explosion possibly caused by an earlier fire or explosion. Ammonium nitrate was at the origin of a disastrous explosion in the French city of Toulouse, in 2001, where there were “only” 300 tons of this dangerous substance stored. On that occasion, there were 29 deaths, mostly in the factory storing the chemical, but including a secondary school pupil at a neighbouring school.
Customs authorities in Beirut have been quick to blame the port authorities, but questions will be asked about why nearly three thousand tonnes of this chemical was left “hanging around” in the port for the past six years. Lebanon is a state rotten with corruption and there will be more than a suspicion that money will have changed hands, perhaps somewhere within the port authority, to overlook this dangerous storage.
Hospitals overwhelmed
It is notable in the desperate search and rescue attempts now being undertaken that we see the near total absence of the Lebanese state. All the relief efforts seem to be organized from outside the state. It has been the local communities and the denominational and religious parties that have been quickest in calling for blood donations. Hospitals in Lebanon are mostly private, as the state does not provide any health care at all. The vacuum is filled by organisations of denominational bodies, making normal access to care terribly precarious for workers and their families.
The consequences of this disaster will be profound. There is first of all the massive death toll and the thousands of wounded. The episode has rekindled the old fears stemming from civil wars and terrorist wars and attacks. The material damage is itself enormous. The explosion razed a key grain silo in the harbour, creating a shortage of bread in a single stroke. Many buildings in the general vicinity of the port have collapsed or are now in a very precarious.
In an already tense political situation this new blow will no doubt add significantly to the economic, social and political crises.
Likely increase in food prices
The port of Beirut is the main entry point for Lebanese imports, especially in food: 80% of which is imported. The destruction of the port will inevitably impact on Lebanon’s ability to bring in food products, so that there may be a scarcity and therefore an increase in the price of food. Even before this explosion, there has been a generalised feeling among young people in particular, that the whole system is rigged against them, with a handful of speculators and profiteers making massive profits while workers go without.
One consequences of this disaster, therefore, will be even more distrust of the ‘political classes’ who wield power.
Shortly before the explosion, a demonstration was held in front of the Ministry of Energy to demand better electricity supplies only one of many a demonstrations over recent months to denounce a corrupt state incapable of meeting the needs of its the population.
Lebanon is rotten to the core
We can already see the manoeuvres of international and regional powers, bolstering their own strategic interests in Lebanon. France, Qatar, Iran, Russia, USA, Iraq have all offered help and are sending field hospitals and equipment. Even Israel, which is still ‘officially’ at war with Lebanon and after first of all denying that it was behind the first explosion – a natural suspicion of many Lebanese – has offered help via third countries.
Lebanon was at one time the most ‘stable’ country in the Middle East, boasting a banking system the envy of all the other Arab states and closely linked to European banks. Its capital city was affluent and ‘Westernized’, a playground for millionaires and would-be millionaires. Today Lebanon is a country rotten to the core. It has a system of government based on the patronage of the warlords of different religious groups: Shia and Sunni Moslems, Maronite Christians, Druze, etc, each of which has its own armed militia and which gets its share of the corrupt spoils. The Lebanese parliamentary democracy is a sham, cloaking what is in effect a mafia state of religious oligarchs and warlords.
Mass civic uprising
Little wonder that the growing economic impasse recent years has led to unprecedented demonstrations of youth and workers. Last October, even before the coronavirus made everything worse, there was a mass civic uprising, overwhelmingly of young people and cutting across all religious groups, that led to the resignation of the government. The Bank of Lebanon – once a haven of stability and economic security in the Middle East – had been plundered to the point where it is now bankrupt.
Protesters up and down the country have openly called for ‘revolution’ and have attacked banks and clashed with security forces, leaving demonstrators dead and wounded, “The World Bank has warned that the number of Lebanese living in poverty could hit 50 per cent in 2020, while a leaked government economic recovery plan estimated that average consumer price inflation in 2020 would exceed 25 per cent. The IMF projects Lebanon’s economic downturn will be the region’s worst this year, with gross domestic product expected to fall 12 per cent”. (Financial Times, April 29). Workers and youth demanded an end to the corrupt system of religious patronage that divided the spoils of government and commerce between superannuated religious and warlord leaders.
The horrific explosion in the port of Beirut is grim metaphor for the political crisis that is the state of Lebanon today: a powder keg waiting to go off. This disaster will have profound consequences far beyond the deaths, injuries and property damage which are the immediate results. It will further expose the corruption of the Lebanese elite and the almost feudal rigged system of confessionalism. It will reinforce the urgency for the big majority of the Lebanese people to take control of their destiny by getting rid of the kleptocratic cliques that enslave them and feed on their backs.
This article is adapted from an article by Sylvain Roch, PCF Paris, on the French Marxist website, La Riposte. The original can be found here.
August 6, 2020
