[sharken]

Comparing Lebanon to the poorest country in Europe, Moldova, show at least one interesting fact besides the GDP drop.

The defence expenditure is more than US$ 2 billion higher per year in Lebanon while it is nearly non-existent in Moldova.

It seems absurd to uphold that kind of expenditure, but it's likely a direct consequence of the historical conflict in the region.

Source: https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/lebanon/moldova

[wumpus]

Moldova has a "frozen conflict" where Russia is holding a fair fraction of their territory hostage. It's less bad than Ukraine, but still a problem.

[sharken]

Thanks for pointing that out, it's not really in the news.

So both countries have a long standing conflict in common and sadly neither conflict seems to have any chance of being resolved.

[CapricornNoble]

>>>but it's likely a direct consequence of the historical conflict in the region.

Yeah, the security situations in the 2 countries are VASTLY different. Lebanon has militant Palestinian refugees[1], Hezbollah, Israel, Syria, Iran, and ISIS-adjacent insurgents [2] all regularly killing each other (or Lebanese government forces) in their territory.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahr_al-Bared_refugee_camp#200...

[2]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-leba...