|
What's keeping the economic situation from freefalling even deeper into the abyss, is the money of the diaspora. Expats send back money to support their families. That's the lifeline, without which there would be famine. What's keeping the economic situation from coming back up, is exactly what brought it down in the first place: It's the complete failure of the state, with a political system that is rotten with power-hungry warlords, old and new, who won't let go. A people who remains divided because every few decades a faction decides it's so powerful now that it's its prerogative to hijack the country's destiny by use of force... And some big countries with huge influences (follower factions), using Lebanon as a card on their negotiating tables - some even see the situation as "chemothraphy to remove a cancer", and don't mind it staying. (Pardon the vagueness; the politics is quite complicated and not possible to give a clearer picture than this in a brief comment). If with a magic wand all of those problems disappeared, and a new government materializes with full support from everyone to start fixes and reforms, it is estimated that it would take at least 10 years to bring the economy back to a healthy state. But 3 years into the crisis and the governments since then still have not provided a single plan to come out of it. Just grandstanding, mutual accusations, deadlocks, hindering investigations, etc. They always hope that some rich country would want to help and make big investments. But those countries, and world organizations, rightfully, do not trust the country's consecutive governments anymore because no reforms have been made and it's still the wild west of corruption. The biggest problem is that those 3 years have witnessed the largest brain drain in the history of the country. Most doctors and nurses left; engineers, technicians, scientists, students, you name it. Resilient people who had seen everything and stayed, but there's always an edge too far. |