Israeli Minister of War Yoav Gallant, who threatened to take Lebanon to the Stone Age, missed something. The mafia-militia coalition imposing its grip on Lebanon has beaten him to it. The sectarian-quota-based spoil-sharing regime, both those “in government” and “the opposition.” Indeed, the March 8 coalition and used to be the March 14 coalition have established a decapitated state as “caretakers” implemented the measures the two coalitions had agreed upon.
Since the "Independence movement" of 2005 was aborted and the Quatartite Agreement was concluded, the sectarian militia-like forces running the country have been carving up the country and the state to split it amongst themselves, sharing its ministries, institutions, and public revenues; then, twelve years ago, they began plotting its people's savings. Najib Mikati, the current caretaker prime minister, knows all about it.
Lebanon has spent 4 of the 18 years since the “Independence Movement” was aborted without a president and around 5 years and a half under a caretaker government.
Under these caretaker governments, state institutions were paralyzed and hollowed out, services became virtually nonexistent, and Lebanon’s security agencies and military stood on shaky grounds. Indeed, things got so out of hand that we have reached a stage in which we are pleading for “subsistence” for the armed forces, with modest material assistance given to the military to keep it standing.
Throughout this time, the mafioso sectarian alliance ruled through fatwas, and the farce peaked with "the strong reign,” with Gebran Bassil bragging, in Davos, that he could teach the world how to govern without budgeting, brushing aside the country’s many bankruptcies, mass unemployment, the destitution seen across its territory, and its banks withholding its people's savings.
Their investment in sectarian divisions drove their despotism to extreme lengths. Reassured by the robustness of their leadership, they held on to their shares firmly. After 2015, they killed time with proposals for “dialogue” propositions on the one hand and calls for reforms on the other. All the while, they brushed the two most prominent issues facing the country aside.
The first is that presidential vacancies had been the rule. They schemed to marginalize this office, which is entrusted with rehabilitating the country and enforcing respect for its laws. The second is the statelet operating within the state. They stayed away from this fully equipped statelet with an army negating the constitution and preventing the restoration of sovereignty through the extension of the state’s authority... With their sectarian quotas, they drafted an unconstitutional election law and they skewed popular representation.
The incident in Kahaleh has brought back memories of the horrors seen during the civil war, and the militia warned against interference with its supply routes in the aftermath.
At the time of writing, the authorities are doing everything they can to brush over the crimes exposed by the "forensic audit" of the Central Bank. Still running free, the regime’s accountant, Riad Salameh, who engineered the grandest "Ponzi" scheme in history to line the pockets of the mafioso-militia alliance, enjoys political, security, and judicial protection. He has not been held to account despite the audit leaving no doubt that he deliberately destroyed the banking sector and the Lebanese economy: robbing depositors to finance the despots, among them including politicians, militias, governments, those who have monopolies (a cartel of sectarian forces), bankrupt banks, smugglers, and those running the "parallel economy" - all to build a bridge the president’s seat through plunder.
It is great that we are now beating drums of repudiating Hezbollah’s wanton activities. It is good that we have seen a late awakening after Lebanon was turned into barren scorched earth. Nonetheless, it is a party to the entrenched spoil-sharing regime, in which it was a partner to Hezbollah, that is beating it. Indeed, we have a surreal political consensus to oppose accountability for the crimes exposed by the “forensic audit” that demonstrated how $76 billion had been looted from the Central between 2015 and 2020 (equivalent to 230 percent of the GDP, which amounted to $31 billion in 2020). Indeed, over 100 billion may have been looted once the squalor of the past 3 years is accounted for!
A political movement aimed at broadening the audit of all government caves and banks should have been formed, given the crimes and pillage the audit has proved that politicians had committed, with billions of politicians’ deposits smuggled abroad and records falsified to concealed and give credibility to claim that “the lira is fine.”
These crimes have left the people hungry, and voices should have been raised denouncing the scandalous silence of the judiciary. Indeed, the judiciary did nothing despite the international arrest warrants and Western sanctions against this "evil gang!” Nothing happened because more than 120 deputies are legislating the seizure of “state assets” to loot them.
They left a oversaw the work of the "fact-finding" committee, which included representatives of sectarian forces, and came together to defend the interests of the banking cartel, refusing to hold the bankers and adding their signature on a deal to demarcate our the maritime borders to Hezbollah’s, relinquishing our sovereignty and wealth as part of a deal between Israel and Iran overseen the US!
Under this mafioso alliance, Lebanon has been left without electricity, hospitals, universities, ports, or infrastructure; security is shaky and rights are violated systematically. Most of its institutions and shops have shut down. The country has turned to dust and its elderly now guard empty houses in its mountains after the country pushed those with merit and fresh graduates out. They have taken Lebanon further back than the stone age, haven’t they Gallant? However, the consecutive shocks are bound to open the doors to a state run by the people, who will not keep quiet as Lebanon lies in the gutter!
