USCFL- The Urgent Need for a New Generation of Business and Political Leaders in Lebanon

Lebanon is rapidly losing its greatest asset. Educated Lebanese are emigrating en masse, fleeing both economic decay and political alienation. Brains are Lebanon’s most valuable export. The government estimates that 277,000 people left for good in 1999 alone – a dizzying statistic in a country of just 3.5 million. According to the Social Affairs Ministry, 895,000 people emigrated during the 15-year civil war, which broke out in 1975. The same number fled in peacetime between 1995 and 1999.

Disheartening it is. And to add insult to injury, while the ruling class has had more than a decade since the end of the war to set things straight, it has failed dismally. In fact, many of the damaging habits that led to the bloody conflict and crippled the national economy have actually gotten worse. What is more, the senior leaders responsible for this appalling state of affairs seem determined to pursue the same petty grudges and power struggles that got the country into this mess.

The troika is back; the Parliament is more paralyzed than ever, the economy is burning, and even when someone in government knows what needs to be done, someone else is always there to block any new initiative. Straining under a $25 billion public debt, accumulated during an extravagant post-war reconstruction by a Prime Minister who seems to be totally oblivious to the basics of Economics 101, and with a zero growth in 2000, is only compounding the problem. Things would actually be better if the “megalomaniac” Lebanese naturalized Saudi along with his two other strong-headed accomplices, Berri the Shi’ite and Lahoud the Maronite, had only stuck their head in the sand and pretended that nothing was wrong. Instead, they have ground what remained of the political process to a halt by angling for better position vis-a-vis Damascus, looking out for particular interest groups instead of the whole nation, and engaging in futile confrontations with the United Nations and wasted time trying to convince the new Bush Administration and the Lebanese Diaspora that all is under control while nothing actually is.

The warning signs have been in place for years. Even with the Israelis having left and a new government having been installed that promised to get the country back on the rails, none of Lebanon’s leaders could bring themselves to recognize the nation’s inherent weakness on a multitude of levels. They therefore proceeded to undermine an already precarious position, bringing us to where we appear to be right now: The end of the line.

They have had more chances to reform themselves and the pathetic system that made them than anyone has a right to ask for starting with Amine Gemayel in 1982 who had everything served on a silver platter including American backing, Lebanese support all across the Board and Israeli willingness to strike a deal . But even though it is time for ALL of them to go, they cannot or will not. So things will have to get even worse before they get better, the people of Lebanon will have to endure more poverty, more pain, and more emigration of their sons and daughters. They will have to hear more humiliating and insulting remarks from Mustafa Tlass and his other backward Syrian cronies before a new generation of forceful Lebanese leaders steps up to the plate and fearlessly fights back until Syria is brought to its knees.

The only light of hope in this gloomy forecast is the possibility that the current cast of players and their predecessors for the past couple of generations will take themselves out of the running the next time a Cabinet is formed, and that the next crop will have learned that a genuine revolution, led from the top down, is the only thing that will save this country from itself.

Like most required revolutions, this one needs to take the whole machine apart and start anew: Dismantle Hizballah, Amal and all these ludicrous organizations because they only breed more hatred and wasted energies; Abolish sectarianism because it only leads to hopeless inefficiency; Drop this sacred “Arab cause” because it didn’t bring Lebanon any value-added after over 50 years of struggle and hundreds of thousands of wasted lives; Do away with the concept of the feudal “zaim” and his family because their loyalties are hopelessly clouded; Open up the economy to Israel and the West instead of to the rogue Arab states which have nothing to offer Lebanon but more isolationism; Dump the idea of “destroying the State of Israel”. This is pure utopia and will never happen, at least as long as there is a United States of America in this world.

Until these and myriad other changes are made, the people of this country are in for a guaranteed economic and political suicide and we have only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Would you like to comment on this article?

If you would like to send us your thoughts on this article, please click the button below:

If you would like to read feedback submitted by other visitors, please click on the button below:

Article:	The Urgent Need of a New Generation of Business and Political Leaders in Lebanon
Author:	Ziad K. Abdelnour -- e-mail: ziad@freelebanon.org
Date:	June 2001