Country profile - Lebanon
Lebanon is a country in the Middle East, bordered by the Hashemite Empire on the north, east and south and by the Mediterranean Sea in the west.
History
The Great European War changed considerably the state of the Middle East and Lebanon, that had been effectively a joint Maronite-Druze protectorate during the Ottoman era, found itself integrated into a wider Pan-Arabic empire : the Greater Arab Kingdom, soon to become the Hashemite Caliphate. Save for a Druze revolt from 1925 to 1927, fearing that they would lose their power in the region, the Lebanese were overall supportive of the Pan-Arabic cause, as long as it stressed race over religion. Mostly known as Christian Arabs, politicians from Mount Lebanon invested themselves in Hashemite politics, mostly on the liberal, progressive side, pushing for an agenda that would accommodate Arabs of all confessions.
The 1958 military coup and the assassination of the Caliph in Damascus crystallized fears of a destabilization of the Hashemite Empire that would mean doom for the Christian populations, subjected to pogroms as Zionist migrants had been in the 1940s : as a result, Mount Lebanon, that was back then a mere region of the Empire, erupted in a revolt on August 1959, asking for the immediate return of democracy. The Majali regime immediately responded by shelling Beirut for a week, ending on 19 August, and putting the region under martial law. In 1960, the worst fears of Lebanese nationalists materialized when the Dhimmi Code was reformed, extending it to Christian inhabitants of the Hashemite Empire. This setback in Lebanon led to the rise of the Phoenician Phalange, a pyrist organization led by the Gemayel family, that asked for the immediate independence of Lebanon as a Christian-only country, seeing the failure of the Pan-Arabic status quo. The return of democracy in the 1970s in the Hashemite Empire allowed the abolition of the Dhimmi Code in 1970 and the granting of autonomy to the Mount Lebanon Region on 21 July 1971, acknowledging its special status and allowing a certain degree of policymaking for the Christians, similar to states’ rights in the United States. Nevertheless, this decision definitely separated the fate of Lebanon from the wider Empire and did everything to empower the Gemayels.
When the Hashemite Civil War broke out in 1982, the Phalange seized control of Beirut and the major cities and unilaterally proclaimed independence. The pyrist rule of Pierre Gemayel saw persecution of Muslim, Druze and Jewish inhabitants, resulting in international recognition being turned down flat by the World Council and limited to likeminded regimes such as Italy, the Ottoman Empire or South Africa. Lebanon would also count on an influx of young volunteers from Europe and America, bent on “protecting a Christian people in the Middle East”, many of these returning and joining the ranks of far right terrorist groups. Phalangist rule in Lebanon would last throughout the Hashemite Civil War, the entry of Hashemite troops in a totally destroyed Beirut on Christmas 1985 effectively ending it. The scions of the Gemayel family were either arrested or went into exile and the few that remained of Lebanese cities were put under matial law. With the return of democracy, Lebanon recovered its special status in 1990, with the diaspora funding the reconstruction of the country.
On 1 June 1998, the World Council, concerned about the instability of the Hashemite Empire and the risks of hate crimes targeting Christian Arabs, agreed with Damascus to turn Mount Lebanon into an International Free Mandate, on the model of Tangiers, in order to have progress and reconstruction internationally monitored and avoid the quagmire of the Civil War. A first referendum on independence held in 2005 allowed Lebanon to become effectively a World Council protectorate within the Hashemite Empire, until a new referendum in 2019 confirmed, by 61 %, the will of the Lebanese people to become independent. Thus Lebanon became the newest country in the world, becoming independent on 1 January 2020.
Political situation
Having had self rule since 1998 under the auspices of the World Council, Lebanon had been an established democratic system, with elections every five years to elect Parliament. The unicameral chamber elects the President of the Republic, who has only ceremonial power, and appoints the Prime Minister; as such, the Constitution of Lebanon has been inspired by the French Sixth Republic, owing to the long present Francophilia of the Lebanese. Common law is also inspired by the French Code Civil. The General Commissioner, appointed by the World Council upon agreement from the Hashemite government, had far more powers than the President.
The Constitution nevertheless has a twist : it is an unitary parliamentary Christian constitutional republic. Since 2009, the pyrist and ultranationalist Phoenician Phalange Party has held a majority in Parliament, and even if violence is far less virulent than during the Civil War, it still restricts Lebanese citizenship to Christian citizens and stresses the importance of Maronite faith in its national values, hereby prohibiting abortion or euthanasia. In the Maronite-majority Mount Lebanon, that forms the frame of the country, the situation is more bearable that it would have been in the far more multiethnic Greater Lebanon, but Muslims, Jews and Druzes are now officially second-tier citizens, in a twist of history as the Phalangists had protested the Dhimmi Code before.
Since 7 June 2009, the Prime Minister has been Pierre Amine Gemayel, also known as Pierre Jr., Rais (leader) of the Phoenician Phalange Party (pyrist), who was reelected in 2014 and 2019. The grandson of the elder Pierre Gemayel, nephew to his successor Bachir Gemayel, Pierre Junior is considered as the new face of the Phalangist movement, having toned down his pyrist rhetoric and corporatism but still authoritarian in nature. The fragmented opposition has yet to assemble. The first President, elected by the Parliament on 31 December 2019 for a six-year term, is Carlos Ghosn (independent), a former businessman born into the Lebanese diaspora in Brazil, whose family returned in virtue of the Lebanese law of return and to flee the Second Brazilian Civil War.
Social situation, population
One of the densest countries in the world, Lebanon has a rather middle-aged population, allowing the country to enjoy a steady economic growth since the 1980s, that didn’t suffer from the setbacks of the 2000s ; mostly urban, the Lebanese population is still growing, thanks to its high standards of living that attract foreign migrants (from China, India or Africa) but also from a very accomodating law of return, modeled on Armenia’s, destined to its extensive diaspora, even more numerous than its population and disseminated on the five continents. The pyrist Constitution of Lebanon has limited citizenship to majority Christian population (either they are Maronite, Orthodox, Protestant or Catholic), with its Shia, Sunni, Druze or Jewish minorities being officially “permanent residents”, no matter if their families were present for centuries in Mount Lebanon ; due to Christian values being inscribed in the Constitution, prostitution, homosexuality, abortion, blasphemy and euthanasia are all crimes punishable by jail. As such, Lebanon is widely seen as an authoritarian and discriminating regime.
For the citizens, however, Lebanon is a country that has many facilities to offer, from all brand new hospitals, universities, schools and public transportation, coming along with a strong welfare state that ranks Lebanon high in worldwide rankings… as long as you are a Christian or rich. As evidence, the effects of the Wuchang pneumonia were barely felt in Lebanon, that had managed to put in place a very restrictive health policy and a strong vaccination campaign.
Economy
Confined to Mount Lebanon and not Greater Lebanon, the young nation has been traditionally turned towards the Mediterreanean Sea and foreign trade. Lebanon’s proportion of cultivable land being among the highest in the Middle East, Lebanon nevertheless manages to sustain itself, with major products including apples, peaches, oranges and lemons. Industry is limited to small business and importation, making Lebanon a country heavily invested on services, tourism and finance, with Beirut remaining a major financial hub and a renowned destination for start-ups and entrepreneurs, drawn by the climate, the high tech facilities of Beirut and its stability. In spite of the Wuchang pneumonia striking the year of its independence, shutting most of tourism and trade, Lebanon nevertheless managed to remain steady thanks to banking and finance. The financial presence of the diaspora is also noticeable, Lebanese migrants being known for their entrepreneurship (an example being President Carlos Ghosn himself), with many redistributing parts of their wealth in the motherland, thanks to tax reductions. Currently in negotiations to establish a treaty of free trade with the European Community, Lebanon is also arm wrestling with Greece and the Hashemite Empire about oil located between its shores and Cyprus… While looking forward to the ongoing crisis in Mesopotamia, with a way to profit from the chaos that would result.
Military
Even if the process of independence was smooth, the Hashemite Empire was harsh on limiting the future Lebanese Armed Forces, placing strict limitations on military equipment, armored vehicles, warships and aviation. It did nothing to secure the paranoid Phalangists, who remembered the Civil War and knew that, being surrounded by the Hashemites, they would capitulate almost immediately in the event of a war. Even if Lebanon officially proclaims its neutrality, military service is compulsory and the military has spent massively in informatic warfare and is looking forward to Bulgarian and Japanese efforts on battle androids.
Culture
Inhabited for millenia by various civilizations (Phoenicians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, Arabs…), Lebanon has been considered, for most of the 20th Century, as one of the liveliest cultural centers of the Middle East, home to Francophile and Pan-Arabic intellectuals, present in visual arts, architecture, literature (Elias Khoury, Amin Maalouf), music (Fairuz), cinema (Nadine Labaki, Ziad Doueiri), cuisine and sports. Utterly destroyed during the Hashemite Civil War, Beirut has since been reconstructed thanks to the efforts of the locals and the diaspora and is a modern smart city, where cultural and festive life is still thriving, at least hidden from the morals of the state and under the symbol of the Cedar.
Even though Lebanon was a major force in the intellectual conception of Pan-Arabism, Phalangist rhetoric has unsuccessfully tried to portray Lebanon as the cradle of a distinct identity, Phoenicia, directly related to the ancient civilization, having been forcibly assimilated by the Arab invaders. That theory failed to gain traction, due to the wide use of the Arabic language and the full extent of the diaspora, and was abandoned during the days of Bachir Gemayel. In religious matters, the Christian republic has cultivated his proximity with the Maronite Church and engaged in oecumenic discuission, stressing their full communion with the Pope and the worldwide Catholic Church while celebrating its self-governance.
History
The Great European War changed considerably the state of the Middle East and Lebanon, that had been effectively a joint Maronite-Druze protectorate during the Ottoman era, found itself integrated into a wider Pan-Arabic empire : the Greater Arab Kingdom, soon to become the Hashemite Caliphate. Save for a Druze revolt from 1925 to 1927, fearing that they would lose their power in the region, the Lebanese were overall supportive of the Pan-Arabic cause, as long as it stressed race over religion. Mostly known as Christian Arabs, politicians from Mount Lebanon invested themselves in Hashemite politics, mostly on the liberal, progressive side, pushing for an agenda that would accommodate Arabs of all confessions.
The 1958 military coup and the assassination of the Caliph in Damascus crystallized fears of a destabilization of the Hashemite Empire that would mean doom for the Christian populations, subjected to pogroms as Zionist migrants had been in the 1940s : as a result, Mount Lebanon, that was back then a mere region of the Empire, erupted in a revolt on August 1959, asking for the immediate return of democracy. The Majali regime immediately responded by shelling Beirut for a week, ending on 19 August, and putting the region under martial law. In 1960, the worst fears of Lebanese nationalists materialized when the Dhimmi Code was reformed, extending it to Christian inhabitants of the Hashemite Empire. This setback in Lebanon led to the rise of the Phoenician Phalange, a pyrist organization led by the Gemayel family, that asked for the immediate independence of Lebanon as a Christian-only country, seeing the failure of the Pan-Arabic status quo. The return of democracy in the 1970s in the Hashemite Empire allowed the abolition of the Dhimmi Code in 1970 and the granting of autonomy to the Mount Lebanon Region on 21 July 1971, acknowledging its special status and allowing a certain degree of policymaking for the Christians, similar to states’ rights in the United States. Nevertheless, this decision definitely separated the fate of Lebanon from the wider Empire and did everything to empower the Gemayels.
When the Hashemite Civil War broke out in 1982, the Phalange seized control of Beirut and the major cities and unilaterally proclaimed independence. The pyrist rule of Pierre Gemayel saw persecution of Muslim, Druze and Jewish inhabitants, resulting in international recognition being turned down flat by the World Council and limited to likeminded regimes such as Italy, the Ottoman Empire or South Africa. Lebanon would also count on an influx of young volunteers from Europe and America, bent on “protecting a Christian people in the Middle East”, many of these returning and joining the ranks of far right terrorist groups. Phalangist rule in Lebanon would last throughout the Hashemite Civil War, the entry of Hashemite troops in a totally destroyed Beirut on Christmas 1985 effectively ending it. The scions of the Gemayel family were either arrested or went into exile and the few that remained of Lebanese cities were put under matial law. With the return of democracy, Lebanon recovered its special status in 1990, with the diaspora funding the reconstruction of the country.
On 1 June 1998, the World Council, concerned about the instability of the Hashemite Empire and the risks of hate crimes targeting Christian Arabs, agreed with Damascus to turn Mount Lebanon into an International Free Mandate, on the model of Tangiers, in order to have progress and reconstruction internationally monitored and avoid the quagmire of the Civil War. A first referendum on independence held in 2005 allowed Lebanon to become effectively a World Council protectorate within the Hashemite Empire, until a new referendum in 2019 confirmed, by 61 %, the will of the Lebanese people to become independent. Thus Lebanon became the newest country in the world, becoming independent on 1 January 2020.
Political situation
Having had self rule since 1998 under the auspices of the World Council, Lebanon had been an established democratic system, with elections every five years to elect Parliament. The unicameral chamber elects the President of the Republic, who has only ceremonial power, and appoints the Prime Minister; as such, the Constitution of Lebanon has been inspired by the French Sixth Republic, owing to the long present Francophilia of the Lebanese. Common law is also inspired by the French Code Civil. The General Commissioner, appointed by the World Council upon agreement from the Hashemite government, had far more powers than the President.
The Constitution nevertheless has a twist : it is an unitary parliamentary Christian constitutional republic. Since 2009, the pyrist and ultranationalist Phoenician Phalange Party has held a majority in Parliament, and even if violence is far less virulent than during the Civil War, it still restricts Lebanese citizenship to Christian citizens and stresses the importance of Maronite faith in its national values, hereby prohibiting abortion or euthanasia. In the Maronite-majority Mount Lebanon, that forms the frame of the country, the situation is more bearable that it would have been in the far more multiethnic Greater Lebanon, but Muslims, Jews and Druzes are now officially second-tier citizens, in a twist of history as the Phalangists had protested the Dhimmi Code before.
Since 7 June 2009, the Prime Minister has been Pierre Amine Gemayel, also known as Pierre Jr., Rais (leader) of the Phoenician Phalange Party (pyrist), who was reelected in 2014 and 2019. The grandson of the elder Pierre Gemayel, nephew to his successor Bachir Gemayel, Pierre Junior is considered as the new face of the Phalangist movement, having toned down his pyrist rhetoric and corporatism but still authoritarian in nature. The fragmented opposition has yet to assemble. The first President, elected by the Parliament on 31 December 2019 for a six-year term, is Carlos Ghosn (independent), a former businessman born into the Lebanese diaspora in Brazil, whose family returned in virtue of the Lebanese law of return and to flee the Second Brazilian Civil War.
Social situation, population
One of the densest countries in the world, Lebanon has a rather middle-aged population, allowing the country to enjoy a steady economic growth since the 1980s, that didn’t suffer from the setbacks of the 2000s ; mostly urban, the Lebanese population is still growing, thanks to its high standards of living that attract foreign migrants (from China, India or Africa) but also from a very accomodating law of return, modeled on Armenia’s, destined to its extensive diaspora, even more numerous than its population and disseminated on the five continents. The pyrist Constitution of Lebanon has limited citizenship to majority Christian population (either they are Maronite, Orthodox, Protestant or Catholic), with its Shia, Sunni, Druze or Jewish minorities being officially “permanent residents”, no matter if their families were present for centuries in Mount Lebanon ; due to Christian values being inscribed in the Constitution, prostitution, homosexuality, abortion, blasphemy and euthanasia are all crimes punishable by jail. As such, Lebanon is widely seen as an authoritarian and discriminating regime.
For the citizens, however, Lebanon is a country that has many facilities to offer, from all brand new hospitals, universities, schools and public transportation, coming along with a strong welfare state that ranks Lebanon high in worldwide rankings… as long as you are a Christian or rich. As evidence, the effects of the Wuchang pneumonia were barely felt in Lebanon, that had managed to put in place a very restrictive health policy and a strong vaccination campaign.
Economy
Confined to Mount Lebanon and not Greater Lebanon, the young nation has been traditionally turned towards the Mediterreanean Sea and foreign trade. Lebanon’s proportion of cultivable land being among the highest in the Middle East, Lebanon nevertheless manages to sustain itself, with major products including apples, peaches, oranges and lemons. Industry is limited to small business and importation, making Lebanon a country heavily invested on services, tourism and finance, with Beirut remaining a major financial hub and a renowned destination for start-ups and entrepreneurs, drawn by the climate, the high tech facilities of Beirut and its stability. In spite of the Wuchang pneumonia striking the year of its independence, shutting most of tourism and trade, Lebanon nevertheless managed to remain steady thanks to banking and finance. The financial presence of the diaspora is also noticeable, Lebanese migrants being known for their entrepreneurship (an example being President Carlos Ghosn himself), with many redistributing parts of their wealth in the motherland, thanks to tax reductions. Currently in negotiations to establish a treaty of free trade with the European Community, Lebanon is also arm wrestling with Greece and the Hashemite Empire about oil located between its shores and Cyprus… While looking forward to the ongoing crisis in Mesopotamia, with a way to profit from the chaos that would result.
Military
Even if the process of independence was smooth, the Hashemite Empire was harsh on limiting the future Lebanese Armed Forces, placing strict limitations on military equipment, armored vehicles, warships and aviation. It did nothing to secure the paranoid Phalangists, who remembered the Civil War and knew that, being surrounded by the Hashemites, they would capitulate almost immediately in the event of a war. Even if Lebanon officially proclaims its neutrality, military service is compulsory and the military has spent massively in informatic warfare and is looking forward to Bulgarian and Japanese efforts on battle androids.
Culture
Inhabited for millenia by various civilizations (Phoenicians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, Arabs…), Lebanon has been considered, for most of the 20th Century, as one of the liveliest cultural centers of the Middle East, home to Francophile and Pan-Arabic intellectuals, present in visual arts, architecture, literature (Elias Khoury, Amin Maalouf), music (Fairuz), cinema (Nadine Labaki, Ziad Doueiri), cuisine and sports. Utterly destroyed during the Hashemite Civil War, Beirut has since been reconstructed thanks to the efforts of the locals and the diaspora and is a modern smart city, where cultural and festive life is still thriving, at least hidden from the morals of the state and under the symbol of the Cedar.
Even though Lebanon was a major force in the intellectual conception of Pan-Arabism, Phalangist rhetoric has unsuccessfully tried to portray Lebanon as the cradle of a distinct identity, Phoenicia, directly related to the ancient civilization, having been forcibly assimilated by the Arab invaders. That theory failed to gain traction, due to the wide use of the Arabic language and the full extent of the diaspora, and was abandoned during the days of Bachir Gemayel. In religious matters, the Christian republic has cultivated his proximity with the Maronite Church and engaged in oecumenic discuission, stressing their full communion with the Pope and the worldwide Catholic Church while celebrating its self-governance.
