Middle East is quite strange, a geography that is hard to be understood. Crisis of a country on one end of this geography could be the way out of crisis of another country on another end!
The last example of this complicated, involved web of relations has become Lebanon.
As already known, in Lebanon, there has been a heavy economic and political crisis for some time. Besides, there is a nickname for Lebanon as the Country of Crises, in addition to the pearl of the Middle East, a miniature of the Middle East.
This is not the first time that Lebanon remains without a government. Nevertheless, it is a country that was without a president for 27 months. However, this time, the situation is different. It has been a while that the crisis could be put off by temporary solutions. As it happened in earlier crises, those countries, which had interfered through their close cooperative groups/movements, have no intensions to mitigate the anxiety by injecting hot money.
Unemployment, hyperinflation, not being able to prevent the scary rise of US dollar have become more chronicle because of the dysfunctionality of political figures trying to justify themselves by blaming each other in the old way in front of cameras.
Besides, it is known that, having had no industry, no agriculture worthy of mentioning, no public services with a proven known standards; even no institutional state structure, Lebanon has been meeting all its needs through imports. In contrast with this, it has been a while that, tourism, services sector and quite dubious banking system, the backbone of the country’s economy has been paralysed.
In Lebanon where even the Central Bank has an oversized file of corruption claims, there is no cash even to procure the basic needs!
Fuel, for example. The generators of hospitals do not operate, the relatives of the patients expect them to pass away in fate before the fuel runs out. Ambulances, bakeries, military vehicles do not operate. Lebanon is a country that even those having money could not buy or find what they want.
Those who have the opportunity and the citizenship of another country have already left the country after the port explosion that happened last year. Specially young, qualified section continues to leave in every way they can think of like via bursaries, language training, employment. It is not individual leave but in masses...
Despite any efforts in forming a government, the political blocks and the known individuals in Lebanon are trying to find support from the countries they have close connections with. For instance, with Saad Hariri’s attempts, France and Macron tried hard to find some donations of hot money. Even various countries also announced that they provided some commitments to give money but under a few conditions: A government is to be established in Lebanon, projects are to be prepared on which the money is to be spent, and the expenditure process is to be transparent. The conditions are very hard to realise for Lebanon, a country at the top of the list of countries where corruption is the happiest.
In short, Hezbollah announced that it could procure fuel from Iran in such a situation where fuel crisis reached horrible levels, even mass transportation vehicles stopped operating, the black-market has become no secret/concealed way anymore.
It is not a solution or not a cash support at considerable amounts to take the country out of the crisis, but it can be said that having a way to procure fuel from a country provided some partial comfort in such process when there have remained not even an amount in Central Bank’s reserve to be used as a collateral set aside for the whole payment to purchase fuel.
The US Embassy in Beirut interfered right away and said “We enforce sanctions.” This was followed by announcements coming from Saudi and those close to western block “Hezbollah is selling out the country to Iran once more.” Hezbollah responded to these announcements: “Let the others do the same as well, we will be glad.” It emphasized that the ally of the block, opposing to Hezbollah to purchase fuel from Iran, was the world oil giant Saudi Arabia.
Ever since Hezbollah announced “Iran will help with fuel,” it has been debated whether or not the ships carrying the fuel would be hit by US or Israel in the open seas. Meanwhile, we watch the Lebanese fighting for scarce produce such as baby food and rice in the supermarkets while ambulances with empty thanks in Lebanon are towed to parking lots and the hospitals announce that they will have to shut down the intensive care units.
In order to ease the tensions about whether or not the ships are hit, a lesser evil solution is found. The ships are to go to Syria, not directly to Lebanon, to Hezbollah. Besides, after the Beirut port explosion, Lebanon had started utilizing the ports of other smaller cities for sea transportation, however, run against serious problems for larger ships to dock.
Finally, the first ship reached Syria without any issues or accidents, others are on their way.
Owing to the phrase at the beginning that a country’s crisis could become an opportunity for another, a quite sizable and high level Lebanese committee arrived in Damascus after the first ship reached Syria.
It is known that everybody has already been worn out by the hydro interruptions reaching up to 20 hours a day due to fuel and cash crisis in Lebanon.
As far as the public announcements, Lebanon committee gets ready to have hydro transferred from Jordan through Syria. Normally, Syria, being under the US embargo, should not be a country of transferring hydro, but every country with presence in Lebanon is really afraid of a possible social explosion while the crisis in Lebanon is so out of control.
The US side announced that it would not interfere in Lebanon’s getting hydro from Jordan through Syria. Some extereme optimists took this announcement as “expectations of the US being flexible on the ambargo over Syria under Biden’s administration,” however it is too early for such assessment.
But it is certain that that Syria tries to turn the crisis in Lebanon around into an opportunity for itself.
So, what would Syria want from Lebanon for being a layover country for transferring hydro and fuel?
Syria, for being so many years under embargo, used to do all bank transactions, its exports, and importing its needs and required raw materials through Lebanon. Once the US embargo got so heavy, and started to include the Syrian accounts in Lebanon, partnered companies and business circles, Syria had taken a very heavy hit. Having its billions of dollars in Lebanese banks frozen, Syria, let alone tidying up its industry, it couldn’t even supply any material to renovate its hydro and water lines.
The crisis in Lebanon is known to all. Therefore, it is impossible for Syria to request the release of its money in Lebanese banks. Besides, it is not left alone up to Lebanon to decide to release that money.
However, Syria might want to ask Lebanon for some exceptions for the companies and individuals who used to do business with them, and this could be a tremendous gain for Syria.
Apart from this, Syria caught a very effective excuse to openly start direct communication with the countries on the other side of this relationship, such as Jordan and Egypt, even if their connections had not been broken completely during the war period.
One additional thing is also that there is the matter of an Arab Pipe Line from Egypt to Syria and including Jordan and Lebanon. When its implementation had been on before the uprising had started, this project had targeted the transportation of Egyptian gas to Syria, even to Europe over Turkey.
After and at the Syrian visit of the Lebanese committee, neither an announcement nor any signal came out from the two countries, regarding the reinitiating of this project. However, it is known that Jordan, which is to send hydro to Lebanon, is very eager for the reinitiating of the project. Of course, all this does not happen once Egypt says yes, or because of Jordan’s excitement, or Syria’s getting all ready for it. It is dependent on the politics of the Biden period US on the region in general, and on Lebanon and Syria in particular, Iran-US relations, the new equations created by the normalization processes of the regional countries with Israel, and many other things.
The only thing that can be said is that the crises also create as many new negotiation areas as the energy and trade networks do in the region...
Hediye Levent
Yusuf Karadaş
Yücel Özdemir