Country Report: Lebanon
For many reasons, the Republic of Lebanon is a remarkable example of the process of state failure and state collapse. To anyone wandering the streets of Beirut in the 1960s, when the city was still a booming hotspot for international commerce and culture, it probably would have been hard to imagine that the “Paris of the East” would be the capital of a collapsed state in a matter of years. Likewise, to anyone in Beirut during the 1990s, following a fifteen-year period of violence and factionalized chaos, the ruins of Beirut pre-civil war would appear haunting, as though the city’s past distinction was only myth. Since the war’s end in 1990, Lebanon has made great progress towards reconstruction, though it is still far from regaining its past status as the “Switzerland of the East.” It may no longer be entrenched in war, but the state of Lebanon continues to be weakened by the very factors that played significant roles in its decline: a system of government that caters to the state’s factions and extensive involvement in regional conflicts. Read more.