The New Normal
Most days, when I’m not too hungover, I like to go to the corner and get my double espresso from a little hole-in-the-wall run by a couple of Syrian guys.
In the afternoon, the store is usually manned by a younger gentleman, no older than 18, from Raqqa, and we exchange the usual Lebanese pleasantries each day.
“Hi, kefak, meshelhal?”
“Hamdella, w enta?”
“Kel shi tamam.”
He always reminds me of the young guys one may see in the streets of a rural Northern Irish town, with that somewhat apathetic “too cool for school” attitude and a tendency toward dark tracksuits.
He does his business, and I do mine.
This is pretty usual for Beirut, a city in which a sizable number of the population, particularly in Achrafieh (where I live), holds a deep disdain for Syrians, yet those same Syrians provide many of the services necessary to maintain this city.
The day laborers on most construction sites, agricultural workers, and even security guards are Syrians, yet they are currently being targeted in Lebanon at a *somewhat* unprecedented level.
At the same time, the Syrian regime, which had been ostracized by the Arab world since 2011, is now being welcomed back into the club of authoritarians.
Indeed, Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s ruler since 2000, made his way to Jeddah last week to attend the Arab League summit.
It seems that the chapter of the Middle East’s history that started in 2011 has officially come to an end, with a new one beginning in its wake, and I truly hope that, at the very least, it does not bring too much extra suffering for the people of this region.
However, it is difficult to be optimistic.
Lebanon has become a burnt-out dystopia, where foreigners and the wealthy can have their fun in a country with no rules, but the average Lebanese suffers the daily humiliations of severe poverty and personal austerity.
Syria, after 12 years of war, has been destroyed, mainly by the regime, with over half a million Syrians dead and half the pre-war population displaced. Given the regime’s nepotism and clientelism (maybe they’re the same thing in this case) on top of US-led sanctions, the country will likely not recover for generations.
In Palestine, the occupation is only becoming more inhumane as Western governments wag their fingers but do nothing else, continuing their support for a modern-day apartheid state.
Tunisia, after a short-lived experiment in democracy, is reverting back to dictatorship under the rule of Kais Saied.
Iraq, even after a nationalist revolution against foreign interference, is still divided and unstable.
And, more recently, Sudan is seeing the beginnings of a new civil war between the military and a powerful militia.
As one of my neighbors who lived through the Lebanese civil war remarked to me recently: “In this region, when it calms down in one place, it starts up somewhere else”
I generally find that pessimism is the lowest form of analysis, but sometimes there is no other way of viewing the world.
I do believe that, given the context of the recent Chinese-brokered detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the next ten years could be at least relatively war-less, but that’s a pretty low bar.
From my view along this tiny street in Achrafieh, the suffering will likely continue.
For Lebanon, I have increasingly found in recent weeks/months, that talking about “the crisis” is no longer useful or descriptive terminology.
This is Lebanon now.
Pre-crisis Lebanon will continue to be a nostalgic mirage, just like pre-war Lebanon is for the older generations.
It is important to note that that nostalgia, for both pre-crisis and pre-war Lebanon, is most definitely, just a post-privilege mirage.
For the poor, though, of course, life has become harder for them, things have essentially always been like this, it’s just that now more of the population, including those who “used to live good,” are now experiencing it as well.
That lovely expression we heard during the pandemic, “the new normal,” pretty aptly describes Lebanon and, unfortunately, many other countries in the Arab world.
In the context of Lebanon, Syria, and the wider Levant, the Assad regime’s normalization in the context of an Iranian-Saudi detente will have the most immediate effects on the current status quo.
Syria’s normalization will consequently normalize Lebanon’s current policies toward Syrian refugees, namely the recent wave of deportations.
With refugees being one of the key points of discussion between Syria and other Arab countries, Lebanon’s behavior may be tacitly endorsed.
Though there is no denying that a tiny and dysfunctional country like Lebanon surely cannot accommodate such a large influx of people to a satisfactory degree, this does in no way justify deportations that have already led to grave human rights violations.
When Syrians are handed over at the border to the Syrian army, it is likely that many of them will either be immediately detained or forcibly conscripted.
Syria’s internal security apparatus is known for its arbitrary brutality, so one can only imagine what type of horrors to which those deported have been subjected.
In the wider political context, it increasingly seems that one of the unannounced provisions of the Saudi-Iran detente is that Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq are firmly in the Iranian sphere of influence.
Somewhat ironically, I actually think one of the factors that made this decision feasible was the current government in Israel, which includes cabinet members more than happy to spout rhetoric in support of ethnic cleansing.
There was and continues to be pressure on Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel, following the steps of other Gulf countries.
However, the kingdom’s position as one of the main powers in the Arab and Muslim worlds makes it far more difficult to normalize with Israel, especially with a government such as this one.
Though some in Washington believe they can pull out a Saudi-Israeli normalization, that seems pretty unlikely, at least with this current cabinet.
For Iran’s sphere of influence, this means that Iran is freer to flex its military might on the borders, especially given the context that the wars in Syria and Iraq have substantially winded down.
Every political entity, or in this case a political vision, needs a raison d’etre, and Iran’s vision in the Levant and Iraq is underlined by its apparent opposition to Israel.
Tehran has had a hankering for a land corridor to the Mediterranean for a while, and in contemporary times the key to that geopolitical desire lies in Jerusalem.
During the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars, the fight against the rebels in Syria and subsequently the Islamic State gave Iran a good pretext to sink its teeth into those two countries.
Now, that these threats have been largely neutralized, Tehran is cranking up the heat against Israel.
Hezbollah, for instance, held massive military exercises in Lebanon’s south that were intentionally well publicized.
Iran is essentially wagging its nose at Israel, saying that it is now free to do as it pleases, and Israel’s leadership is well aware of how devastating another war would be domestically, given Hezbollah’s military prowess.
Hopefully, war will be avoided, as it is ultimately unlikely that Iran’s goal is to start a regional war.
However, miscalculations happen, and very easily an unstoppable chain of escalation could commence.
Coincidentally, today was liberation day in Lebanon, which celebrates the collapse of Israel’s security zone in the country’s south. Though, it is, of course, liberation from occupation is always worth celebrating, it is hard to be enthusiastic about it given the current situation.
Hezbollah now rules Lebanon, to be fair not exactly with an iron fist like other countries in the region, but it still is only interested in advancing its interests, as opposed to alleviating the country’s current suffering.
Overall, there’s little to be enthusiastic about.
But, I do detest a bad attitude, so maybe at least some things will get better, or at least more manageable.
I certainly hope so.