Lebanon's cruel wake up call
Nothing in life is free. Never were truer words ever spoken. For as long as I can remember, my family have benefited from the largess and graciousness of the oil-rich Gulf countries. All the way back to the 1960s, many in my own family have lived and worked in the Gulf. In times of war and peace they have looked roughly South East to our own version of the Promised Land, the land of crude oil and near unlimited funds. These Gulf countries have been good to us; they have been good to many Levantines and to many other poor Arab countries of the human-resource-rich variety. We have all headed lemming-like en masse towards the promise of gainful employment, stability, a good life and we looked with hope to the day of our return to our homelands to live out a comfortable retirement. Now we come to the "nothing in life is free" part. Lebanon, in particular, has built an economy post civil war almost entirely dependent on expatriate remittances, a considerable part of these ...