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 remittances come from the Gulf countries. This is not counting the many, many investments that citizens of these Gulf countries have made in Lebanon and not counting the many Gulf citizens that used to visit Lebanon through out the year to enjoy our summers and our winters, to enjoy our liberal culture and our many entertainment options. Today, these countries are pressuring the Lebanese government to settle the bill, to make an unthinkable choice or else, or so it appears, for whatever reason, to take a definite position in the regional crisis, that multi-faceted conflict between the Arab Gulf countries and Iran. It’s a "you are either with us or against us" moment. We are being told to make a choice, a choice we cannot make simply because we cannot afford to be with or against any of the two sides to this conflict.

Lebanon is complicated. Yes, our Arab identity is enshrined in law, in the preamble to our Constitution to be exact. But we are much more, our identity is complex, it cannot be just one thing or another. Our multi-layered national identity is the consequence of our history; we have always been a safe haven for persecuted minorities, a mountain fortress isolated geographically from its turbulent surroundings.

We cannot deny any part of this complex identity, as that would mean denying one or more groups of Lebanese citizens their citizenship rights. We can no more ostracise Hezbollah and its sizeable following from political life than we can ostracise an entire sect or ethno-linguistic group in Lebanon from the same. And yet, that is what we are being asked to do.

The pressure tactics employed by some Gulf Arab countries are essentially asking the Lebanese to make a choice that would see us abandon a group of Lebanese who are wedded to particular political views vis-à-vis the regional crisis, views that Gulf countries find objectionable. While I can understand that Gulf countries might have found offence in the criticisms they have endured from this group, their recent actions aimed at Lebanon are tantamount to collective punishment. Demanding the Lebanese State take a clear position on certain divisive issues vis-à-vis Hezbollah and Iran is tantamount to putting a gun to all our heads and asking us to plunge our country in to civil war or lose our meal ticket.

I have my doubts that this pressure tactic was devised solely by the political machinery of these Gulf countries, rather I sense the handiwork of Hezbollah's Lebanese opponents in the new tactic being employed by these countries. If I were Sherlock Holmes I could see a connection between this new Gulf policy towards Lebanon and Saad Hariri's return to Lebanon more buoyant and loquacious than he was when he first left for his voluntary exile.

Regardless of who is behind the dramatic changes in these Gulf countries' positions towards Lebanon, starting with revoking the USD 4 billion grant to support our armed forces, the result has been to destabilise Lebanon and threaten the exceptionally strong ties our country has had with the Gulf countries since independence. A relationship once wrecked thus is hard to repair.

However, the Lebanese have been remiss in their duty to themselves, the duty of vigilance and preparedness. We are not prepared to lose our friendship with the Gulf countries; we are not prepared for the pulling of Gulf funds from our banks, the pulling of Gulf investments from Lebanon and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese breadwinners from the Gulf. If that scenario should play out in full it would be an unmitigated disaster for us, comparable only to the famine that followed the end of World War I in 1918, a famine that continues to define us to this day as a country, a country with more of its children residing abroad than at home.

Lebanon is on its knees, yes. Lebanon appears to be checkmated, true. But our national character being what it is, by which I refer to the lethal stubbornness and aggressiveness we display while driving, I fear we would chose death to a life on our knees. All I can say is that we have some tough times ahead, so, batten down the hatches, a storm is coming and it's like nothing we have seen before.

The fact is we are all addicts; we are addicted to Gulf money, which makes us slaves to our drug of choice: easy money. Instead of building, or rather rebuilding, a real homegrown economy after our civil war, doing the hard work ourselves to repair our infrastructure, to fix our bruised and battered society, we shipped off our most promising, youngest and brightest citizens to work in the Gulf.

Some will jump in about now to list all the good things Gulf countries have done for us, and these are many, no doubt, and we should be duly grateful, many of us rightly are. But, the problem is not with the Gulf countries, the problem is with us, we made a wrong turn somewhere and we need to find our way back to dignity and self-respect. The best way to do that is to work together again, to trust one another again, to rebuild all that has been destroyed together and rely on each other and on no one else.