Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits

Special Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits
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A family fleeing Lebanon's economic crisis arrives at Cyprus' Larnaca International Airport in this Sept. 2, 2021 photo. (AFP file)
Special Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits
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A general strike by public transport and workers unions early this year over Lebanon's economic crisis has emptied roads in Beirut and elsewhere. (AFP)
Special Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits
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The increasing difficulties faces by families in Lebanon has forced many to seek better life abroad. (AFP)
Special Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits
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The increasing difficulties faces by families in Lebanon has forced many to seek better life abroad. (AFP)
Special Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits
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The increasing difficulties faces by families in Lebanon has forced many to seek better life abroad. (AFP)
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Updated 12 June 2022

Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits

Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits
  • Economists say phenomenon of educated people moving abroad en masse will make recovery much harder
  • Since 2019, Lebanon has been beset with an economic crisis, COVID-19 pandemic and political paralysis

DUBAI: When Lebanese cardiologist Walid Alami, 59, was 19 years old he worked as a volunteer in an emergency operating room and helped dozens of people who were wounded during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

After a massive explosion tore through Beirut’s port on Aug. 4, 2020, he once again found himself in the thick of life-saving emergency action.

However, as has been the case for thousands of middle-class Lebanese professionals, the nation’s prolonged, overlapping crises eventually proved too much to endure, forcing him and his family to move abroad in search of safety and economic security.

Alami gave up a lucrative cardiology practice in the US and returned to Beirut in 2012 so that he could be closer to his extended family and his children could experience the nation of their roots.




Dr. Walid Alami. (Supplied)

“I wanted my children to grow up in Lebanon and know their motherland,” he told Arab News. “My hope was that I would replicate my American practice there, improve the system, innovate and take care of patients like I did in the US.

“But to my disappointment, things professionally didn’t go as planned because our system is corrupt, including the medical system.”

Undeterred, Alami persisted, hoping that the country’s fortunes would eventually turn around. But poor governance, institutional decay and the nation’s economic collapse soon started to take a toll on his family’s finances.

“I started losing money because of the banking system, the corruption and a decline in income,” he said. “Financially and professionally, I was doing worse than ever.”

By 2021, Alami decided enough was enough. He once again packed his bags and returned to the US to reunite with his family there. He had much less money in his pockets and more painful memories than a decade earlier.

The education of his two children was also affected by Lebanon’s economic collapse. He had trouble paying the university tuition fees for his daughter Noor, 21, who was studying at NYU in New York. Meanwhile, Jad, 18, was sent to a boarding school in the aftermath of the devastating port blast.

“It was my dream that they would have graduated from the American University in Beirut but that didn’t happen,” Alami said.

“In the last few years, I haven’t been able to generate enough cash for a small portion of my daughter’s living expenses. I found myself in a position where I could not afford to support my children’s education costs from Beirut, especially with the devaluation of the currency and the fact that our funds were seized.”




A Lebanese activist displays fake banknotes called "Lollars", in front of a mock ATM, during a stunt to denounce the high-level of corruption that has wrecked the country. (AFP)

Alami found himself in the position of having to borrow money from his family to help pay for his children’s education.

“I had no choice but to leave. And so, in 2021, I decided to return to the US,” he said. “I feel like my dreams were defeated. Going back to Lebanon, I was hoping to pay back my country of origin, emulate things on a professional and social level.”

Although Alami and his family were able to transition back to life in the US, the events of the past decade continue to cast a dark shadow.

“I am almost 60 years old and I am now finding myself starting all over again as a cardiologist,” he said. “But I have to do what I have to do to support my family.”

Alami’s story is a familiar one in Lebanon, as the nation of about 6.7 million people experiences one of the biggest waves of emigration in its history.

Since 2019, the country has been in the grip of its worst-ever financial crisis, compounded by the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic and protracted political paralysis.




Beirut's port blast of Aug. 4, 2021, which left 218 dead and 7,000 injured, was the last straw for many Lebanese. (AFP)

For many Lebanese, the final straw was the Beirut port explosion, in which at least 218 people were killed and 7,000 injured. It caused $15 billion in property damage, and left an estimated 300,000 people homeless.

Almost two years later, the country faces a worsening food crisis as the war in Ukraine sends the already high prices of staple foods skyrocketing.

According to the World Bank, Lebanon’s nominal gross domestic product fell from close to $52 billion in 2019 to $21.8 billion in 2021, a 58.1 percent contraction. Unless reforms are enacted soon, real GDP is projected to fall by 6.5 percent this year.

In May, the black-market value of the Lebanese pound fell to an all-time low of 35,600 against the US dollar. According to the UN, the financial crisis has plunged 82 percent of the population below the poverty line since late 2019.

Parliamentary elections in May offered a glimmer of hope that things might be changing. The Lebanese Forces party emerged as the largest Christian party for the first time, while the Hezbollah bloc lost its majority. However, it is not yet clear whether Hezbollah’s opponents will be able to form a cohesive and stable coalition capable of implementing administrative and economic reforms.

These concurrent uncertainties have sent thousands of young Lebanese abroad in search of security and opportunity, including many of the country’s top medical professionals and educators.

According to a report issued in February 2022 by Information International, the number of emigrants soared from 17,721 in 2020 to 79,134 in 2021 — its highest rate in five years. The Beirut-based research center identified the emigration rate as “the highest seen by Lebanon in five years.”

A sharp increase in emigration was also recorded between mid-December 2018 and mid-December 2019, with 66,800 Lebanese emigrating, compared with 33,841 during the same period in 2018.

Historically, many Lebanese chose to relocate to Western Europe, the US, Australia and the Arab Gulf states. More recently they also have been heading to Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Serbia and even Iraq.

According to Iraqi authorities, more than 20,000 people from Lebanon arrived between June 2021 and February 2022, not counting pilgrims visiting the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

FASTFACTS

Lebanon’s nominal GDP fell from $52bn in 2019 to $21.8bn 2021 (World Bank).

The Lebanese pound’s black-market value fell to 35,600 against the US dollar in May.

“The movement (of people) has recently increased,” Ali Habhab, Lebanon’s ambassador to Iraq, told the Agence France-Presse news agency. He said the health sector in particular has been affected by the influx, with “dozens of Lebanese doctors who offer their services” to Iraqi hospitals.

The UAE continues to be a favored destination for Lebanese with the financial means to relocate. Marianna Wehbe, 42, who runs a luxury PR firm, moved to Dubai in August 2021 to be with her daughter, Sophie, 17, who left Lebanon after the Beirut blast.

“Even during the (2019) revolution, the explosion and crisis, we all found ways to continue to operate and work with clients abroad,” Wehbe told Arab News.

“Most of those who left did so to be with their families and to have a safe and stable environment for their children. My daughter needed a place to study in safety and to keep her sanity. Beirut, with the electricity and internet cuts, was not that anymore. Her formative years are ahead of her.”




Paintings that represent migrating Lebanese youths are seen along a street in Beirut's Hamra district. (AFP file photo)

She said that, inevitably, some among this new generation of emigrants will begin to feel homesick after a time and, filled with a renewed sense of hope, may decide to go back.

“Lebanon has always been that way: You leave and then you come back,” said Wehbe. “You give up and then you have hope because we all want to go back home. So, many families are moving back in the hope that things are (getting) better.”

However, the American University of Beirut’s Crisis Observatory said in August 2021 that the current loss of talent will be difficult for Lebanon to overcome because it is the nation’s youth who are leaving.




Lebanon's famous American University has lost its luster as a result of the country's unmitigated economic crisis. (AFP file photo)

According to the results of an Arab Youth Opinion Survey published in 2020, about 77 percent of respondents in Lebanon said that they were thinking about emigrating — the highest percentage in any Arab country that year.

It is easy to see why so many young Lebanese would be looking for an exit strategy. According to the World Bank, an estimated one in five people have lost their jobs since October 2019, and 61 percent of companies have reduced permanent staff by an average of 43 percent.

“The exodus of the middle class in Lebanon is wiping out the country,” Alami told Arab News from his self-imposed exile in the US.




The increasing difficulties faces by families in Lebanon has forced many to seek better life abroad. (AFP)

“A nation is built on the middle class, and with all the engineers, bankers, lawyers and middle-class professionals leaving Lebanon, I think we will see the whole foundation crumble. It will be very hard to rebuild with the current situation.”

The World Health Organization estimated in September 2021 that more than nearly 40 percent of Lebanon’s doctors and nurses have left the country since October 2019.

“More than 35 percent of health professionals have left for the Gulf, Europe or the Americas to continue their careers,” said Alami.

“I don’t see myself going back in the next 10 years, from a professional standpoint, because there is no magic wand that is going to change things in Lebanon in the next decade. I just need to secure my children’s future now.”

 


Benjamin Netanyah: Israel will not revive settlements evacuated in 2005

Benjamin Netanyah: Israel will not revive settlements evacuated in 2005
Updated 14 sec ago

Benjamin Netanyah: Israel will not revive settlements evacuated in 2005

Benjamin Netanyah: Israel will not revive settlements evacuated in 2005
  • Lawmakers earlier voted to annul part of a law banning Israelis from living in areas of the occupied West Bank the government evacuated in 2005
JERUSALEM: Israel has “no intention” of reviving West Bank settlements evacuated nearly two decades ago, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday, after a parliamentary vote sparked US ire.
Lawmakers voted Tuesday to annul part of a law banning Israelis from living in areas of the occupied West Bank the government evacuated in 2005.
That year Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip and removed Jewish settlers from the coastal territory, as well as from four settlements in the northern West Bank.
Netanyahu’s office said the parliamentary vote scraps “a discriminatory and humiliating law, that prohibited Jews from living in areas in northern Samaria, which is part of our historic homeland,” using the biblical name for the northern West Bank.
“Having said that, the government has no intention of establishing new communities in these areas,” the statement added.
Netanyahu returned to power in December and vowed to expand settlements across the West Bank, which are deemed illegal under international law.
His assertion that the government will not formally allow settlers to return to the four sites evacuated in 2005 comes after Washington said it was “extremely troubled” by the parliamentary vote.
“The legislative changes announced today are particularly provocative,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters Tuesday.
Patel said the move was in “clear contradiction” of promises made by prime minister Ariel Sharon to US president George W. Bush, as well as assurances given just two days ago by the Netanyahu administration.
The decision by lawmakers was heralded by Israel’s settler movement which has made one of the sites — Homesh — a symbol of their cause.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a far-right settler, tweeted that it marked a step toward regularizing the Israeli presence at Homesh.
A small group of activists returned to the site in 2009 and set up a Jewish seminary, which was cleared repeatedly by Israeli troops before the military eventually allowed them to stay.

Tear gas, clashes as Lebanon protesters try to storm govt HQ

Tear gas, clashes as Lebanon protesters try to storm govt HQ
Updated 35 sec ago

Tear gas, clashes as Lebanon protesters try to storm govt HQ

Tear gas, clashes as Lebanon protesters try to storm govt HQ
BEIRUT: Lebanese security forces fired tear gas on Wednesday to disperse hundreds of protesters, mainly retired soldiers, who tried to break through the fence leading to the government headquarters in downtown Beirut.
The violence came amid widespread anger over the harsh economic conditions in the country, where mismanagement by the ruling class has been rampant for years, preceding the economic meltdown that started in late 2019.
The retired soldiers demanding better pay were clashing with riot police and troops. Several people suffered breathing problems from the tear gas. The protesters hurled stones at the officers protecting the government headquarters and repeatedly tried to break through the fence.
The Lebanese pound hit a new low on Tuesday, selling for more than 143,000 pounds to the dollar before making some gains. The pound has lost more than 96 percent of its value over the past three years.
“My monthly salary is $40. How can I survive,” screamed a retired army officer.
Lebanon, a small Mediterranean nation of 6 million people, is in the grips of the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history, rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by a political class that has ruled the country since the end of the 1975-90 civil war.
The political class has also resisted the implementation of reforms demanded by the international community. Since the economic meltdown began, three-quarters of the population, which includes 1 million Syrian refugees, now lives in poverty and inflation is soaring.
Lebanon has also stalled on reforms agreed to with the International Monetary Fund to enable access to $3 billion in a bailout package and unlock funds in development aid to make the economy viable again.

Building collapse in Qatar’s capital kills 1, search ongoing

Building collapse in Qatar’s capital kills 1, search ongoing
Updated 25 min 24 sec ago

Building collapse in Qatar’s capital kills 1, search ongoing

Building collapse in Qatar’s capital kills 1, search ongoing

DOHA: A building collapsed Wednesday in Qatar’s capital, killing at least one person as searchers clawed through the rubble to check for survivors, authorities said.
Qatar’s Interior Ministry described the building as a four-story structure in Doha’s Bin Durham neighborhood. It said rescuers found seven survivors, while the one person killed had been inside the building at the time of the collapse.
Authorities offered no immediate explanation for the building’s collapse. Online video showed car alarms sounding after the collapse, with one part of the building falling into another nearby.
Civil defense and police surrounded the site after the 8 a.m. collapse, with multiple ambulances and an excavator at the scene. Residents were asked to evacuate for their safety.
Qatar hosted the FIFA World Cup last year.


Pro-Kurdish party gives tacit support to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rival in Turkey polls

Pro-Kurdish party gives tacit support to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rival in Turkey polls
Updated 22 March 2023

Pro-Kurdish party gives tacit support to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rival in Turkey polls

Pro-Kurdish party gives tacit support to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rival in Turkey polls
  • Peoples’ Democratic Party decision reduces the possibility of a damaging split of the anti-Erdogan vote
  • Boosts the chances of the opposition alliance’s joint candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu

ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s main pro-Kurdish party said Wednesday it would not field a presidential candidate in May elections, giving tacit support to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rival in the crucial vote.
The decision by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) reduces the possibility of a damaging split of the anti-Erdogan vote, boosting the chances of the opposition alliance’s joint candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Winning more than 10 percent of the vote in the past three national elections, the HDP was widely seen as a kingmaker in the tightly contested race.
“We will not field a candidate in the presidential elections,” Pervin Buldan, the party co-chairwoman, told reporters.
“We will fulfil our historic responsibility to end one-man rule in the coming elections,” she said, condemning Erdogan’s consolidation of power over his two decades as prime minister and president.
The HDP’s decision strips Erdogan of a key voting bloc in what is widely seen as Turkiye’s most important election of its post-Ottoman history.
Erdogan enjoyed some support from Kurdish voters earlier in his rule.
His government once worked with HDP politicians in an effort to put an end to a decades-long fight by Kurdish insurgents for an independent state that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
But he now accuses the HDP — parliament’s third largest party — of being the political wing of the PKK militants.
The leftist party denies the charges and says it is being singled out for its fierce criticism of the government’s social and economic policies.
Erdogan and his far-right allies in parliament are now trying to dissolve the HDP over its alleged terror ties.
Turkiye’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday rejected the HDP’s request to delay the outcome of the case until after the May 14 election.
The HDP was excluded from a six-party opposition alliance that has rallied around Kilicdaroglu’s candidacy.
The anti-Erdogan alliance includes staunchly nationalist parties that refuse to work with the HDP.
Meeting with HDP leaders on Monday, Kilicdaroglu promised to remove restrictions on the Kurdish language and address other Kurdish concerns.


Kurds remain biggest winners from US-led invasion of Iraq

Kurds remain biggest winners from US-led invasion of Iraq
Updated 22 March 2023

Kurds remain biggest winners from US-led invasion of Iraq

Kurds remain biggest winners from US-led invasion of Iraq
  • Irbil, the seat of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, was once a backwater provincial capital
  • That rapidly changed after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein

IRBIL, Iraq: Complexes of McMansions, fast food restaurants, real estate offices and half-constructed high-rises line wide highways in Irbil, the seat of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.
Many members of the political and business elite live in a suburban gated community dubbed the American Village, where homes sell for as much as $5 million, with lush gardens consuming more than a million liters of water a day in the summer.
The visible opulence is a far cry from 20 years ago. Back then, Irbil was a backwater provincial capital without even an airport.
That rapidly changed after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein. Analysts say that Iraqi Kurds – and particularly the Kurdish political class – were the biggest beneficiaries in a conflict that had few winners.
That’s despite the fact that for ordinary Kurds, the benefits of the new order have been tempered by corruption and power struggles between the two major Kurdish parties and between Irbil and Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.
In the wake of the invasion, much of Iraq fell into chaos, as occupying American forces fought an insurgency and as multiple political and sectarian communities vied to fill the power vacuum left in Baghdad. But the Kurds, seen as staunch allies of the Americans, strengthened their political position and courted foreign investments.
Irbil quickly grew into an oil-fueled boom town. Two years later, in 2005, the city opened a new commercial airport, constructed with Turkish funds, and followed a few years after that by an expanded international airport.
Traditionally, the “Kurdish narrative is one of victimhood and one of grievances,” said Bilal Wahab, a fellow at the Washington Institute think tank. But in Iraq since 2003, “that is not the Kurdish story. The story is one of power and empowerment.”
With the Ottoman Empire’s collapse after World War I, the Kurds were promised an independent homeland in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. But the treaty was never ratified, and “Kurdistan” was carved up. Since then, there have been Kurdish rebellions in Iran, Iraq and Turkey, while in Syria, Kurds have clashed with Turkish-backed forces.
In Iraq, the Kurdish region won de facto self-rule in 1991, when the United States imposed a no-fly zone over it in response to Saddam’s brutal repression of Kurdish uprisings.
“We had built our own institutions, the parliament, the government,” said Hoshyar Zebari, a top official with the Kurdistan Democratic Party who served as foreign minister in Iraq’s first post-Saddam government. “Also, we had our own civil war. But we overcame that,” he said, referring to fighting between rival Kurdish factions in the mid-1990s.
Speaking in an interview at his palatial home in Masif, a former resort town in the mountains above Irbil that is now home to much of the KDP leadership, Zabari added, “The regime change in Baghdad has brought a lot of benefits to this region.”
Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid, from the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, also gave a glowing assessment of the post-2003 developments. The Kurds, he said, had aimed for “a democratic Iraq, and at the same time some sort of … self-determination for the Kurdish people.”
With the US overthrow of Saddam, he said, “We achieved that ... We became a strong group in Baghdad.”
The post-invasion constitution codified the Kurdish region’s semi-independent status, while an informal power-sharing arrangement now stipulates that Iraq’s president is always a Kurd, the prime minister a Shiite and the parliament speaker a Sunni.
But even in the Kurdish region, the legacy of the invasion is complicated. The two major Kurdish parties have jockeyed for power, while Irbil and Baghdad have been at odds over territory and the sharing of oil revenues.
Meanwhile, Arabs in the Kurdish region and minorities, including the Turkmen and Yazidis, feel sidelined in the new order, as do Kurds without ties to one of the two key parties that serve as gatekeepers to opportunities in the Kurdish region.
As the economic boom has stagnated in recent years, due to both domestic issues and global economic trends, an increasing number of Kurdish youths are leaving the country in search of better opportunities. According to the International Labor Organization, 19.2 percent of men and 38 percent of women aged 15-24 were unemployed and out of school in Irbil province in 2021.
Wahab said Irbil’s post-2003 economic success has also been qualified by widespread waste and patronage in the public sector.
“The corruption in the system is really undermining the potential,” he said.
In Kirkuk, an oil-rich city inhabited by a mixed population of Kurds, Turkmen and Sunni Arabs where Baghdad and Irbil have vied for control, Kahtan Vendavi, local head of the Iraqi Turkmen Front party, complained that the American forces’ “support was very clear for the Kurdish parties” after the 2003 invasion.
Turkmen are the third largest ethnic group in Iraq, with an estimated 3 million people, but hold no high government positions and only a handful of parliamentary seats.
In Kirkuk, the Americans “appointed a governor of Kurdish nationality to manage the province. Important departments and security agencies were handed over to Kurdish parties,” Vendavi said.
Some Kurdish groups also lost out in the post-2003 order, which consolidated the power of the two major parties.
Ali Bapir, head of the Kurdistan Justice Group, a Kurdish Islamist party, said the two ruling parties “treat people who do not belong to (them) as third- and fourth-class citizens.”
Bapir has other reasons to resent the US incursion. Although he had fought against the rule of Saddam’s Baath Party, the US forces who arrived in 2003 accused him and his party of ties to extremist groups. Soon after the invasion, the US bombed his party’s compound and then arrested Bapir and imprisoned him for two years.
Kurds not involved in the political sphere have other, mainly economic, concerns.
Picnicking with her mother and sister and a pair of friends at the sprawling Sami Abdul Rahman Park, built on what was once a military base under Saddam, 40-year-old Tara Chalabi acknowledged that the “security and safety situation is excellent here.”
But she ticked off a list of other grievances, including high unemployment, the end of subsidies from the regional government for heating fuel and frequent delays and cuts in the salaries of public employees like her.
“Now there is uncertainty if they will pay this month,” she said.
Nearby, a group of university students said they are hoping to emigrate.
“Working hard, before, was enough for you to succeed in life,” said a 22-year-old who gave only her first name, Gala. “If you studied well and you got good grades … you would have a good opportunity, a good job. But now it’s very different. You must have connections.”
In 2021, hundreds of Iraqi Kurds rushed to Belarus in hopes of crossing into Poland or other neighboring EU countries. Belarus at the time was readily handing out tourist visas in an apparent attempt to pressure the European Union by creating a wave of migrants.
Those who went, Wahab said, were from the middle class, able to afford plane tickets and smuggler fees.
“To me, it’s a sign that it’s not about poverty,” he said. “It’s basically about the younger generation of Kurds who don’t really see a future for themselves in this region anymore.”