Once more Lebanon is in crisis, and once more its leaders turn to what they most understand to solve things: ties of blood. Families are a big deal in that part of the world. And as Lebanon has stumbled into financial and political ruin over the past year, it is to family, or more correctly a family, its elites have turned. Former prime minister, and the nation’s most famous Dauphin, Saad Hariri, has been invited back into office. It’s not only the country’s economy that’s going backwards.
Hariri was Prime Minister from December 2016 until he quit in October 2019, following huge popular protests across the country in the wake of an imploding economy. His successor, Hassan Diab, who was brought in to shore up finances, failed miserably. In August, after just a few months in power, he was forced to resign, alongside the entire Lebanese government, when 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored in a Beirut warehouse blew
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