What happens when a state fails

‘You can still smell it in the wind,’ says Maria. She points out from the neon-lit bar along Beirut’s shorefront to the dark port area just across the road, where tangled metal and broken concrete jut out into the sky.

Maria had been working from home on August 4, 2020, when 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate left to rot in a warehouse on the harbour suddenly detonated, killing more than 200 people and levelling much of the Lebanese capital. Her usual daily drive back from her job as a reporter on a local newspaper – since shuttered due to lack of funding – took her along the seafront. Had she gone into the office that day, she’s convinced she would have died.

‘It’s a burning smell – like plastic. One day we’ll find out that it has been poisoning everyone here this whole time, giving us all cancer.