Tuesday’s deadly explosion couldn’t have come at a worse time for Lebanon, which is also struggling with high inflation, the collapse of its currency and a new wave of coronavirus infections.
Tag: lebanon
Welcome to Friday, where the European flood death toll tops 100, Lebanon’s prime minister steps down and a teenager gets a seat on Jeff Bezos’ trip to space. We also get a look from Kommersant on the rising hopes of the reformist revolution in the post-Soviet state of Moldova. • Germany death toll rises to […]
In Arab countries, the death of George Floyd has reignited the debate about racism against Blacks, a discrimination that worsens as it descends the social ladder.
BEIRUT — Located in the heart of Beirut’s vibrant Hamra Street, an area that served as a hub for intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s, Metro al-Madina is an independent theater company and cabaret. The theater was founded in 2012 by Hisham Jaber & co. from the rubble of an abandoned theater with aspirations of […]
A determined architect continues to pursue her dream of opening a civil war museum in Beirut, where people are still rattled by the bloody events of the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990.
BEIRUT — Lebanon appears to be mobilizing for the mass return of Syrian refugees, disregarding warnings that conditions in their home country are not conducive to voluntary returns in safety and dignity. Last week, ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary elections, Lebanese President Michel Aoun asked the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to help secure the return of refugees. After the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) stated that it was not involved in last month’s return of around 500 Syrians from Lebanon due to conditions in Syria, the UNHCR’s representative to Lebanon, Mireille Girard, was summoned by the foreign ministry […]
-Analysis- BEIRUT — Since its independence in 1943, Lebanon has been exposed to the vicissitudes of the Middle East’s complicated geopolitics, from the creation of Israel, which led to a massive influx of Palestinian refugees on Lebanese soil, to the recent war in Syria, not to mention Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. Since 2005 and […]
-Analysis- Lebanon can be seen as a microcosm for the entire Middle East: intractable sectarian conflict, economic potential, terrorist threats and a labyrinthine web of competing national interests. These days, it seems, the small nation of just over six million inhabitants risks again becoming the live theater for the region to play out its many […]
The Lebanese ‘Party of Hope’ calls for the immediate expulsion of more than one million Syrian refugees.
In Lebanon, the country with the highest number of refugees per capita in the world, a cemetery for Syrian refugees is running out of burial plots.
ALEY — Mohammad left his home on the outskirts of Damascus in 2013, gripped with a mix of guilt and anxiety. Though he was fleeing violence that is still ongoing in his hometown of Jobar, the 39-year-old father of four worried about how he would provide for his family. He had lived his whole life in the historic neighborhood that hems the walls of old Damascus, where he owned a thriving business — a workshop that pressed aluminum. But when the conflict broke out in 2011, he watched his enterprise shutter and his community unravel. Two years into the war, […]
A project in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second biggest city gives women from the rival Alawite and Sunni communities a chance to work together.
Experiments among Syrian refugees in Lebanon are testing the best way to help those in need.
BEKAA — It’s a typical wine tasting at the Château Marsyas in the beautiful Bekaa region of Lebanon. We are trying a French Cabernet after tasting a Merlot and Shiraz. Bottles and glasses are scattered on a wooden table in the heart of the winery, which houses a dozen stainless steel vats and hundreds of […]
Many locals in Lebanon’s capital are firm Hezbollah and Assad loyalists, seeing the Islamist militia that supports the Syrian regime and fights ISIS on the ground as their ultimate protector against the civil war raging across the border.
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February 16
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On This Day – November 22
Two suicide bombings claimed by ISIS killed 43 people and at least 239 others Thursday evening in the Lebanese capital’s southern neighborhood of Bourj el-Barajneh, a busy commercial and residential and stronghold of Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah. The Lebanese daily L’Orient-Le Jour called the attack “unacceptable” on its front page Friday, which was decreed a […]
BEIRUT — An Italian diplomat once said that “the darkest corners of a crisis can be the most illuminating in understanding geopolitical dynamics.” This is where Lebanon finds itself: One of the few Middle Eastern countries that is not at war, yet one suffering in the trenches nonetheless. These days Lebanon is far from the […]
When the landfill servicing Beirut closed, so did the garbage collection. Now the suburbs have been left quite literally holding the bag, and government solutions aren’t coming.
Al-Akhbar, Oct. 27, 2015 “His Royal Drugs,” reads Tuesday’s front page of Lebanese Arabic-language daily Al-Akhbar, one day after a Saudi prince and four others were arrested at the Beirut airport after authorities found more than two tons of illegal drugs on a Saudi-bound private jet. Prince Abdel Mohsen Bin Walid Bin Abdulaziz was among […]
The UN estimates that at least 45,000 Palestinians who were already living as refugees in Syria have arrived in Lebanon since the Syrian civil war began.
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Russian Air Strikes Shake Up Syrian Conflict
Al-Akhbar, Oct. 1, 2015 “Toward a new Middle East,” reads the front page of the Thursday edition of Lebanon’s Arabic-language daily Al-Akhbar, together with a picture of a Russian aircraft ready for take-off, as Moscow hits targets in Syria for a second day. On Wednesday, Moscow launched a series of airstrikes against what it said […]
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Extra! Lebanon’s Waste Collection Crisis
Beirut has been facing a major trash collection crisis for nearly two weeks after the city’s primary landfill site was declared full and closed. Without a place to dispose of the 3,000 tons of trash generated daily in Lebanon’s capital, it’s everywhere. But as the situation begins to change, Lebenese daily Al-Mustaqbal”s Wednesday edition features […]
A growing number of Syrians have been trying to escape to Europe over the past year, some meeting their tragic ends after paying smugglers to cross the Mediterranean in overcrowded boats.
RAS BAALBEK — There’s a 140-kilometer strip of land on top of the mountains just north of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley that marks the border with Syria. It’s here that ISIS has dug in, appropriating a remote corner of Lebanon where the terror group has accumulated militants, resources and hostages to gear up for an impending […]
Recent beheadings highlight an ongoing exodus of Christians from territories targeted by ISIS. Some have taken refuge in Lebanon.
Turns in the war in Syria, as well as shifting resources and alliances across the Muslim world, mean tensions are easing between Israel and both Hamas and Hezbollah.
Bidding farewell to those who died this past month.
In a secret location in the Lebanese capital, a 60-bed hospital treats ISIS and other Islamic extremists whose backers must pay cash in advance. Enemies share doctors where medicine is a blind business, and cash is king.
Who’d have thought Lebanon’s cedars could actually root out loud for their own preservation? The country’s Ministries of Environment and Education have helped a team of bioacoustic engineers extract the natural sounds emitted in the Barouk Forest by a cedar tree, the endangered national symbol of Lebanon. They then let Beirut-based DJ ESC work his […]
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a crackdown on trafficking rings is not enough – there is also the question of parental responsbility. And extreme poverty.
Khaled’s family is one of the 190 from Syria that have recently moved to poor and isolated Gaza. Doors elsewhere for refugees are closing, especially to the Palestinian minority fleeing Syria.
Kholoud, a Sunni, and Nidal, a Shiite, got married in a civil ceremony, a first for Lebanon where sectarianism warns against loving the “wrong” neighbor. Now they have a baby boy.
BLAST HITS EAST LEBANONAt least five people were killed and 42 wounded as a car bomb exploded this morning in Hermel, a Hezbollah bastion in eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria, The Daily Star reports. The blast, which appears to have been the work of a suicide bomber, occurred as the trial in absentia […]
The two explosions that killed at least 23 people this week in Beirut are the latest sign that the country is moving toward the kind of conflict that has torn it apart in the past.
Peace is a process, never a single event. Negotiations for peace are always far more complicated than the public understands, and the results are not always miraculous. Even so, the majority of modern conflicts — 80%, according to the School for the Culture of Peace in Barcelona — eventually end after negotiations. The school’s reports […]