Lebanon’s economy collapsed completely and some people go hungry – a new war could break out in Europe’s neighborhood, local young people say

In Tripoli, Lebanon, many young people face only poor options. If you stay, you will starve. If you leave, you might drown in the sea.

28 years old Arafat Yassin sits in a port street cafe in Tripoli and talks about how food is already being dug out of the trash on the streets.

– Here you see people dying in the streets. No one is doing anything about it.

Lebanon’s economy has completely collapsed. More than 90% of the value of the Lebanese pound has evaporated in just a few years.

Nearly 80 percent of the population is below the poverty line. They cannot afford to buy food. One third of Lebanese are unemployed. In Tripoli, for example, youth unemployment is in the 60 percent range.

Poverty and unemployment have created enormous social tensions. The leaders of the denominations are intimidated by the new civil war.

Religious leaders refer to the civil war that ended in 1990 and lasted 15 years. The war is still well remembered.

Lebanese also have an understanding that civil war would not be confined to its borders. It would in one way or another draw Syria, Iran and Israel, just as it did in 1975-90.

Even so, the people have been on the streets to oppose the corrupt power elite and the miserable treatment of the economic collapse. In the ranks of the impoverished people, drunkenness is seen between the poor and the rich, not between religious groups.

If an uprising finally comes, the impoverished Lebanese will set out to overthrow the ruling elite, regardless of religion.

– This war will not be fought with rifles. This war is starving people, Yassin says.

Before the economic collapse, Arafat Yassin did various chores, including as a taxi driver.

Three years ago, Yassin tried to escape.

He met a human trafficker. The ride across the sea didn’t rush because Yassin didn’t have the money to pay. The fair price for a dream in Europe at the time was US $ 3,000.

The price is tough considering the voyage of dilapidated boats christened as death ships often ends in shipwreck. Dollars are kind of just a down payment, as the trip often costs a refugee as well.

Eventually, Yassin was given a place on the death ship – a driver’s seat. He offset by work what boat the Lebanese and Syrian refugees paid with the money.

Yassin practiced and learned to steer a big boat and land. Meanwhile, her daughter was a year old and was just learning to walk.

On the third of September 2019, Arafat Yassin set off with 42 refugees. The direction was Larnaca, Cyprus.

– It was night. The lights couldn’t be kept on so the patrol boats wouldn’t see us.

The shipping was dangerously rough. Yassin was scared.

– I didn’t see any lights anywhere, and I didn’t see any islands. I didn’t know where we were.

Grabbing in the dark took eight hours. The voyage in international waters off the coast of Cyprus to the Unifil patrol boat. It picked up the refugees and took them back to Tripoli.

In his home port, Yassin was handed over to the army. He was imprisoned for ten days.

During the voyage, he says he wondered how life would change when he got to Europe.

How would he raise money and send it to his family – daughter, father and brother.

Even after a failed attempt, Yassin is convinced that an escape to Europe is the best option. Only in this way can he think he can help his family.

Lebanese now look at the Mediterranean differently than before. It saw young people as an opportunity to flee to Europe.

Three out of four Lebanese young people want to leave the country.

And poverty is not the only reason young people want to leave. The political and spiritual climate is also haunting.

Yassin says freedom of thought and expression has disappeared. People can be arrested simply because they highlight problems and grievances in their speeches or criticize leaders, the military, or the police.

– Young people no longer want to defend Lebanon. They want to leave the country because they feel trapped.

Yassin says that, too, that there is no dignified life in Lebanon.

A cousin who had previously arrived in Cyprus had signaled how human rights would be respected in Europe and how a cat would be taken to a hospital if it was left under a car.

Even in Tripoli, Yassin cannot keep the lights on during the night. Like the Mediterranean, the night is sack-dark. That’s because there’s only a few hours of electricity a day. In the shelter of darkness, people rob each other.

This is the crystallization of poverty – one no longer sees another person as a neighbor, but an opportunity to alleviate one’s own misery. Poverty hurts people-to-people relationships.

Poverty, hunger and lack of visibility in Tripoli create a particularly favorable soil for exploitation. The extremist Islamic terrorist network Isis has recruited hundreds of young people into its ranks over the past winter and spring.

– The young men are leaving with Isis because they want to make money. Isis exploits poverty, provides money and gets men to fight in Syria or Iraq.

It is stop to think that the safest way out of poverty for the young people of Tripoli can only be found in life-threatening options – you set out on a flight to the Mediterranean in contempt of death or to fight the forces of Isis.

And the choice of a voyage was not the first time Yassin had to make a big and lifelong choice.

He recalls how he had to drop out of school at the age of 15. Had to go to work and help parents support their families. Yassin thinks the spiral that would suck her will also suck her daughter in her time.

– We probably can’t afford to keep him at school because I don’t have enough jobs here.

And Arafat’s vicious predictions don’t end there. He blurs the whole of Lebanon’s future. Poverty and tensions erupt violently. The blast leaves Tripoli and spreads across the country.

According to Yassin, the parliamentary elections in May and their campaigning only increased dissatisfaction because votes were bought with money and food. He thinks the scam will now be revealed after the election, when no promises are kept.

Yassin says she no longer thinks specifically about her future. The question of that makes him pensive, though.

– I’m focusing on staying alive. I fall asleep sad and wake up even sadder. Yeah, and I’ll try to escape by boat again.

In the darkness of Lebanon, there are other shades besides deep black.

26-year-old Verena El-Amil is a recently graduated lawyer. He was the youngest candidate in the parliamentary elections on one of the numerous lists of independents.

He was not elected, but it did not discourage him.

– I receive messages from my friends who have gone abroad that my candidacy brought hope. They say they can come back too. Change is possible.

Perhaps the change most desperately needed by young people is the transformation of Lebanon into a secular state.

Non-Amil is Maronite Christian. The demand for secularism has also been his political guideline since he experienced a political awakening while studying law at the University of Saint Joseph in Beirut.

In addition to reading the law, he was founding a non-religious student movement. Secularism, anti-corruption, and the same rights and freedoms for all were central to the student movement.

– Talking about secularism is now at the heart of the political debate.

Verena El-Amil also ran a parliamentary election campaign with themes emphasizing secularism. He says the message sank both in Beirut’s student youth and young people outside the capital.

– It felt like my heart was beating everywhere. That has never happened since the Civil War.

Here El-Amil senses revolutionaryness. He also felt that feeling strongly three years ago, at the same time as Arafat Yassin went to sea.

El-Amil was involved when Lebanese took to the streets in October 2019 to demand corruption and account for the power elite, which had miserably handled the economic crisis. Even then, poverty and unemployment had exploded.

When a devastating explosion took place in the port of Beirut in August 2020, people once again took to the streets to protest against the incompetence and corruption of the ruling elite. Blood was once again involved.

A record dozen independent candidates like El-Amil entered Parliament.

– We can change the system from the inside. We can bring a revolution to Parliament.

If Parliament proves to be a slow lane or things do not go through at all, people will still be ready to take to the streets. According to Verena, all means are needed.

– It is not possible to know when people will be on the street again. I know it’s important to get back on the street. Yes, it will happen soon enough.

El-Amil has had the opportunity to choose a future outside Lebanon. He graduated with a law degree from the Sorbonne University in Paris last fall. He decided to return to make a revolution in his homeland.

The brain drain is, after all, the most significant of the tragedies caused by the economic collapse in Lebanon for the future. The most educated people have left the country. As a result, health care and education, among others, have plunged into a catastrophic state.

Poverty and hunger need the most lively solutions. El-Amil, like Yassin, says leaders of religions are trying to play their subjects against each other in the face of the problem of poverty.

He does not believe that the elites of religious groups succeed in their intentions because young people see that the boundary between the poor and the rich does not follow the boundaries of religious denominations.

– It’s inside of them. The elite are at their own heights among the Sunnis, Shiites and Christians alike.

Like Arafat Yassin, Verena El-Amil thinks Lebanese social tensions may not end well.

– I think this could explode. What matters is whether people’s anger can be directed towards change for the good of the state, and not just chaos and fear.

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