28 Aug 2021; MEMO: Lebanon is heading towards complete collapse unless action is taken to remedy the crisis caused by its financial meltdown, Reuters reported Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian, the state's most senior Sunni Muslim cleric, warning today.
The economic collapse that began in 2019 has plumbed new depths this month, leading to fuel shortages that have crippled even essential services and causing numerous security incidents involving scrambles for gasoline.
The head of one of the main security agencies, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, ordered his officers to stand firm in the face of the crisis, saying it could be protracted and warning of the chaos that would ensue if the state collapsed.
The warnings are some of the strongest yet from Lebanese officials about the gravity of the situation.
The accelerating pace of the deterioration has added to international concern about a state that was pieced back together after a 1975-90 civil war and is still deeply riven by sectarian and factional rivalries.
The UN secretary general yesterday called for a new government to be formed urgently.
Lebanese politicians have failed to agree on the government even as the currency has lost more than 90 per cent of its value and more than half of Lebanese have fallen into poverty.
Even vital medicines are hard to find. Cancer patients who have been told their treatment cannot be guaranteed protested yesterday.
"We fear that … the patience of Lebanese will run out and that we will all fall into the furnace of complete chaos, manifestations of which we have started to see in all fields," Sheikh Derian said during a Friday sermon in comments carried by the National News Agency.
"The matter requires serious and immediate treatment," he said. "Otherwise we are truly going to what is worse and to complete collapse," he said, noting clashes that have flared up in some parts of Lebanon.
The World Bank says it is one of the worst collapses ever recorded. Its root causes include decades of corruption in government and the unsustainable way the state was financed.
Foreign donors say they will provide assistance once a government is formed that embarks on reforms.
Grand Mufti Derian urged President Michael Aoun to try to save what was left his term.
"Otherwise we are going to … to the bottom of hell," he said, recalling Aoun's warning last September that Lebanon was going to hell if a government was not formed.
