Analysis | Here’s what the protests in Lebanon and Iraq are really about
By Bassel F. Salloukh
Massive, unexpected protests erupted across Lebanon on Thursday. While the protests were triggered by the government’s plan to impose a tax on WhatsApp, a popular messaging app, the underlying anger went far deeper. Lebanese have been struggling with a mounting economic crisis, including stagflation, public debt and last month’s gasoline stoppages and ATM outages. The governance failures that led to 2015’s “You Stink†protests over the non-removal of trash have seen scant improvement, while the government remains mired in dysfunction, dramatically expressed in its failure to deal with last week’s wildfires.
Protesters are angry about the decision to increase a range of taxes — even on what should be free WhatsApp calls — rather than clamping down on rampant clientelism and corruption inside, as well as outside, state institutions. Lebanese across sects and regions alike are mobilizing against the political and economic elite. Unlike the civil society-led 2015 protests, this time it is the very poor who have risen against their own sectarian leaders.
Decades of monetary policies favoring the rich triggered the kind of united uprising that identity divisions in a sectarian system are supposed to prevent. Lebanon’s protests, like those over the last month in Iraq, show that divisions among religions and sects do not explain all political events in the Arab world. Here’s how the current protests are actually about governance failures and economic grievance — and not about identity.
Read more at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/19/heres-what-protests-lebanon-iraq-are-really-about/
Some people said the protesters were having a lot of fun out there BUT... yesterday 2 people got killed from my understanding.... so, we will see.
