Lebanon

10 Sep 2021; MEMO: Lebanese leaders have today agreed a new government after a year of political feuding over cabinet seats that has exacerbated a devastating economic collapse, Reuters reports.

09 Sep 2021; MEMO: Lebanon's caretaker minister of social affairs today announced the launch of cash subsidy cards for 500,000 families saying that negotiations were under way for them to be partly funded from new IMF SDR allocations and World Bank loans, Reuters reports.

The government introduced a subsidy programme last year to finance the import of basic goods such as wheat, fuel and medicine which has all but depleted foreign reserves and is now being phased out.

06 Sep 2021; MEMO: The head of the Lebanese Forces Party, Samir Geagea, yesterday called for "early presidential elections" to be held, saying the results of President Michel Aoun's rule have been "catastrophic" for all people, especially Christians.

"We do not want a president who provokes crises, insults the state, and impoverishes the Lebanese," Geagea said, adding that his party deeply regrets supporting the election of General Michel Aoun as President of the Republic.

03 Sep 2021; MEMO: Lebanon has requested the United States provide it with an exemption from the ban on imports and exports through Syria, citing the economic and fuel crises currently ravaging Lebanon.

According to the Syrian news outlet Athr Press, the speaker of Lebanon's parliament Nabih Berri made the request to the US on Wednesday, in an effort to allow the exports to and imports from neighbouring Syria to help ease Lebanon's hardships.

03 Sep 2021; MEMO: Six Syrian refugees arrested and detained by the Lebanese authorities must be released "unless they are charged with a recognisable offence," Amnesty International has urged. The six were arrested last week as they went to the Syrian Embassy in Beirut to collect their passports.

The Lebanese army confirmed on 28 August that its intelligence officers apprehended the six men and handed them over to the General Security Directorate.

02 Sep 2021; MEMO: US Senator Richard Blumenthal said yesterday that the Lebanese authorities do not have to rely on Iranian fuel shipments to alleviate the fuel crisis crippling the country.

"Lebanon is in free fall…We've seen this movie before and it's a horror story…, but the good news is it can, should, and hopefully will be avoided," Blumenthal told reporters at the end of a two-day visit to Lebanon as part of a US congressional delegation.

BEIRUT (AP) — Driving back to base after firing rockets toward Israeli positions from a border area last month, a group of Hezbollah fighters was accosted by angry villagers who smashed their vehicles’ windshields and held them up briefly.

It was a rare incident of defiance that suggested many in Lebanon would not tolerate provocations by the powerful group that risk triggering a new war with Israel.

28 Aug 2021; MEMO: Secretary-General of the Lebanese Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah revealed on Friday an agreement with Iran to start loading a third ship of oil derivatives to sail to Lebanon.

This came in a televised speech delivered by Nasrallah on the fourth anniversary of the Second Liberation, which was broadcast by some Lebanese channels, including pro-Hezbollah Al-Manar TV channel.

Nasrallah stated:

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.

BEIRUT (AP) — A few days after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, a convoy of militants drove through the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria in cars bearing the group’s white-and-black flags, honking horns and firing their guns in the air.

The celebrations by an al-Qaida affiliate in a remote corner of war-torn Syria were an expression of the triumph felt by radical Islamic groups from the Gaza Strip to Pakistan and West Africa who see America’s violence-marred exit from Afghanistan an opportunity to reassert their presence.