Can Lebanon's struggling economy survive another war?

Lebanon's economy has been in dire straits for decades, and now it is yet again on the brink of war. Are better times on the horizon?

Lebanon Flag
(Image credit: Getty Images)

The unending modern tragedy of Lebanon has taken another bitter turn, with the return of war to the country. Since mid-September, Israel has ramped up its military action aimed at eliminating the deadly threat from Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia militant group that dominates Lebanese society and controls parts of the country. Since then, many hundreds of people have been killed in targeted attacks aimed at Hezbollah targets, including in densely populated areas where civilian casualties are inevitable. On 27 September, Israeli forces assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s powerful leader since 1992, in a series of strikes on the group’s headquarters in Beirut. And in the first week of October, Israel launched what has so far been a limited ground invasion of southern Lebanon – the stated aim being to cripple Hezbollah’s forces and infrastructure in border areas.

How is Lebanon coping?

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.