BEIRUT: The lines snaked around the block. Then they swelled to fill the whole street, before they turned into a raucous mob of men shoving to the front of the line. There at the exchange bureau, they could buy rationed dollars, the hottest commodity in Lebanon.
The small Mediterranean country’s financial meltdown has thrown Lebanese into a frantic search for dollars as their local currency’s value evaporates. To get the precious hard currency, they must navigate labyrinthine regulations, exploiting any loopholes they can to rescue their earnings.
Every transaction, from doctor fees to store purchases to rent, is negotiated day by day, juggling the tumbling Lebanese pound and multiple, changing dollar exchange rates. Those who can are snapping up luxury goods or real estate, trying to use their dollars trapped in bank accounts frozen by the cash-strapped authorities.
The turmoil is deepening resentment of the political elite and the once flourishing banking system — and fueling desperation.
“They are going to crash us into a wall,” Chris Georgian, a 25-year-old student, said, trying to buy $600 at an exchange bureau to send for his university fees in Armenia.
Last week, a 61-year-old man apparently distraught over his economic situation shot and killed himself on a Beirut commercial street, one of multiple suicides during the crisis.
Despite survival skills honed by political tension and wars, nothing prepared Lebanese for having to line up to buy money.
During the 15-year civil war and Israel’s invasion and occupation of the south and Beirut, there may have been queues for water or bread, but Lebanon was always flush with dollars.
Since 1997, the local currency, the pound, was pegged at around 1,500 to the dollar, and Lebanese used the two interchangeably.
That stability was built on what experts say was essentially a Ponzi scheme that let banks and the elite profit while allowing Lebanese to live beyond their means.
Successive governments borrowed from private banks to finance massive public debt and pay for vital imports like fuel — but also luxury goods — eating into depositors’ dollar accounts. Most of those deposits were from Lebanese expats attracted by high interest rates.
It collapsed when remittances and direct foreign investments plunged in recent years.
In the ensuing liquidity crunch, the pound has lost nearly 85% of its value. Tens of thousands have fallen into poverty, wages are worth only a fraction of what they once were, and prices are skyrocketing — stripping Lebanon of its trademark joie de vivre and vibrancy.
Chain retailers have shut down, unable to import or price goods with the fluctuating rates. Some vendors have either closed or only take payment in dollars.
Dollar accounts have been frozen, and those trapped dollars have become “Monopoly money” with no value outside Lebanon, said Dan Azzi, a former banker and analyst. He coined a name for that currency, the “Lollar” or Lebanese dollar.
People began hoarding cash dollars, getting relatives living abroad to transfer dollars, which — unlike frozen local accounts — can be withdrawn from the bank.
Some sell gold for dollars. “We buy gold at the highest price $39-$55 and in cash,” reads one jeweler’s marketing telephone message.
The peg remains in place officially, even as the black market price of a dollar has spiraled to at least five times that. Meanwhile, authorities imposed rationing on exchange bureaus, limiting how many dollars a person can buy and setting a rate higher than the peg but lower than the black market.
That fanned the raucous lines. Some bought dollars only to sell them on the black market. New phone apps cropped up to keep track of multiple rates.
“Isn’t all this humiliating?” said Elie, a security guard keeping order at an exchange bureau. “When senior officials were making money, we were getting some of it. Now they aren’t anymore, so they deny it to us,” he said, declining to give his last name because of his job.
Many scramble for ways to use their trapped “Lollars,” fearing they could eventually lose them completely.
Lines formed outside luxury retailer Louis Vuitton because it was selling at a rate half the black market. Others use stuck dollars to settle bank loans, still valued at the official peg. Azzi estimates loans up to $15 billion have been paid already.
Ghassan Frem, a dentist, paid a friend’s loan of over $30,000 with his “Lollars.” She paid him the money in an account abroad. It is a win-win: He uses his “dead” dollars, and the friend settles her loan at a discount.
Meanwhile, Frem bought $950-worth of new air conditioners on his credit card. The trick is: He pays his credit card bill at the official rate with pounds he bought on the black market for far fewer dollars.
Many use this loophole, buying merchandise or doing renovations whether they need it or not, to rescue trapped dollars.
“Anyone who can get back at the banks is doing some good,” Frem said. “We do to them what they have done to us.”
On social media, some proposed organizing a peer-to-peer platform to avoid using banks.
Meanwhile, real estate transactions jumped more than 16% in the first quarter of 2020, according to the General Directorate of Land Registry. One of Lebanon’s largest real estate companies, Solidere, reported a profit for the first time since 2018.
For his dentist clinic, Frem negotiates purchasing supplies item by item, hour by hour. One Monday afternoon, he ordered a product and by the time it arrived the next day, the dollar price had gone up 20%. “The delivery guy got a text message with the new price when he arrived,” Frem said.
For Georgian, the student, his education is on the line.
A third-year psychology student in a Yerevan university, he returned to Lebanon because of coronavirus. With his parents’ dollars locked up, he has to chase dollars to finance his return.
At the exchange office, he asked the guard to walk him through the documents he needed. Under new rules to curb profiteering, you must prove you need rationed dollars to pay education fees, rent, medical fees or salaries for foreign workers. No one gets cash — the dollars you buy are sent directly to the destination.
Still, Georgian was relieved. His school fees are $600, and the cost for that at the exchange is about half what it would be on the black market, saving him enough to live for months in Yerevan.
“If the dollar keeps rising, I will never go back,” he said. “I will lose my education.”
Georgian questioned his parents’ decision to remain in Lebanon despite constant complaints of corruption.
“They said they didn’t think it will be this bad,” he said, shaking his head.
Hottest commodity in Lebanon’s economic chaos: The US dollar
https://arab.news/b9cgg
Hottest commodity in Lebanon’s economic chaos: The US dollar
- The financial meltdown has thrown Lebanese into a frantic search for dollars as their local currency’s value evaporates
UK doubles aid to war-torn Sudan
- Fighting broke out in April 2023 between the army under the country’s de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo
LONDON: The UK on Sunday announced a £113 million ($143 million) aid boost to support more than one million people affected by the war in Sudan, doubling its current package.
The new funding will be targeted at the 600,000 people in Sudan and 700,000 people in neighboring countries who have fled the conflict.
“The brutal conflict in Sudan has caused unimaginable suffering. The people of Sudan need more aid, which is why the UK is helping to provide much-needed food, shelter and education for the most vulnerable,” Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a government press release.
“The UK will never forget Sudan,” he vowed.
Fighting broke out in April 2023 between the army under the country’s de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Last month, United Nations experts accused the warring sides of using “starvation tactics” against 25 million civilians, and three major aid organizations warned of a “historic” hunger crisis as families resort to eating leaves and insects.
Lammy is due to visit the UN Security Council on Monday, where his ministry said he will call on the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) to keep the vital Adre border crossing open indefinitely to allow aid deliveries.
“We cannot deliver aid without access. Starvation must not be used as a weapon of war,” he said.
The new funding package will support UN and NGO partners in providing food, money, shelter, medical assistance, water and sanitation, said the Foreign Office.
Deaths in the conflict are likely to be “substantially underreported,” according to a study published this week, which found more casualties in Khartoum State alone than current empirical estimates for the whole country.
Sudan women sexually exploited in Chad camps
- Some victims said among those who exploited them were humanitarian workers and local security forces
- Nidhi Kapur, who works on preventing sexual exploitation and abuse, said exploitation represents a deep failure by the aid community
- Many of the women interviewed were unaware of the free hotline and feedback boxes put up by UN agencies to report abuse anonymously
ADRE, Chad: Crossing into Chad, the 27-year-old thought she’d left the horrors of Sudan’s war behind: the bodies she ran over while fleeing, the screams of girls being raped, the disappearance of her husband when gunmen attacked. But now she says she has faced more suffering — being forced as a refugee to have sex to get by.
She cradled her 7-week-old son, who she asserted was the child of an aid worker who promised her money in exchange for sex.
“The children were crying. We ran out of food,” she said of her four other children. “He abused my situation.” She and other women who spoke to The Associated Press requested anonymity because they feared retribution.
Some Sudanese women and girls assert that men, including those meant to protect them such as humanitarian workers and local security forces, have sexually exploited them in Chad’s displacement sites, offering money, easier access to assistance and jobs. Such sexual exploitation in Chad is a crime.
Hundreds of thousands of people, most of them women, have streamed into Chad to escape Sudan’s civil war, which has killed over 20,000 people. Aid groups struggle to support them in growing displacement sites.
Three women spoke with the AP in the town of Adre near the Sudanese border. A Sudanese psychologist shared the accounts of seven other women and girls who either refused to speak directly with a reporter or were no longer in touch with her. The AP could not confirm their accounts.
Daral-Salam Omar, the psychologist, said all the seven told her they went along with the offers of benefits in exchange for sex out of necessity. Some sought her help because they became pregnant and couldn’t seek an abortion at a clinic for fear of being shunned by their community, she said.
“They were psychologically destroyed. Imagine a woman getting pregnant without a husband amid this situation,” Omar said.
Sexual exploitation during large humanitarian crises is not uncommon, especially in displacement sites. Aid groups have long struggled to combat the issue. They cite a lack of reporting by women, not enough funds to respond and a focus on first providing basic necessities.
The UN refugee agency said it doesn’t publish data on cases, citing the confidentiality and safety of victims.
People seeking protection should never have to make choices driven by survival, experts said. Nidhi Kapur, who works on preventing sexual exploitation and abuse in emergency contexts, said exploitation represents a deep failure by the aid community.
Yewande Odia, the United Nations Population’s Fund representative in Chad, said sexual exploitation is a serious violation. UN agencies said displacement camps have “safe spaces” where women can gather, along with awareness sessions, a free hotline and feedback boxes to report abuse anonymously.
Yet many of the Sudanese women said they weren’t aware of the hotline, and some said using the boxes would draw unwanted attention.
The Sudanese woman with the newborn said she was afraid to report the aid worker for fear he’d turn her in to police.
She said she approached the aid worker, a Sudanese man, after searching for jobs to buy basic necessities like soap. She asked him for money. He said he’d give her cash but only in exchange for sex.
They slept together for months, she said, and he paid the equivalent of about $12 each time. After she had the baby, he gave her a one-time payment of approximately $65 but denied it was his, she said.
The man was a Sudanese laborer for Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, she said.
Two other Sudanese women said Chadian men working at MSF sites— one wearing MSF clothing — solicited them after they applied for work with the organization. The men took their phone numbers and repeatedly called, saying they’d give them jobs for sex. Both women said they refused.
Christopher Lockyear, MSF’s secretary general, said the organization was not aware of the allegations and wanted to investigate. “Asking for money or sex in exchange for access to care or a job is a clear violation of our behavioral commitments,” he said.
MSF would not say how many such cases had been reported among Sudanese refugees in Chad. Last year, out of 714 complaints made about MSF staff behavior where it works globally, 264 were confirmed to be cases of abuse or inappropriate behavior including sexual exploitation, abuse of power and bullying, Lockyear said.
Lockyear said MSF is creating a pool of investigators at the global level to enhance its ability to pursue allegations.
One woman told the AP that a man with another aid group also exploited her, but she was unable to identify the organization. Omar, the psychologist, said several of the women told her they were exploited by aid workers, local and international. She gave no evidence to back up the claims.
Another woman, one of the two who alleged they were approached after seeking work with MSF, said she also refused a local policeman who approached her and promised an extra food ration card if she went to his house.
Ali Mahamat Sebey, the head official for Adre, said police are not allowed inside the camps and asserted that allegations against them of exploitation were false. With the growing influx of people, however, it’s hard to protect everyone, he said.
The women said they just want to feel safe, adding that access to jobs would lessen their vulnerability.
After most of her family was killed or abducted in Sudan’s Darfur region last year, one 19-year-old sought refuge in Chad. She didn’t have enough money to support the nieces and nephews in her care. She got a job at a restaurant in the camp but when she asked her Sudanese boss for a raise, he agreed on the condition of sex.
The money he paid was more than six times her salary. But when she got pregnant with his child, the man fled, she asserted. She rubbed her growing belly.
“If we had enough, we wouldn’t have to go out and lose our dignity,” she said.
The family of Israeli-American hostage pleads with Biden and Trump to bring hostages home
- “I think maybe there is new hope,” says Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander, 20
TEL AVIV, Israel: Over the past two weeks, the political landscape around the negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza have undergone a dramatic transformation.
The American elections, the firing of Israel’s popular defense minister, Qatar’s decision to suspend its mediation, and the ongoing war in Lebanon all seem to have pushed the possibility for a ceasefire in Gaza further away than it has been in more than a year of conflict.
Still, some families of the dozens of hostages who remain captive in Gaza are desperately hoping the changes will reignite momentum to bring their loved ones home — though the impact of Donald Trump returning to the White House and a hard-line new defense minister in Israel remains unknown.
“I think maybe there is new hope,” said Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander, 20, a soldier kidnapped from his base on the Gaza border during the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
Alexander’s parents, Adi and Yael Alexander, who live in New Jersey, met this week with Trump and President Joe Biden in Washington and pleaded with them to work together to bring all the hostages home in a single deal.
“As a grandmother, I say, cooperate — Trump wants peace in this region, Biden has always said he wants to release the hostages, so work together and do something important for the lives of human beings,” Ben Baruch said.
She said neither leader offered specific details or plans for releasing the hostages or restarting negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire.
Talks have hit a wall in recent months, largely over Hamas’ demands for guarantees that a full hostage release will bring an end to Israel’s campaign in Gaza and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vows to continue fighting until Hamas is crushed and unable to rearm.
“We’re not involved in politics, not American and not Israeli, the families are above politics, we just want our loved ones home,” she said. “Edan was kidnapped because he was Jewish, not because he voted for a certain party.”
More than 250 people were kidnapped and 1,200 killed when Hamas militants burst across the border and carried out a bloody attack on southern Israeli communities. Israel’s campaign of retaliation since has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and some 90 percent of its 2.3 million people have been displaced.
As militants attacked on the morning of Oct. 7, Edan Alexander, then 19, was able to send a quick message to his mother amid the intense fighting around his base. He told her that despite having shrapnel embedded in his helmet from the explosions, he had managed to get to a protected area. After 7 a.m., his family lost contact.
Alexander was considered missing as the family desperately searched hospitals for him. After five days, friends recognized him in a video of Hamas militants capturing soldiers.
The family was happy: He was alive, Ben Baruch said. “But we didn’t understand what we were entering into, what is still happening now.”
When a week-long ceasefire last November brought the release of 105 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners, some of the freed hostages said they had seen Alexander in captivity. Ben Baruch said they told her Alexander kept his cool, encouraging them that everyone would be released soon.
Ben Baruch said she was disheartened when Netanyahu last week fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who she said had consistently reassured the families that the hostages were at the top of his agenda.
“I felt he was a partner,” she said. Gallant was replaced by a Netanyahu loyalist who has urged a tough line against Hamas.
A mass protest movement urging the government to reach a hostage deal has shown signs of weariness, and hostage families have struggled to keep their campaign in the headlines. A delegation of former hostages and their relatives met with the pope on Thursday and expressed hope the incoming and outgoing American administrations would bring their loved ones home.
In Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, the headquarters of the protest movement, opinions were mixed on the effect of Trump’s election on hostages.
“I don’t think this is good for Israel or the hostages, I’m really scared of him,” said David Danino, a 45-year-old hi-tech worker from Tel Aviv. He was at Hostages Square with his family, visiting from France, who wanted to pay their respects.
Danino noted that Israel had already achieved many of its war goals, including killing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. “They are building us a photo of what is ‘victory,’ but how is there victory without the hostages?” he asked.
Others thought Trump’s reputation might help the situation.
“When he decides to do something, he does it, without blinking, and he can create ultimatums,” said Orly Vitman, a 54-year-old former special education teacher from the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon.
She comes every few months to the square with her daughter to light candles in honor of the hostages. While she was opposed to the firing of Gallant in the middle of the war, she was heartened by Trump’s election.
“We will have the legitimacy and ability to use the full force of what we know how to do,” she said.
Ben Baruch, a philanthropist and accomplished artist whose modernizt sculptures dot the Tel Aviv home where she has lived for 52 years, said she has pushed everything aside in her life to focus on the struggle to bring her grandson home. Her days are filled with meetings, interviews, rallies, protests and communal prayer sessions uniting different groups of Israelis from across the religious spectrum.
“It’s like people’s lives went back to their routine, but ours did not,” she said. “There’s nothing left to say. All the words have been said. We have heard everything. We have met with everyone. But they are still there.”
Two flares land near Netanyahu’s home in ‘serious incident’: police
- Israel's President Isaac Herzog condemned the incident in a post on X and said an investigation was underway
- Caesarea is about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of the Haifa city area, which Hezbollah has regularly targeted
JERUSALEM: Two flares landed near Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence on Saturday in the central town of Caesarea, security services said, describing the incident as “serious.”
“Two flares landed in the courtyard outside the prime minister’s residence,” police and the Shin Bet internal security agency said in a joint statement.
“The prime minister and his family were not in the house at the time of the incident,” they added.
“An investigation has been opened. This is a serious incident and a dangerous escalation.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog condemned the incident and warned “against an increase in violence in the public sphere.
“I have now spoken with the head of the Shin Bet and expressed the urgent need to investigate and deal with those responsible for the incident as soon as possible,” Herzog said in a post on X.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the flares.
The incident comes after a drone attack targeting the same residence on October 19, which was later claimed by Hezbollah.
Netanyahu at the time accused Hezbollah of attempting to assassinate him and his wife.
Since September 23, Israel has escalated its bombing of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops after almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges of fire begun by Hezbollah militants over the war in Gaza.
Caesarea is about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of the Haifa city area, which Hezbollah has regularly targeted.
Two people were injured when a synagogue was hit in Haifa by a “heavy rocket barrage” from Hezbollah earlier Saturday, the Israeli military said.
Separately, the army said it had intercepted some of the “approximately 10 projectiles” that crossed from Lebanon into Israel.
Hezbollah claimed several rocket attacks on northern Israel, saying it targeted military sites including a naval base in the Haifa area.
Tunisia migrant advocate held in first ‘terrorism’ probe: rights group
- Tunisia is one of the main launching points for boats carrying migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to seek better lives in Europe
TUNIS: A prominent Tunisian advocate for migrants is in custody and his case being handled by anti-terrorist investigators, a disturbing first for the country, the head of a rights group said Saturday.
Tunisia is one of the main launching points for boats carrying migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to seek better lives in Europe.
Abdallah Said, a Tunisian of Chadian origin, was questioned along with the secretary general and treasurer of his association, Children of the Medenine Moon, said Romdhane Ben Amor, spokesman for the Tunisian Forum for Social and Economic Rights (FTDES).
Two officers of a bank handling the association’s accounts were also detained, he said.
Ben Amor described as “a dangerous signal” the transfer of the case to anti-terrorist investigators “because it’s the first time authorities have used this against associations specializing in migration issues.”
La Presse newspaper, which is close to the government, reported that “five activists operating on behalf of an association in Medenine were in custody in order to be referred to anti-terrorism investigators.”
The newspaper said the association is suspected of receiving foreign funds “to assist sub-Saharan migrants to enter illegally onto Tunisian soil.”
Ben Amor called Said’s detention part of “a new wave of even tougher repression” against migration activists after an earlier crackdown in May.
“It’s a message to all those working in solidarity with the migrants,” he said.
In May, President Kais Saied lashed out at organizations that defend the rights of migrants, calling their leaders “traitors and mercenaries.”
The president reiterated that Tunisia must not become “a country of transit” for migrants and asylum seekers.
Saied, re-elected in October in a vote with turnout of 28.8 percent, made a sweeping power grab in 2021 and critics accuse him of ushering in a new authoritarian regime.
Under a 2023 agreement, the European Union has provided funds to Tunisia in exchange for help with curbing small-boat crossings to Europe.
EU funding rules state all money should be spent in a way that respects fundamental rights, but reports have since emerged of migrants being beaten, raped and mistreated in Tunisian custody.
