BEIRUT: She is a nurse at a Beirut hospital, and still Rita Harb can’t find her grandfather’s heart drugs.
She has searched pharmacies up and down Lebanon, called friends abroad. Not even her connections with doctors could secure the drugs. Unlike many amid Lebanon’s financial crash, she can afford them — they just aren’t there.
To get by, her 85-year-old grandfather is substituting his medicine with more pills of a smaller concentration to reach his dosage. That too could run out soon.
“But if he dies, he dies,” Harb said with a small, bitter laugh of resignation that has become a common reaction among Lebanese to their country’s multiple crises.
Drugs for everything from diabetes and blood pressure to anti-depressants and fever pills used in COVID-19 treatment have disappeared from shelves around Lebanon.
Officials and pharmacists say the shortage was exacerbated by panic buying and hoarding after the Central Bank governor said that with foreign reserves running low, the government won’t be able to keep up subsidies, including on drugs.
That announcement “caused a storm, an earthquake,” said Ghassan Al-Amin, head of the pharmacist syndicate.
Lebanese now scour the country and beyond for crucial medications. The elderly ask around religious charities and aid groups. Family members plead on social media or travel to neighboring Syria. Expats are sending in donations.
It’s the newest stage in the economic collapse of this country of 5 million, once a regional hub for banking, real estate and medical services.
More than half the population has been pushed into poverty and people’s savings have lost value. Public debt is crippling, and the local currency plunged, losing nearly 80% of its value. The health sector is buckling under the financial strain and coronavirus pandemic.
Lebanese are back to hoarding basics, such as water and fuel, like they did during the country’s 15-year civil war. Trust in the ruling class — mostly in power since the war ended in 1990 — vanished as the country grapples with a financial breakdown, the pandemic, and the fallout from the deadly Aug. 4 explosion at Beirut’s port that wrecked the facility and large swaths of the city.
Lebanon imports nearly everything, including 85% of its pharmaceuticals.
Lifting subsidies is an inevitable step for the highly-indebted government. This is expected to send prices and inflation soaring and the Lebanese pound further tumbling. Fixed at 1,500 to the dollar for decades, it now hovers around 7,000 for $1 on the black market.
People are hoarding medications, fearing they will no longer be able to afford them. Suppliers are shelving drugs, worried they won’t have enough dollars to buy more — or hoping to sell for higher when subsidies are lifted. Strapped pharmacies can’t stock shelves because suppliers now demand cash payment.
Meanwhile, the difference between the official and black market dollar rate energized smuggling, and subsidized Lebanese drugs were now whisked out to neighboring countries.
In the chaos, six out of every 10 brand drugs have become unavailable, said Malak Khiami, the pharmacist at Amel Association, a humanitarian group that offers primary health care.
Out of 3,400 unionized pharmacies, nearly 300 have shut down, Al-Amin said.
The problem became so bad that one enraged buyer, an off-duty soldier, pulled out his gun and threatened a pharmacist who told him he didn’t have Panadol, a basic pain reliever.
At his pharmacy in Bchamoune, outside Beirut, Ziad Jomaa said he and the gun-toting buyer were both victims of a corrupt and failed political class.
The incident, caught on CCTV footage, brought Jomaa sympathy, including from the pain relief suppliers who immediately sent him 50 boxes.
But he had to take new security measures. He closed the pharmacy door at night, only taking orders through a window, and hired a guard.
“They put me in confrontation with the public,” Jomaa said.
Civil groups stepped in to fill the gaps.
At one of Amel’s centers, in Beirut’s Baajour district, 800 people sought medicine or health care at nominal fees in October, nearly double the number in August. Amel has been keeping up its longest emergency relief program since 2006, when a war with Israel destroyed large parts of Beirut and killed over 1,000 people.
“People are suffering big, big time,” said , said Zeina Mohanna, a board member. They “are set in fear for survival.”
Intissar Hatoum, 63, lined up at the center’s dispensary. Gripping a plastic bag with her empty drug boxes, she came for whatever is available: inhalers, hypertension and heart pills, anti-coagulants. Her unemployed husband suffers from kidney disease. Less urgent are her cholesterol pills.
A housewife, Hatoum relies on her taxi driver son to pay medical bills, often skipping warm meals to afford them. He has asked around southern Lebanon and Syria for their prescriptions.
“He didn’t leave a place he didn’t look,” she said.
Lebanese rely heavily on pharmaceuticals. Nearly 44% of all health care spending is on drugs, compared to around 17% percent in Western nations, according to a BlomInvest Bank study.
For decades, the market has been controlled by some two dozen importers. The law awards select importers exclusive rights in each sector, keeping out competitors and giving them enormous power to resist reforms.
The exclusive import rights are a a key feature of Lebanon’s economic order, which after the civil war’s end became controlled by militia chiefs, wealthy traders and real estate owners. Focusing on services, it was reliant on imports and foreign labor.
As that model falls apart, the market for foreign drugs is bound to shrink, said Viviane Akiki, an economic reporter who also covers pharmaceuticals. “The dollar shortage will impose new solutions.”
But it is not clear Lebanon’s small domestic drug production can fill the gap.
In Beirut’s Zoukaq Al-Blat neighborhood, Mahmoud Mahmoud’s pharmacy was quiet. A few painkillers, supplements and shampoo bottles were scattered on otherwise empty shelves.
Mahmoud believes suppliers are holding back medications waiting for higher prices — or smuggling them. One gout drug, he said, was found in Iraq, selling for $7, more than five times its price in Lebanon.
“They are destroying the profession,” said Mahmoud. “With the way the country is going, the profession is collapsing.”
Frantic search after medicines vanish from Lebanon shelves
https://arab.news/997ec
Frantic search after medicines vanish from Lebanon shelves
- Drugs for everything from diabetes and blood pressure to anti-depressants and fever pills used in COVID-19 treatment have disappeared from shelves around Lebanon
Israel says intercepted two projectiles fired from central Gaza
- The military said it has intercepted several rockets fired from northern Gaza in recent days
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said two projectiles were fired from Gaza on Wednesday in the first minutes of the new year, one of which was intercepted while the other landed in an open area.
Alert sirens sounded around midnight (2200 GMT) in the western Negev, the Israeli military said, and “two projectiles were identified crossing from the central Gaza Strip into Israeli territory.”
“One projectile was successfully intercepted and the second projectile fell in an open area,” the army said on Telegram.
The military said it has intercepted several rockets fired from northern Gaza in recent days.
Since October, Israeli operations in Gaza have focused on the north, with officials saying their land and air offensive aims to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which resulted in 1,208 deaths — mostly civilians — according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 45,500 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
The UN considers those figures reliable.
New year hope reigns in a Damascus freed from Assad
- More than half a million people died in the 13-year civil war as the country split into different regions controlled by various warring parties
DAMASCUS: Umayyad Square in Damascus hummed to the throngs of people brandishing “revolution” flags as Syria saw in the new year with “hope” following 13 years of civil war.
Gunshots rang out from Mount Qasioun overlooking the capital where hundreds of people gazed up at fireworks, an AFP reporter at the square saw.
It was the first new year’s celebration without an Assad in power for more than 50 years after the fall of Bashar Assad in December.
“Long live Syria, Assad has fallen,” shouted some children.
Despite the revelry, soldiers patrolled the streets of Damascus, less than a month after Assad’s rapid demise.
The green, white and black “revolution” flag with its three red stars flies all over the capital.
Such a sight — the symbol of the Syrian people’s uprising against the Assad dynasty’s iron-fisted rule — was unthinkable a month ago.
The revolutionary song “Lift your head, you are a free Syrian” by Syrian singer Assala Nasri rang out loud on Umayyad Square.
“Every year, we aged suddenly by 10 years,” taxi driver Qassem Al-Qassem, 34, told AFP in reference to the tough living conditions in a country whose economy collapsed under Assad.
“But with the fall of regime, all our fears have dissipated,” he added.
“Now I have a lot of hope. But all we want now is peace.”
More than half a million people died in the 13-year civil war as the country split into different regions controlled by various warring parties.
Many families are still waiting for news of loved ones who disappeared under Assad’s rule, during which time tens of thousands of prisoners disappeared.
“I hope that Syria in 2025 will be non-denominational, pluralist, for everyone, without exception,” said Havan Mohammad, a Kurdish student from the northeast studying pharmacy in the capital.
Ocalan: PKK chief held in solitary on Turkish prison island
- A Marxist-inspired group, the PKK is considered a terror organization by Turkiye, the United States, the European Union and most of Turkiye’s Western allies
ISTANBUL: Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of Kurdish militant group the PKK, is hailed by many Kurds as an icon, but within wider Turkish society many see him as a terrorist who deserves to die.
On Saturday, Ocalan, who has been held in solitary confinement in Turkiye since 1999, received his first political visit in nearly a decade amid signs of a tentative thaw in relations with the Turkish government.
The move came two months after the leader of the far-right MHP, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, offered Ocalan an unprecedented olive branch if he would publicly renounce terror.
In a message sent back with his visitors, two lawmakers from the pro-Kurd opposition DEM party, Ocalan — the man who embodies the decades-long Kurdish rebellion against the Turkish government — said he was “ready” to embrace efforts to end the conflict.
“I am ready to take the necessary positive steps and make the call,” said the 75-year-old former guerrilla, who also received his first family visit in four years on October 23.
During that visit, Ocalan said he had the necessary clout to shift the Kurdish question “from an arena of conflict and violence to one of law and politics.”
Ankara’s tentative bid to reopen dialogue nearly a decade after peace efforts collapsed comes amid a major regional adjustment following the ouster of Syria’s Bashar Assad.
Ocalan founded the PKK — the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — in 1978. It spearheaded a brutal insurgency that has killed tens of thousands in its fight for independence and, more recently, broader autonomy in Turkiye’s mostly Kurdish southeast.
A Marxist-inspired group, the PKK is considered a terror organization by Turkiye, the United States, the European Union and most of Turkiye’s Western allies.
After years on the run, Ocalan was arrested on February 15, 1999 in Kenya following a Hollywood-style operation by Turkish security forces.
He was sentenced to death, but escaped the gallows when Turkiye abolished capital punishment in 2004. He has since been held in an isolation cell on Imrali island in the Sea of Marmara.
For many Kurds, he is hero they call “Apo” (uncle). But Turks often call him “bebek katili” (baby killer) for his ruthless tactics, including the bombing of civilian targets.
Tentative moves to resolve Turkiye’s “Kurdish problem” began in 2008. Several years later, Ocalan got involved in the first unofficial peace talks, approved when Erdogan was premier.
Seen as the world’s largest stateless people, Kurds were left without a country when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I.
Although most live in Turkiye, where they make up around a fifth of the population, the Kurds are also spread across Syria, Iraq and Iran.
For hard-line nationalists who support the post-Ottoman idea of “Turkishness,” the Kurds simply do not exist.
And not all Kurds back the ideas, let alone the methods, of the PKK.
Led by Hakan Fidan, Erdogan’s spy chief turned foreign minister, the talks raised hopes of ending the insurgency in favor of an equitable solution for Kurdish rights within Turkiye’s borders.
But they collapsed in July 2015, reigniting one of the deadliest chapters in the conflict.
After a suicide attack on pro-Kurdish demonstrators attributed to Islamic State (IS) group jihadists in October 2015, the PKK accused Ankara of collaborating with IS and resumed its violence with a vengeance.
Turkiye’s widescale use of combat drones has pushed most Kurdish fighters into Iraq and Syria, where Ankara has continued raids.
The government has defended its de facto silencing of Ocalan by saying he failed to convince the PKK of the need for peace, raising doubts about how much sway he has over the group.
Ocalan was born on April 4, 1948, one of six siblings in a mixed Turkish-Kurdish peasant family in Omerli village, in Turkiye’s southeast. His mother tongue is Turkish.
He became a left-wing activist while studying politics at university in Ankara, and did his first stint in prison in 1972.
He set up the PKK six years later, then spent years on the run, launching the movement’s armed struggle in 1984.
Taking refuge in Syria, he led the fight from there, causing friction between Damascus and Ankara.
Forced out in 1998 and with the net closing in, Ocalan raced from Russia to Italy to Greece in search of a haven, ending up at the Greek consulate in Kenya, where US agents got wind of his presence and tipped off ally Ankara.
Lured into a vehicle and told he would be flown to the Netherlands, Ocalan was instead handed over to Turkish military commandos and flown home on a private plane to face trial.
A new year dawns on a Middle East torn by conflict and change
- The last year was a dramatic one in the Middle East, bringing calamity to some and hope to others
DAMASCUS: In Damascus, the streets were buzzing with excitement Tuesday as Syrians welcomed in a new year that seemed to many to bring a promise of a brighter future after the unexpected fall of Bashar Assad’s government weeks earlier.
While Syrians in the capital looked forward to a new beginning after the ousting of Assad, the mood was more somber along Beirut’s Mediterranean promenade, where residents shared cautious hopes for the new year, reflecting on a country still reeling from war and ongoing crises.
War-weary Palestinians in Gaza who lost their homes and loved ones in 2024 saw little hope that 2025 would bring an end to their suffering.
The last year was a dramatic one in the Middle East, bringing calamity to some and hope to others. Across the region, it felt foolish to many to attempt to predict what the next year might bring.
In Damascus, Abir Homsi said she is optimistic about a future for her country that would include peace, security and freedom of expression and would bring Syrian communities previously divided by battle lines back together.
“We will return to how we once were, when people loved each other, celebrated together whether it is Ramadan or Christmas or any other holiday — no restricted areas for anyone,” she said.
But for many, the new year and new reality carried with it reminders of the painful years that came before.
Abdulrahman Al-Habib, from the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, had come to Damascus in hopes of finding relatives who disappeared after being arrested under Assad’s rule. He was at the capital’s Marjeh Square, where relatives of the missing have taken to posting photos of their loved ones in search of any clue to their whereabouts.
“We hope that in the new year, our status will be better ... and peace will prevail in the whole Arab world,” he said.
In Lebanon, a tenuous ceasefire brought a halt to fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group a little over a month ago. The country battered by years of economic collapse, political instability and a series of calamities since 2019, continues to grapple with uncertainty, but the truce has brought at least a temporary return to normal life.
Some families flocked to the Mzaar Ski Resort in the mountains northeast of Beirut on Tuesday to enjoy the day in the snow even though the resort had not officially opened.
“What happened and what’s still happening in the region, especially in Lebanon recently, has been very painful,” said Youssef Haddad, who came to ski with his family. “We have great hope that everything will get better.”
On Beirut’s seaside corniche, Mohammad Mohammad from the village of Marwahin in southern Lebanon was strolling with his three children.
“I hope peace and love prevail next year, but it feels like more (challenges) await us,” he said.
Mohammad was among the tens of thousands displaced during more than a year of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. Now living in Jadra, a town that was also bombarded during the conflict, he awaits the end of a 60-day period, after which the Israeli army is required to withdraw under the conditions of a French and US-brokered ceasefire.
“Our village was completely destroyed,” Mohammad said. His family would spend a quiet evening at home, he said. This year “was very hard on us. I hope 2025 is better than all the years that passed.”
In Gaza, where the war between Hamas and Israel has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, brought massive destruction and displaced most of the enclave’s population, few saw cause for optimism in the new year.
“The year 2024 was one of the worst years for all Palestinian people. It was a year of hunger, displacement, suffering and poverty,” said Nour Abu Obaid, a displaced woman from northern Gaza.
Obaid, whose 10-year-old child was killed in a strike in the so-called “humanitarian zone” in Muwasi, said she didn’t expect anything good in 2025. “The world is dead,” she said. “We do not expect anything, we expect the worst.”
The war was sparked by the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people and abducted some 250 others.
Ismail Salih, who lost his home and livelihood, expressed hopes for an end to the war in 2025 so that Gaza’s people can start rebuilding their lives.
The year that passed “was all war and all destruction,” he said. “Our homes are gone, our trees are gone, our livelihood is lost.”
In the coming year, Salih said he hopes that Palestinians can “live like the rest of the people of the world, in security, reassurance and peace.”
Two migrants die off Tunisia, 17 others rescued: National Guard
- Tunisia is a key departure point for irregular migrants seeking to reach Europe. Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt the perilous Mediterranean crossing
TUNIS: Two Tunisian migrants, one of them a five-year-old child, died after their makeshift boat broke down off the country's northern coast, with 17 others rescued, the National Guard has said.
One body was found aboard the vessel, while the dead child was recovered from the water, the National Guard said in a statement Monday.
It said maritime units had responded to a distress call Sunday "about a damaged vessel out at sea that began taking on water", rescuing 17 out of 19 passengers.
"Five were rescued while fighting for their lives after they jumped off the boat," it added.
Four people linked to organising the crossing attempt were arrested, the statement said.
Tunisia is a key departure point for irregular migrants seeking to reach Europe. Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt the perilous Mediterranean crossing.
Italy, whose Lampedusa island is only 150 kilometres (90 miles) from Tunisia, is often their first port of call.
The crossing has seen a spate of recent shipwrecks, exacerbated by bad weather.
On December 18, at least 20 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa died in a shipwreck off the city of Sfax, with five others missing.
On December 12, the coastguard rescued 27 African migrants near Jebeniana, north of Sfax, but 15 were reported dead or missing.
In late October, 15 unidentified bodies were recovered off Mahdia, another key departure point.
And in September, 36 migrants -- 20 Tunisians and 16 Egyptians -- were rescued from a stranded boat near Nabeul.
Since the beginning of the year, the Tunisian human rights group FTDES has counted "between 600 and 700" migrants killed or missing in shipwrecks off Tunisia. More than 1,300 migrants died or disappeared in 2023.
Tunisia is grappling with a number of economic woes, marked by high inflation, unemployment, and sluggish growth.
