BEIRUT— Ibrahim Al-Masri wipes
sweat from his brow as he queues behind two dozen other cars outside a Beirut
gas station. It could take hours to replenish his depleted tank — but with no
spare cash to bribe the pump attendant, all he can do is wait.
اضافة اعلان
As Lebanon's deepening economic crisis causes shortages of
basic goods including fuel, medicine, and even bread, a privileged few are
finding ways to beat the queues and rationing by wielding personal connections,
or wads of banknotes.
"I've seen other people give 100,000 Lebanese pounds
(about $5 at market rates) to the attendant to cut in line ahead of me,"
said Masri, 45, a government clerk.
"I can't afford that," he said, adding that a
bribe of that size was equivalent to a day's wages for him.
Even before its economy collapsed, Lebanon had one of the
world's most unequal wealth distributions. In 2019, the richest 10 percent
owned 70 percent of the country's personal wealth, according to the UN Economic
and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).
At the time, 42 percent of households in
Lebanon suffered
from "multidimensional poverty", meaning they were deprived of at
least one essential service such as healthcare, electricity or shelter,
according to ESCWA.
Two years since the financial crisis erupted, that number
has doubled to 82 percent, the body said this month.
'Tectonic shift'
In Beirut and its suburbs, residents said accessing basic
goods and services now depends increasingly on having foreign currency,
personal connections or knowing incoming travelers who can bring in
necessities.
"It's a tectonic shift in every facet of life in
Lebanon," said Nasser Yassin, a professor at the American University of
Beirut and head of the Crisis Observatory, which tracks the impact of Lebanon's
financial collapse.
The "haves" include Lebanese people working for
embassies, multinational companies, and international aid agencies, whose
foreign currency earnings have been shielded from the loss of more than 90
percent of the pound's value since 2019.
They can still afford to go grocery shopping, eat out at
restaurants, pay for their children's schooling, and even travel — in stark
contrast to the new "have nots" of Lebanon's middle class, who get
paid in pounds.
To escape frequent power cuts, the privileged hard currency
earners can afford to rent apartments in luxurious complexes with guaranteed
diesel supplies for private generators.
"The increasingly small percentage of the population
who have access to foreign currency are much better-off now," Yassin said.
Basic goods are being sold on "parallel markets"
he said, allowing people to bypass long lines for a rationed product if they
are willing to pay more.
Some buy black market fuel out of plastic containers at
multiple-times the official price, while others pay someone else to wait in
their car for them at the fuel station.
Chadia Akiki, a 48-year-old who lives north of the capital,
said some bakeries had started selling "black market bread" at 10,000
Lebanese pounds per bag — more than double the maximum price set by the state.
Like Masri at the gas station, she said she could not pay a
premium.
"I had to wait in line behind 20 people at the regular
bakery to buy it at the normal price, and they wouldn't let me buy more than
one bag," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
While supermarkets in urban areas have seen shortages of the
staple pita flatbread, more expensive sliced and artisanal breads remain
readily available.
'No rock bottom'
But as some goods become more difficult to find, not even
cash is enough.
"Personal contacts work better than money these
days," said Chadi Chahla, an information technology officer who lives in
northern Lebanon and drives 90km to his office in Beirut every day.
Family friends and other connections have helped him buy
plastic tanks of gasoline on the black market, though he has still run out of
gas three times on the highway.
Other motorists have managed to fill up their vehicles after
friends with connections at nearby fuel stations alerted them that the pumps
were about to open.
As pharmaceutical stocks run low too, contacts are often the
only way to get hold of urgently needed supplies.
Hassan, an e-commerce entrepreneur from southern Lebanon who
asked not to give his full name, said his expatriate connections had proved a
lifeline.
"We were struggling for six months to find hormonal
medications for my mum, who is recovering from cancer, until we found people
coming from outside Lebanon who could bring them," he said.
Grassroots initiatives have popped up on Instagram to link
incoming travelers with patients looking for medications unavailable in Lebanon
– from anti-depressants to painkillers and chemotherapy drugs.
But despite having scraped by so far, Hassan said he was
bracing for tougher times ahead.
"I don't have the privilege or the connections to have
someone regularly bring me medication, or diesel for the power generators, or
gas for my car," he said.
"Every time we say it can't get worse, it does. There's
no rock bottom."
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