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Lebanon Faces Grave Threat to Stability as Poverty Mounts

Associated Press

   TRIPOLI, LEBANON - Living in a slum built precariously on the banks of
   a sewage-tainted river in Lebanon, Faiqqa Homsi feels her family being
   pushed closer and closer to the edge.

   A mother of five, she was already struggling, relying on donations to
   care for a baby daughter with cancer. The coronavirus shutdown cost her
   husband his meager income driving a school bus. She hoped to earn some
   change selling carrot juice after a charity gave her a juicer. But as
   Lebanon's currency collapsed, carrots became too expensive.

   "It is all closing in our face," Homsi said.

   Lebanese are growing more desperate as jobs disappear and their money's
   value evaporates in a terrifying confluence of events. An unprecedented
   economic crisis, nationwide protests and coronavirus pose the biggest
   threat to stability since the end of the civil war in 1990, and there
   are fears of a new slide into violence.

   Nowhere is the despair deeper than in Tripoli, Homsi's hometown and
   Lebanon's poorest city.

   Overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and home to over 700,000 people, Tripoli
   has suffered years of neglect and is stigmatized with violence and
   extremism. Mounting poverty is turning it into a powder keg.

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