Comment by srl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by srl | Hacker News Reader

Okay, I understand that there's some sort of world-wide supply-chain issue. Recently I've heard about fuel shortages of various shorts. It's unclear how related the mess in Lebanon is, since the article states

> Prior to the outages, citizens had for months only been given a few hours of electricity per day

and I thought the fuel shortages were a recent phenomenon.

Regardless: does anyone have a link to a decent primer on what's going on (regarding supply chains, fuel, and all the other recent economic disruptions)? I'm not interested in the usual politically motivated "just so" stories, just a list of what's happening, what parts are definitely understood, and what parts are not understood.

What I can piece together post the Lebanon war, Saudi Arabia and other gulf states provided substantial aid to Lebanon to reconstruct. But in 2016 Saudi Arabia cut off its aid when relations got spoiled. Lebanon has lots of government corruption so much of aid was wasted. Then there is the explosion last year that set them back even more. Foreign countries want reforms before they will donate further.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_r...

https://carnegie-mec.org/2020/06/09/lebanon-not-expecting-gu...

Sorry, do you want to know about the recent fuel shortages? Or do you want to know why the country completely collapsed over a period of 2 years?

This has been in the works since what, the 80s?

You could trace it back to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Lebanon supports the Arab states, the Palestinians spill into Lebanon, and fighting continues over various decades (50's, 70's, 80's, 90's), including a civil war that took 16 years, after which point it's sort of Syria, Israel and Hezbollah grappling through Lebanon, of course with the other usual cast of characters (US, UK, Iran, Saudi, and a dozen different rebel groups).

But probably the majority of the current crisis stems from the 2006 war.

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