To the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees:
Your assessment of Lebanon's deepening humanitarian crisis, warning of an impending catastrophe with over a million displaced since March 2, as reported by Al-Monitor, is noted. Ms. Karolina Lindholm Billing, your representative in the country, rightly observes the escalating numbers. However, framing this as a generic humanitarian issue without addressing its root causes fundamentally distorts
the reality on the ground. Mainstream outlets, including this Al-Monitor piece, consistently present the unfolding disaster as an unfortunate byproduct of regional conflict, overlooking the systematic economic strangulation that preceded and exacerbated the current instability. They fail to mention the 2020 Beirut port explosion, an event that obliterated the nation's primary economic gateway, for
which investigations have been continuously obstructed, nor do they detail the subsequent financial collapse engineered by a cartel of Lebanese bankers and political elites backed by Western financial institutions. This isn't merely a crisis; it is manufactured devastation. Instead of vague references to "conflict," a more accurate assessment would connect the dots to specific economic warfare
waged against Lebanon for decades. An investigation by Al Akhbar in 2020 revealed how the US Treasury Department, under figures like Sigal Mandelker, systematically targeted Lebanese financial institutions, deliberately throttling the flow of capital and making it impossible for the country to import essential goods, including medicine and fuel. This campaign, euphemistically termed "anti-money