It was always going to be a big ask. Jim Yong Kim, head of the World Bank, who was in Beirut earlier this month, already gave us the bad news, so we knew our chances of a bumper tourist season were about as remote as Iran beating Argentina in the group stages of the Fifa World Cup. And yet, like Saturday night’s game, it looked like an upset was on the cards.
You see, according to Mr Kim – but it’s really no secret – the Syrian civil war will have cost Lebanon US$7.5 billion: that’s roughly 18 per cent of GDP, by the end of the year. Meanwhile, GDP has dropped by 2.9 per cent each year since 2012 and unemployment has rocketed to above 20 per cent. Mr Kim also likened the influx of Syrian refugees fleeing the conflict to the whole of Mexico moving to, and working in, the US.
Even so, on Wednesday night the bars and restaurants on Zaytouni Bay, the waterfront development near the husk of the old Hotel St Georges, were doing brisk trade.
My niece and her admittedly jittery Irish husband were over from London for a wedding and, apart from being a little taken aback at being charged $15 for a five-minute cab ride, were having the time of their lives.
Even the tourism minister Michel Pharaon, whom I must confess, despite my initial scepticism, is making a decent fist of his new job, told the Arab Economic Forum in Beirut on Friday that hotel bookings for the summer had increased by 15 per cent on 2013. Not bad when you remember Mr Kim’s bleak prognosis.
And then came a late goal to break Lebanese hearts. A car bomb at the mountain pass into the Bekaa Valley and a series of raids on hotels in the Hamra district of West Beirut that closed all the roads to the capital and which, looking back, seemed nothing more than a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, sent us into a tailspin.
Within hours, events scheduled for the weekend were cancelled or postponed and a UAE diplomat urged his citizens to leave Lebanon. It doesn’t take much for people to err on the side of caution, especially with Iraq all over the news. Beirut may be 740 kilometres from Mosul, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned we’re all part of the same mess.
Well at least we still have the football, and the World Cup is a good opportunity to be reminded of countries to which we wouldn’t normally give a second thought. Take Costa Rica, the nation that is, much to everyone’s surprise, riding high in the group stages of the tournament. The Central American nation and Lebanon are quite similar. Both are what the World Bank calls upper-middle income countries. Costa Rica has a population of 4.5 million people and a GDP of $45bn. Close enough.
But Costa Rica has created genuine opportunities for foreign investment where Lebanon hasn’t, especially in software development and pharmaceuticals, and has a solid financial services sector that does more than hold deposits and lend to the government. It also has a thriving eco-tourism sector, thanks to one of the best environmental policies in the world, while Lebanon, if we are being honest, is an eco-nightmare.
I would like to think that there is a link between a being small nation, having a sound environmental programme and the ability to punch above your weight on the greatest stage in world football and I will wager that even if Costa Rica does not progress very far in the knockout stages, the world will have already seen it in a new, more exciting, and perhaps even more prosperous, light.
As for Lebanese football, well last year, more than 24 Lebanese footballers were investigated for match fixing and “throwing” games at the behest of international gambling cartels. That about sums us up, for now.
But just imagine Lebanon in the World Cup finals. Now that would be a party not even ISIS could stop.
Michael Karam is a freelance journalist based in Beirut
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