The latest Syrian border action should not be seen as an act of political bullying
Waiting to pay the price… (Photo credit: Lucy Barsakhian, Albalad)
We the Lebanese like to think that we’re the center of the world. This is why our initial instinct when Syria imposed significant diesel levies on outgoing trucks, was to think that this is yet another form of economic aggression; a sinister scheme designed to choke Lebanon’s economy to death.
“This must be in retaliation to the Lebanese spoiling of the Damascus Arab summit” declared scandalized pundits on TV, to the backdrop of heart-wrenching TV footage of Lebanese farmers griping about their forever-lost livelihoods.
Today, however, sober heads prevailed. After a closer look, observers realized that Syria, whose economy is in trouble, was only trying to prevent neighbors from piggy backing on their state-subsidized diesel, the price of which became so cheap neighbors started smuggling it in truckloads. In other words, this was a legitimate act of economic self-defense.
The Syrian regime might be evil, but not everything it does necessarily is. Our farmers are still in trouble. But their plight is not Syria’s to solve.
Hello, my name is Mustapha and I've been blogging about Lebanese society, business and politics since February 2005.
Why do you think that “Syria, whose economy is in trouble…” ??
They declared a 6% annual growth rate, and I read somewhere that Syrian central banks has reserves of 20.000.000.000 US$.
Iran and the golf’ies are pouring fresh investment (petrol)-money, and everything looks nice, promising and bright.
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Why would the Syrians care for smuggling diesel out of their country? They would sell it legit so there’s no problem there. In fact, the more people buy the cheap diesel in Syria and ‘smuggle’ it across to Lebanon, the better it is for the Syrian gas stations.
It would have made sense if it was the Lebanese government doing the levying, after all, it is the one losing out on sales since trucks buy their diesel in Syria, leaving the Lebanese gas station owners empty-handed.
Allow me to join the discussion with:
hahahahahahahahahahaha…
Instead of worrying about Syria’s legitimate economic measures (which they are, of course, entitled to), i wish our own government and country would enact its own legitimate economic measures, with the Lebanese economy in mind.