Hunting season: Lebanon's diaspora bails out the government

Every year, 2.6 million migratory birds are gunned down over Lebanon as they travel between Africa and Eurasia. Similarly, each summer, around one million Lebanese migrants — romantically dubbed “estranged” — flock back to their country of origin, only to be hunted for every dollar they brought with them.

The deliberate absence of a recovery plan has brutally reshaped Lebanon’s post-2019 economy into a machine designed to capture whatever scraps of foreign currency drift its way and impose staunch austerity on the locals. This shrinking economy and crumbling infrastructure, when met with the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands of visitors, transform Lebanon into a decaying seasonal amusement park for the diaspora, and leaving in its wake year-round blackouts, rising costs, and collapsing services for those who never left.

Who would choose to vacation in a country with no fuel, scarce medication, empty shelves, multiple exchange rates, daily blackouts during heatwaves, collapsing businesses, an exploded port, sectarian gunfire, and a regional war? Only émigrés compelled by duty to their families.

This summer appears to have brought an even larger influx than usual, perhaps driven by a sense that Lebanon narrowly avoided an even wider and more devastating war with Israel, and by the hopeful — if naïve — belief circulating in some circles that the country is entering a “Pax Americana.”

Whatever the reason, the result has been the same: suffocating crowds, paralyzed roads, predatory services, and an economy gorging itself on short-term gains while hollowing out the future.

A rising influx and a shrinking map

It is nearly impossible to know how many tourists and visiting migrants come to Lebanon each year. This summer alone, an estimated 1.5 million people came to Lebanon, with nearly half a million in July. Authorities deliberately blur the numbers by labeling anyone arriving at Beirut airport with a return ticket a “tourist.” This fiction sustains Lebanon’s self-identification as a tourist destination, letting governments claim success whenever concerned émigrés return, not for leisure, but to care for aging families and hand-deliver cash they cannot transfer through banks.

After the 2019 crisis, this misleading clustering took on a new role. The regime, desperate to reassert its grip on a furious and disillusioned population, used the inflated “tourist” numbers as propaganda. But the claim collapsed under reality. Who would choose to vacation in a country with no fuel, scarce medication, empty shelves, multiple exchange rates, daily blackouts during heatwaves, collapsing businesses, an exploded port, sectarian gunfire, and a regional war? Only émigrés compelled by duty to their families.

The seasonal return of the diaspora has been a fixture since the end of the Civil War, but its scale has ballooned since 2019, when 875,000 people left the country between 2019 and 2022. Unlike earlier waves, these recent émigrés remain strongly attached to their homes and communities, having been pushed out suddenly and violently. They now make it a point to come back as often as possible.

These new places replacing old businesses are get-rich-quick schemes for a lucky minority of newcomers into the business and a cash cow for the powerful and franchised businesses that expanded branches into every popular hangout.

As of this summer, Lebanon’s dollarization has become absolute. Commodities were once again available, but only at prices many visitors described as matching, or even surpassing, those of Paris, London, New York, and Geneva. While multifactorial, inflation in Lebanon is mostly driven by the unfettered greed of monopolies. Seasonal demand from returning migrants sustains these inflated prices, ensuring they never fall when the visitors leave.

Meanwhile, the country itself has shrunk, both qualitatively and geographically. Between 2019 and 2025, GDP fell by 47 percent. Half of Lebanon’s economic activity is gone, and with it half of its shops, restaurants, bars, and venues, especially in peripheral areas. What remains is concentrated in a narrower strip of the country, while Israel’s near-daily strikes on the South and the Bekaa have rendered them inaccessible. The result is a swelling population pressed into less than half the space it once had.

The effect is stark. Traffic jams clog the few Beirut streets where bars and restaurants operate and the highways leading to Batroun and Faraya, popular destinations for tourists and returnees turning family visits into short vacations. This demographic crush strains already decaying infrastructure and pushes stopgap measures, like private generators and water tanks, beyond their limits.

This overcrowding is self-defeating. Members of the diaspora, already paying exorbitant prices, are left shuttling between traffic jams instead of enjoying the entertainment they came for. If their summers bring more frustration than leisure, they may think twice before returning the next season.

The capture economy

It is no secret that Lebanon’s economy is being reshaped by ad hoc, unofficial policies designed to protect economic elites at everyone else’s expense. When the lira’s collapse became unavoidable, the government assumed in 2020 that exports would grow, parroting the old adage that “the market regulates itself.” Five years later, that claim has proven a lie.

Lebanon’s post-war economy has long been one of extraction rather than investment. In its post-crisis form, it has escalated into a total cash grab.

As banks were allowed to strangle the economy while offloading their losses onto the population, the market scrambled for foreign currency and found two main sources: NGOs channeling aid and the service sector capturing diaspora spending.

Remittances financed household consumption, but the state’s only attempt to capture them was a central bank circular forcing their payout in lira at below-market rates. When US aid declined, the first source dried up. What remained was the boom in restaurants, bars, beach clubs, yoga, pilates studios, and paddle courts mushrooming across Beirut, Faraya, and Batroun.

Owners bragged of recouping investments within a year as ostentatious displays of wealth returned after a short post-crisis hiatus. A 2024 industry survey recorded 169 new food and beverage businesses and 86 closures, proof of the sector’s volatility. But it also reported an average growth rate of 15.3 percent, indicating its profitability as a vehicle for foreign cash. Growth rates varied wildly from 44 percent in the now-crammed Ahmad Daouk Street in downtown Beirut to a negative 7 percent in Hamra.

This seasonal tidal wave of new places replacing old businesses is due to the ease of making money off the diaspora, albeit for a brief timespan. They are get-rich-quick schemes for a lucky minority of newcomers into the business and a cash cow for the powerful and franchised businesses that expanded branches into every popular hangout. Bars based in Beirut franchised in Batroun, others set up restaurants, guest-list-only clubs, and some even seized maritime property to monetize beach access.

The overreliance on the food and beverage sector carries heavy costs. Service-sector growth overwhelmingly benefits wealthy, urban households who already own the land and capital to invest. Workers are left with poverty wages, informal contracts, and little ability to organize. In Lebanon, no union represents waiters or bartenders, yet owners of restaurants, bars, and hotels have unions to defend their interests, a perfect illustration of power skewed upward.

The money generated in tourism and the food and beverage industry does not circulate through the wider economy. Most inputs are imported, so value leaks abroad. Meanwhile, the seasonal gold rush fuels real estate speculation, pricing residents out of their neighborhoods and pushing workers away from their jobs. The sector is uniquely vulnerable to external shocks. Building an economy around such volatility leaves growth fragile, unsustainable, and easily derailed by fluctuations in demand or instability beyond the country’s control.

To present this turnover of restaurants and bars as “recovery” is therefore dangerously misleading. At best, it is an unhealthy coping mechanism that deepens inequality and embeds fragility at the very core of the Lebanese economy.

Migrants are not tourists

Catering to tourists and capturing the diaspora follow entirely different logics.

Tourists require infrastructure and amenities designed for outsiders: reliable public transportation, destination-focused urban planning, the upkeep of historical sites, public events, environmental preservation of forests and beaches, and basic services like water, electricity, and internet that do not depend on “knowing a guy who knows a guy.” Businesses must compete over the quality of their offerings to attract them. Against this standard, Lebanon’s so-called “tourism policy” this year amounted to nothing more than repaving the airport road and stripping Hezbollah banners from it.

During the past two years alone, the government has extracted 7.8 billion dollars in taxes, and yet, spent virtually nothing.

The diaspora, by contrast, returns to family homes where coping mechanisms are already in place. They know the sites, have their own cars, and come mainly to reconnect with friends and relatives. Businesses know this captive audience has no real alternatives, so they cut corners, lowering quality while raising prices. The result is overcrowded parties, dull music, undertrained staff, and hazardous food. Nearly everyone who went out this summer complained of one or more of these problems, yet venues thrive because the diaspora has no choice but to frequent them.

It is hardly surprising, then, that under lax regulation, recurring summer heatwaves, a failing electricity grid, and businesses bent on profit maximization, a food poisoning outbreak erupted this year. Cases doubled in August, a clear public health crisis. Yet the state took no action, leaving the public to dismiss it as bad luck rather than the predictable outcome of systemic neglect.

A country eating itself

Lebanon’s post-war economy has long been one of extraction rather than investment. In its post-crisis form, it has escalated into a total cash grab.

The state is draining what remains of the economy through ad hoc austerity. Since 2019, successive governments have hiked taxes (mostly indirect, embedded in the prices of everyday goods) while slashing expenditure. Between 2019 and 2024, public spending fell by 82 percent, meaning fewer salaries, fewer welfare benefits, and almost no infrastructure projects, despite Lebanon having lived under austerity since 1995. It is a horrifying feat that, during one of the worst crises of modern history, government budgets have been scoring surpluses. During the past two years alone, the government has extracted 7.8 billion dollars in taxes, and yet, spent virtually nothing. Instead, these funds accumulate in a central bank account, improving the balance sheet on paper and helping suppress demand for dollars by locking the money away in lira, thereby entrenching dollarization.

Meanwhile, private banks continue to hold depositors hostage. Still blocking any reform that might liquidate their capital, they forced losses of 85 billion dollars onto depositors by reimbursing them at only a fraction of their deposits’ value. Yet, even in their undeclared bankruptcy, banks turned profits and distributed them to shareholders.

What do these numbers mean? Two parallel processes — one orchestrated by the government and central bank, the other by private banks — are eroding people’s savings and purchasing power to cosmetically balance the books. Once the numbers align, officials will pretend the banks were never really bankrupt. The process may take decades, since with each passing year, less can be squeezed from what remains of the economy.

That is how capturing the only remaining source of foreign currency—the diaspora—becomes a country’s only priority.

This predatory restructuring of the economy is eroding what little productive capabilities are left and adding strain to the already difficult lives of those who stayed. Arguably worse yet, the spectacles of consumption in restaurants, bars, clubs, and venues create the illusion of recovery and cover up the growing need for a complete overhaul of the economy.

When the next “diaspora season” comes in December, when traffic becomes stifling, prices climb higher, and the country is left a little worse for wear, remember this: your suffering is not in vain; you are helping a few hundred bank shareholders shore up their bankrupt fortunes.