The shy Lebanon versus Syria: medicine, garbage, and telecommunications

Written by Nasser Kandil,

The time is not appropriate to tell the Syrians that their country, the quality of life in it, and the magnitude of suffering are elements that make Syria a country that is envied to live in, because Syria is bleeding under the weight of war that killed, displaced, and destroyed. The standard of living of the Syrians has been lowered to less than half, in addition that the job opportunities have been reduced to less than half of what they were before, the levels of services which are provided by the country have been decreased to less than quarter of what they were before the war, and the security situation and the threats of death are prevailing everywhere, knowing that nearly half of the Syrians became outside their country, and nearly a quarter of them needs relief aids after their situation has exceeded the level of poverty and a deterioration in the conditions of life, but in Syria the Syrians know the times of power cut, the proportion of feeding by the electrical current is approximately seventy percent over the whole Syrian area as an average,  moreover the roads of the places which the war does not prevent the work of the governmental workshops in are still receiving periodic maintenance, and the employees in all the institutions of the Syrian country and its regions still get their salaries. Furthermore the schools and the universities still receive students and still provide them with education for free, the hospitals are still making thousands of surgical operations including the most complex with low rates for all the Syrian citizens, where the war did not destroy the health facilities, in addition that bread and electricity are still at the reach of the Syrians with prices that the state treasury is bearing nearly half of them.

Theoretically the Lebanese live outside the war which ravaged their country since a quarter a century ago, they have spent about nearly fifty billion dollars on the rehabilitation of the sects of electricity, telecommunications, and roads, they have a good security background comparing with what the region’s countries know five years ago, from Syria to Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia and others of the neighboring countries, but despite of that whether they are with or without a president, they pay the most expensive bills of electricity and telephone in the region without obtaining the best services and the most systematic, furthermore in the comparisons which the international institutions carry out, they pay the highest bill for medical services in the world comparing with the population, and they get a level of a medical service that makes their country at the rank one hundred seventy according to assessments of 2015. Lebanon is one of the most expensive countries regarding the costs of education comparing with Europe, so it is enough to say in the fields which the country does not bear the burdens and the costs of pricing, that the prices of medicines, the wages of telecommunications and internet, which are sectors that run by the private sector and supervised and sponsored by the country as general services are equal ten times of the prices and the wages of the same medicines and the same telecommunications’ services in Syria, they are still like that and maybe they became twenty times during the war which ravaged Syria for five years, Although in the two countries the market of these two fields is directed by the private sector, and that the source of the product and the service is foreign and maybe the same. As the Syrians the Lebanese are consuming from their monthly income medicines and communications services that are equal to the cost of food.

For five years of the war in Syria no one hears neither about the scandals in the market of medicine as that occur in Lebanon once at least every year, nor about the scandals of piracy and smuggling in the telecommunications sector as that happen in Lebanon every two years, each Lebanese that visits Syria these days holds a list of requests from his friends to buy medicines, he feels happy when he starts receiving the Syrian mobile networks that he will no more concern about the bill, and he will have an almost free internet service comparing with that which he gets in Lebanon but it is better. Despite that the northern and the southern borders of Syria are out of the control of the country, the mafia of smuggling did not succeed in violating the Syrian market while everyday it achieves new success in the Lebanese market especially in the two fields of medicine and communications, while today it achieves as it achieved at the days of  the strength of the Syrian country and its prestige a traditional success in the two Syrian markets of  tobacco and alcohol, it is a matter that Syria shares in the days of peace and war with the European countries where the taxes which are high on these commodities make  in front of the adventure and risk profitable incentives for the smugglers and the consumers of the smuggled articles alike to enter the black market, the irony is that Lebanon constitutes one of the largest smuggling markets for these commodities to Syria and the region, because the approved prices in the Lebanese market as the smugglers describe it are “ competitive” while the prices spread in the two markets of medicine and telecommunications make the smuggling to Lebanon a motive, completely unlike Syria because the country is interfering to make the prices fictional. Publicly we know the major scandal which we hide our seasonal scandals behind in the two fields of medicine and communications, we recognize the social identity of our country and what it wants us to consume easily and what is difficult to get it, but always through the strength of its authority in the field of pricing.

Our scandal and the cause of our shame is when we go to Syria which is exhausted through the five years of war, and we do not see any trace of the garbage’s crisis which its mountain spread between our homes and the streets of our cities, they became competing our white mountains. Our ruling staff is unable to find solutions for them, while the vehicles which dedicated to treat the waste and its collecting on the Syrian areas work effectively in traditional routine  in exception of the force majeure, the worst scandal is when the UN Envoy Steffan De Mistura dared to call the Syrians to get the inspiration of the political solution for their crisis from the inspiring Lebanese example, where the sectarian distribution of the ruling centers  constitutes the hidden knot of the rampant corruption everywhere from the medicine market to the sectors of communications and not ending with the scandal of the waste.

The shy Lebanon versus Syria in the sectors of medicine, communications, and garbage and in every field where the sect versus the civil country decides how to interfere in the lives of its citizens, so when the people of sect feel ashamed of their scandal?

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,