Could Trash Talk Bring Iran and Saudi Arabia Together?

What’s the connection between the garbage piling up on the streets of Lebanon and the war in Syria? The geopolitical rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. I’m not kidding: Solve one, and you may start enough of a dialogue to solve the other.

The whole Arab world stinks. Don’t get me wrong, I love the region with all its faults, beauty, diversity, and insanity, but the garbage is piling up — and it’s starting to reek. From Egypt to Saudi Arabia, the most common way to handle solid waste, including industrial waste, is to dump it in landfills or in the desert. Cities like Cairo have also long struggled to get a handle on waste management, with a “garbage city” sprouting up in the slums, filling up with the 15,000 tons of waste produced every day by the metropolis.

In tiny Lebanon, however, there’s only so far you can go to hide your trash. Now, a garbage crisis is the smelly icing on the cake of political paralysis, threatening to erupt into wider unrest.

On Tuesday, activists with a civil protest campaign stormed the ministry of environment demanding the resignation of the minister, Mohammad Machnouk. More than a month into a crisis that has seen garbage piling up on the streets of the capital and haphazard dumping and burning of piles of trash around the country, the minister’s only apparent initiative so far had been to remove himself from the cabinet committee tasked with finding a solution.

“You Stink” is the slogan of the protest campaign and the message that outraged citizens have in unison for their politicians, who have failed repeatedly to deliver basic services, from garbage collection to running water and electric power — all the while blaming regional events for their own failures.

The war raging next door in Syria has hung over Lebanon like a cloud since 2011, paralyzing the country’s ability to make basic decisions. The conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran pervades every aspect of politics in Beirut: The pro-Iranian Shiite militant group Hezbollah is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, while the collection of mostly Sunni and Christian politicians that oppose Assad are aligned with Riyadh or the West. As a result, every political party and politician has a stake in how the war in Syria ends. But because of its newly expanded regional role fighting battles from Syria to allegedly Yemen, Hezbollah is the party with the most power (including military) to block any progress and strangle Lebanon’s institutions while the country is in waiting mode.

Lebanon has been headless since April 2014 when the last president’s term came to an end — the stunning result of 26 failed attempts by parliament to elect a replacement (though the legislative body did conveniently manage to extend its own term). Neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran is willing to give the other camp the throne in Beirut before a victor is declared in Damascus. And this being Lebanon, of course, no political party or politician has had the bright idea to ignore outside patrons and find a workable solution together.

The country has been muddling through, deferring decisions on anything that’s not a life or death matter. But with a disempowered parliament and cabinet, appointments of civil servants and new military commanders postponed, public institutions have been slowly crumbling.

This abdication of responsibility by Lebanon’s politicians, spurred by the Syrian conflict and the Saudi-Iranian tug of war, has now led to the trash piling up on the streets of Beirut. It all began when the country’s only landfill shut down in July. The Naameh landfill started as a temporary solution in 1998 and by July was 13 million tons over capacity. With nowhere to take the trash, garbage collectors have left it festering on the streets. This coincided with the trash company’s contract coming to end after repeatedly being renewed with no competitive outside bidding. Somehow, no one in the cabinet saw this coming.

Why should you care about Lebanon’s garbage? It’s not only disfiguring a fantastic summer holiday destination — it threatens to destabilize one of the only countries left in the region with a semblance of stability and a vibrant civil society. (I’ve already written about the importance of preserving Lebanon’s model of moderation for the future of the Middle East.)

But in a country with 18 different government-recognized sects and where power is split between Christians and Muslims, even garbage becomes sectarian. Residents angry about the stench in their neighborhoods have been hiring private truck drivers to dump the trash under the cover of night elsewhere. So the garbage of the Christians from the posh neighborhood of Achrafieh ended up in northern Lebanon’s poor and mainly Sunni Akkar region, threatening to exacerbate already tense religious divides.

“It leads to a whole debate across communities about who is the dumpster and who is [the rich] garbage producer,” said Antoine Haddad, secretary-general of the Democratic Renewal Movement.

When incinerators had to be built years ago, decision-makers were careful to ensure that one was placed in a Christian area and the second in a Muslim district. No one wanted to single out a specific community as the country’s “dump,” so the shame was shared equally.

Needless to say, politics and corruption play a significant role in Lebanon’s waste management policy. The landfill is located in the fiefdom of one politician, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, while the very profitable trash collection company, Sukleen, was awarded the cleaning contract by the cabinet of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister who was assassinated in 2005 and whose son was also a recent prime minister. Hezbollah, which has members in the cabinet, turned a blind eye to the repeated contract renewals without competitive bidding, despite the outrageously high cost of Sukleen’s services, in return for favors elsewhere.

“The absence of trash collectors for even one day had more impact on our lives than the absence of our politicians for a whole year,” said environmental activist Paul Abi Rached at one of the You Stink movement’s demonstrations.

Of course, the Lebanese always love to blame their mess on outside powers. But if you look at the history of interference, invasions, and occupations by countries near and far, the blame game isn’t exactly unwarranted.

Perhaps for once, the Lebanese really should be encouraged to call on outside interference. This is not taking anything away from the powerful civil society street protests that have taken to the streets. The very diverse, nonsectarian, nonpolitical demonstrators expressing a combination of outrage and despair of a people pushed to the brink serve as a reminder of what the Arab uprisings were about: a better life, basic services, and an end to corruption. But the reality is that all the protests can probably do is awaken the leadership in the region to the urgent need to pressure their local allies to get their collective act together.

There has been a flurry of diplomatic activity in the Middle East in the last few weeks. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir visited Moscow, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem showed up in Oman, and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif came to Beirut. Much of this diplomacy is tied to trying to solve the Syrian conflict, but no one appears willing to concede an inch yet — especially not on the question of Assad’s fate, which has been a central sticking point in talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The rivalry between the two countries seems to drive every crisis in the region, and there’s not a whiff of détente in sight yet. It’s time to look for confidence-building measures: With the region’s major crises in Syria and Yemen still too big to resolve, Lebanon’s landfills may be a more manageable problem.

Why should the Iranians and Saudis stoop to this level? Because their allies in Lebanon are now drowning in garbage, and the government will soon be unable to pay public servants’ salaries — turning a barely functioning state into a failed one. Neither Riyadh nor Tehran have any interest in the complete collapse of Lebanon or an outbreak of violence. And when it comes to recycling, both Iran and Saudi Arabia already are aware of the cash-making opportunity it represents.

After cleaning up the streets and winning hearts and minds in Beirut, perhaps the Saudis and Iranians can agree on a consensus candidate for president of Lebanon. Too often problems in the region are swept under the carpet or dumped out of sight. The greater cause of the moment — from war with Israel, to fighting terrorism, to countering Iran or whatever enemy du jour — is endlessly invoked as an excuse to avoid attending to citizens’ basic needs. It’s time to start small — with recycling. The steep slope to a solution in Syria may look closer if Riyadh and Tehran can climb halfway up an overflowing landfill.

Photo credit: JOSEPH EID/AFP/Getty Images