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Jim Muir

Middle East correspondent, based in Beirut.

End of an Era for Many, As BBC Arabic Radio Closes Down Jim Muir · February 2023 At midday GMT on Friday 27 January, the BBC’s Arabic radio station closed down with the same words with which it launched its first broadcast 85 years earlier: ‘This is London, the British Broadcasting Corporation’. The closure brought a wave of nostalgia and regret from many throughout the (…)
Lebanon: Endless Bickering as the Boat Goes Down Jim Muir · April 2021 Eight months after the blast at Beirut port and the resignation of Hassan Diab’s cabinet, and six months after Saad Hariri was asked to form a new one, Lebanon is still without a government, as the country plunges deeper into the crisis.
The most common and obvious metaphor being applied to (…)
Lebanon: Adrift in Stormy Seas Jim Muir · July 2020 With its currency in free-fall against the US dollar, half the population plunged into poverty, and rescue talks with the IMF in disarray because Lebanon’s leaders seem incapable of enacting basic reforms, the country appears to be lurching ever closer to a collapse into chaos.
It happened (…)
Lebanon. The Political Class Saved (provisionally?) by Covid-19 Jim Muir · April 2020 Even before the Covid-19 lockdown, Lebanon was in the grip of a severe economic, financial and social crisis. If the spread of the epidemic seems to be under control, it is to be expected, after the country’s recovery, that there will be a tsunami of unemployment and poverty, the consequences of (…)