From colony to couture, no other Middle Eastern city has proved itself to be a hub of art and fashion quite like Beirut. The fusion of East and West, of tradition and modernity, earned the Lebanese capital the nickname: The Paris of the Middle East. With its French Mandate architecture, its world-class cuisine, its fashionable and liberated women, its multitude of churches on the Christian side of town, and its thousand-year-old ties to France, it fit the part. 

During the 1990s, Lebanon became a poster child of a laissez-faire economy gone wild, and it now requires a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Rife with corruption, the powerful and well-connected were barely subject to the rule of law, and the warlords of the civil war took charge of running the country. 

The once-thriving middle class in Beirut, Lebanon, has collapsed amid a historic economic crisis. Banks are freezing withdrawals and pharmacies are running out of medicines.

How did this happen?  You may read the article here.