Lebanon’s central banker expects a breakthrough by the end of the year in IMF talks on a controversial law stipulating how to repay depositors whose savings were caught up in the country’s financial collapse

Lebanon is today considered an Arab country, but its Christian Maronite population (Eastern Catholics in full communion with Rome) is genetically closer to Christian Cypriot and Armenian populations, according to a major genome-wide study, while Lebanese Muslims show greater genetic affinity with Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians. Another major international study of 926 Lebanese men published in the American Journal of Human Genetics found that Lebanese Muslims show stronger Arabian Peninsula ancestry while Lebanese Christians show some genetic links to Western Europe. Before 1920, Christians made up 80% of Mount Lebanon’s population. After Greater Lebanon was established in 1920, predominantly Muslim areas were added, immediately reducing the Christian share to 57% of the new country. Fast forward to today: Lebanon was flooded with as many as 2 million Syrian refugees on top of 230,000 Palestinians. At the same time, generations of Maronites have emigrated from Lebanon due to wars and cultural and religious differences, stemming from all these demographic changes. Today, Christian Maronites constitute roughly a mere 9% of everyone living on Lebanese territory. Lebanon’s case is a warning to Europe and the West: when mass migration and demographic change cause one population to grow substantially relative to another, the native population can become an increasingly small minority in its own historic homeland. Lebanon might seem like a country where almost half the population today consists of foreigners. However, Syrians and Palestinians share substantial genetic affinity with Lebanese Muslims, meaning the demographic shift has made the population more genetically similar overall, while the distinct Maronite population, which constituted a large majority in pre-1920 Mount Lebanon, has dwindled to a small minority of those living on Lebanese territory. The global population of Lebanese Christian Maronites and their descendants is estimated at roughly 10 million, with approximately 4 million in Brazil, 1.5 million in Argentina, 1.2 million in the United States, 2 million across other Latin American countries, 400k in Europe, and 700k in Lebanon.