The massive explosion that rocked Beirut on Aug.

4 was felt some 160 miles away in

Cyprus. It killed at least 180 people, wounded 6,000, and displaced another 300,000.
Beyond the human toll, the city itself is devastated, with large swathes of the capital
destroyed and gutted. The blast was the result of government incompetence: Nearly
3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate were being unsafely stored at the port of Beirut since
2013, meters away from densely populated neighborhoods.

The blast is the latest in a series of crises created and perpetuated by an anachronistic
system of governance. At the heart of this system lies a social compact that divides and
connects individuals to political leaders based on sectarian identity — Maronite
Christian, Sunni Muslim, Shia Muslim, Druze, but to name a few of the country’s 18
different religious sects. If Lebanon is to truly rebuild and move on from its latest
calamity, a new social compact will need to emerge from the capital’s rubble, one that
moves away from the political leader and towards a state that recognizes, but does not
succumb to, communal pluralism.

Rewriting the social compact will not be an easy task. The current one between state
and society has been around for nearly 200 years. Yet much like what propelled it into
being, political and economic changes over the last 15 years have gradually chipped
away at its foundations, allowing nascent notions of civic-mindedness to emerge that
challenge the current sect-centric compact tying communities to the state via their
political leaders. More specifically, new civil society and media organizations have
emerged that are directly and indirectly pursuing transformational outcomes as opposed
to single-issue reforms that simply reinforce the existing confessional system and
compact.