Feeling at home in Lebanon

Ask anyone in Beirut about any infrastructure project of the city and one is mostly met with references to Rafic Hariri, the twice-elected Lebanese prime minister, who was assassinated in 2006. At the end of my week-long stay, Hariri seemed like the man with the golden touch to me — anything he laid his hands on appeared to have turned to gold. The airport, the roads and almost all concrete structures were attributed to the late prime minister.

Indeed, ordinary Lebanese people remember him for developing the country’s infrastructure as it recovered from decades of civil war. During my childhood, I remember references to Beirut as the Paris of the Middle East — modern, developed and perhaps, very European. But all of that began to change after the mid-1970s due to the civil war in Lebanon. Indeed, even today the country is very ethnically divided, but with a greater semblance of sanity. Thus, Hariri is remembered for brokering peace in 1990 to end the 16-year civil war. Consequently, he was elected prime minister in 1992 for his first term. This is when he adopted policies to rebuild the war-torn infrastructure.



However, driving around you soon begin to wonder if this was the only way to rebuild the war-torn city and morale of the people. There are those who argue that Hariri failed to resolve two critical issues — lack of electricity and water shortage. For a country that should ideally have sufficient water, this is a major issue. But then the assassinated Lebanese prime minister was not the only one with this kind of attitude. We in South Asia are equally fond of investing in infrastructure projects that look impressive. Drive around Sri Lanka or Pakistan and you can observe investment in projects that are likely to be visible to the common man. The fact is that the common man in Beirut — the taxi driver, the small-time shopkeeper and other people belonging to similar professions — complains about water and electricity, but his mind is too distracted by whatever was built by Hariri to notice that the former leader was also a part of the problem that he was trying to resolve.

Hariri built his personal fortune due to his association with the Saudi Arabian elite. He invested Saudi money and other finances to develop the infrastructure that I referred to earlier. These are the kind of projects that could have been delayed until peace was restored and well-anchored. More importantly, such investment was a vital part of building a new patronage structure that bred a new group of elite, with national, regional and international linkages. The World Bank patted Hariri on the back for his spending spree and borrowings for reconstruction. This was seen as a vital part of post-war development. But the fact of the matter is that Hariri was central to the mafia that continues to destabilise the country. The ongoing garbage crisis in Lebanon is representative of the mafia problem that bred the system of ‘spoils’ and rampant corruption. (Currently, the company that collected and disposed of public waste is not functioning because the mafia behind it has raised the cost to a point where the garbage collection service has become unaffordable for ordinary people).

The prime minister was a shareholder in Solidere, a Beirut-based development and reconstruction company. It was used to reward Hariri’s clients and political partners. Hence, Beirut’s seemingly pretty downtown, which presents a successful effort at beautification, gentrification and restoration of some history, denotes an intense system of ‘spoils’. Politically, this translated into supporting those subscribing to a certain kind of ideology and putting restrictions on the media. The Syrian government banned public demonstrations in 1994 to curb all opposition.



The intention here is not to criticise the former Lebanese prime minister, but to remind oneself of the peculiarities of this particular model of infrastructure and economic development that is used in many places. Such a system is essentially aimed at generating rents and creating a new class of stakeholders. I certainly did not feel out of place in Lebanon. I was, in fact, quite at home watching things that make ordinary folk feel happy temporarily, but which have been accomplished by putting at stake their future happiness, which is a huge cost indeed.

Furthermore, infrastructure development in Lebanon echoes similar developments in the rest of the Gulf. The infrastructure development in this region is connected to a global capitalist system that is based on building up a local elite that then have stakes in this kind of an economy. Adam Hanieh, a senior lecturer at the School of African and Oriental Studies, wrote an excellent book, Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States, that explains this phenomenon. In fact, reading this book, we find that Lebanon was late in adopting this integrated global-regional economy that began to grow in the Gulf in the 1970s. The political economy of such development revolves around building a capitalist class in these regions that is linked with the world market. Thus, we can observe growth of family-based trading groups and businesses that operate across the Gulf. The state is there to provide support and act as a backbone of this system. So, irrespective of political issues, an economic integration of sorts has happened quite swiftly. In fact, if we observe closely, we will be able to see the new capitalist elite in South Asia also getting integrated with the one in the Gulf.

One of the fundamental perimeters of this economy is that it does not aim to understand or redress real issues faced by the people. And so behind the sheen that some Middle Eastern economies represent, we are often unable to notice the repression of ordinary folk. Part of the trick is to manage the narrative through silencing dissent or through other means. Hence, curbing the media is critical, not just because the intent is to secure people against terrorism, but also to muffle opposition to the aforementioned system of ‘spoils’.

Sadly, this infrastructure development becomes the face of growth and development, which it is not. Public movements will have to see through this facade and find an antidote before this becomes too painful.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 17^th, 2015.

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