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UPPSATSER: Kulturgeografiska Institutionen UPPSATSER: Kulturgeografiska institutionen Hezbollah as a Reconstruction Leader Participatory Planning in the Rebuilding of Haret Hreik, Lebanon, Post-War 2006 Yasmin Tag-Eldeen ABSTRACT Tag-Eldeen, Y. 2020. Hezbollah as a Reconstruction Leader: Participatory Planning in the Rebuilding of Haret Hreik, Post-War 2006. Kulturgeografiska institutionen, Uppsatser, Uppsala universitet. This paper assesses the politicized nature of reconstruction efforts in the aftermath of the Israeli-Lebanese July War of 2006. It illustrates the factors driving the polarized nature of Lebanese politics, as well as the reasons for which a faith-based non-governmental organization such as Hezbollah was able to take the leading role in the reconstruction of Haret Hreik, a southern suburb of Beirut. Through a literature review, the study will demonstrate that the power struggle to lead post-war reconstruction can be seen as a reflection of Lebanon’s internal political and religious divisions, often along sectarian lines, as well as a lack of democratic accountability and the retreat of the state. Finally, in examining the implications for participatory planning when faith-based, non-state actors serve as reconstruction leaders in a politicized post-war context, the study contributes to the literature on citizen participation, power in urban planning and non-state actors within neoliberal urban governance. Keywords: participatory planning, Project Wa’d, neoliberalism, Hezbollah, post-war reconstruction Supervisor: Donald Mitchell ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3 1. INTRODUCTION 4 1.1 Purpose and Research Question 5 1.2 Definitions 5 1.3 Outlining 7 2. BACKGROUND 8 2.1 The July War of 2006 8 2.2 Aftermath of the War 8 2.3 Lebanon’s Political Landscape 9 2.4 History and Ideology of Hezbollah 10 2.5 Reconstruction and Hezbollah as a Reconstruction Leader 12 2.6 Project Wa’d 13 3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 17 3.1 Post-War Reconstruction 17 3.2 Neoliberalism and Non-State Actors 18 3.3 A Ladder of Citizen Participation 21 3.4 Operationalization 24 4. METHOD 26 4.1 Case study design 26 4.2 Qualitative Literature Study 26 5. ANALYSIS 28 5.1 Ladder of Participation in Project Wa’d: Tokenism and Non-Participation 29 5.2 Hezbollah’s Reconstruction Efforts: A Neoliberal Project? 33 6. CONCLUSION 36 REFERENCES 39 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to dedicate this thesis to my loving and caring mother, Zeinab Noureddine Tag-Eldeen, who passed away one month before this essay was completed. One of the many things we shared in common was our interest in politics within the Middle East region, specifically Lebanon, her homeland. Together, we discussed this essay thoroughly, where she shared her guidance and comments, since she herself was an Associate Professor at The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The loss of my beautiful mother will forever be the toughest sorrow for me to carry. This essay is also dedicated to my loving father and the wisest, most hard working man I know, Mustafa Tag-Eldeen, who worked within Disaster Risk Management in over 50 countries, and who also passed away one year ago. They are my greatest motivation in all that I do, present and future. Thanks to my devoted parents I have experienced love, support and care beyond what this world will ever know. They have taught me generosity, commitment, ambition, thrive, hard work, warmth, gratitude, love and happiness. No words will ever be enough to explain the emptiness they have left in our hearts, nor will there be enough words to explain the love we as a family shared for each other. I would like to show my deepest gratitude and love for all those who have supported me and my sister Yara Tag-Eldeen, specifically during the loss of our lovely parents. Thank you to my closest friends; Julia Jokiaho and Mila Stieglitz-Courtney for not only giving me love, support and care, but assisting me in accomplishing this study with great interest, engagement and dedication from start, together with: Frida Nordlander and Maya Bushell; my supervisor Professor Donald Mitchell, for his patience, inspiration, and guidance; my twin sister Yara Tag-Eldeen for being my other half, supporting and holding my hand through every step; my childhood friends Sarah Gligoric, Lanna Gligoric, Ivana Gligoric and Yasmeen Ainholm for being the closest thing to family; and my loving aunties in Lebanon, Laila and Fatmeh Noureddine, who share the great loss of their sister and our mother. It would not have been possible without you. 4 1. INTRODUCTION In July 2006, the capture of two Israeli soldiers by the Lebanese Shia-Islamist organization Hezbollah ignited an armed conflict between Israel and Lebanon that would go on to last 34 days. The conflict, that would come to be known as the July War, resulted in 1,200 Lebanese casualties, more than 3 billion USD in damage to civil infrastructure, and irreparable economic damage to a country already struggling to recover from a Civil War only fifteen years prior. By August 2006, over 2 billion USD had flowed into the country for the purpose of helping its reconstruction efforts, coming from a range of international and regional actors including the United Nations, Saudi Arabia and Qatar (The Presidency of the Council of Ministers 2007). Of the areas impacted during the July War, both in terms of civilian deaths and damages to infrastructure, the southern region of Lebanon and southern Beirut populated in majority by the Shia community were hardest hit, because of these areas’ ties to Hezbollah. These spatial-political factors, which led to such disparate destructions within the country, later marked the reconstruction efforts during the post-war period as well, with Hezbollah leading the efforts to rebuild areas of their stronghold. The most notable of these efforts, perhaps, was the reconstruction of Beirut's southern suburb Haret Hreik through “Project Wa’d”, led by Hezbollah’s construction wing Jihad al-Bina’. Beginning in 2006 directly after the war and completed by 2012, the project was remarkable in terms of scope and speed. The nature of the reconstruction project, however, remains contested, with specific respect to the participatory nature that the party espoused. Despite promises from leading figures to make Haret Hreik, which had historically hosted a number of Hezbollah’s headquarters, more beautiful than it was (Saliba 2015, p. 52), and regardless of hefty investments from the organization and its financial backers into reconstruction, the neighborhood was rebuilt entirely as it had been previously, despite the absence of public space and legal status of homes pre-2006. Furthermore, while officials of the party publicly described the reconstruction as a direct response to the community’s aspirations (Fawaz 2009), scholars have since argued that the process responded strictly to Hezbollah’s political ambitions and their quest for territorial control. 5 1.1 Purpose and Research Question The purpose of this thesis thus seeks to study post-war planning when it occurs within a complex power structure and highly politicized context. More specifically, an analysis will be given of the post-war rebuilding efforts of Hezbollah within the aftermath of the July War, with a specific focus on the reconstruction of Haret Hreik through “Project Wa’d,” that was taken up by the faith-based organization’s construction wing Jihad al- Bina’. As such, this paper will contribute to the literature on participatory planning by focusing on a specific case-study wherein a non-governmental and faith-based organization is one of the leading actors in a post-war recovery context. Drawing primarily on Arnstein’s (1969) A Ladder of Citizen Participation, the case will, first and foremost, be studied within the framework of participation within citizen decision- making processes. It will focus on the literature relating to reconstruction efforts in sectarian societies, as well as that of non-state actors within neoliberal urban regimes. This work will set out specifically to answer the following research question: What are the implications for participatory planning when faith-based non-governmental organizations serve as actors in a highly politicized post-war recovery context? 1.2 Definitions In order to study the implications of participatory planning in Hezbollah’s reconstruction of Haret Hreik, the definitions and meanings of the relevant terminology must first be outlined. A non-governmental organization (NGO), as defined by Goldstein (2007), is an organization that is responsible for the dissemination of information, advocacy or circulation of a particular policy or group, or is involved in a nation’s national affairs despite being unaffiliated with a specific government. This thesis will occasionally use the term NGO and non-state actors interchangeably, typically in the context of understanding how weak states give rise to non-governmental groups. It is, however, worth distinguishing between Hezbollah and its construction wing Jihad al-Bina’, the former of which is both a faith-based NGO and political party, whereas the latter is more of a non-governmental entity. 6 Neoliberalism can be defined as both an economic and political philosophy, one which believes that markets should have a dominant and controlling role in all, or nearly all, aspects of life, promoting privatization and economic efficiency above other values, such as wealth redistribution, conservation, and social justice (Goldstein 2007, p. 388). In this paper, neoliberalism helps contextualize the extent to which Hezbollah, as an NGO, was able to supercede the state in reconstruction efforts post-2006, insofar as neoliberal policies such as the deregulation of the market and the retreat of the state — in the form of reduced government expenditure and redistribution and for the sake of greater “economic efficiency” — help give rise to non-state actors seeking to fill the void left by the state in social service provisions.
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