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Constructing Resilience: Real Estate Investment, Sovereign Debt and Lebanon's Transnational Political Economy by Julia Tierney

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Constructing Resilience: Real Estate Investment, Sovereign Debt and Lebanon's Transnational Political Economy by Julia Tierney Constructing Resilience: Real Estate Investment, Sovereign Debt and Lebanon’s Transnational Political Economy by Julia Tierney A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctoral of Philosophy in City and Regional Planning and the Designated Emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Teresa Caldeira, Chair Professor Ananya Roy Professor Michael Watts Professor Cihan Tugal Spring 2017 Constructing Resilience: Real Estate Investment, Sovereign Debt and Lebanon’s Transnational Political Economy Copyright 2017 by Julia Tierney Abstract Constructing Resilience: Real Estate Investment, Sovereign Debt and Lebanon’s Transnational Political Economy by Julia Tierney Doctoral of Philosophy in City and Regional Planning And the Designated Emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Teresa Caldeira In urban studies scholarship, Lebanon is often theorized on the frontiers of sectarian conflict as well as on the frontlines of neoliberalism. Entangling real estate investment, sovereign debt and transnational financial circulations from Arab Gulf investors and the Lebanese diaspora, managed by the Banque du Liban and scrutinized by the United States Treasury, the Lebanese political economy was – and still is – swayed by the fortunes of war. According to literature on the political economy of violence, profits are often made in times of war, a context appropriate to the civil war and postwar eras, during which spoils of war enriched the pockets of warlords-turned-politicians. Yet as the effects of the Syrian conflict spill across the border, encumbering Lebanon’s long paralyzed politics, straining its already deteriorated infrastructure and intensifying uncertainty with punctuated bombings, certain sectors prosper not because of violence but in spite of it. The skyline of Beirut is covered in construction cranes erecting affluent, if empty, apartments; the banks are infused with deposits invested in the debt of a sovereign bankrupt in ways not simply financial. Both real estate and banking are said to be resilient, a discourse so often repeated that resilience has become the dominant mode by which Lebanon is broadly understood, and not only by the developers and bankers with a financial interest in this depiction. Resilience has taken on the status of a self-evident truth. Tracing transnational investment into these two sectors, the pillars of the economy, this dissertation excavates the history around which resilience arose as a concept and thereafter endured. Rather than a description or explanation, resilience is instead – this dissertation argues – a dispositif organizing an entire political economy around the attraction of foreign financial inflows and ongoing emigration, ensuring the resilience for which Lebanon is renowned also perpetuates much of its underlying instability. 1 CONTENTS Acknowledgements ii Chapter One: 1 Real Estate, Banking and War Chapter Two: 21 Building Resilience Chapter Three: 49 Financing Resilience Chapter Four: 87 Affective Investment Chapter Five: 131 Hezbollah, the United States’ Treasury and a War by other Means Conclusion: 171 The Costs of Resilience Bibliography 178 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When thinking of those I want to acknowledge in my dissertation I remember my early days of research in Beirut. I do not know where to begin. There are those whose ideas I cited and words I borrowed, who took time to read and critique, who filled my mind with knowledge, fed my stomach with delicious food and fulfilled my soul with friendship, family and love. My dissertation therefore has multiple inspirations, if not authors, too many to name. Thank you. ii CHAPTER ONE: Real Estate, Banking and War Around the reconstructed downtown near to where construction financier and former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated by a massive car bomb in February 2005, there is an intersection that perhaps perfectly captures the paradox of Beirut. On one side are the Damac Tower and Beirut Terraces, lavish property developments financed by petro and diaspora dollars; on the other, are the luminous BankMed headquarters and the rocket-pierced Holiday Inn, devastated during the Lebanese civil war (1975 to 1990). Beirut’s political economy is constructed around banks and real estate, against the backdrop of war. Among a banking sector with assets almost four times the size of the economy, BankMed is Lebanon’s fifth largest.1 According to its website, BankMed was established in Lebanon in 1944 and renamed Banque de la Méditerranée in 1970. Amid the civil war, when fighting brought material damage to banks headquartered in Beirut’s devastated downtown and foreign investors fled, the Lebanese Parliament passed the Free Banking Law of 1977 to open the financial sector to further investment.2 In 1980, the majority of BankMed’s shares were acquired by the Méditerranée Investors Group, which in 1982 was fully acquired by the Rafiq Hariri, then chairman of Saudi Oger construction. Today, BankMed is fully owned by GroupMed Holdings (the re-named Méditerranée Investors Group), a banking, insurance and real estate conglomerate with investments in Lebanon and across the Middle East, and owned by the Rafiq Hariri’s wife Nazek and sons Ayman and Saad,3 the latter who was once Prime Minister and is today leader of the Future Movement political party. The Chairman and General Manager of BandMed is the late-Hariri’s cousin. The billionaire Hariri family epitomize what Hannes Baumann terms “the new contractor bourgeoisie in Lebanese politics,” emigrants who became wealthy in the Gulf and returned to Lebanon as investors and politicians.4 BankMed’s politically-connected ownership resembles that of other Lebanese banks, although perhaps not as concentrated as the fully Hariri-owned bank, as does its international expansion beyond Lebanon into Cyprus, Switzerland, Turkey, Iraq and Dubai.5 The Damac Tower (and Beirut Terraces behind it) in turn exemplify the construction of luxury real estate that characterizes Beirut’s postwar reconstruction. Damac Properties, the largest property development company in Dubai, chose Beirut for their first foreign venture in 2006,6 before the July war with Israel, after which their construction plans were put on hold until 2010 when they recommenced.7 Construction appears to be complete, but the Damac Tower is also empty (although the company’s chairman claimed that 45 percent of the apartments had been sold at prices 20 percent higher than those downtown, where the average price per square meter varies between $6,000 and $10,000.)8 According to the World Bank, real estate accounted for 70 percent of physical capital formation in Lebanon since 1 Bank deposits from Banque du Liban (http://www.bdl.gov.lb/statistics-and-research.html) and BankMed assets from Association des Banques du Liban, “Almanac of Banks in Lebanon” (2015). 2 Clement Henry Moore, “Le système bancaire libanais” (1983), 33. 3 Jad Chaaban, “Mapping the Control of Lebanese Politicians over the Banking Sector” (2015). 4 Hannes Baumann, “The New Contractor Bourgeoisie in Lebanese Politics” (2013), 125. 5 Association des Banques du Liban 2015, op. cit. 6 Lebanon Opportunities, May 2006. 7 Lebanon Opportunities, August 2010. 8 The Executive, “Behind Beirut’s Newest Luxury Development” (2013). 1 1997.9 From 2002 to 2010, apartment prices in Beirut rose by over 300 percent,10 especially as a result of investment from the Gulf Arab countries. Yet since the outbreak of hostilities in Syria, foreign investment has practically vanished and expatriate investors became more prominent. Behind the Damac Tower, the visually-striking Beirut Terraces, with hanging gardens on their oversized, unenclosed terraces, is under development by Bassim Halaby, a Lebanese expatriate whose Benchmark Development company is also building across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen and Morocco. Apartments in Beirut Terraces start selling at $7,300 per square meter, meaning the smallest apartments sell for more than $1.8 million.11 Yet both BankMed, with more than $12 billion in deposits, and the luxurious towers across the street, where apartments are beyond the purchasing price of significantly less than even 1 percent of Lebanese, expatriate or resident, stand beside the bombed out building of what was once the Holiday Inn. Opened in 1973, two years before the start of the Lebanese civil war, it was destroyed during “the war of the hotels” between late 1975 and early 1976, when the Holiday Inn was situated on the frontlines of fighting between sectarian militias.12 Its war scarred façade is preserved because of an ownership dispute between its Lebanese and Kuwaiti shareholders, the former who want to renovate it into luxury lofts and the latter who seek to demolish the building and rebuild in a style similar to those surrounding it, such as the Damac Tower and Beirut Terraces.13 This image that opens my dissertation also encapsulates the essence of the Lebanese political economy: banks, real estate, against the backdrop of war. It points to the question at the heart of my dissertation: why is there so much money flowing through Lebanon when there are so many risks of investing here? Lebanon is not a country at war, nor is violence even an everyday threat in Beirut, but by measures of investment risk – political uncertainty, economic fragility and regional insecurity – Lebanon ranks rather high. The past decade has
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