Saad Hariri, Future Movement head and Rafik Hariri heir, announced from Tripoli last week $52 million in development, educational and health projects to commemorate the third anniversary of his father’s February 14, 2005 assassination.  The enormous gift, too, comes just weeks after the release of “Poverty, Growth and Income Distribution in Lebanon,” a report coauthored by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Lebanese Ministry of Social Affairs naming the governate, or mohafazat, of the North the most impoverished in the country.

“Whereas poverty rates are insignificant in the capital, Beirut, they are very high in the Northern city of Akkar,” the report concluded.  “In general, the North governate has been lagging behind the rest of the country and thus its poverty rate has become high.  Levels of poverty are above-average in the South but are not as severe as expected.”

According to the study, 18% of citizens of the North live in extreme poverty, which means that they live on a daily per capita expenditure of only $2.40.  A full 53%, furthermore, live in poverty, which means that they live on a daily per capita expenditure of just $4.00.  In both cases, these rates are more than twice the national average.

Comparing this data set, gathered in 2004-2005, to data gathered in 1997, the report concluded that the North “witnessed a major deterioration in its ranking by mean per capita expenditure,” a decline the authors speculate has only been exacerbated in the last three years by the July 2006 war, the battle around the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared through the summer of 2007 and also the current political impasse. 

The mohafazat of the North, the study says, also has the highest “inter-governate inequality” in Lebanon, meaning that it has the widest gap between rich and poor.  “Tripoli and Akkar are extremely poor,” the report concludes, “while Zghorta, Koura, and Batroun, Bcharre have a relatively low poverty rate.”

Analysts have long cited poverty in the South, and also in the predominately Shia southern suburbs of Beirut, as the greatest factor facilitating the political influence of Syria and Iran over the region’s people.  Both states have long funded schools, hospitals, places of worship and community centers in addition to funding and equipping armed military groups like Hezbollah.  In doing so, they have gained the loyalty of those, most of them Shia, who quite rightly complain of a lack of state spending in their villages and urban centers.

The client-patronage system, however, is not one exploited solely by regional actors like Iran and Syria looking for greater political influence in Lebanon.  Where the feudal sway of traditional Shia families in the South has given way in recent decades to the hegemony of political parties like Hezbollah and Amal, the North, for better or worse, is still ruled by prominent and moneyed families, who also use philanthropy to mobilize the people around their political projects. 

Some of the most notable of these families are headed by men and women like former Prime Minister Omar Karami of Tripoli, former MP Issam Fares of Beinou, Minister of Social Affairs Nayla Mouawad of Zghorta and MP Mohammad Safadi, also of Tripoli.  From outside of the North, too, the Hariri family of Saida funds a variety of projects in the area.

The René Moawad Foundation, for example, in over fifteen years of service, has built an agricultural center, trained residents in the agricultural sciences, promoted the breeding of goats and cattle, founded vocational training centers, worked to combat child labor, promoted human rights and democracy projects, and much more.  The Fares, Safadi, Hariri and other families have funded similar philanthropic projects.

And while most development experts applaud any effort to combat poverty, they point out that there are fundamental problems with relying on individual donors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to provide essential services that should come from the state. 

Asked broadly about the development work of these foundations in the North, Clément Zakhia, one author of “Forgotten Akkar,” a report to be released in early March 2008 by Mada, complained, “It is not done in an institutionalized manner or on a large scale.”  Money from big families and many NGOs is too often tied to national and confessional politics.  “Most of the time,” Zakhia said, “the money flows just before elections.”

A Lebanese farmer tries to convince his cow to leave his barn, which is covered in parliamentary campagin posters for the Future Movement Alliance list, in the northern Lebanese village of Karaf, in Akkar district, 19 June 2005. (AFP PHOTO/ Haitham Mussawi)

“The ones that are doing some sort of service are usually offering services in the communities of their voters,” agreed Aisha Mouchref, another contributor to “Forgotten Akkar.”  By comparing and contrasting the social services offered in the North by NGOs to those offered by Hezbollah in the Bekaa and the South, she argued, “Hezbollah provides systematic kinds of services.  They help the people in a kind of structural way, whereas in Akkar, you have these ad hoc services, often offered before elections.”

“The persistence of feudalism in Akkar until independence has left a major mark on the socio-economic situation in this region,” a draft of their report carefully argues in a section entitled “Historical Neglect and Marginalization.”  The descendents of feudal families, the report observes, often became the political representation for the area and “saw no personal benefit in fighting for the development of the deprived farmers.”

Even in recent decades, there have been political forces actively working against the development of the North.  Under Syrian tutelage, the Hariri family seems to have been actively kept out of the North by agents of the regime in Damascus.  By keeping the Sunni family’s philanthropy out of the region, the authorities were able to cut both Rafik and Saad Hariri’s Future Movement off from a major bloc of Sunni voters in 2000 and 2005 parliamentary elections, which voted instead for Fares or for deputies on the list of Safadi’s Tripoli Bloc, now nominally aligned with the Future Movement.

“It would be better if the state would implement [development] projects,” explained Mouchref.  In the final analysis, experts agree, development will have to come from expanding the state’s real material infrastructure.  The ability of individuals and NGOs in the North, or of Hezbollah in the South and the Bekaa, to serve as a substitute for the state in matters of development is ultimately limited.  But of course, with the government still in shambles, it might be a long time before residents of Akkar see any real change in the state’s attitude toward them: For now, patronage and individual philanthropy will likely continue serving as the Northern lifeline.