The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War, and the International Drug Traffic
By Jonathan V. Marshall,
Stanford University Press,
261 pages, $35
The latest natural gas exploration reports concluded that Lebanon may have more offshore deposits than either Cyprus and Syria, perhaps as much as 12 trillion cubic feet, which if extracted “could be enough to cover Lebanon’s electricity production needs for 99 years”, according to the minister of energy. The country used to be equally rich in hashish. In fact, during the 1975-1990 civil war, the fertile Biqa’a valley that borders Syria produced up to 1,000 tonnes of cannabis resin a year, and grew an estimated 30-50 tonnes of opium, which is used to make heroin.
Indeed, because of the lack of legitimate authority during those years of chaos, Lebanon became one of the world’s largest transit ports in the international traffic of narcotics, rivalling Mexico, Colombia, and even Afghanistan. Like in similarly situated countries, the drug industry fell under the control of highly placed government officials and political parties. To maintain otherwise was to simply delude oneself, although Beirut was neither the sole culprit nor the exception to the vicious rule. Simply stated, growing and moving large amounts of drugs required working relationships with state institutions, which took the form of organised corruption.
Jonathan V. Marshall, an independent scholar living in the San Francisco Bay Area and an expert on the politics of illicit drugs, has written an exciting volume on a seldom-broached topic. He first explores the role of hashish in the economy — the petroleum of Lebanon — before delving into the post-independence era when France, the former mandate power, brought along with its perennial influence, the “Corsican Connection”. As local kingpins muscled Corsicans out, large financial entities, including the state-funded Intra Bank (whose own scandal became legendary), also benefited from drug sales. By 1975, the beginning of the civil war, the country was already caught in the throngs of feudal lords who managed to dot every drug business i and cross every imaginable t. Of course, Syria channelled a good chunk of profits generated by various crops during its three-decades-long occupation, as Damascus created fresh infrastructures for its own “Connection,” which literally transformed the hapless country into a premier drug destination.
Heavily referenced, including rare drug-production statistics that identify estimated output levels, and relying on secret American government records, Marshall describes the corruption that oils the Lebanese economy and political system. The author reports on drug profits — and the drug trade’s contributions that allowed most active militias to operate with relative impunity. To say that hashish sales contributed to the country’s still unfinished, though mercifully suspended, civil war, would indeed be an understatement. Marshall provides the evidence that sheds light “on the dangerous role of vast criminal enterprises in the collapse of states and the creation of war economies that thrive in the midst of civil conflicts”.
What stands out in this fairly honest assessment is the author’s unabashed criticisms of regional powers — chiefly Syria and Israel, along with several Palestinian factions, which used Lebanon as their battleground — to turn the drug issue to their advantage. Still, Jonathan Marshall warns that greed, which was the feature of the hard-drugs business, threatened to transform narco-states into failed states.
That was certainly a concern, which was why Beirut began destroying cannabis fields in the Biqa’a in the summer this year. Angered at the deployment of military bulldozers to uproot their crops, local warlords fought back with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, wounding several policemen and damaging vehicles. This retaliation forced a temporary halt to the destruction of crops, though the state was determined to continue, anxious to regain sovereignty.
The farmers, on the other hand, accused the government of depriving them of their main source of income and of neglecting the valley’s development needs, both the complaints being completely justified. Rural inhabitants were generally poorer than their city counterparts and most were marginalised for decades, which meant that few carried any clout to press for serious investments. What was equally clear, however, was that repeated crop substitution efforts failed because powerful politicians and parties perceived hashish farmers as cash cows, which was why few shed any tears on the fates that befell poor farmers.
Many law-abiding citizens wondered, whether Beirut’s Oil Sector Management Committee, which the parliament recently created, will now rob the nation anew. Several politicians promised “surprises” awaiting the Lebanese, while a few congratulated “the people” on this wealth at the bottom of the sea. Few believed that its fate would not resemble that of the revenue-generating cannabis fields that, for decades, tarnished the country’s reputation.
Dr Joseph A. Kéchichian is the author of the forthcoming Legal and Political Reforms in Saudi Arabia (Routledge, 2012).
