To reconsider what platform for future development Lebanon stands on today, Executive talked to Fadi Fawaz, who served Rafik Hariri as an advisor on development issues throughout his premiership and who lived the day-to-day evolution of these projects with the late former prime minister.
Fadi Fawaz remembers many things about working with Rafik Hariri, including the bursts of energy that could erupt at any time of day. “Often he would call me early in the morning and suggest we drive across town to the Cite Sportive construction site to give workers a boost or walk the corridors of the new Beirut International Airport,” recalled Fawaz, still in deep shock at the sudden death of the man he called a colleague, a friend, a brother and a father.
“He believed in development and that development is essential for our seeds and opportunities. You can’t bring the private sector to invest in a country if there is no infrastructure. Unfortunately, for every project, he was never given recognition at first,” Fawaz exclaimed, recounting a key rationale in Hariri’s reconstruction concept and how the projects struggled under objections and criticism.
“The political factions did not credit him, but time showed that he was right,” Fawaz insisted, pointing to global recognition of Hariri’s achievements, especially his last award, the Habitat Scroll of Honor Special Citation for 2004. “I remember Rafik Hariri telling us, ‘this is the crowning jewel of my achievement,’ when he heard of the award.”
According to Fawaz – who in 2003 prepared with the Council for Development and Reconstruction, Lebanon Rebuilt, a report outlining the reconstruction achievements to date – the citation was especially meaningful because a commission of international experts scrutinized Lebanon’s reconstruction accomplishments before Lebanon and Hariri were selected as winners among a large number of candidates.
In reflection post-mortem, the record of Hariri’s achievements is impressive: the most visible was the rebuilding of the BCD, while the biggest disappointment would have to be the Elyssar urban development scheme for southern Beirut, which ironically is now being looked at in a more favorable light.
However, he was still frustrated by politics that thwarted his dreams, including the Beirut International Conference and Convention Center on Manara. “When the cabinet of Omar Karami declared in January that it would scrap the plans for this project, he was very hurt,” Fawaz said. “He thought a convention center should be in Beirut. He felt they made this decision for no real reason, except out of spite.”
But what of those projects that were realized. For posterity, here are the developmental achievements of the Hariri years. One can only speculate what would have happened had there been no Rafik Hariri. Would anyone else have come along with similar vision, energy and international clout? It’s hard to imagine.
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Roads
The Hariri government drafted several plans for establishing controlled access highways on the north-south axis along the coast and from Beirut to Damascus, in addition to a Beirut ringroad and tourism-related road projects. Over 10 years of restoration, important parts of these transportation schemes were realized, such as the southern highway, the northern gateway to Beirut, the highway linking Beirut airport and the downtown, urban feeder roads and parts of the ringroad, and a major bridge on the road to Damascus.
However, the initial scheme had to be revised in major parts and some projects had to be postponed or abandoned. The international highway and Beirut ringroad plans had been designed at one stage as a Build-Operate-Transfer project and contracted out to international construction consortiums, but the deals between the firms and the Lebanese government were dropped when the firms increased their demands after recalculating their costs and revenue projections. Subsequent plans to create a Lebanese Toll Road Company did not overcome the financing hurdles.
The road transport development concept also was battered by land speculation and corruption that pushed the cost per meter of new highway to astronomical heights. Its realization was further impaired by communal and regional rivalries, which created haggling over construction priorities and led to piecemeal implementation. By the turn of the century, the latest $1.2 billion national road rehabilitation program looked impressive mainly on paper and could be carried out only in part. International transportation experts also found the Lebanese transportation master plan, which in essence relies on traffic concepts of the 1960s, to be too motor vehicle-centric and lacking of advanced integrative aspects of public transportation and other alternatives to automobile transport.
However, the road network in Beirut and the highways connecting the capital with the north and south of the country have been improved markedly over the reconstruction years and driving in Lebanon has become significantly more comfortable. According to Fawaz, the passionate driver Hariri took an active interest in road planning. He emphasized the application of international standards in equipping the road network with traffic signs and went as far as personally scouting terrain where he envisioned a “Summit Highway” road to interlink Lebanese mountain tops for better tourist access. He considered the car the primary means of transportation chosen by the Lebanese and regarded rail-bound mass transportation concepts as luxury.
The challenge of the coming years is to complete rehabilitation of the road network, for which money has been too scarce in several past planning attempts, in order to fully implement this essential infrastructure for commerce and recreation. The dictates of contemporary traffic planning and the Lebanese experience leave no doubt that the improvement of the road network will have to include measures to control vehicular dependency and overcrowding of streets by stronger provision of alternative public transportation and make roads safer through vastly increased driver education.
| Area of reconstruction | Value of all awarded Projects ($ millions) | Value of Projects completed by end 2002 ($ millions) | Percentage of Progress on awarded but incomplete projects (2002) |
| Road network rehabilitation and expansion | 1,016.5 | 554.0 | 49% |
Source: Lebanon Rebuilt, 2003
Airport and Port
Next to the road infrastructure, the transportation gateway of Beirut International Airport (BIA) figured very prominently in Rafik Hariri’s design to attract foreign investors, international business and Arab tourists back to Beirut. Once built as one of the region’s first international travel hubs, Beirut airport was devastated by the war and operated as a relic of the past during the first years of the Hariri-era while the construction of a new terminal and runways went on at the same site, based on project plans devised prior to the Lebanese war and re-adopted by the reconstruction planners after its end.
With ambitious hopes, the BIA rehabilitation and expansion was implemented for an annual capacity of six million passengers, with the potential for even greater numbers. The great investment requirement and high visibility of the project made it a central target for critics of the Hariri reconstruction concept and an often-used tool in political attacks against his policies. Construction of the new BIA was moreover delayed and driven into cost overruns, partly by the need to revise plans in the middle of works but more severely by the 1996 Israeli armed operation “Grapes of Wrath,” which sought to incapacitate the Hizbullah military capabilities in Lebanon but had its greatest effects in the killing of civilians and slowing down reconstruction.
Hariri’s sweeping enthusiasm for the airport project was highly visible when he inaugurated the first phase of the new terminal building in 1998 and traversed the facility with an entourage of aides, officials, international guests and media. His vision extended to making Beirut a primary stopover point for wealthy private travelers by creation of a world-class private terminal and internationally outstanding free zone, including a unique haven for the world’s cigar smokers. Hariri personally drove the development of BIA forward and, according to Fawaz, was often was attacked for it, only to be proven right by the success of the airport in bringing visitors to Lebanon.
According to Fawaz, Beirut Port also was an intricate component in the Hariri concept to revitalize the Lebanese economy. The dredging and enlargement of Beirut Port are now also paying off, Fawaz claimed, as the port last year could massively increase container traffic, again confirming the late former prime minister’s concept to enhance the economy by investing into infrastructure.
| Area | Value of Projects | Value of Projects completed by end 2002 | Percentage of Progress on awarded but incomplete projects (2002) |
| Beirut International Airport | 663.7 | 543.3 | 52% |
| Beirut Port and other Ports | 7.3 | 5.4 | 34% |
Source: Lebanon Rebuilt, 2003
Telecommunications and Electricity
The development of the telecommunications network and the refurbishment and expansion of the electricity network counted among the first and most investment-demanding projects of the Lebanese reconstruction.
In telecommunications, the Hariri concept split the responsibilities for the renewal of the landline network and for the creation of mobile telephony into distinct realms. For the new GSM mobile phone networks, the government, in which Hariri temporarily held the post of telecommunications minister in addition to his premiership, awarded the construction and operation of two cellular networks to private sector companies under a Build-Operate-Transfer contract package, which provided the country with mobile services and the Lebanese state with revenue, without requiring public sector investments.
In landline telephony, the government invested directly into replacing the obsolete and run-down pre-war network that in 1992 only comprised 200,000 lines of questionable functionality, with a new network that in 2002 could offer 1.2 million lines. At nearly $800 million of capital expenditure, this landline project was one of the biggest projects in the reconstruction portfolio but this was still surpassed by the price tag for restoring and developing the electricity network.
In 1992, the utility grid was one of the major losses of the war years and the citizens of Lebanon bore the burden of daily outages, rationing and inefficiencies in electricity deliveries in a national grid that had been reduced to a capacity of 600 megawatt. At a cost of almost $1.4 billion in capital expenditure, oil-burning power plants, a small array of hydroelectric plants, and the national distribution grid were brought to levels where they could supply the capital Beirut and outlying regions with electricity on constant basis.
Despite the high investments, however, both telecommunications and electricity kept prominent positions in the list of citizen complaints. The BOT-scheme for the mobile communications sector turned sour and the landline network operator long did not succeed to optimize the usage of the expensive network. The development of the electricity grid suffered a major setback when Israel retaliated for resistance attacks against occupying positions with several air strikes destroying electricity generation capacity in the late 90s. But in the longer run, political disputes over the management of the telecommunications sector and inefficiencies at the Electricite de Liban (EDL) power utility proved even more detrimental to the fortunes of telecommunications and electricity networks.
Restructuring and eventually privatizing the EDL utility is one of the most pressing tasks for the near future, along with the conversion of electricity generation from oil to the cheaper natural gas. In telecommunications, the long fight over regulation and privatization, which frequently pitted Hariri and President Emile Lahoud as direct opponents, has led the country fall behind in implementation of urgently needed technical developments and competitive telecoms environment. Regulatory and privatization issues are vastly overdue exercises for the nation’s incoming authorities.
| Area | Value of Projects | Value of Projects completed by end 2002 | Percentage of Progress on awarded but incomplete projects (2002) |
| Electricity generation and distribution | 1,387.6 | 1,015.9 | 90% |
| Telephone network | 775.3 | 766.4 | 78% |
Source: Lebanon Rebuilt, 2003
Education and Public Health
In 1992, Lebanon’s public education network retained 1262 schools, which however had suffered massively under the war, and the state-run Lebanese University in a fragmented operation over 47 locations. By 2002, the number of public schools had been increased to 1,280, with a combined increase in capacity of 12,000 to 13,000 seats due to renovation and new construction of public schools. The vocational education system had received a boost through creation of 30 new vocational-technical teaching institutions and for higher education, the new central campus for the Lebanese University after many delays was nearing completion in suburban Hadath, with nine faculties on a 700,000 square meter campus with capacity to serve 25,000 students.
For provision of public health services, the government undertook it to increase the number of beds in public hospitals, which had fallen in the conflict years to merely 350, to a national coverage with 2,500 beds mainly through construction of new hospitals. The network of health centers, rural and urban hospitals in the provinces is being crowned with the Beirut Government University Hospital (BGUH) which has just been completed in the Bir Hasan district of Beirut and is awaiting its opening this spring.
According to Fawaz, Hariri placed great emphasis on providing young people with a proper learning environment, including classroom design, installation of heating and air conditioning, and sports facilities. He personally inspected and influenced the construction and equipment of public schools, Fawaz said, expressing sadness over the fact that Hariri would not himself be able to inaugurate the new Lebanese University campus in Hadath and the BGUH.
The leading challenges in the areas of education are today for assuring of competitiveness and comparability between education provided at public schools and the Lebanese University and the private sector operators, also in terms of image. In the health care realm, the re-structuring of the social safety net and implementation of retiree health insurance are top needs.
| Area | Value of Projects | Value of Projects completed by end 2002 | Percentage of Progress on awarded but incomplete projects (2002) |
| Lebanese university, libraries and archeological sites | 253.6 | 29.4 | 58% |
| Public schools | 94.4 | 78.6 | 36% |
| Vocational sector | 65.0 | 41.4 | 4% |
| Public Health centers and hospitals | 238.1 | 89.1 | 58% |
Source: Lebanon Rebuilt, 2003
Environment and Sport
The public investments into sports facilities were executed largely in preparation of the ASEAN Games, which were hosted by Lebanon in 2000. The major works were the renewal of the Cite Sportive stadium and sports complex in Beirut (already in time for the 1997 Pan-Arab Games), construction of two new stadiums in Tripoli and Sidon and rehabilitation of several municipal stadiums around Lebanon.
According to Fawaz, the completion of the sports facilities in time for international competition was a high priority for Hariri, who reassured officials from the ASEAN organization on daily basis that the stadiums would be completed in time for the prestigious games with their capability to enhance Lebanon’s image.
In carrying out the games, the main difficulty for the host nation was to fill the spanking new stadiums with enough spectators to create an atmosphere befitting the competition of national football teams from Asian countries. Outside of the setting of these games, the fairly expensive stadiums continue to face their severest challenges in the tasks to maintain them in good working order and find ways to use them for sports and recreational purposes.
The environmental initiatives of the Hariri-era took off with the establishment of the ministry for the environment in 1992. According to Lebanon Rebuilt, the administration achieved their most significant steps towards improving the relationship between the Lebanese and the nature around them by setting up “National Environment Code Nr. 444” that stipulates a standard for environmental quality, classification of industry by environmental impact, and guidelines for environmental impact assessment studies.
The densely populated country faces serious issues in threats of environmental degradation and desertification and has to address the need for sustainable rural development. With a limited scope of environmental projects completed or under implementation and the ministry of environment having operated under persistent shortage of personnel, funding and authority, the challenges in this field remain extensive.
| Area | Value of Projects | Value of Projects completed by end 2002 | Percentage of Progress on awarded but incomplete projects (2002) |
| Sports facilities | 126.1 | 121.5 | 99% |
| Environmental and reforestation projects | 32.9 | 14.5 | 69% |
Source: Lebanon Rebuilt, 2003
Water and waste
The sectors of water supply and collection and treatment of solid and liquid wastes had to grapple with the dual burdens of repairing wartime damages and growing demand from a growing and increasingly urbanized population. The water supply for greater Beirut was improved significantly through rehabilitation and expansion of the Dbayeh water treatment plant and water and wastewater networks in several parts of Lebanon were rehabilitated and improved over the past ten years. However, the water supply network in Beirut and most of the country functions inefficiently and large parts of the network are in need of renewal. As household and industrial sewage today largely enters the Mediterranean with minimal or no treatment, plants for wastewater treatment are yet to be completed or constructed throughout the country. In the longer term, the country faces a major challenge in securing the water supply for future generations.
In the collection of solid waste, the Hariri government succeeded to address the country’s waste emergency and the unregulated dumping of refuse on Beirut seashores is a thing of the past (although the memoirs of the practice still loom). Measures implemented by the government for Beirut included the commissioning of effective private sector waste collection, the abandoning of an obsolete incinerator (Amrousiyeh) and a smelly composting plant (Karantina) in connection with establishment of a sanitary landfill in Naameh in 1997. The government decided to turn away from waste incineration and create a system of composting, recycling, and landfills for solid waste but the waste generation of greater Beirut quickly outstripped the capacities of the Naameh facility. Municipal waste mountains in the next larger cities, Tripoli and Sidon, and a massive presence of unsanitary or entirely irregular garbage dumps in smaller towns and throughout most of rural Lebanon plague the country.
In the sectors of wastewater and solid waste treatment, the reconstruction under Rafik Hariri still had many ambitions that could not be fulfilled, said Fawaz. For future administrations, a comprehensive strategy for waste avoidance, recycling, treatment and disposal is a major order to be tackled.
| Area | Value of Projects | Value of Projects completed by end 2002 | Percentage of Progress on awarded but incomplete projects (2002) |
| Water Supply | 477.4 | 212.7 | 54% |
| Wastewater | 363.0 | 168.1 | 54% |
| Solid Waste | 682.4 | 206.5 | 41% |
Source: Lebanon Rebuilt, 2003
Government and public buildings
In restoration of existing and construction of new government buildings, the Hariri-era equipped Lebanon with new administrative facilities but perhaps even more with new symbols of government. While the Presidential Palace, the UNESCO Palace facility and cultural center, several ministry buildings in Beirut and administration offices in several municipalities were covered by the $111 million expenditure into this area, the most prominent project in this respect is the restoration and expansion of the seat of office for the Lebanese prime minister, the Grand Serail overlooking downtown Beirut. Incidentally, Hariri supporters like to point out that the late prime minister spent millions of dollar of his private fortune in paying for furnishing of the administrative palace.
| Area | Value of Projects | Value of Projects completed by end 2002 | Percentage of Progress on awarded but incomplete projects (2002) |
| Government Buildings | 111.0 | 92.5 | 63% |
Source: Lebanon Rebuilt, 2003
