The context of citizenship and reconstruction differs between the Bekaa Valley and the South, depending on the current situation and the nature of the political and military influence of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement in each region. While the South, after the war, established a narrative based on resistance and reconstruction within a tripartite relationship (state-party-people), the Bekaa Valley remained outside this framework.
The Bekaa Valley has historically suffered from economic and structural marginalization, with no viable alternatives to smuggling, cannabis cultivation, and the role of local networks. This makes the search for a “new social contract” between the state and the region’s inhabitants a pressing question, especially after the recent Israeli war on Lebanon, the diminished military role of Hezbollah, and the renewed focus on the issue of “monopolizing weapons in the hands of the state.” The question then arises: How will the people of the Bekaa shape their relationship with the state? And what alternatives exist to the current systems?
To address this question, it is essential to understand the historical relationship between the clans in the Bekaa Valley and the state and political parties. Engineer Rashid Hamadeh, son of the late politician Sabri Hamadeh, explains that “tribalism is the first societal characteristic adopted by individuals in the region to preserve their identity, prioritizing personal value over productive individualism, and ethics and relationships over productive structures.” According to Hamadeh, clans function as a “social institution” that provides services, security, and mediation when the state is absent, and becomes a partner to the state when the latter provides services and makes people feel valued and dignified. When the state fails to do so, individuals revert to other systems of affiliation, whether sectarian, partisan, or tribal.
The economic marginalization of the Bekaa Valley persisted for decades, creating a vacuum exploited by political parties as a substitute for the state, alongside the cannabis cultivation economy. One serious attempt to integrate the Bekaa into the state was undertaken by the late Sabri Hamadeh during the presidency of Fouad Chehab in 1962. At that time, cannabis cultivation was promoted to pressure the international community into securing development funding. This resulted in the US-funded “Green Project,” which contributed to revitalizing the agricultural sector and rebuilding rural areas, thus creating a new social contract between the tribes, the state, and the concept of citizenship. However, this contract gradually collapsed with the civil war. The project resurfaced in the 1990s during the reconstruction phase before disappearing entirely due to a lack of funding. Cannabis cultivation returned, the social contract dissolved, and the region entered a phase of tribal and political disintegration, beginning with the influence of Hafez al-Assad and culminating in the dominance of Hezbollah and Amal. This disintegration involved replacing historical tribal leaders with leaders linked to money, weapons, and religious-party loyalty.
A study published in the Journal of Illicit Economics and Development indicates that drug trafficking revenues in Lebanon between the 1970s and 1990 were estimated at between $500 million and $6 billion annually, underscoring the central role of this trade in an impoverished and marginalized region. With the state’s persistent inability to provide alternatives, authorities have sometimes resorted to a two-pronged policy: destroying crops under international pressure on the one hand, and tacitly accepting the continuation of trafficking as “compensation” for marginalization on the other. This has exacerbated the rift between the state and farmers, expanded smuggling networks, and given the cannabis economy a “socio-economic” function in addition to its purely illegal one.
Sheikh Nafiz Jaafar, a local leader, told Daraj that Fouad Chehab’s experience “was the most successful in linking the tribes to the state.” He explained that these areas were deprived of basic services and infrastructure, so economic projects and services were provided, creating a “social contract based on services.” He added that necessity drove villagers to cultivate and sell cannabis, and that if economic and developmental alternatives had existed, this could have been avoided. According to Jaafar, legalizing cannabis cultivation for medical purposes is an important step, but it is insufficient. He believes it requires “the state’s presence and support, ensuring security, issuing a general amnesty for wanted individuals not involved in murder to reintegrate them, and opening up volunteering in state institutions based on merit, not favoritism.”
Since Lebanon’s independence in 1943, the cultivation of hashish and opium in the northern Bekaa Valley has constituted an illegal economic activity, involving local networks that include farmers, traders and agents, within a shadow economy paralleling the absence of the state.
A Carnegie Institute study titled “Double Traders: Lebanon and the Dangers of Captagon Trafficking” indicates that the Captagon trade evolved after the 2011 Syrian war, with the entry of new traders from outside the traditional clans. These traders, possessing political and sectarian connections, amassed huge profits due to low production costs and high demand in the Gulf, making them part of the war economy and the local political economy. The collapse of the Lebanese financial system in 2019 and international sanctions on Syria further exacerbated this trade, given the Amal Movement and Hezbollah’s monopoly on Shiite political representation in the Bekaa Valley and Hezbollah’s focus on addressing the demands of major clans rather than developing the local political economy. This has made it difficult for the state to curb the drug trade, with the possibility of increased production in the future due to continued demand and the existing production infrastructure in Lebanon, according to the study.
Rashid Hamadeh argues that the black market was not the cause of Lebanon’s economic collapse, instead blaming the economic policies of the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in the 1990s for the destruction of productive sectors. He believes that the greatest harm from smuggling is social and security-related rather than economic, and suggests distinguishing between the smuggling of consumer goods, which lowers prices, and the smuggling of drugs and weapons, which undermines the social and security fabric. He adds that Shiite leaders before the rise of modern political parties were more closely aligned with the concept of the state (such as Kamel Asaad and Sabri Hamadeh), until the landscape changed due to Iranian funding and the disintegration of tribal and religious classes, leading to a decline in Arab-secularism in favor of religious-political influence linked to Iran.
Despite this, Hamadeh believes that solutions for rebuilding the social contract are still possible through “a strong state with a robust security and economy,” modern agricultural and industrial development, and support for livestock and grain production, which could generate approximately $4 billion annually. For Hamadeh, the only solution for Lebanon is “a new social contract comprised of a civil state and a legal system that protects the individual, not the leaders, leading to a comprehensive national alliance and a declaration from the clans rejecting all drug traffickers…”
In contrast, the mayor of Sharbin, Engineer Khader Nasser al-Din, believes that “there is no need for a new social contract, but rather a return to loyalty to the nation through education.” He considers the existence of political parties natural as long as they operate within the framework of the state, arguing that the fundamental problem lies in “the absence of the state and its services.” He maintains that the people of these areas are an integral part of the state, constituting approximately 60-70 percent of the military forces. However, Nasser al-Din points out that the state has driven the region’s youth toward involvement in illegal activities due to the lack of services, while the eastern border is now “almost completely controlled,” with only a few exceptions, he says.
This marginalization of the Bekaa Valley was compounded by the 2024 Israeli war on Lebanon and the Syrian army’s border attacks in March 2025, which displaced residents who owned border lands without compensation or educational and social support. Nasser Eddine explains that international aid was “temporary and ineffective,” leaving an entire generation out of school and the losses unresolved.
The Captagon trade is not limited to local residents and certain clans; it employs Lebanese and Syrians and has become intertwined with politics. The two Shiite parties sought a general amnesty that would include hundreds of prisoners convicted of drug-related offenses by 2020, but this amnesty never materialized. Hezbollah sees this as an opportunity to bolster its popular support after the losses suffered by Shiite areas due to the conflict. This is confirmed by Joseph Daher, a professor of political economy at the University of Lausanne and author of “The Political Economy of Hezbollah,” who considers the drug trade an economic alternative. He cites a statement by former Agriculture Minister Hussein Hajj Hassan in 2011-2012 that there was no alternative to cultivating cannabis. Daher believes that Hezbollah’s involvement in the drug trade was part of a war economy, coordinated with the Syrian regime, aimed at diversifying its funding sources beyond Iranian support, especially given that its civilian and military network comprises more than 100,000 people.
Following the ceasefire in November 2024, American conditions emerged demanding that the Lebanese government begin a timetable for “monopolizing weapons in the hands of the state.” This created a sense of unease within the Shia community, particularly in the Bekaa Valley, where weapons were associated with self-defense in the absence of state authority. Despite political reassurances from President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, the question remained: What comes after the weapons? Who will guarantee security? Who will guarantee a decent life?
Daher argues that “disarmament” is not a military or technical issue, but rather a “socio-economic” one related to the balance of power within Lebanon and the lack of economic alternatives. Humanitarian agencies estimate that the recent hostilities affected 1.2 million people, and that reconstruction needs are close to $3.4 billion, while pledges have reached only about $750 million.
In a study conducted in collaboration with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Daher proposes two models of sovereignty:
(1) Sovereignty from above, achieved through a monopoly on arms, control of borders, and foreign policy, but this clashes with a weak economic state.
(2) Sovereignty from below, achieved through development, services, political representation, strategic neutrality, reform of the sectarian system, a secular electoral law, judicial independence, and combating corruption.
The Bekaa Valley today faces an unresolved question: Will its return to the state come through security, the economy, services, or through the formulation of a new social contract that integrates clans, the state, and parties within a formal economy and comprehensive development? And if parties have filled the void left by the state for decades, then disarmament reopens the question: Who will guarantee security? Who will guarantee livelihood? And what is the alternative to an economy that has been formed on the borders of a weakened state?
Despite their differing approaches, Hamadeh, Nasser al-Din, and Daher share a common understanding: the Bekaa Valley needs a strong state, robust institutions, and development. They also agree that any discussion of disarmament cannot be separated from the issues of the economy, living conditions, and borders. Without genuine alternatives, the social contract with the state remains postponed, and the search for a “new identity” for political Shiism in the Bekaa remains open to multiple possibilities.