Drilling the Bekaa: Temporality, Technology, and Vernacular Development in Postcolonial Lebanon

By viewing the post-World War II "development era" from the perspective of rural Lebanon, this paper argues that international development missions were typically interventions in longer-term struggles that predated and outlived that era. It explores how communities in Lebanon's Bekaa valley enrolled US hydrological experts in their struggles for just resource distribution. It reveals how these communities' conception of development fundamentally differed from that of US experts, and the outcomes of that disjuncture.

In 1951-53, a team of US Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) engineers researched Lebanon's Litani River, seeking to implement the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) model. Their report formed the basis of the Litani Project (1955--65), Lebanon's largest ever rural project. Two key principles animated the USBR: that their work would propel Lebanon forward temporally, and that the TVA was a "travelling technology." As a byproduct of the USBR's core sample investigations, they left behind fresh wells. When Bekaa farmers discovered these wells, they petitioned the USBR for more. Scholars have interrogated how the temporality of development requires communities to sacrifice their present needs for a developed future that continually vanishes. Bekaa farmers, however, exploited the USBR for immediate and tangible gains. They did not seek amorphous future benefits from the Litani Project, but insisted that the USBR drill wells immediately. They equally challenged the USBR's notion that the TVA was a travelling technology by agitating for the technology that had actually traveled with the USBR: a state-of-the-art drill.

These wells were the only benefit the farmers garnered from Litani development for decades. The completed Litani Project extracted water from the Bekaa and transmitted electricity exclusively to Beirut, driving rural grievances. By rejecting the temporality of development and mobilizing the technology that tangibly traveled, Bekaa villagers secured gains from an otherwise disastrous process.