Rubble from Israel’s war against Hizbollah is being dumped near the roadside in Lebanon’s capital, part of an opaque process overseen by a local authority dominated by the militant group that underscores the challenges of rebuilding the country.
The Dahiyeh Union of Municipalities, the municipal body for Beirut’s southern suburbs, has been allocated millions of dollars in public funds to oversee and contract damage appraisals and rubble removal, according to government minutes.
But months after the end of the latest conflict, which caused what the World Bank estimates was $6.8bn of physical damage, contracts have not been made public. And while most of the rubble from Dahiyeh was meant to go to a landfill called Costa Brava, it has instead so far been thrown in a union-owned site nestled between the national airport’s runways in south Beirut.
The government of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, which took power in January, shortly after the funds were issued, faces calls at home and from foreign donors to increase transparency in government spending and weaken Hizbollah’s hold on Lebanon’s institutions.
Hizbollah has a political wing and has long been a dominant political, as well as military, force in Lebanon.
The Dahiyeh Union works under the purview of Hizbollah’s political leadership, according to Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director of research at the Carnegie Center in Beirut. Hizbollah’s health institution finances and jointly runs the union’s civil defence centre and jointly operates its food and health inspection unit, according to the union’s website.
Hizbollah’s opponents worry that giving a role in the reconstruction process to the Iran-backed Shia group could allow it to retain political leverage and channel government funds to its base following its worst ever defeat last year. Hizbollah’s role in reconstruction following its previous 2006 war with Israel was vital to helping it shore up its power.
Reformers say poor centralised planning and lack of proper supervision could also have severe consequences for the environment. “The same old patterns may be repeating themselves,” said Lamia Moubayed, who directs the Basil Fuleihan Institute at the Ministry of Finance. “It feels like déjà vu.”
Riad al-Assad, a longtime contractor from southern Lebanon, said that allowing groups linked to Hizbollah to control the damage assessments would deepen political reliance on the movement and its allies, whose assessments have, in the past, dictated the size of compensation payments.
“This process is being done as it has been done before,” he said. He argued Hizbollah’s true goal was to get people “by the throat” and make them “clients for a very long time.”
The war started after Hizbollah began firing rockets towards Israel following Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack and continued until a ceasefire on November 27 last year.
The UN estimates that Israel’s campaign created 10mn cubic metres of rubble in Lebanon, over three times the amount after the 2006 war. Israeli attacks have continued in the months since, and escalated in recent weeks.
The destruction was concentrated in Dahiyeh as well as southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, the traditional heartlands of Hizbollah and allied Shia party Amal.
In December, the caretaker government allocated $10mn to the Dahiyeh Union to oversee rubble clearance in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The union in turn issued an open tender, according to documents reviewed by the Financial Times. But rather than wait the nearly month-long period required by public procurement law, it convened in early January to approve a direct contract with the lowest bidder, Al Bonyan, which offered $3.65 per cubic metre, a sum other contractors described as implausibly low.
The contract and tenders for Dahiyeh have not been made public, despite the fact that the union is obliged to publish them online. The head of the union did not reply to multiple calls and written questions.
Ali al-Mousawi, chief operating officer at Al Bonyan, said they were able to outbid others because of their technical expertise, adding that the resale of sorted rebar would help make up costs. He also denied that the firm had any direct contact with Hizbollah, but said it was co-ordinating closely with the union.
At the union-owned roadside site in south Beirut, mounds of debris, mixed with shreds of clothing, are visible behind thick brush.
Environmentalists and foreign donors say the rubble should be taken to safe sites, sorted, and repurposed. They warn that the dumping of rubble in cheaper, convenient places risks causing severe ecological damage.
“Every truck that is leaving any site should be equipped with a GPS, with a sensor to quantify the amounts,” said Elie Mansour, an engineer leading the UN Debris Task Force quantifications in Lebanon. “Or else, everything will end up in unknown locations.”
Al Bonyan insists the debris will eventually go to the Costa Brava landfill. But the landfill’s operators said there was no guarantee it would.
But in a sign of the enormous challenges facing the new government, environment minister Tamara Zein acknowledged the state’s limited budget allocation was not enough for contractors to adhere to all the environmental standards.
A second phase in which rubble would be taken to final disposal sites and recycled would depend on a loan from the World Bank, she said. Zein said contractors had to be pragmatic: “What’s better: leaving the rubble among people, or taking it somewhere more isolated?”
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