The Litani's Wealth for the Development of the Lebanese Economy

The interest that the Lebanese woman, in The Woman's Voice, takes in development projects is proof of her sense of national responsibility, and of her feeling of the necessity of building a wakeful society, jealous of its interests and working to raise its standard so that it may live with dignity within its borders.

No wonder at this feeling, for the Lebanese woman through the ages — such as "Elissa," princess of Tyre, and "Salammbô," princess of Carthage, and others — has engraved upon the pages of ancient Lebanese history pictures of the most splendid glory, heroism, and creation that nations can boast of.

On the coast stretching between Tyre and Latakia there flourished a world civilization that was a herald spreading prosperity, and its commerce played the first role in the world then known.

The crushing of the kingdom of Tyre, the effacement of its landmarks, and the slaughter of its people at the hands of Alexander were nothing but the killing of Lebanese commerce and the clearing of the way for the Greek economy and its spread.

And the cries of "Cato" in the Senate of Rome, saying: "Rome shall not live except by the annihilation of Carthage" — these cries, which still ring in the ears of the ages, are nothing but an acknowledgment of Lebanese superiority and of the conquests of Lebanese commerce.

But now, when we are as far as can be from that ancient glory and that vanished bliss, and after we have been barred from all extension and expansion, we must rely upon our own resources within our borders, as is incumbent upon every state that imposes its will and refuses any touch upon its independence, whatever the economic and developmental pressures may be.

The number of inhabitants multiplies day after day, and the educated, conscious working hand is on the increase. If matters remain as they now are — procrastination and contentment with the existing state of things — the standard of living will sink, conditions will worsen, and chaos will spread everywhere... The equipping of our natural wealth and its exploitation is the only hope, if we desire a settled life in the near future.

From agriculture and what it produces of grains, vegetables, and fruits, and what accompanies it of the raising of poultry and livestock; and from industry and what it erects of the means of development and what it creates of the goods necessary to the country — from these and those, many wide fields of work are opened.

The engineer Mr. Ibrahim Abd al-Al is one of the few Lebanese who have obtained a distinguished scientific degree in hydraulic engineering. He has a precious study of the Litani, the fruit of twenty years, which is considered an authoritative reference.

Mr. Ibrahim Abd al-Al is Director General of the Supervision of Companies and of Water and Electrical Affairs, and President of the Higher Council of the Beirut Water Authority. He is also a professor in the School of Engineering at the Jesuit University, and he has kindly written this article in reply to the following questions addressed to him by The Woman's Voice magazine.

1 — Would you explain to us briefly the importance of the Litani for Lebanon from the economic standpoint, and why did you say in your precious book on the subject: "Just as Egypt is the gift of the Nile, Lebanon can be the gift of the Litani"?

2 — Have serious measures been taken up to now to carry out the Litani project? What, in your view, are the best proposals or means for carrying it out?

3 — What part of the Litani project does the Qasimiyya project constitute?

4 — Is it true that the realization of the Litani project must necessarily yield a direct benefit to the state of Israel? And is there any means of avoiding this result?

Water and Agriculture

The total that the sky sends down upon Lebanon in a normal year exceeds ten thousand million cubic meters of water, which is the equivalent of one million cubic meters for every kilometer of the area of Lebanese territory.

These waters constitute a basic source of wealth and explain to us the reasons for Lebanon's relative prosperity in the Arab East.

But the season of rains is confined to five months of the year, and the remaining seasons stay dry: not a cloud in the sky, and no rain falls upon the earth.

Even so, there are in Lebanese territory fourteen perennial rivers, fed by springs of abundant discharge, flowing continuously the whole year through, supplied from what the mountains have stored of the waters that fall upon them from the melting of the snows and the heavy rains of the winter season.

From this we see the need of the agricultural lands for irrigation throughout the season when the rains are withheld from them. Irrigation is the life of agriculture and the source of its growth; besides feeding the cultivated land, it gains us new land for cultivation, which increases the quantity of the crops and contributes to bringing prosperity.

Motive Power and Industry

Modern life and its quickening cannot do without motive power, and its importance for industry in particular is like the importance of the blood that runs in man's veins.

The liquid fuels that create this power are not produced by the soil of Lebanon, unfortunately, and its lack of them makes it dependent upon the production of others.

God's Blessing

Among God's blessings upon Lebanon is that a mighty force of this motive power lies latent in its rivers, still waiting for attention to be turned to it, and for release from its tether, that it may produce.

Most of these rivers are coastal torrents of swift course, upon which dams cannot be erected to store the waters; the reason for this lies in the steep gradient of the surface of the bed and the general fissuring of its geological strata.

Hence it is impossible to regulate their discharge, and it must be supposed that the waters will be used as they come: abundant in the winter season, with most of them lost to the sea, and scanty in summer.

The Litani

The Litani river is distinguished among the Lebanese watercourses. The geographical characteristics of rivers are combined in it, and it is the greatest of them in Lebanon; indeed, it is Lebanon's only river whose course lies entirely within Lebanese territory, and whose water wealth is all the work of Lebanon's sky, for its waters come to it from more than a fifth of the area of Lebanese territory.

The equipping of the Litani has been confined to this day to the use of its waters for agricultural irrigation in the coastal plain, famous as the Qasimiyya plain, and to the irrigation of the Bekaa.

The valley of the Litani is capable of being equipped on a wider scale than the rest of the Lebanese rivers. Technical studies and local evidence are agreed in considering the Litani river the greatest natural resource in Lebanon. If the waters of the river are controlled and used regularly, they will produce abundant and cheap electric power, sufficient to supply all the Lebanese regions, and will help to widen the works of irrigation by driving the water with pumps, to increase the agricultural possibilities, and to stimulate industrial undertakings.

And we find in the valley of the Litani river great possibilities for building dams and storing water on the one hand, and great falls for generating electric power on the other.

It is possible to carry out storage works sufficient to secure a regular discharge of water throughout the year. This matter is of the utmost importance, for it means that the waters stored between the Bekaa plain and the seacoast suffice to generate nearly one hundred thousand kilowatts, capable of producing 500 million kilowatt-hours a year — that is, enough to secure two thousand kilowatt-hours for some 250,000 of the inhabitants annually.

The quantity of water that can be stored amounts to 200 million cubic meters a year, by means of two dams each rising 50 meters.

In addition to the generation of electric power, the stored waters make it possible to widen the compass of irrigation, whether in the elevated coastal regions or in the mountainous regions of the South. Moreover, the geographical center of these projects makes it easy to carry electric power to the most important cities of Lebanon: the distance in a straight line between them and Beirut does not exceed 50 kilometers.

From the foregoing it appears that the Litani river occupies a place of high importance, and it is therefore necessary that it be studied and treated as one complete, indivisible unit.

By way of fixing ideas, we mention that Lebanon consumes annually, in fuels for the generation of electric power, for industry, and for domestic uses, the equivalent of 622 million kilowatt-hours, costing nine million Lebanese lira a year.

The power at present generated from the falls of the rivers does not exceed sixty million kilowatt-hours; whereas the electric power that can be generated from the falls of the rivers in Lebanon amounts to 500 million kilowatt-hours for the Litani river alone.

300 million kilowatt-hours for the rest of the rivers, which have not been equipped to this day.

It appears, then, that the Litani river is capable of securing electric power for the twenty-five years to come, thus achieving for the country an industrial development that is indispensable for making good the deficiency in agricultural production.

It appears also that the Litani river possesses ample possibilities that allow the solution of the water question for a third of the Lebanese Republic, between the district of the Chouf and the Palestine frontier — a complete and certain solution, combining abundance of water with elegance in the technical method of conveying it.

These possibilities we enumerate as follows:

Irrigation of the southern Bekaa plain.

Securing water for all the villages of Jabal Amil that are utterly deprived of it.

Generation of electric power amounting to 500 million kilowatt-hours annually.

Irrigation of the entire plain between Tyre and Sidon, including the lemon orchards of Sidon, which are at present irrigated from the waters of the Awali river, that is, the Barouk; thereby the restrictions imposed upon the waters of the Barouk will be lightened, and they can then be used in the elevated regions of the district of Aley, Iqlim al-Kharrub, and elsewhere..

From all that I have set forth we come to the important conclusion that the Litani river is the vital artery of the country, and that through it all the great water questions of a third of the Lebanese Republic can be solved; it is one of the effective means of development, of society, and of economy. It is therefore worthy of an ample share of attention, and it calls for the stirring up of publicity to show its national character, so that as a result there should prevail in the mind of the public the conviction that its equipping is a national project, and that slowness in carrying it out is a defrauding of the homeland's right.

Perhaps that day is not far off when we shall be able to say: "Lebanon is the gift of the Litani," as Herodotus said of old: "Egypt is the gift of the Nile."

Carrying Out the Litani Projects

The detailed designs of the works are still in preparation. The American Technical Cooperation organization has adopted the Lebanese program for the realization of the Litani project, and it is expected to finish its work at the end of this year.

The Lebanese government has created a Development and Reconstruction Board, still of recent date; nevertheless it has begun to deal with the question of financing the water projects, and is now studying a proposal to found a national company enjoying special financial privileges that would encourage the owners of capital to carry out the water projects and exploit them, with the government contributing an ample share. Among the water projects, first place belongs to the equipping of the Litani river.

The Project of the Coastal Plain between Tyre and Sidon

Famous as the Qasimiyya Project

The area of this plain is 4,500 hectares, and it is capable of perennial irrigation from the waters of the Litani river near its mouth, and from the waters of the Ras al-Ain springs near Tyre.

We have seen that of the Litani projects some are for agricultural irrigation and some for the generation of electric power.

The Qasimiyya project belongs in the series of irrigation projects and constitutes the final, coastal part — the one carried out up to now.

The Political Importance of the Litani Projects

There are rivers that are shared between two states or more, and their equipping requires the conclusion of international agreements for the division of the waters in proportion to the lands and the natural possibilities. Hence arises the political role that results from a river's crossing the territories of different states. By way of example we take up a question of great importance: the division of the waters of the Euphrates river between Syria and Iraq. It has appeared that the regulation of the exploitation of the waters on an international basis depends to some extent on the speed of completing the projects in each of the two countries — meaning that every project now established on the Euphrates will be a firm right to the waters used by means of it; and there is no doubt that this matter is a spur to the activity of the two states, urging them to hasten to establish joint projects that guarantee a just division of the waters between the two countries.

So too the Orontes river: in its upper part it rises abundantly in Lebanon, and its waters pour across the Syrian frontier into the Lake of Homs, from which branches out the network of canals irrigating the Homs–Hama plain.

If Syria wishes to widen the compass of irrigation in her lands, that will lead to the use of new waters from the waters of the Orontes, and this requires that the two states agree upon a just division of the waters between them, one that preserves to Lebanon its right to the use of a part of them.

The Litani river is not shared between two states: it lies entirely in the soil of Lebanon, and the waters that feed it come to it entirely from the sky of Lebanon. The projects intended for the equipping of the Litani river likewise lie all in the soil of Lebanon. And the needs of Lebanon absorb the river's entire production, whether on the agricultural side, which needs irrigation water, or on the industrial side, which needs electric power. The Litani river, then, has no political role, because we have no partner in the river's waters, and our exploitation of this wealth depends upon the speed of realizing the equipment projects, and does not depend upon the conclusion of international agreements at all.

Moreover, the equipping of the Litani benefits none but Lebanon: none of its production will exceed our needs — indeed it will hardly suffice to cover these needs in the twenty-five years to come; and by needs I mean what is necessary for the development of Lebanese agriculture and industry.

We conclude by saying that there is no political problem standing in the way of the realization of the Litani projects. The river, from its source to its mouth, is the property of a state of absolute sovereignty within its borders, disputed by no rival; it is she who possesses the right of disposal over the river's wealth, and it is absurd talk to speak of a direct benefit to any other than Lebanon from the equipping of the Litani river.