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 Part of the TRAFO series “Reconstructing Neighborhoods of War” By Diana ZeidanShattered neighborhoods andpoliciesAs part of its rebuilding strategy after the 2006 war,the Lebanese government put in place the adoption scheme for south-Lebanesetowns and villages through which foreign countries were invited to take chargeof the entire reconstruction of the “adopted’’ area. However, the provision ofsocial services by a large array of development and foreign state actors wasclear competition for Hezbollah in one of its main political and military strongholds.In this context, employees and volunteers from Jihādal-Bināʾ, thereconstruction arm of the party, were heavily deployed in the area, presentingthemselves to citizens and municipalities as technical experts onreconstruction, dwelling and development. By producing plans rich in seeminglytechnical language, but also strikingly visual, local governments in southLebanon were invoking the expert power of the planner as both an aesthetic anda scientific shaper of urban space.Nonetheless, Hezbollah’s control over thereconstruction apparatus did not happen as smoothly as in the suburbs of Beirut,mainly because of the large number of international donors operating in thereconstruction and local development fields and because of the local legitimacyand authority of municipality leaders. To overcome these conflictualallegiances, Jihādal-Bināʾ needed to undertake negotiations at many levels, askinship networks needed to be mobilized to consolidate their technical powers. Inparticular, they capitalized on the party’s role in developing the southernpart of the country, highlighting the marginalization of rural areas by the Lebanesestate. In the municipal elections in 1998, Hezbollahproclaimed the reconstruction and development of South Lebanon as its maincampaign slogan. It targeted the incoherence of public policies in the Southand proposed alternative means of action. The presence of internationalorganizations implementing development projects, closely cooperating withHezbollah-affiliated mayors, also reinforced the party’s visibility within theinternational community. After the 2006 war, experts from Jihādal-Bināʾ emphasized a new approach towards postwar neighborhooddesign and presented planning and housing as a scientific, rational processthat was the just reward for the national struggle during the war. Theapplication of planners’ knowledge in reconstruction plans legitimized thelocal governments’ own positions at the head of postwar town planning, silencingand emasculating competing voices. Reconstruction plans engaged in a dialoguebetween experts and citizens by presenting their schemes in accessible visualand textual terms. However, they also enforced a clean break with the past byshowing a future that looked different and was crucially made more legible andaccessible through the technical exercise of damage mapping.Reconstruction as amanifestation of pride.Damage assessments and neighborhood reconstructionsplans as presented in local meetings appeared to be relatively sober exercisesin technical detail, showing the locations of housing estates and shops as wellas demonstrating land uses and areas of green&#160;space, but were,nevertheless, somewhat lacking in many of the details that would havebeen&#160;necessary to make them realizable proposals. The inclusion of neighborhoodmaps in most reconstruction plans also appears to have been for the purpose ofenhancing the impression of technical expertise among passages of text thatwere frequently rather&#160;vague and often quite disjointed. In information-heavyillustrations of “before and after damage”, neighborhoods were presented ascolorful, arresting images that portrayed a professional planning approach thatwas capable of understanding the south Lebanese space, making it legible anddefining its future shape and usage. This interface between technical information and theeye-catching qualities of maps conveyed the&#160;idea of a scientifically plannedworld in an easy-to-understand way. It allowed local inhabitants andreconstruction stakeholders to imagine a cadre of expert planners in control ofthe environment and suggested that the future was in safe, knowledgeable hands.The visual material points towards the conclusion that reconstruction plans, atleast in part, served as a material artefact to legitimize the role of planningand local government in shaping the future city. Framed within narratives ofcivilian sacrifice during the war and a brave new world as reward, the visualmaterial of the reconstruction plans invoked an idea of progress through expertiserepresented in maps and figures, and representations of modernist architecture.In this context, expressions of pride are fundamentalin understanding the shifts in governance in post-2006 South Lebanon. While thepresence of a large array of stakeholders in the reconstruction landscape meantthat pride was no longer connected solely to party affiliation, it still becamea reflection of the ambitions and dreams of the governing authorities, local councelors,professional planners, architects and designers, and the developers andbuilders. Local authorities continued to use the aspirational language of prideand resistance in rebuilding neighborhoods. The ambitions, architecture, designand planning choices of local partnerships were portrayed as elevating thestatus of the city or the village and as creating a unified environment withwhich everyone could identify. However, this was also different from the past. Prideembraced modernism with its promise of a new, dynamic and clean city. Thelanguage used promised to clear away the old and worn. As such, pride was nolonger an expression of party affiliation but the language of the technocrat, councelorand developer.Members of Jihad al-Bina conducting technical assessment of destroyed properties (Source: tarmeem.org) Conclusion Postwar discourses of town planning situated thedestroyed towns of South Lebanon at a crucial moment of transformation andposited expert-led planning as the means to create modern cities fit for thepeople who had lost homes and loved ones during the war. Narratives ofsacrifice and national duty were intertwined with debates concerning damagedand destroyed cities, and the invocation of these interrelated debatespresented local governments with an opportunity to articulate their desire,evident in inter-war schemes and postwar spatial policies, to holisticallycontrol the space of the city. The apparent radicalism of the solutionspresented at the end of the war appears not merely as an overly ambitiousproduct of a period where planners dreamt of utopia, but as a specific anduseful tool which communicated ideas of progress and planning expertise to anexpectant population. Hezbollah development experts and local governmentsasserted their right to plan the city through the exploitation of a language ofprogress, both in the form of spoken or written communication, and throughvisual depictions of the future contained in reconstruction plans presented inlocal meetings with various development stakeholders. In doing so they seem tohave deliberately obscured significant continuities with pre-war projects,which in turn have pushed histories of the postwar period to accept too readilyboth their plans and local policies as evidence of radical change.References and Further ReadingAl-Harithy, H (2010) Lessons in Post-War Reconstruction: Case Studiesfrom Lebanon in the Aftermath of the 2006 War, London: Routledge.Harb, Mona. (2009) “La gestion du local par les maires du Hezbollah auLiban.” Critique Internationale, No. 42, pp. 57–72.Picard, Elizabeth. (2011) “Unité et diversité de la communauté chiitelibanaise à l’épreuve des urnes (2009– 2010).” Critique Internationale, No. 51, pp. 35–55.Zeidan, Diana. (2018) “Networks of Dependencies and Governmentality in Southern Lebanon: Development as a Tool for Hezbollah’s Clientelist Strategies,” in Ruiz de Elvira et al. (eds.), Clientelism, and Patronage in the Middle East and North Africa: Networks of Dependency, London: Routledge, pp. 192–210.Diana Zeidan is a PhD candidate in Development Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. She holds a MA in Comparative Development Studies from the same university and a BA in Political Science from Saint-Joseph University in Beirut. Her research interests focus on questions related to the deployment of development policies in post-war Lebanon and the “making of politics” through the post-reconstruction aid system in Arab countries. Currently based in Ottawa, Diana is a contributor for the Canadian International Development Platform, examining development and reconstruction initiatives in the MENA region. Her most recent publications include two policy memos for the POMEPS at George Washington University, and a chapter in Clientelism and Patronage in the Middle East and North Africa published by Routledge in 2018. She is also currently working as a service delivery consultant for the Canadian Immigrant Integration Program.Further articles in the series “Reconstructing Neighborhoods of War” on TRAFO:Birgit Schäbler,&#160;Introduction: The Importance of Being Earnest About Neighborhoods, 28 August 2019.Kevin Mazur,&#160;Not Just Neo-Liberalism: Spontaneous Settlement and Violent Conflict in Homs, Syria, 4 September 2019.Mazen Haidar,&#160;Neighbors at War in 1975-77 Beirut,&#160;11 September 2019.Piotr Korduba,&#160;The Reconstruction of Warsaw: Between Abhorrence and Acceptance, 18 September 2019.Paul Sigel,&#160;“More Beautiful than Ever Before!” Neighborhood-Rebuilding in Divided Germany as Political Propaganda during the Cold War, 25 September 2019.Allam Al-Kazei,&#160;Beyond the Atomic Bombing: The Revival of Hiroshima’s Neighborhoods, 2 October 2019.Mohammad Hassan Khani,&#160;War Emigration and its Impact on Post-War Reconstruction of Neighborhoods: A Case Study of Khorramshahr after the Iran-Iraq War, 17 October 2019.Namariq Al-Rawi,&#160;Baghdad Neighborhoods: Processes of Resilience against the Internally-reflected Conflict of 2006–2008, 24 October 2019.Kefah Ahmed M. Najjar,&#160;Youth Teams and Reconstruction, 7 November 2019.Zoya Masoud,&#160;A Treasure of Heritage for the Poor of Aleppo: Neighborhoods between the Hammer of Political Insecurity and the Anvil of Warlords, 14 November 2019.M. Wesam Al Asali, Majida Malo, and Iyass Shahin,&#160;Informality for Reconstruction: A Possible Partnership, 21 November 2019.Mamoun Fansa,&#160;Post-conflict Analysis and Post-war Reconstruction Strategies: Sociopolitical Considerations Using the Old City of Aleppo as an Example, 12 December 2019.Kai Vöckler,&#160;Post-Conflict Cities and Neighborhoods, 27 December 2019.Arshi Javid, Texture of Loss: Tapestry of a Withered Neighborhood from Kashmir, 9 January 2020.John Hanna, The Space of Literature and Lebanese Wars, 30 January 2020.Mona Fawaz and Nada Moumtaz, Neighborhoods as Propertied Landscapes: Lessons from Beirut’s Reconstructions, 4 February 2020.Eric Lob, The Promise and Politicization of  Post-War Reconstruction in Haret Hreik, 18 February 2020.Howayda Al-Harithy, Re-Constructing the  Historic Neighbourhood in Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, after the 2006 War, 13 March 2020.Citation:  Diana Zeidan, Rebuilding Pride and the Technocratic Fantasy in South Lebanese Villages and Neighborhoods, in: TRAFO  – Blog for  Transregional Research, 23.03.2020, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/23535.   