Lebanon is a mountain strip without a true hinterland

Lebanon is a mountain strip on the Mediterranean. There is hardly a hinterland in the proper sense, because the sea and Syria come so close. Beirut is the port and the capital in one. What happens in the port happens in the city that carries the state.

The mountains rise almost immediately behind the coast. Beyond them lies the Beqaa, and beyond the Beqaa, Syria. To the south, Israel is the other land neighbour. The state has a short depth, and the land borders accompany the whole country. There is no distant province in which the capital would be only a memory. The distances are so small that coast, mountain and border remain one space.

Too little depth between the sea and Syria

Lebanon covers 10,452 square kilometres and has 5,849,421 inhabitants. Many people live on that area, and they do not live in a wide plain that could be settled without brushing a neighbour. The coast is narrow, the mountain is the country proper, and the Beqaa is the valley beyond, already close to Syria. Beirut sits on the coastal strip, not in a middle far from every edge.

This tightness is ordinary geography. A road from the coast into the Beqaa crosses the mountains and is then almost already at the border. The state cannot calm its parts by distance. It has to govern them at close range. Lebanon is not a country with a capital and, beside it, an untouched hinterland. What lies behind the city lies above it, in the mountain, and it is immediately there.

Beirut is port, capital and bottleneck

Beirut carries the port, the government and a large part of urban life. The city is the bottleneck through which the country reaches the Mediterranean. In 2020 an explosion in the port destroyed whole quarters of the capital. It was a disaster on the quay and in the city at once, because quay and city do not lie apart. The port is not an outpost of Beirut. It is Beirut on the water side.

South of the city the coast runs toward the border, and so it does to the north, while to the east the mountain rises. Beirut has no wide surroundings that could be mistaken for the surroundings of other capitals. Leave the city and you are soon in the mountains or on the road by the sea. Lebanon gathers in this bottleneck. A crisis in the port hits the political centre without first having to travel through a hinterland.

In Lebanon the hinterland does not lie behind the city. It lies above it, in the mountains, and it is immediately there.

— TerraTally · Countries desk

A pact, because distance is missing

The constitution makes Arabic the official language and leaves to a law the cases in which French is used. French is therefore not a second official language, and it is not a foreign addition either. It belongs to the school, to parts of administration and to the history of the state. Lebanon speaks Arabic in office and keeps French ready for the cases the law names. That too is tightness: two languages in very little space, legally ranked with care.

Politically the state is a pact of religious communities. The Taif Agreement recast the constitution after the civil war, divided parliament equally between Christians and Muslims, and left the highest offices with the communities. The president comes from the Maronite community, the prime minister from the Sunni community, the speaker of parliament from the Shia community. The territory does not draw these communities apart into distant regions. Where distance is missing, office is shared. The currency remains the Lebanese pound of the Banque du Liban. In daily life the US dollar runs alongside it, without replacing the pact or the official language.

Lebanon is too narrow for a hinterland behind Beirut. The port is the capital on the water side, the mountain is the country above it, and the state orders power as a pact, because distance does not separate the communities.