Harakat Amal: Social Mobilization, Economic Resources, Welfare Provision

Introduction

This paper explores the historical, political and social (internal and external) factors that brought the Lebanese Shi‘a to mobilize and transform from a sub-proletariat group to an entrepreneurial bourgeoisie in the span of less than three generations. In particular, I analyze harakat Amal through its formation, its social and political trajectory, and finally its associations and welfare networks. Even though literature on Hezbollah-related social activities has already partially highlighted the importance of the organization’s massive welfare structure, scholarship on the social activities enacted and regulated by Amal is by far more modest. Harakat Amal is described here as an economic class related to the control of multiple forms of capital and social services, and produced by local, national, and transnational networks related to flows of services, money, education, and a culturally constructed social identity structured by economic as well as other forms of capital in relation to other groups in Lebanon. Mutual aid translates “private” networks into physical realities and duties. These forms of social welfare distribution in Lebanon represent the consolidation of identities, and the takeover of responsibilities unfulfilled by the central state. How do harakat Amal related philanthropic organizations and their fundraising’s activities operate? Who are the recipients and beneficiaries of these welfare organizations? What is the role of the Shiite diaspora in creating social welfare networks in the country of origin and abroad?

Lebanese Shi’a: Social and Political Development

The Shi‘a of Lebanon possess a political, ideological and economic dynamism that makes them one the most significant Shiite community in the Arab world today, representing approximately 30 per cent of the Lebanese population.¹ The story of the Shi’a’s rise to economic power, while containing several feature unique to Lebanon, can offer some relevant general insights to the shifts of a community - from disenfranchisement to entrepreneurial bourgeoisie - elsewhere in the Arab world.² The Lebanese Shi‘a are one of the first communities to have achieved a relevant political, economic and social power as a group in the contemporary Arab world.³ They are the only Arab Shi‘a who were able to transform from an oppressed, isolated and marginalized community to a powerful and economically independent group within the political order of Lebanon’s state and society. The Shi‘a over a 30-year period have become quite simply the most powerful political force in today’s Lebanon and the single largest community in the country, with a noteworthy contrast with other Shi‘a communities in the region.⁴

The presence of traditional baronial families (which, in Lebanon’s case, extended also to other communities), the zu‘ama feudal system that for a long time contributed to the economic stagnation and marginalization of this community, at some point started clashing with the various currents of Arab nationalism and socialism which invested the rest of the Arab world, regardless of the religious/sectarian affiliations. Economic inequalities, a leftover of the Ottoman era and reinforced by the French rule, also created a class of Shiites with a desire for economic stability, political representation and social enfranchisement.

A large portion of this population migrated massively either to the commercial Beirut, or to other countries (mainly, Africa, Brazil, Canada, Europe, the Arab Gulf) establishing successful businesses and actively helping those relatives who still resided in their own native villages to achieve an economic stability. In Lebanon, they left the political agenda to Amal and later Hezbollah, groups with evident sectarian tasks, in taking the lead of the Shi‘a resurgence and to advocate Shiite’s rights, from the south of Lebanon to the Beqaa valley. The Shi‘a community is not homogenous and neither Amal nor Hezbollah between them have universal Shiite support; many Shiites remain out of the range of these two organizations. Nevertheless, both the political groups and the entrepreneurial Shiite’s bourgeoisie that churned out as a consequence of the massive Shiite Lebanese diaspora have enormously benefited either from the success of the organizations and the impressive amount of revenues that those entrepreneurs reinvested in their country of origins securing...