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The administrative decentralization project is provided for in the Taëf Agreement (1989) but has not yet been implemented. However, many studies have been carried out for this purpose, without success. A look back at a reform in waiting. The concrete implementation of administrative decentralization in Lebanon relies on strengthening local councils, particularly at the caza level, which constitute the second tier after municipalities. According to Rayanne Assaf, doctor of law and legal affairs officer at the presidency between 2008 and 2014, “the decentralization project stipulates that within each caza, citizens elect, under a majority system, a general committee composed of representatives from all localities, even those without municipalities (to ensure the best geographical representation). This committee then elects the caza's board of directors according to a proportional system.” Each board of directors would be composed of twelve members, endowed with broad powers to ensure local development and resource management. This administrative architecture would allow the population to directly control the actions of their representatives, thereby strengthening accountability and limiting the practices of clientelism and feudalism that have long characterized Lebanese political life. Administrative autonomy and competence criteria Ms. Assaf emphasizes the importance of establishing specific conditions to guarantee the effectiveness of local councils. “Caza council members must hold a university degree,” she specifies, to ensure that officials have the necessary skills to manage budgets, coordinate projects, and oversee regional development. This technical requirement aims to professionalize local administration and establish a standard of competence for all councils, thereby reducing the risks of mismanagement. This approach contributes to creating a direct link between the competence of elected officials and citizen satisfaction. The population will be able to see concrete results of the caza council's work, which promotes closer citizen control and better transparency in the management of public affairs. Financial resources One of the most critical points of decentralization concerns financial resources. Ms. Assaf insists that there is no “financial decentralization” in Lebanon. “We speak rather of financial autonomy, because it is impossible to transfer powers without providing the necessary means for their exercise,” she explains. Currently, municipalities have revenues, particularly from telecommunications taxes, as well as other sources. Funds are deposited in the autonomous municipal fund but do not allow municipalities to fully carry out their missions. Municipalities legally have broad powers, but are unable to exercise them satisfactorily and appropriately due to insufficient financial means. The decentralization project plans to replace the autonomous municipal fund with a decentralized fund, designed to ensure balanced development between regions. This will be based on precise criteria and indicators, four in number with specific coefficients, to correct inequalities and support less developed areas. By broadening the geographical scope of resource collection and redistribution, the project aims to increase the financial means of marginalized localities. Municipalities, which have powers but currently lack sufficient resources, could thus better exercise their competences and contribute to regional development. The decentralization project also provides for the creation of a Ministry of Decentralization, responsible for coordinating local policies and ensuring the coherence of actions throughout the territory. According to Ms. Assaf, this institution would be essential for framing the functioning of councils and guaranteeing a balance between local autonomy and national cohesion. Transversality and control The reform planned by Taëf also emphasizes the strengthening of control and transparency. A committee continuously monitors the board of directors, ensuring the conformity of its actions with current rules and the proper use of funds. This control structure aims to reassure both citizens and international donors, who demand guarantees on the management and distribution of resources. Also, the Council is required to publish a periodic newsletter and create a website on which general decisions and audit reports of justice accounts will be obligatorily published. Ms. Assaf recalls that these measures not only professionalize local administration but also prepare the ground for a sustainable culture of accountability at the national level. “Technical decentralization can serve as a model for spreading transparency and accountability throughout the country, even in the absence of a more comprehensive political reform,” she specifies. Practical impacts for citizens For residents, decentralization means increased proximity to decision-making centers. Taxpayers would be more informed about the real needs of their respective cazas and how their resources are used. According to Ms. Assaf, “by bringing governance closer to citizens, they can demand more accountability, which will encourage local councils to work to effectively meet the expectations of the population.” For her, decentralization is the adequate answer to those who do not think that a solution can be found to overcome many problems related to the management of public affairs. “It is the only mechanism that allows governance to be brought closer to the population and to ensure that resources and powers are used effectively at the local level.” This approach allows residents to concretely see the results of their elected officials' work, demand accountability, and get more involved in the management of their caza. Primarily developmental in nature, administrative decentralization could help reduce local political tensions and disputes. Its main assets, however, remain coordination between municipalities and caza councils, as well as the creation of employment opportunities and regional development, limiting rural exodus and the excessive concentration of activities in Beirut or a few urban centers. Chronology and blockages She notes that the delay in implementing this reform mainly results from a lack of political consensus, with established forces reluctant to lose certain prerogatives and powers to local authorities. She dismisses fears that administrative decentralization risks fragmenting Lebanon. On the contrary, she says it will strengthen the development of the cazas, especially since they are multi-confessional. Ms. Assaf sounds the alarm: “Today, the Lebanese state has very limited financial means. Decentralization appears as a pragmatic way to mobilize resources, strengthen governance, and improve accountability.”

In Lebanon, money opens almost every door. It speeds up decisions, simplifies procedures, brings down many resistances. Yet there is one door it cannot open: the door of dignity, the door of genuine respect, the kind that cannot be bought. He knows it, even if he prefers not to admit it. He succeeded quickly, very quickly. Too quickly. A newly rich man, fortune arriving before recognition, money sometimes opaque, sometimes plainly dubious. Despite the assets, the connections, and the outward signs, he lives with a persistent unease: something is missing. A legitimacy. A place. The feeling of existing as something other than the one who pays. His wound does not begin in adulthood. It begins much earlier. With a father belittled, never respected, from whom he understands very early that he must distance himself if he does not want to end up in the same place. With a family it is better to conceal, not out of lack of attachment, but because it recalls an origin deemed disqualifying. Very early on, something settles in the background. Old marks, never erased. So he acts as if it never mattered. He moves forward. He builds for himself an image more solid, more brilliant, more acceptable. He quickly understands that worth depends on status, on name, on position. He does not seek to be loved. He seeks no longer to be humiliated. When money arrives, it heals nothing. It protects. It conceals. Whether it is clean or dubious matters little, as long as it allows him to impose himself and silence doubts. Success becomes a strategy of survival. But when money is no longer enough to produce respect, another solution imposes itself: to become a Member of Parliament. Here, the mandate is not a service. It is protection. In a State that protects no one, the seat becomes a personal guarantee, a de facto immunity, a way of transforming a contested fortune into official authority. He is ready to pay. Dearly. During the campaign, he repeats the expected words. Projects. Laws. Future. Reconstruction. He knows that all of this is merely a compulsory passage. What matters is shelter. To exist, at last, even if it is through fear. He buys votes. Misery does the rest. When one is hungry, a vote can be sold. He knows it and takes advantage of it. He calls it assistance. In reality, it is simple corruption: money in exchange for silence, poverty in exchange for power. Then comes the election. The title. The suit. And the void. Nothing is repaired. In the eyes of others, he remains the one who paid. And before himself, he remains the one he has always been. He had sought respect. He obtains to be called “Your Excellency.” And the most obscene thing is neither the lie, nor the failure, nor the emptiness. The most obscene thing is that it is enough for him.

If the rumors are to be believed, there will be nothing serious to report in the coming weeks. For, if one trusts Abbas Araghtchi's statements, Tehran and Washington would have reached, during their talks in Geneva, a broad agreement on a set of 'guiding principles, on the basis of which they will advance and begin to work on the text of a potential agreement'. In the meantime, Iran is rearming itself with weapons and ammunition, which is not reassuring to Israel, the latter demanding, moreover, that the ongoing talks go beyond the strict framework of nuclear issues to include the two questions of missiles and proxies. That said, the Arab countries of the Gulf, who insisted that Trump prioritize diplomatic channels over the military option, may fear that Netanyahu will play the fool and ignite a powder keg. And if there was something fishy While gathering a threatening armada in the region, the American president came to the rescue of the ayatollah regime by granting it a reprieve. He saved it by keeping its head above water, just as he preserved it from Israel's fury, whose avenging arm he has so far restrained. But will he still restrain it after the 'persuasion trip' that Netanyahu made to Washington last February 11, the purpose of which was to share Israeli apprehensions with the White House? Donald Trump is more cunning than one might think. As proof, his unforeseen, and for some, untimely intervention last June. Let us recall that Israel had launched a surprise attack against Iran on June 13, 2025, and that, on the night of the 21st to the 22nd of the same month, the US Air Force and US Navy had entered the fray and bombed several nuclear sites. This raid was going to brutally interrupt the sixth round of negotiations, which was supposed to resume between Iran and the United States, three days after the start of the fighting. Today, what would prevent a remake based on the same scenario? Are we not on the eve of negotiations whose 'guiding principles' were recently established in Geneva? And isn't this the ideal moment to strike Iran, which believes it has won the round by outwitting the American? This would be a bit of tit for tat, and Trump is certainly capable of it! That is not taking into account pusillanimity Some have gone so far as to accuse American policy of inconsistency. Ben Samuels, Haaretz correspondent in Washington, still cannot explain the White House's zigzag (or yoyo) policy, when everything is a matter of one man's arbitrariness, mood, or whim. However, J.D. Vance, the American Vice President, did not hesitate to declare that Donald Trump was 'not in the habit of publicly revealing his positions in order to preserve his decision-making space'. Donald Trump is a businessman who does not want to fall into the trap of war, where many of his predecessors have fallen. He is also, and I'm not telling you anything new, a braggart capable of grand gestures but who backs down when it comes to confrontation. In decision-making, both a person's interests and their character come into play! And if the American president declares that he wants to exhaust the diplomatic path with Iran before any military action, it is due to 'failure of nerve and want of courage', that is to say, out of cowardice and pusillanimity. But at this precise hour, when two aircraft carriers have taken up position in the region, nothing is settled and anything can still happen!

«The first reform must be intelligent decentralization», Jules Payot Decentralization is a mode of state organization that consists of transferring powers, responsibilities, and resources from central government to elected local authorities, which are legally autonomous, in order to bring decision-making closer to citizens and improve the effectiveness of public action. It allows Lebanon to transfer part of the state's powers, competencies, and resources to elected and autonomous territorial communities – notably municipalities and decentralized entities – while maintaining the unity of the state. The objective is to strengthen and activate local governance, citizen participation, and the balanced development of regions. According to Ms. Rayanne Assaf, doctor of law and legal affairs officer at the Presidency of the Republic between 2008 and 2014, “in politics, there is no miracle solution.” “Change happens gradually, step by step, and this reality is particularly true for pluralistic countries,” she emphasizes. Lebanon, with its complex confessional and political mosaic, like all pluralistic countries, has no universal recipe or miracle solution capable of resolving institutional imbalances or guaranteeing national cohesion.” For Ms. Assaf, who was a member of the special commission established in 2012 by the Prime Minister for the elaboration of the administrative decentralization bill, “decentralization constitutes an essential step on the path of progress.” “It is a pragmatic tool to strengthen the state, improve governance, and bring decision-making closer to citizens,” she specifies. If one were to speak of a “miracle” in Lebanese politics, she adds, it could be identified in the part of the Taif Agreement relating to decentralization. In a context where parties struggle to agree on structural reforms, reaching a compromise on this point constitutes a historical event. At the time, some factions were in favor of decentralization, while others opposed it. Despite these divergences, an agreement was reached, enshrining decentralization as a fundamental reform. Taif and the implementation deadlock After the Taif Agreement and until President Michel Sleiman's mandate, no concrete bill on decentralization was adopted. The available texts were more about deconcentration than decentralization itself. Ms. Assaf insists on this distinction: « Deconcentration consists of representing the central state administrations in the regions, without transferring real powers. Decentralization, on the other hand, involves councils elected directly by citizens, with their own competencies and real administrative and financial autonomy. » Some initiatives, such as the bill presented by the late MP Robert Ghanem, were described as decentralization, but they did not provide for the election of local councils. However, the absence of elections goes against the very spirit of decentralization. Today, Lebanon has a first degree of decentralization through municipalities . These entities have powers, but they lack adequate financial means to exercise them fully. The example of some of them, endowed with considerable financial resources, contrasts sharply with other less favored municipalities. The role of decentralization Decentralization allows for the creation of genuine democratic control. According to Ms. Assaf, “thanks to decentralization, citizens become more capable of holding to account and controlling public action.” The reform in question also helps to better identify regional needs, reduce congestion, create local employment opportunities, foster regional development, and mitigate political disputes. However, these benefits cannot be achieved without a strong central authority capable of guaranteeing the coherence and unity of the state. Decentralization is not a means to weaken the state, but a tool to strengthen governance and improve the effectiveness of public action. For Ms. Assaf, decentralization could play a catalytic role in accountability at the national level. Chronology of initiatives In accordance with the Taif Agreement, during the presidential mandate 2008-2014, at the initiative of the President of the Republic and in agreement with the Prime Minister, a committee chaired by former minister Ziad Baroud was created in 2012 to draft a decentralization bill. This committee brought together experts and specialists from several fields, as decentralization involves administrative, financial, political, cultural, social aspects, etc. In 2014, the final draft was endorsed by the presidency. It respects the Taif Agreement and includes advanced standards for local governance. In 2015, a dialogue conference supported the principle of decentralization. MP Samy Gemayel then took up this project and presented it as a bill to Parliament. Since then, the text has been examined by parliamentary committees without being adopted. Ms. Assaf emphasizes that its approval depends on a political will that is still lacking. She adds that decentralization is a technical reform and that it would be illogical, even absurd, to link its approval to the implementation of other eminently political reforms, such as the establishment of a Senate or the abolition of sectarianism, which will require years of effort. Financial autonomy and regional balance According to Ms. Assaf, in application of the principle 'transfer of powers, transfer of resources,' decentralization cannot be achieved without financial resources. The term “financial decentralization” is often misused in Lebanon, she explains. According to her, decentralization is based on two inseparable pillars: administrative autonomy and financial autonomy. The project advocates for the allocation of financial resources to elected local councils (for example, a share of income tax and property tax collected at the caza level, etc.). It also provides for the creation of a decentralized fund, which will replace the current autonomous municipal fund. This new fund aims to ensure balanced development and reduce inequalities between regions, based on indicators of development status, annual tax collection, census of the population registered in the community, and the area of the caza. Decentralization allows citizens to elect local officials capable of effectively managing the resources of their caza. It helps to limit clientelism and feudalism, while establishing a culture of accountability. It should be noted that the historical and institutional framework highlights the fact that decentralization in Lebanon is both a democratic imperative and a lever for institutional resilience. The chronology of initiatives reveals a constant political will on paper, but hindered by partisan interests and lack of consensus. The effective adoption of this reform would be a major test for the political class.

The Libyan war ceases to be intelligible when read solely through its internal actors. From 2014, and even more so after 2019, the conflict transformed into a theater of regional projection, where local dynamics serve as supports for strategies that largely exceed them. Libya is thus a fragmented territory, invested, used, and worked from the outside as a malleable space, devoid of effective sovereignty, and, consequently, ideal for indirect wars. Certainly, the rivalry between regional powers alone does not explain the Libyan collapse, but it nevertheless freezes its lines, prevents any endogenous resolution, and transforms every local advance into a variable of a larger game. At this stage, the war no longer only pits Libyans against each other, but competing visions of the regional order, projected onto a territory incapable of absorbing them. The ultimate focal point, like Syria post-2011, or, before, Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. The first fault line opposes two antagonistic conceptions of stabilization. On one side, an authoritarian, security-oriented, vertical logic, supported by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. On the other, an opportunistic and transactional intervention logic promoted by Turkey, based on a different reading of regional balances. For Cairo, Libya constitutes a strategic lock. The long and porous Egyptian western border has long been perceived as a direct threat to national security, especially after 2011. The specter of weapons, fighters, and hostile ideologies circulating has structured the Egyptian position. Therefore, supporting a force capable of imposing a military order in Cyrenaica appears as a defensive necessity. From this perspective, Khalifa Haftar embodies less a Libyan project than a tool for stabilization by proxy. The Emirates, for their part, place their commitment within a broader strategy of projecting influence. Libya is one of the links in a regional policy aimed at containing political Islam, structuring allied security networks, and controlling critical points of commercial and energy flows. The support provided to eastern Libya certainly responds to an ideological logic; but it is even more part of a pragmatic approach, based on anticipating long-term power relations. Reconfiguring the Regional Equation Facing this axis, Turkey intervenes with a different rationale. Its massive engagement from 2019 marks a decisive turning point in the conflict. For Ankara, it is not only about saving Tripoli from an imminent military offensive but about reconfiguring the regional equation. Thus, Turkish intervention combines direct military assistance, drone deployment, advisors, Syrian mercenaries, and, crucially, a maritime agreement that redefines borders in the Eastern Mediterranean. And this agreement is not a technical detail. It places Libya at the heart of an energy and geopolitical rivalry that extends far beyond its borders. By aligning with the Tripoli government, Ankara gains legal legitimacy to challenge competing projects in the Mediterranean, weaken the Greece-Cyprus-Egypt axis, and establish itself as a crucial player in the eastern basin. Libya ceases to exist as such and to be an objective in itself - it is more than that: a strategic platform. This regionalization of the conflict thus produces a cumulative effect, inasmuch as each Libyan camp is gradually dispossessed of its strategic autonomy. Major military decisions are no longer made in Tripoli or Benghazi but are calculated according to the red lines and interests of external patrons, and the war thus transforms into a space of indirect negotiation between regional powers, where escalation is controlled, calibrated, sometimes suspended, but rarely resolved. The Berlin conference, initiated by Germany and the UN in January 2020, and the multiple diplomatic initiatives that followed, illustrate this impasse. They sought to re-establish a multilateral framework but encountered a bitter reality: the regional actors present in Libya have no immediate interest in a sovereign unification of the country. A weak, divided, negotiable Libya offers more opportunities than a strong central state capable of setting its own rules… A Management Phase The war in Tripoli, between 2019 and 2020, was in this regard a particularly revealing moment, in that it demonstrated that external intervention can alter a balance of power without producing a political solution. The failure of Haftar's offensive against the official government did not, however, pave the way for state reconstruction; instead, it confirmed Libya's transformation into a zone of conflicting equilibrium, where no actor can prevail without causing uncontrollable regional escalation. From then on, the conflict enters a phase of management rather than resolution. Ceasefires are respected as long as they serve the interests of the patrons. Violations are tolerated as long as they do not cross certain thresholds. Libya becomes a space where war is contained, but never defused. This dynamic also has a maritime and migratory dimension. Migration routes, ports, and departure zones for Europe have become stakes in implicit negotiations with European powers, often politically absent but present through their security concerns. Libya then serves as a buffer zone at the cost of brutal outsourcing of migration control and the invisibility of the accompanying violence. What is happening in Libya, therefore, has nothing to do with a classic civil war. It is a regional war of position being fought on Libyan territory, inscribed in a space where the front lines are as much diplomatic as military. Welcome to the realm of extreme instrumentalization. ‘The war of others,’ Ghassan Tuéni would have said… with local cannon fodder. In this context, there should be no illusion: any attempt to resolve the crisis as strictly Libyan is doomed to failure. As long as regional balances remain structured by rivalry, and as long as the Eastern Mediterranean is a space of energy and strategic competition, Libya will remain a field of ‘adjustment.’ The formula is undoubtedly cynical, but it perfectly describes reality. The war is maintained specifically because it fulfills a function in an unstable regional order, as it also does in Sudan. And as long as this function is not challenged, no solution, no lasting peace can emerge. Next article: Libya in the Fragmented International Order (5/5) Read on the same theme: 2011 or Libya in the Post-State Era (1/5) The Libyan Conflict: An Extreme ‘Militianization’ of Politics (2/5) ‘Two Libyas’ and an Elusive Sovereignty (3/5)

The cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground off Giglio Island after hitting underwater rocks on January 13, 2012. (Filippo Monteforte/AFP) Imagine, as the Costa Concordia cruise ship was sinking in 2012, the restaurant manager asking passengers not to forget to pay their bill. Absurd? Yet, that is, more or less, the logic adopted by our government. In a country paralyzed by crisis, where only inflation is progressing, the State, desperately seeking to finance salary increases for its civil servants and more or less adapted pensions for retired military personnel, has found the solution: increase VAT by 1% and tax gasoline by three hundred thousand pounds per can. After all, why not? In a system where impunity reigns and accountability is an administrative fiction, it would undoubtedly be indelicate to ask leaders to return embezzled funds. As long as we're at it, we might as well extract from a people who have shown a remarkable ability to take it without flinching. What, after all, is more noble than paying taxes to support a public sector where some employees are as stealthy as a B-2 bomber, invisible 29 out of 30 days? Or those who prove that there is life after death, still receiving their salary long after their administrative burial? And then, if the unemployment rate is around 40%, this gasoline tax will ultimately only concern those who work. The unemployed, for their part, are not supposed to roam the roads doing nothing. The motivations for these taxes are impeccable: opposing them would almost be ungrateful towards those who maintain the illusion of a semblance of a state. Or even worse, towards an army whose some high-ranking officers, instead of enjoying a well-deserved retirement, have agreed to sacrifice themselves once more, by presiding over us. Shakespeare wrote, and he was right: «Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude», especially since the new taxes do not affect the fuel that warms us from the winter wind… And let's stop seeing the glass as half empty. As the saying goes, just take a smaller glass for it to be almost full. Certainly, a real taxation of the use of public maritime domain, cigarettes and carpets (which some leaders smoke) would have been more coherent. But the gasoline tax will at least have the merit of reducing the number of motorists, smoothing traffic flow and, consequently, lowering pollution. This government innovates! It has just invented ecological transition through economic asphyxiation. However, we have shown great maturity regarding the laws against which we express indignation. Let's remember: in 2019, the mention of a six-dollar tax on WhatsApp was enough to ignite the country, dissolve the government, and fill the streets. Today, a tax approaching twenty dollars monthly, coupled with a VAT increase, passes without a hitch. Our revolt takes place on social media, but at least it's free, and this, thanks to a sense of responsibility and general mobilization around a national cause, which we had ardently defended in 2019! Ultimately, our rulers have perfectly applied the concept of inverse solidarity: extracting from those who cannot afford to stop, in order to finance a state that, itself, is at a standstill. The difference with the Concordia is that when the ship was sinking, water or access to the sea were not yet being billed, whereas in Lebanon, we are sinking but will be in order….