The proposed reopening of René Mouawad Airport in Qlayaat, Akkar, northern Lebanon, has often been framed as a technical or developmental question.
Yet its history shows something more: it is a layered infrastructure shaped by regional oil ambitions and geopolitics, and struggles over politico-economic self-determination in northern Lebanon.
Understanding why it is becoming politically “possible” today requires tracing this history and linking it to Lebanon’s current search for bankable infrastructure - projects able to attract financing and generate revenue despite state collapse. The prolonged shutdown of Qlayaat Airport has long symbolised political tensions and competing development visions. During my research in Akkar between 2011 and 2019, its closure was repeatedly invoked as emblematic of marginalisation, state neglect, and uneven political attention. While the first phase of reopening has begun in cooperation with national and aviation bodies, subsequent phases may soon place the airport on airline routes. The project also implies serving Lebanon’s diaspora by breaking Middle East Airlines’ monopoly and making travel home more affordable, while further mobilising expatriates as sources of remittances and investment. Yet this approach risks treating the diaspora primarily as a source of economic capital, relying on external resources to compensate for state inefficiency rather than addressing its structural causes. Although such investment may create new development opportunities in Akkar, it rests on a problematic logic of state welfare abdication and the perpetual externalisation of social and economic support. Originally, the site was not conceived as a civilian airport. Its location - near the Syrian border - was tied to regional industrial ambitions involving the Iraq Petroleum Company, linked to logistics between Kirkuk and Tripoli. Strategically positioned within cross-border economic geographies, Qlayaat would function within regional circulation logics rather than national aviation planning. From the mid-1960s, the Lebanese army repurposed the site for military training, transforming it into a security asset. Civilian potential became secondary, and during the civil war (1975–1990), operations collapsed entirely.
The airport shifted from an infrastructure of mobility to one of suspension – physically present as well as present in the collective memory of local residents, yet inactive. After the Ta'ef agreement concluding the Lebanese civil war, the airport symbolised postwar reconciliation and reconstruction.
Despite this symbolic reintegration, it never became a functioning civilian airport; political fragmentation and uneven investment continued to constrain its development. Northern Lebanon was also shaped by Syrian presence through the army and intelligence networks, making Akkar entangled in systems of economic dependency and political pressure. Informal taxation systems and indirect rule further entrenched Akkar’s marginalisation as a peripheral region. Local people in Akkar and Tripoli often refer to the closure of the airport as “a plot against the people of northern Lebanon”. These legacies continue to inform resistance to reopening. Concerns, particularly among actors aligned with Hezbollah, focus on the airport’s proximity to Syrian strategic influence, raising geopolitical anxieties about cross-border flows. Proposals have therefore faced delay and obstruction. At the same time, Qiliyaat is framed as a development engine for Akkar and Tripoli, alongside other unrealised infrastructure projects in the same locations. Its reopening is imagined as reducing regional inequality and stimulating employment, though such processes echo broader patterns of spatial marginalisation: namely, in Beirut's Dahiye, the southern suburbs, mostly led by Hezbollah, which has a main road leading to the airport; the construction of a highway in Dahiye enabled outsiders not to pass through these suburbs. Policy discourse has thus shifted attention toward bankable infrastructure : projects driven by feasibility under fiscal breakdown rather than long-term planning. Such investment opportunities are attractive to private investors and international donors. Qlayaat fits this model: it reduces capital costs as existing infrastructure, enables public–private partnerships, supports decentralisation beyond Beirut, and symbolises engagement with neglected northern areas. Yet this shift reactivates historical constraints. Economic redistribution across Akkar remains unlikely, while geopolitical sensitivities persist, reproducing patterns of project-based governance. When infrastructure is not “bankable,” it becomes humanitarianised. In Akkar, the Syrian crisis showed how basic services - roads, drainage, bus stops – can be delivered through NGOs as temporary crisis-management devices rather than public obligations.
In Halba, for example, I saw bus stops built by humanitarian organisations, reflecting the “tyranny of emergency”, where infrastructure depends on fluctuating donor priorities rather than sustained planning. In this framework, while humanitarian actors became de factoinfrastructural providers in Lebanon’s neglected peripheries, the temporal logic of humanitarianism fundamentally conflicts with the longue durée requirements of infrastructure itself. Ultimately, the reopening of Qlayaat Airport, received with both caution and enthusiasm by the Ministry of Public Works and Transport and the local Mayor, is not simply developmental. As some Arab press reported, it reflects a long trajectory in which infrastructure has shifted from oil-linked industrial ambition to military asset, then from neglected periphery to a source of investment.
The core issue is not whether the airport will reopen, but what kind of infrastructure Lebanon can produce under collapse. Qlayaat emerges as a test case: projects may succeed not through effective and accountable governance, but through the strategic performance of state weakness and under-resourcefulness, letting others build where the state cannot. A story that dramatically repeats itself. Estella Carpi is an Associate Professor in Humanitarian Studies at University College London and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Lebanese American University. Her work mostly revolves around humanitarianism, identity politics, and forced displacement. She is author of "The Politics of Crisis-Making. Forced Displacement and Cultures of Assistance in Lebanon" (Indiana University Press, 2023). Follow her on X: @estycrp Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.