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National Geographic : 1970 Feb
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Lebanon: Little Bible Land in the Crossfire of History To do this, farmers began centuries ago to terrace the slopes with stone retaining walls. Some 175,000 acres of the terraced land was abandoned, however, as rural people moved to the cities or followed their sons to distant countries. The walls collapsed and the soil, accumulated through generations of back breaking labor, washed down to the sea. The Green Plan made tractors available to rebuild the terraces, together with counseling on land reclamation and development. "If the farmer is too shy to come to us for help, we go to him," an official of the plan told me. "In the past four years our work has spread through almost a third of the villages of Lebanon." Romans Grew Grain in the Bekaa Mountain land restored to productive use rose all around us as Najib and I continued our grinding drive across the midsection of the country, heading for Lebanon's richest agricultural area. "Down there," Najib said, nodding his head to the left. "The Bekaa." It reached as far as I could see (to Syria, it seemed), wide and flat and stacked with the gifts of fertile earth. Lebanon's valleys are many, but it is the Bekaa that the country wears like a green sash of honor (pages 264-5). Pushing up the back of the country for 80 miles, this northeasternmost extension of the Great Rift Valley gave Imperial Rome much of its grain. Before that, even, a long roster of conquering peoples passed through the Be kaa. Some paused, then went on; afew stayed. All tasted of its sweetness. Each spring the Bekaa attracts hordes of Bedouin. Most of them come from the Syrian Desert, walking more than a week, almost always at night, to escape the approaching summer heat. With them come 60,000 to 70,000 Awassi sheep, a breed distinguished by its tail, which resembles a Ping-Pong pad dle of fat. Looking down over the broad sweep of the plain, I could see the black goathair tents of the Bedouin set on the fringes of the quilt work of crops. Many of the fields were given over to cereals, others to potatoes and onions, sugar beets and grapes. And hashish. Hashish is the dried resin of the same Indian hemp plant (Cannabis indica) from which marijuana is derived. It is a stronger drug, however. Hashish is an illegal commod ity in Lebanon, but law enforcement meas ures are aimed more against the distributor than against the grower. One objective of the Green Plan is to get hashish farmers to grow sunflowers instead. So far, this phase of the plan has not pro gressed as rapidly as hoped. Future maneuvers in the war against the growing of hashish may include attacks from the air-spraying the fields with an agent that renders the drug repulsive to both taste and smell. "Hashish will grow on land that's too dry for almost anything else," Najib told me. "I know people in the Bekaa who switched to other crops as soon as they got irrigation wa ter on their lands. I'm sure others would do the same. The key to it is water." Litani Project Puts a River to Work To help meet this need for water, work began in 1957 on a project of unprecedented scope for a country the size of Lebanon: de velopment of the nation's longest river, the Litani. Rising in the northern part of the Bekaa, the Litani flows south and west for nearly seventy miles before prying through the coastal mountain range and giving itself to the Mediterranean. At no place does the river leave the boundaries of the country. One phase of the project, recently com pleted at a cost of $100,000,000, produces hydroelectric power. A 200-foot-high rock-fill dam backs up a lake that holds nearly 300 million cubic yards of water. When released, this water plunges down through a series of tunnels and penstocks, powering turbines placed like steps on the mountain slopes. Eventually, the Litani project is expected to provide about 600 million kilowatt hours of power per year. Even now, the work has gone far toward lighting the nation. "Of the nearly 2,000 villages in Lebanon," said Salah Halwani, Warm hospitality of the Bedouin greets photographer Mobley on the plains near Dayr az Zahrani. While her children play in their goathair tent, mother bakes the family bread. After forming balls of dough, she deftly works them into thin cakes that are placed upon the rounded stove for baking, foreground. Fleeing summer's desert heat, Bedouin with their sheep and goats thread mountain passes from Syria into the Bekaa Valley and coastal plain. EKTACHROME @ NATIONALGEOGRAPHICSOCIETY 267
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