Lebanon: A Decade of Darkness

How to read this chart:

Every Lebanese district gets two bars.

The orange bar shows how much light the district lost between 2019 and 2022 - that is the economic collapse. When Lebanon's financial system failed, the state electricity grid shut down, businesses closed, and families could no longer afford generators. Every single one of the 26 districts lost between 50 and 80 percent of its nighttime light. The orange bars are nearly identical across all districts - that is the point. The economic collapse hit everyone equally.

The red bar shows conflict events recorded by ACLED during the war period (October 2023 to December 2024). This is where the chart becomes a diagnostic tool: red bars only appear where fighting actually happened. The southern front - Tyre, Marjeyoun, Bint Jbeil, Hasbaya, Nabatieh - carries large red bars. Baalbek also has a significant red bar from Israeli strikes in late 2024. The rest of Lebanon has no red bar. Zero.

What this proves:
The orange bars tell you about the economic crisis. The red bars tell you about the war. Two different catastrophes, measurable separately from space - and the satellite can show you exactly which districts suffered from which cause.

A district like Bsharri has a large orange bar (hit hard by the economic collapse) and almost no red bar (the war did not reach it). Marjeyoun has both: already damaged by the economic collapse, then hit again by the war.

Note on the two axes: orange bars measure a percentage of light lost (bottom axis). Red bars measure a count of conflict events (top axis). They use different scales because they measure different things.

What this chart shows:

The pre-collapse baseline (2019): Beirut port averaged 153 vessel arrivals per month before the financial crisis. It is by far Lebanon's dominant port, handling the majority of the country's maritime imports.

The August 2020 explosion: Vessel calls to Beirut dropped 34% in a single month - from 125 in July to 83 in August 2020. This is the sharpest single-month shock in the record and is visible immediately on the red line. The port's grain silos and warehouse infrastructure were destroyed, and it took years to partially restore capacity.

The economic collapse (2019-2022): Beirut's monthly average fell from 153 in 2019 to 92 in 2022 - a 40% decline. Import volumes collapsed by 44%: from 8.5 million metric tons in 2019 to 4.7 million in 2022. This is not a port problem - it is a country that could no longer afford to import. The satellite light data tells the same story from a different angle.

The fuel crisis (2021): Tanker calls - the vessels that bring fuel - dropped sharply in 2021 as the state could not finance fuel imports. This is visible as a dip in Beirut's line specifically during the period when EDL electricity collapsed to near zero.

Tripoli's unusual rise: While Beirut declined, Tripoli (blue line) actually increased - from 34 vessel calls/month in 2019 to 50 in 2022. This reflects trade diversion: as Beirut's damaged port struggled, some cargo was rerouted north. It is not a sign of northern economic strength; it is a consequence of Beirut's damage.

The war period (2023-2024): Saida port (orange line), located in the southern conflict zone, saw vessel calls drop from an average of 19/month before October 2023 to 14/month during the war - a 26% decline. The southern ports (Saida and Tyre) serve the same hinterland as the districts most affected by the conflict.

Exports: the collapse was even sharper than imports. Beirut's export volumes fell 66% between 2019 and 2021 - from 1.74 million metric tons to 598,000. Export revenue as a share of imports dropped from 21% to 11%, meaning Lebanon became even more dependent on imports precisely as it could no longer afford them. This is a structural feature of the collapse: the country's ability to earn foreign exchange through exports deteriorated faster than its consumption of foreign goods.

The Tripoli export anomaly. While the rest of Lebanon collapsed, Tripoli's exports grew by a factor of 5 - from 222,000 metric tons in 2019 to 1.27 million in 2023. This is one of the most striking signals in the entire dataset and has no clear explanation from Lebanon's domestic economy alone. Possible causes include Syrian goods being re-exported through Tripoli following changes in regional trade routes, construction and raw materials moving towards northern Syria, or activity related to Syria's post-Assad political transition. This finding is flagged here as an open question requiring investigation - it may represent legitimate trade growth or something more opaque. It warrants a dedicated inquiry.

How to read this chart

Think of it as a brightness meter for each country. In 2019, every country is set to 100 - that is the starting point. Everything above 100 means the country got brighter (more activity, more electricity, more economic life). Everything below 100 means it got darker.

The red line is Lebanon. Watch what happens from 2019 onwards: it falls off a cliff. By 2022, Lebanon is at roughly 30 - it lost two-thirds of its nighttime light compared to 2019. That is not a power cut. That is a country shutting down.

Now look at everyone else. Jordan stays flat and actually grows. Israel/OPT grows. Cyprus stays stable. They all float around the 100 line throughout the entire period. If the darkness was caused by a regional problem - bad weather, satellite errors, a shared economic shock - all five lines would dip together. They do not. Four countries stay completely normal while one falls apart. Lebanon's collapse is specific to Lebanon.

Note on Syria (orange): Syria's fluctuations reflect its own civil war, which started in 2011 and destroyed infrastructure years before this chart begins. The two collapses have completely different causes, timelines, and geographies. Even a country with its own catastrophic war does not show the same sharp 2019 collapse that Lebanon does.