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Hezbollah in step with the
times
By Sami
Moubayed
DAMASCUS - Earlier this year,
Hezbollah secretary general Hasan Nasrullah
recounted an important conversation he had with
Lebanon's slain premier Rafik Hariri in early
February, one week before Hariri's assassination
in Beirut. Nasrullah remembered that Hariri had
spoken about Hezbollah, saying, "I believe in this
resistance. And I am telling you that if I become
prime minister again I will not implement the
(disarmament) article of (UN) Resolution 1559. I
swear to you that the resistance and its weapons
will remain until the day a comprehensive regional
settlement is reached, not just until (the
Israeli) withdrawal from the Sheba Farms."
Hariri, according to Nasrullah, went on,
saying, "On that day, when that agreement is
reached, I will sit with you and say: 'Sir, there
is no further need for the resistance and its
weapons.' If we agree, that's what will be. If we
disagree, I swear to you and before God (he also
swore by his deceased son Hussam) that I will not
fight the resistance. I will resign and leave the
country (before that happens)."
Hariri has
taken details of this conversation with him to the
grave, and some in Lebanon today are doubting
whether he ever made such a promise to Nasrullah.
Were Hariri, an Arab nationalist at heart and a
one-time member of the Movement of Arab
Nationalists still around, it is debatable whether
he would agree with the disarmament of Hezbollah.
Yet he was a man loyal to his words and if he made
such a promise to Nasrullah, he would have kept
it.
Today, however, Lebanon is divided
like no time before on whether Hezbollah should
keep its arms, or whether it should be
demilitarized and fully enter the political
system.
Nobody, however, wants to disarm
the group by force since this would be considered
aggression on the Shi'ite community as a whole.
Doing that might easily ignite another civil war
in Lebanon. Force is not even an option for the
Americans, who know that due to pan-Shi'ite
loyalties, aggression on the Shi'ites of Lebanon
would enrage the Shi'ites of Iraq and Iran. This
would upset the already very turbulent situation
in Iraq and alienate America's number one allies
in the post-Saddam Hussein order in Iraq. The
Americans have realized that the only way to get
Hezbollah to disarm is to keep the issue a
domestic Lebanese one, negotiated by leaders of
the Sunni, Shi'ite and Christian communities. Any
excessive US interference would lead to a violent
backlash, aggressiveness, and permanently damage
any progress.
For its part, Hezbollah is
enjoying its current status in Lebanon and the
confusion it is creating in Washington. It has
gotten to keep its arms even in the wake of the
Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, maintain its war
with Israel, has one party member and one party
loyalist in the cabinet of Fouad al-Siniora, and
14 seats in parliament.
Many wrongly
believed that once the Syrian army left Lebanon,
Hezbollah would be weakened, gradually losing its
influence in the country. This turned out to be
nonsense, since contrary to what is commonly
portrayed in the Western media, Hezbollah is a
party that is totally independent in Lebanon from
control of the Syrians.
For example, they
had four parliamentary seats in 1992, and four for
their allies, a total of only eight, and this in
the heyday of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon. Today,
with Syria out, they have 14 seats. This explains
why Hezbollah remained pro-Syrian until curtain
fall. Even without the Syrians, Nasrullah knew
that he could survive without them. He never
relied on the Syrians for his power base, nor did
any member of Hezbollah.
Hezbollah might
have needed Syrian support in the early 1990s to
survive in the post-civil war arena while other
armed groups were being disbanded, but it outgrew
Syrian patronage. It may have relied on the
Syrians for cover and advice, but it received no
money, military training or weapons from the
Syrians. After its success in driving the Israelis
out of Lebanon in May 2000, its stature and
credibility inside Lebanon increased tremendously,
making any Syrian support unnecessary.
Also in Hezbollah's favor now is the
victory of Mamud Ahmadinejad, the president-elect
of Iran, who is likely to continue supporting the
Lebanese Shi'ite guerillas. A man devoted to the
principals of the Iranian revolution of 1979,
Ahmadinejad knew that one of its main objectives
was Shi'ite emancipation, and helping the Shi'ites
of the world achieve victory and end injustice.
Had a moderate like Mustapha Moin become president
of Iran, for example, or someone like Ali Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was seeking imaginative
ways to appease the Americans, then probably the
future of Hezbollah would have been in doubt,
given the possibility of losing its Iranian
patron. Ahmadinejad, however, is an ally of
Hezbollah and so is his master, the Grand
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. If the Syrian withdrawal
in any way shook the confidence of Hezbollah, then
Ahmadinejad's victory certainly restored it.
Saad Hariri, the son of the slain premier,
who now leads the biggest parliamentary bloc, told
the media on July 25 that Lebanon had a lot of
problems and that it was a fragile country;
discussing them all at once will lead to
instability. He prioritized nation-building, and
finding those who killed his father, over the
disarmament of Hezbollah. Any disarmament, he
said, had to be made within the Lebanese framework
and not under pressure from abroad.
This
was echoed by French President Jacques Chirac,
when he received Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon on July 27. The Israeli leader requested
French assistance in the disarmament of Hezbollah,
and Chirac replied that this was a domestic
Lebanese matter that could only be dealt with by
the Lebanese themselves, with no outside
intervention.
The arms debate
Inside Lebanon, everybody pays tribute to
Nasrullah and acknowledges his role in liberating
South Lebanon in 2000. The country is sharply
divided on disarmament, however. The Christians,
and some Muslims, are in favor of disarming the
resistance. The Shi'ites, even those who are not
members in Hezbollah, are overwhelmingly opposed
to such a move.
Nasrullah voiced his views
on the matter on the anniversary of the liberation
of the South, held in the southern village of Bint
Jbeil, "There is talk of disarming the resistance.
Any thought of disarming the resistance is pure
madness. We do not want to attack anyone. We have
never done so. And we will never allow anyone to
attack Lebanon. But if anyone, no matter who, even
thinks about disarming the resistance, we will
fight him like the martyr-seekers in Karbala."
Hezbollah is a symbol of Shi'ite
emancipation and power in Lebanon. If it goes
away, many people fear that the Shi'ites will
return to becoming the under-class of Lebanese
society, as they had been in the 1950s and 1960s.
Also, many fear that if Hezbollah disarms, it
would lose its finances, which allow it to
maintain so many charity networks, schools,
medical centers and hospitals. Many people rely on
these charity organizations for their livelihoods.
As the world discusses the disarmament of
Hezbollah, one question should be raised: why do
people support Hezbollah? The obvious reason is
religion, yet a study conducted in 1996 by Dr
Judith Harik, a professor of political science at
the American University of Beirut, shows
otherwise. In her study, "Between Islam and the
State: Sources and Implications of Popular Support
for Lebanon's Hezbollah", published in Journal of
Conflict Resolution, Volume 40 (March 1996), Harik
showed that 70% of Hezbollah's supporters saw
themselves only as moderately religious, and 23%
said they were religious only out of obligation.
Pragmatism and nationalism, rather than Muslim
ideology, are the secrets of Hezbollah's success.
Hezbollah enjoys authority and commands
unwavering loyalty among Shi'ites because it
always appears to be a confident political party
that is doing an honorable job in fighting Israel.
Adding to the nationalist aspect is the social
one, which is that many people in the Shi'ite
community, mainly at the grass-root level, rely on
Hezbollah for charity and welfare. Hezbollah has
succeeded in promoting itself through the media,
igniting confidence, safety and security among the
10 million viewers of al-Manar television, for
example. Many of those viewers are Shi'ites.
Hezbollah's media empire includes al-Manar, a
radio station, a newspaper and tons of Internet
sites, created by, affiliated with, or supportive
of the resistance. Not once does al-Manar, for
example, show viewers a member of Hezbollah
defeated. Rather, it shows pictures of dead
Israelis, real footage of Hezbollah operations,
and programs highlighting Hezbollah's charity
organization, such as the rebuilding of 5,000
homes destroyed by the Israelis in South Lebanon.
Hezbollah is a movement inspired by nationalism
rather than religiousness.
Precisely for
these reasons, it would be difficult for anyone to
tackle Hezbollah. The only way to disarm is for
the Shi'ite group to wait until the Israelis leave
Sheba, and then quietly lay down their arms and
modify their agenda from a military to a political
one. The examples of armed groups dismantling
themselves the minute independence is achieved are
many.
History lessons
One that
comes to mind is the National Youth in Syria,
whose leaders willingly disarmed when the French
left in 1946. Another is that of Irgun and Hagana,
the two Zionist military groups that operated in
Palestine prior to the creation of Israel in 1948.
To the Jewish, they were resistance leaders. To
the Arabs, they were terrorists. This is exactly
how Hezbollah is viewed today by the
Lebanese/Arabs and Israelis/Americans.
One
side sees them as a heroic resistance, the other
side as terrorists. Many columnists in the Jewish
media have been drawing parallels between the two
Zionist militias that disarmed in 1948 and the
current military groups in the Arab world, saying
that they should do the same. This applies, they
claim, to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.
The story of 1948 says that when David Ben
Gurion became prime minister of Israel, he knew
that in order to centralize power, he needed to
build a strong army and one military authority in
Israel. He could not afford another military group
operating in Israel. The role of the Irgun and
Hagana was acknowledged in having helped achieve
victory for Israel in 1948, but now was the time,
Ben Gurion argued, for them to lay down their arms
and enter the political arena as political parties
with no military agenda.
The founders of
both parties, Menahem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir,
curtly refused, claiming that any efforts to
disarm the "resistance" was madness. On June 20,
1948, the Irgun office in Paris sent a ship loaded
with arms and ammunition to Israel, named the
Altalena, to reinforce the resistance. A stern Ben
Gurion confronted the ship at the shore of Tel
Aviv and ordered his army to sink it, with all
arms on board.
After the Altalena Affair,
the Hagana was absorbed into the Israeli Defense
Forces and Irgun were convinced, unwillingly, to
disarm. Begin abandoned military affairs for a
political career, ending up as prime minister in
1977, and Shamir did the same, becoming prime
minister in 1983. This should be repeated, Jewish
writers are saying, in Lebanon today. Hezbollah
must disarm, just like Hagana and Irgun, or else
the Lebanese government, now freed from Syrian
influence, must make strong moves to disarm the
resistance, similar to how Ben Gurion sunk the
Altalena.
The difference between Ben
Gurion's case in 1948 and Lebanon's in 2005 is
colossal. Ben Gurion only cracked down on the
armed groups after Israel was created in 1948. He
would not, and could not do that while Israel was
occupied by the British. Hezbollah cannot do that,
and the Lebanese government cannot force them to
do that, while the Sheba Farms are occupied by the
Israelis.
Recently, it was reported in the
media that two US officials had held talks with
Trad Hamadeh, the Lebanese minister of labor who
was nominated into office by Hezbollah. The talks
were mainly concerned with Hamadeh trying to
convince the Americans to change face, vis-a-vis
the resistance in Lebanon, and conduct dialogue
with it, rather than pursue confrontation.
When visiting Beirut in July, US Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice was asked if the US
would change course towards Hezbollah if the group
abandoned its military program. She swiftly
replied, "We don't speak in hypotheticals." Yet
revealed at her Beirut visit was a guarantee she
had received from Ariel Sharon for the Israeli
withdrawal from Sheba. This plan was advocated by
the US, France and Germany, who are lobbying with
Sharon to get him to withdraw. They plan on
getting Syria and Iran to support this, in
exchange for some sort of deal with both countries
that would reduce US pressure on Tehran and
Damascus.
Logically, if the Sheba Farms
are liberated, there would no longer be any need
for Hezbollah to maintain its arms. The argument
against Hezbollah would become much easier for
Lebanese politicians, American statesmen and
Israel. From where they stand today, however,
Hezbollah is unlikely to lay down its arms that
easily. It will not disarm even if Sheba is
liberated. It would still have a high priority on
its agenda: protecting the Shi'ites of Lebanon.
Hezbollah as a party works for the
Shi'ites, who historically have been a oppressed
community. In 1992, eyebrows were raised when
Hezbollah decided to enter parliamentary elections
because this was a political system that it
despised, describing it as feudal and corrupted.
Nasrullah at the time replied that he was doing it
"for the sake of the oppressed".
Precisely
for this reason, he will not abandon the arms of
Hezbollah. Hezbollah will remain armed "for the
sake of the oppressed".
Sami
Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
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