The war Hezbollah is really
fighting By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
The asymmetrical warfare between a
US-backed regional superpower and an Islamist
resistance movement ill-equipped to reciprocate in
kind the deadly, punishing blows by its adversary
is now entering its second week with no sign of
abating.
Both militarily, politically and
diplomatically, both sides in this "widening war"
have mirror-imaged each other by targeting cities
and towns and villages rather indiscriminately,
even though the
death
and destruction wrought by Israel's
state-of-the-art weaponry dwarfs by a vast margin
the damages exacted by Hezbollah's rather
primitive rockets.
Irrespective, Hezbollah
can boast about both its steadfastness in the face
of relentless bombardment reminiscent of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization's bombardment of
Serbia in the summer 1999. It can also take heart
from its unprecedented ability to shower northern
Israel with rocket attacks, bringing normal life
for a full one third of the state of Israel to a
virtual standstill.
The key question is,
of course, how long Hezbollah can withstand the
Israeli air and (increasingly) ground onslaught
without running out of ammunition, logistic
support and sheer will power. A war of attrition,
when Israel's arsenal is fully and quickly
replenished by the US, according to press reports,
while Hezbollah's supply routes are choked off, is
not in Hezbollah's strategic interests.
But, that may be inevitable since Israel
has publicly devoted itself to dismantling
Hezbollah's military infrastructure "once and for
all" and, yet, the air campaign will in all
likelihood fall dreadfully short of this
objective. Crippling Hezbollah, albeit
temporarily, may be the maximum achievable by the
Israeli air campaign.
Israel's
incremental ground invasion As of this
writing, Israel's army has penetrated some three
miles inside Lebanon, capturing some villages,
while massing troops at the border in anticipation
of a potential full-scale invasion. This has the
dual objective of eliminating Hezbollah's
strongholds near the border and creating a "deep
buffer".
Mindful of history, when
Hezbollah's guerrillas waged an ultimately
successful counter-strategy that forced Israel's
withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, Israel
is fully aware of the "war trap" and is seeking a
working formula whereby it can accomplish its
ultimate war objectives short of re-occupying
parts of Lebanon.
The war's pattern of
escalation may, on the other hand, create its own
momentum toward large-scale invasion, in which
case, all roads will lead to Beirut. This is the
main reason that Hezbollah's hot pursuit by
Israeli forces will culminate in urban warfare in
Beirut's vicinity and, indeed, the entire length
of the capital city presently under siege.
Thus, Israel's military conundrum:
settling fpr less than full victory against the
determined Hezbollah will scar Israel's military
prestige and, yet, the price of total victory may
prove too high, in terms of destruction of Lebanon
and the level of tolerance of international public
opinion. Worse, there is no guarantee that
Israel's quest for total destruction of Hezbollah
will succeed. In fact, Beirut may prove to be the
Arabs' Stalingrad, delivering a stunning blow to
the invading Israeli army at the end of a bloody
campaign.
With the war beginning to
galvanize the Arab street, a protracted conflict
will bring al-Qaeda to Lebanon in hordes, thus
exponentially widening the net of Arab terrorism.
A timely unifying development potentially putting
to the backburner the present Sunni-Shi'ite schism
turning violent in Iraq and Pakistan, the war in
Lebanon is also proving a critical antidote to
Lebanese factionalism, in light of the
announcement by various Lebanese leaders that
Lebanon will stand united against an Israeli
invasion.
Western military analysts have
readily dismissed the Lebanese Army as "no match"
for Israel, which is true, but the 60,000 standing
army can quickly double in size through a general
mobilization, as well as by accepting recruits
from other Arab and Muslim nations.
Besides, Lebanon's premier has already
alluded to turning his army into a guerrilla-type
army, which has the advantage of familiarity with
the terrain, fighting a war of independence and
self-determination against what is perceived as a
ruthless enemy which has not spared even Beirut's
hospitals. Lebanon may be physically devastated
now, but politically it has demonstrated an
admirable new maturity bound to be praised by
future historians.
The war on the
diplomatic front "There is no diplomacy,"
decried the Lebanon's man at the UN after a week
of bloodshed passively observed by the United
Nations, despite a formal complaint lodged by
Lebanon at the Security Council.
Ignoring
repeated pleas by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
for an immediate ceasefire, backed by certain
European governments, such as France and
practically the entire bloc of developing nations
known as the Non-Aligned Movement, the US has
singlehandedly brought the Security Council to a
state of paralysis. The feeble argument of its
envoy John Bolton is that we "must wait and see
what the military outcome will be" and that to do
otherwise is "putting the cart before the horse".
This even though the UN Charter and the
council's mandate is to prevent armed conflicts
and to institute peace in inter-state conflicts.
Such mockery of the UN's role simply adds another
fresh log to the burning furnace of
anti-Americanism running rampant in the Middle
East and, indeed, the entire Muslim World.
The US's justification that "Israel has
the right to defend herself" is not once extended
to the oppressed Palestinian people, who have been
enduring the most horrific series of air and
ground assaults. According to the Palestinian
envoy to the UN, who reported to the Security
Council on Friday, Israel has conducted over 100
air strikes and shelled Gaza more than 1,100
times.
The US Congress has self-limited
itself to uncritical support for Israel, passing a
resolution condemning Syria and Iran, without even
bothering with the previous niceties of keeping a
facade of fairness.
A new resolution by
the House of Representative calls for the release
of kidnapped Israeli soldiers, without mentioning
the fact, cited by the London Observer, that a day
prior to the kidnapping of a soldier by Hamas,
Israeli commandos violated Gaza's territorial
sovereignty by "abducting" two Hamas members. In
fairness, respected US lawmakers should similarly
ask for Israel's release of detained Arabs.
Few US politicians dare to criticize
Israel's destruction of much of the infrastructure
of the Palestinian Authority, imprisonment of
dozens of Palestinian lawmakers and half its
cabinet ministers.
A just reaction by
Congress would be to openly entertain reprisals
against Israel if it refused to halt its deadly
campaign. A range of options must be explored:
reducing military exchanges, freezing the delivery
of weapons purchased by Israel and scaling down
military-to-military cooperation.
Also,
Washington can threaten to withdraw economic
assistance, delay investments, freeze preferential
trade agreements and dissolve joint economic
projects, and, in the worst-case scenario, freeze
economic assets.
Short of the US heavily
weighing in on Israel, the threat of escalation
potentially harming the US's strategic interests
in the region for a long time looms on the
horizon.
As US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice begins her journey to "the
region", which reportedly does not include any
Arab capital, in spite of Syria's declared
willingness to engage in dialogue with the US, it
is abundantly clear that this is mainly diplomatic
window dressing for Israel's war efforts.
Rice's bravado about a "new Middle East"
is vacuous, in light of the Bush administration's
lop-sided pro-Israel stance and the previous
absence of any initiative whatsoever toward
resolving the Palestinian "issue". And, if the US
and Israel are warming to the notion of an
international buffer force at the Israel-Lebanese
border, it is less because of the US's concern for
peace and more due to the failure of Israel to
break the back of Lebanon and its fears of a war
trap mentioned above.
Hezbollah's
option: Unilateral ceasefire Hezbollah is
the sole Arab entity that has delivered a stunning
blow to Israel by forcing it to depart from
Lebanon after 18 years of combat, one main reason
for its immense popularity in Lebanon and the
wider region.
Far from a "terror group
pure and simple" as repeatedly labeled by US
government leaders, Hezbollah is a well-entrenched
politico-military movement participating in the
national life of Lebanon while, simultaneously,
acting as a welfare arm of the Lebanese system by
providing basic welfare services to its largely
underclass mass constituency.
Clearly,
Hezbollah is not a foreign army, like the
Palestinian Liberation Organization, that would be
forced to flee the country. Rather, it is a
home-grown phenomenon deeply immersed in the
fabric of Lebanese society and its collective
identity.
As a result, both the US and
Israeli policy of destroying Hezbollah is doomed
to failure, and no matter how severely it is
pounded by massive bombs, it will survive and its
phoenix will rise from the ashes of Lebanon.
At the same time, that is not to say that
Hezbollah is beyond critical reproach. For one
thing, by targeting civilians in Israel, Hezbollah
has put itself on the same (im)moral equation as
the state of Israel presently terrorizing the
entire Lebanese nation. But, a more prudent
strategy by Hezbollah may be to unilaterally
declare a ceasefire and avoid any more rocket
attacks on northern Israel, focusing on the
Israeli ground forces making incursions into
Lebanon.
There are multiple advantages to
such an initiative by Hezbollah. First, Islam
forbids the harming of civilian populations and
Hezbollah would thus temper its fierce resistance
with a moral high ground.
Second, Israel
would be hard-pressed by the international
community to continue with its aerial assault on
Lebanon in the aftermath of Hezbollah's unilateral
ceasefire, and the more Israel sustains this the
more isolated it will find itself internationally,
given the tide of world opinion already horrified
by the colossal damages to Beirut and elsewhere in
Lebanon.
With the facade of any "symmetry"
between Israel's air campaign and Hezbollah's
rocket attacks, which the pro-Israel US media has
been aptly exploiting, thus disappearing, Israel
may win the war militarily, but will sure lose it
politically and diplomatically.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the
author of After Khomeini: New Directions in
Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and
co-authored "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism",
The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume X11,
issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He
also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential
latent", Harvard International Review. He is
author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating
Facts Versus Fiction.
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