DAMASCUS - "I care about my people, my
country and defending them from the Zionist
aggression," said a Hezbollah fighter after I'd
asked him why he joined the group. I found myself
in downtown Beirut sitting in the back seat of his
car in the liquid heat of a Lebanese summer. Sweat
rolled down my nose and dripped on my notepad as I
jotted furiously.
"My home in Dahaya is
now pulverized," he said while the concussions of
Israeli bombs landing in his nearby neighborhood
echoed across the buildings around us. "Everything
in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight them.
I am a shaheed [martyr]."
He asked
to remain anonymous, and that I refer to him only
as Ahmed.
The late-afternoon sun was
behind him as he told me just how
hard
his life had been. When he was 11 years old he and
his youngest brother had been taken from their
home by Israeli soldiers and put in prison for two
years. I asked him what happened to him there, but
that was a subject he wouldn't discuss. One of his
brothers was later killed by Israeli soldiers.
After his release from an Israeli prison
Ahmed was spending his teenage years in southern
Lebanon when he was caught in crossfire between
Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers near his
home. He was shot three times. Many years before,
his father had been killed by an Israeli air
strike on a refugee camp in south Beirut.
"What are we left with?" he asked, while
the angle of the sun through the windshield
highlighted tears welling in his eyes. "I know I
will die fighting them, then I will go to my god.
But I will go to my god fighting like a lion. I
will not be slaughtered like a lamb."
A
widely misunderstood group Leaving on this
trip to Syria, I never intended to go to Lebanon.
When my plane took off from San Francisco, Lebanon
was still a peaceful land; by the time my plane
touched down in Damascus, however, everything had
changed. That very day, I learned on landing,
Hezbollah had taken two Israeli soldiers captive
and killed eight others. While the mainstream
media have taken it as fact that the Hezbollah
raid occurred inside Israel, many Arab outlets
claim the Israelis actually entered Lebanon before
being attacked. The exact location of the clash
remains in dispute.
Clearer, however, are
the effects of the subsequent Israeli attack on
Lebanon. Physically, Lebanon has been bombed if
not yet back to the Stone Age, then at least to a
point where much of the country now looks as it
did in the worst periods of its brutal civil war,
which lasted from 1975 until 1990.
According to statistics provided by the
Lebanese government on July 24, there had already
been well over US$2.1 billion of damage to the
civilian infrastructure of Lebanon - all three of
its airports and all four of its seaports had by
then been bombed, and in the weeks to follow it
was only to get worse.
By estimates that
go quickly out of date as the bombing campaign
continues, there has already been nearly $1
billion of damage done to civilian residences and
businesses, with more than 22 gasoline stations as
well as fuel depots bombed and the major highways
along which fuel resupply would take place badly
damaged. Scores of factories, worth more than $180
million, have also been damaged or destroyed.
Red Cross ambulances, governmental
emergency centers, United Nations peacekeeping
forces and observers, media outlets and
mobile-phone towers have all been bombed, each a
violation of international law. Mosques and
churches have been hit; illegal weapons such as
cluster bombs and white phosphorus used; and, as
far as can be told at this early point, more than
90% of the victims killed have been civilians.
As of this writing, the Lebanese
government had already announced at least 900
deaths, and that number is now certainly well over
1,000. At least 60 Israelis are also dead from
Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel and fierce
fighting inside Lebanon.
As air wars go, the one in Lebanon
may seem strikingly directed against the
civilian infrastructure and against society; in
that, however, it is historically anything but
unique. It might even be said that war from the
air, since first launched in Europe's colonies
early in the last century, has always been
essentially directed against civilians. As in
World War II, air power - no matter its stated
targets - almost invariably turns out to be
worst for civilians and, in the end, to be aimed
at society itself. In that way, its damage is
anything but "collateral", never truly
"surgical", and never in its overall effect
"precise". Even when it doesn't start that way,
the frustration of not working as planned, of
not breaking the "will", invariably leads, as
with the Israelis, to ever wider, ever fiercer
versions of the same, which, if allowed to
proceed to their logical conclusion, will bring
down not society's will, but society itself.
The government of Israel stated at
the outset that the goal of its massive air
campaign, leveled directly at the infrastructure
of Lebanese society and at its economy, was in
essence psychological - meant to increase popular
pressure against Hezbollah; but, as might easily
have been predicted, exactly the opposite has
occurred.
"I never supported Hezbollah
before," a young student at the American
University of Beirut told me shortly after I
arrived in the capital city. "But now they are
defending us against Israel." His view of
Hezbollah is quickly becoming the norm for
hundreds of thousands of previously unsympathetic
Lebanese as US-made Israeli bombs and missiles
continue to rain down on the country.
During my time in Lebanon I drove to Qana.
On the way there, I passed one small hilltop
village after another, all of them resembling
bombed-out ghost towns. Chunks of buildings
littered the roads, which our car had to negotiate
carefully. Powdered rock from shattered homes
seemed to cover everything like a thin film. No
one was walking the deserted streets, even in the
middle of the day. The few who remained, mostly
the elderly and children, hid in basements. For
whole stretches, only occasional stray cats and
dogs were seen, along with a flock of goats whose
herder had long since fled.
Irregular thumping of bomb
explosions continued in the distance. The roar of
Israeli F-16s overhead was a constant reminder
that no place in the south of this country was
safe. After witnessing this level of destruction,
the literal tearing apart of a society, it was
clear to me why so many more people were
supporting Hezbollah.
Enter
Nasrallah To grasp the unfolding events in
Lebanon, you have to begin with an uncomfortable
fact. Hezbollah, widely known throughout much of
the West as a "terrorist organization", is seen as
anything but in Lebanon. This was obviously true
of most Shi'ites, especially in south Lebanon,
before this round of war began. Now, even many in
the conservative Christian population in parts of
northern Lebanon and west Beirut have come to hold
its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in high regard. With
seats in the Lebanese parliament, Hezbollah is
seen as a legitimate political group.
Hezbollah first came into existence as a
result of the Israeli invasion and occupation of
Lebanon, which began on June 6, 1982. The group
draws most of its popular support from southern
Beirut and southern Lebanon, where the majority of
the country's Shi'ite population lives.
Downtrodden, impoverished, and largely overlooked
by a government in Beirut in which they had
inadequate representation, the Shi'ites were
primed for a leader who would promise them a
better future.
The group was officially
founded on February 16, 1985, when Sheik Ibrahim
al-Amin proclaimed its manifesto. Nasrallah would
only come to power after the Israeli military
assassinated Amin. A charismatic leader, he
promptly solidified his base and swelled
Hezbollah's ranks by working to satisfy the most
essential needs of his followers. Hezbollah soon
started providing the basic social-service
infrastructure in the neglected Shi'ite areas of
the country - hospitals, schools, construction
projects, welfare programs and, above all, a
well-trained, highly disciplined militia for
protection.
After years of brutal
guerrilla war against the Israeli military, which
had occupied part of south Lebanon, Hezbollah
succeeded in doing what neither the Lebanese
government nor its impotent army could possibly
have done. Its fighters wore down the Israeli
military and finally forced it out of the country
in 2000. This, not surprisingly, lent it even
greater popularity.
While the coming years
also brought it more significant political
representation and respect, the Druze and
Christian populations continued to distance
themselves from or oppose the group.
Now,
the staggeringly disproportionate Israeli response
to the detention of two of its soldiers and the
killing of others in mid-July has changed even
this. In a sense, the Israelis are accomplishing
the previously inconceivable - uniting the
otherwise hostile power centers of the country
behind Hezbollah.
Last week, the Israelis
actually began bombing key bridges in the
Christian part of the country for the first time -
a clear statement that no Lebanese are to be
spared their attentions. Most of the Druze and
Christian leadership have by now condemned the
Israeli response. Many have even gone so far as to
state that they believe Hezbollah is working to
defend the country's sovereignty.
Thus the
Israeli response has played a huge role in
strengthening the already strong hand of
Nasrallah.
The view from Damascus
Hezbollah enjoys massive popular and
political support in Syria. Everywhere in the
ancient city of Damascus the yellow-and-green
flags of the group hang from storefronts, flutter
in the wind from television antennas, and fly from
the radio antennas of cars. Portraits and photos
of Nasrallah are taped to the back windows of
Mercedes and BMWs. Key chains of his bearded,
smiling face, along with iconic T-shirts in which
he is portrayed between the Syrian flag and that
of Hezbollah, are now selling like hotcakes.
"We know the Americans are trying to smash
our dignity," a man named Faez told me in the
coastal Syrian city of Latakia. Inside a heavily
air-conditioned European-style coffee shop, while
sipping espresso, the businessman did what so many
Syrians do nowadays – he used "America" and
"Israel" interchangeably.
The head of the
Syrian Union of Engineers, Hassan Majid, was no
less frank as we sat in his plush office in
downtown Damascus. "Hezbollah has our greatest
respect now," he said softly.
Hundreds of
thousands of Lebanese refugees have flooded the
capital. You can see them inhabiting schools and
crowded into various offices for Middle East
Airlines, Lebanon's air carrier. They are always
to be found at Syrian Red Crescent shelters hoping
to acquire lodging, food, or other assistance.
The support they receive is of a far
better kind than is available to the tens of
thousands of internal refugees who have fled no
further than Beirut, where they sleep in the dirt
in city parks or, if they are lucky, on thin foam
mats in still-empty schools; yet their accounts of
suffering and loss are no less heart-wrenching.
These stories ripple across Syria daily, broadcast
far and wide by state television.
At the
headquarters of the Syrian Red Crescent, you can
still see a plaque from the Red Cross thanking the
Syrian group for its efforts assisting Hurricane
Katrina victims. When I asked about it, one of the
volunteers told me Syria had donated medical
supplies to aid the desperate residents of New
Orleans.
An old man named Hassan Hamdan
had just arrived from south Lebanon and was
waiting for volunteers to find him somewhere to
sleep. He caught the spirit of the moment when he
took my very first open-ended questions as an
opportunity to vent his rage.
In a sense,
it never felt as if he was talking to me at all.
As he began, he promptly stood up. His voice rose
instantly into the shouting range and he quite
literally yelled, "The Israelis are attacking and
killing everything which moves!" I involuntarily
took a step back, fearing he was so angry he might
actually assault me. "It's total destruction! They
just shredded our city!" For a moment he calmed
slightly and explained that he'd just left his
village near the south Lebanese city of Bint
Jbail. Immediately, his voice rose and he was off
again: "Everyone is now with Hezbollah! Even Jesus
is with Hezbollah! Insha'Allah [God
willing], Hezbollah will smash the Israelis and
kick them from Lebanon once and for all!"
I've seen similar rantings broadcast on
Syrian state television as people crowd around to
watch inside sweaty restaurants and I
automatically dismissed it as so much state
propaganda. But here that "propaganda" was alive
and unbelievably vociferous, with not a screen in
sight.
In fact, it hardly matters any more
what anyone says or does. Sometimes you can feel a
tidal pull in events - in this case, a strong one
flowing in a single powerful direction. When one
Israeli general recently aimed some pointed barbs
at Syria for supporting Hezbollah, and President
Bashar al-Assad promptly put the Syrian military
on high alert, popular support for Hezbollah,
further galvanized, only grew accordingly. It's no
longer hard to imagine a whole region in which the
shouting might reach previously inconceivable
decibels and nobody will be listening.
Drastic measures After visiting
a hospital in Beirut where I saw dozens of
horribly wounded children, women and the elderly,
their skin burned, often from the flames of their
own devastated homes, their bodies shredded,
possibly by the cluster bombs the Israelis have
reportedly been using, I walked outside and wept.
Shortly after, I met with Ahmed again and
briefly described the experience while, once
again, tearing up. "This is what I've been seeing
my entire life," he replied, staring into my eyes.
"Nothing but pain and suffering."
Now,
this is also what so many Lebanese, sheltered
these past years of reconstruction from life
experiences like Ahmed's, are seeing first-hand,
and this is why Hezbollah is viewed by almost all
Lebanese as a legitimate resistance movement, not
a "terrorist organization". This is what the
Israelis have actually done to the Lebanese, other
than dismantling their society and turning them
into refugees in their own land.
When you
are in Syria or, I suspect, in most Arab states
today and utter the words "terrorist
organization", it doesn't even occur to people
that Hezbollah might be the topic of conversation.
They take it for granted that you're referring
either to Israel or the United States.
As
Israeli pilots continue to drop US-made
precision-guided bombs from F-16s and Hezbollah
launches barrages of rockets ever deeper into
Israel, the radicalization of both populations -
and of the region - only intensifies amid the
spreading devastation.
When this war
finally ends, the societal, economic and
environmental destruction will undoubtedly be
staggering - it already is - as well as
long-lasting; but it will pale in comparison to
the psychological damage that has already been
done. Rather than sowing the seeds of a future
peace, it's painfully clear to an observer that
the seeds of everlasting bloodshed, resentment and
resistance are now sprouting amid the ruins.
Arab leaders continue to earn the scorn of
their populations for not putting their all into
stopping the Israeli campaign against Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah appears committed to doing so
until the very end - and, based on what I saw in
my days in Lebanon, that "end" of mutual
destruction seems all that is left on the minds of
those involved.
The Israelis, overvaluing
the technology of war and, in particular, of air
power (as so many have done before them), began
their campaign against Lebanon by using perfectly
real bombs and missiles to achieve largely
psychological ends - the humiliation of Hezbollah
in the eyes of the Lebanese population. As it
turns out, they have indeed changed the psychology
of Lebanon - and possibly of the region. Just not
in ways they ever imagined.
As Tarad
Hamade, the Lebanese minister of labor and
official representative of Hezbollah, told me in
Beirut recently, "We might not be as powerful as
the Israeli army, but we will fight until we die."
Dahr Jamail is an independent
journalist from Anchorage, Alaska, who spent eight
months reporting from occupied Iraq. He regularly
reports for Inter Press Service, and contributes
to Asia Times Online, The Independent, the Sunday
Herald, as well as Tomdispatch.com. He maintains a
website at www.dahrjamailiraq.com.
