THE
ROVING EYE Hezbollah's big
challenge By Pepe Escobar
BEIRUT - "You are in heaven and those who
killed you will go to hell," reads a poster in a
middle-class, predominantly Sunni neighborhood in
north Beirut.
Those depicted in heaven
include Saddam Hussein, Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat, former Lebanese prime minister Rafik
al-Hariri (killed in a car bombing in 2005), and
Sheik Ahmed Yassin (the Hamas leader assassinated
by the Israelis in 2004). There's
not much to unite Saddam, Arafat, Hariri
and Yassin - who all "went to heaven" by
different methods - except they were Sunni.
Compare
this to posters all over bombed-out south Beirut
depicting smiling Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah alongside Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
That's one way to see a
Sunni-Shi'ite divide played out in a single Middle
Eastern capital. Another way is to confront the
configuration of the city itself.
Flush
with Saudi Arabian funds, Hariri, a billionaire
Sunni, set out to rebuild Beirut from the ashes of
the Lebanese civil war. Western Christians -
and Saudi Wahhabis - may be impressed with the
malls and the smart cafes. But the Shi'ite masses
from south Beirut - or south Lebanon for that
matter - won't be seen sipping a cappuccino at the
al-Maarad, facing the excavated ruins of the Roman
cardus maximus (city center); they won't be
shopping for Prada in Ras Beirut; they won't even
be allowed at the door of the US$300-a-night hotel
Albergo in Achrafiye; and the kids won't be able
to afford $10 drinks at the Strange Fruit
nightclub.
The game of what many call
Hariri Inc was to rebuild the former "Paris of the
East" from top - downtown - down during the 1990s,
and then the rest of Lebanon would also join the
party. It didn't happen. Shi'ites not only didn't
profit from it, they were bombed by Israel last
summer, after downtown Beirut had become a de
facto Saudi playground.
But then,
last December, a mass Lebanese opposition
campaign, direct-democracy-style, was unleashed, led by
Hezbollah. Downtown is now relatively empty -
occupied by people drinking tea and playing
backgammon in tents for days, even weeks, in a
round-the-clock anti-government sit-in to the
sound of macho martial rhythms.
Lebanon
may be losing as much as $70 million a day as the
impasse continues. Wealthy Saudi and Emirates
tycoons are laying off people in droves. The
affluent, non-Shi'ite, party-going crowd moved
back to the coffee shops in old Hamra Street. But
downtown is not dead - at least not yet, if one
counts as sustainable development projects like La
Residence, a $140 million, Ivana Trump-designed
luxury apartment tower, still selling at a brisk
pace.
Lebanon as a model The easiest
way to avoid trouble in Lebanon is to behave
like a Shi'ite in the south, like a Sunni in
Jiyyih and like a Christian in Beirut. Anyone strictly
secular may run the risk of talking to the
deaf. Unlike Syria, sectarianism rules. It sounds
like Iraq in more ways than one - a non-viable
state.
Crackpots abound - like Druze leader
Walid Jumblatt, who qualifies Nasrallah as a
Syrian agent, Assad as a "serial killer" and Hezbollah
as puppets of Tehran. Or Parliament Speaker
Nabih Berri, who proposed chartering flights
full of Lebanese politicians to Saudi Arabia
so they can be all swayed (by checkbook?) by
King Abdullah. As'ad AbuKhalil, host of the Angry
Arab website, always stresses that the Lebanese
civil war never ended. What outsiders don't know
is the current sectarian wave was unleashed by
Hariri Inc and their wealthy Saudi associates.
But the buck doesn't stop with them.
Because there will always be the Washington-House
of Saud axis.
Saudi Arabia's powerful
Prince Bandar, former ambassador to Washington,
also known as Bandar Bush - who harbors desires of
becoming the next Saudi king - is basically pro-US
and anti-Syria, thus fiercely anti-Hezbollah.
Bandar has been instrumental in convincing other
members of the "axis of fear" apart from Saudi
Arabia - Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the Emirates -
that the US must attack Iran sooner rather than
later.
It's an open secret in Beirut - and
across the Middle East - that the US is financing
the Fouad Siniora government with Bandar money,
not to mention the almost $9 billion which
"mysteriously" disappeared from Iraq. A US-pushed
January conference in Paris came up with pledges
of no less than $8 billion to Lebanon, including
more than $1 billion from the House of Saud. Rafik
Hariri himself was always very close to the House
of Saud, and Prince Bandar in particular.
A United Nations investigation revealed no
direct evidence of Syrian implication in Hariri's
assassination. Officials in Damascus are more than
happy to remind anyone that Hariri was also very
close to former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
asset, former Iraqi interim prime minister and
"Butcher of Fallujah", Iyad Allawi, Not to mention
that he was the facilitator of a $20 billion arms
deal between the Russians and the House of Saud.
As for the pitiful Siniora, he could not even
place a call to President George W Bush last
summer to stop Israel from bombing his own country
to the Stone Age.
Lebanon is a mere pawn
in this Big Brother (US-Bandar Bush) game. No
wonder Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's number two,
has been roundly denouncing Washington for pulling
no punches in preventing any agreement between the
Siniora government and the opposition. Qassem says
the US "wants to tie Lebanon into negotiations
that benefit Israel and their plan for a New
Middle East".
Qassem also stresses that
the US is waging a "covert war" against Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is just reading the news here: before
Christmas 2006, and after long discussions with
Bandar Bush, Bush signed a "non-lethal
presidential finding", officially deniable, giving
the green light to the CIA to take on Hezbollah -
under the guise of providing financial and
logistical support to the Siniora government.
Although the finding was top secret, the news
leaked.
This configures the US, plus the
"axis of fear", plus Israel all united to, in
White House/Pentagon newspeak, "stop Iranian
hegemony in the Middle East". It's hard not to
agree with Iran's ambassador to Damascus, Mohammad
Hassan Akhtari, when he says that the US is using
the old British imperial tactic of divide and
rule, sowing discord among Sunnis and Shi'ites to
try to isolate Iran.
Give a hand to
al-Qaeda The US game in Lebanon is
hardcore. It involves $60 million support for a
Hezbollah witchhunt operated by the Internal
Security Force at the Interior Ministry; and
generous, active support to al-Qaeda-affiliated
Sunni jihadis. Once again the Bush administration
is merrily playing al-Qaeda's game. Blowback will
be inevitable.
Just as Iraq is in Syria,
Iraq has also come to Lebanon. Hundreds of new
jihadis plucked from among the more than 400,000
Palestinians who live in refugee camps in Lebanon
- like Fatah al-Islam, originally from the Nahr
al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern
Lebanon, or Asbat al-Ansar, from the Ain al-Hilweh
refugee camp - crossed to Iraq and acquired
battlefield experience fighting the US occupation.
At least some of them are back, as well as a
smattering of Salafi-jihadis from northern Lebanon
who settled back in Tripoli. There's also al-Qaeda
fi Bilad as-Sham ("al-Qaeda in the lands of the
Levant"), which sprung up when Syrian forces left
Lebanon in 2005.
These are among the new
US "friends" in Lebanon. Not surprisingly,
billionaire Saad Hariri, Rafik's son - who looks
like a cross between a sleazy car salesman and a
cheap hoodlum and happens to double as Sunni
majority leader of the Lebanese Parliament - has
already bailed out and obtained amnesty for a
smattering of Salafi-jihadis from Dinniyeh trained
in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Nasrallah - who night after night is never
allowed to sleep in the same place - is the number
one target not only of these Salafi-jihadis but
also of Jordanian intelligence, faithful to "axis
of fear" stalwart and staunch US ally King
Abdullah. On an Arab street level, Nasrallah
remains the undisputed top politician all over the
Middle East, be it among Sunnis or Shi'ites: in
Damascus his posters are found even in Christian
and Armenian businesses.
A landmark
January interview by Nasrallah to the satellite
channel al-Manar remains essential in outlining
Hezbollah's take on the Lebanese game. Lebanon is
viewed as part of the US-concocted "New Middle
East"; its destiny is intimately related to
occupied Palestine and Iraq, as much as the US
fomenting sectarianism in Lebanon is also
intimately related to the US fomenting a civil war
in Iraq.
The White House has of course
accused Hezbollah - with no proof - of supporting
Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army (Nasrallah has
repeatedly said Hezbollah supports the Iraqi
resistance "in all its dimensions"). It's true
that Muqtada supported Hezbollah when Israel
attacked Lebanon last summer. In Kufa and Beirut
it is also widely recognized that Muqtada respects
Nasrallah as a towering, extremely popular,
nationalist leader - and has tried to model the
Mehdi Army, to some extent, on Hezbollah.
Yes, there are indeed
Muqtada-meets-Nasrallah posters - and these will
be collectors' items in CIA boot camps. But
although they both may lead nationalist resistance
movements - thus inevitably incurring America's
wrath - there are fundamental differences.
Hezbollah is a solid block, the Mehdi Army has
splintered into at least three factions. Hezbollah
is not sectarian, unlike at least two of the Mehdi
Army's factions still engaged in attacks against
Sunni civilians.
Nasrallah is very much
aware of divide and rule. In his January
interview, he defined the New Middle East as "a
collection of statelets that are divided along
religious, sectarian and racial lines, from
Lebanon to Syria to Iraq to Iran to Turkey to
Afghanistan to Pakistan; all the way to Saudi
Arabia and Yemen and the rest of the Gulf States,
reaching North Africa. A founding pillar of the
'New Middle East' is continuous conflict between
these statelets."
Already in January,
Nasrallah was puzzled by "some politicians in
Lebanon who are intimately tied to the US, and who
are known to coordinate closely with the
Americans, these politicians are agitating Sunnis
against Shi'ites under the pretext that Shi'ites
are American collaborators. This is a bizarre,
surreal contradiction." Bizarre is indeed the
middle name of the Bush administration's game - as
it pits its Sunni clients against Shi'ites in
Lebanon while pitting its own Shi'ite
collaborators against "other" Shi'ites and
assorted Sunnis in Iraq. But Nasrallah may not be
puzzled at all that the Bush administration had to
reach for al-Qaeda to take on Hezbollah.
It all boils down to the same game:
smashing any true nationalist resistance movement,
whatever it takes, to the benefit of easily
pliable client regimes. Thus the Nuri al-Maliki
client regime in Iraq killing Sunnis (and, as much
as possible, also Sadrists); the Abbas client
regime in Palestine against Hamas; the Siniora
client regime in Lebanon attacking Hezbollah. In
appropriate newspeak the surge for a region-wide
Sunni-Shi'ite war is then labeled as "support for
democracy" and spun on pliant corporate media. The
repressive, retrograde House of Saud couldn't be a
better partner in this "peace process" - as it
sees nationalists such as Nasrallah, Muqtada and
Hamas leader Khalid Meshal as the plague.
No more wars Hezbollah
officials in Beirut told Asia Times Online that
the party is very much aware that Bush, Bandar
Bush and Israel are working to unleash
fitna - doubt, anger, the implosion of
Islam. They say the US wants a partition not only
of Iraq, but also of Syria and Lebanon. Hezbollah
is doing all it can to prevent a regional
Sunni-Shi'ite war - which would start by a
partition of Iraq. This is exactly what we
hear from Iraqi refugees in Damascus: the US wants
Sunnis and Shi'ites to kill each other instead of
US occupation soldiers. And this is also what
Syrian intelligence hears from these same Iraqi
refugees, whether they come from Baghdad, Hilla
and Najaf or from Fallujah and Ramadi.
Hezbollah does not want another civil war
in Lebanon. And Hezbollah also does not want
another war with Israel. But just in case, the
party is preparing non-stop for another possible
Israeli attack, which "could happen before the end
of 2008".
Meanwhile, no one knows what
will happen in downtown Beirut. Hezbollah swears
the sit-in will continue. Hezbollah and other
groups in the opposition want veto power over the
US-backed Siniora cabinet. Christian Maronites and
Sunnis may scream, but the majority of Lebanon's
population agree.
Hezbollah sees the
cabinet as a US puppet. The Siniora government and
Hariri Inc say Hezbollah is a puppet from Syria
and Iran. Dialogue seems virtually impossible.
Breaking the deadlock may have to wait until
November, when President Emile Lahoud finishes his
term. It's been widely rumored in Beirut that
Lahoud may appoint a new government. Surrealist
Lebanon would then have two competing cabinets. No
wonder Lebanon is suffering a massive brain drain.
And then there's the non-stop US pressure
for the UN Security Council to set up an
international tribunal to examine the killing of
Hariri. Hezbollah is not against a tribunal - but
against a tribunal manipulated by the US as a
political weapon.
Hezbollah has a sound
proposal for breaking the Lebanese deadlock now:
new elections or a referendum. The US's clients
keep saying no. Nasrallah will have to wait. He
may already be the most clever - and popular -
statesman in the Middle East. But the true test of
his caliber will not be to offer tangible proof
that Hezbollah is not a puppet of Syria and Iran;
it will be to offset the specter of a regional,
US-encouraged, Sunni-Shi'ite war.
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