Hezbollah caught in vortex of
chance By Nicholas Noe
BEIRUT - With unrest and violence growing
daily in Syria, the Shi'ite movement Hezbollah now
confronts a strategic challenge whose negative
effects have been magnified by the sheer
suddenness of it all.
Just three months
ago, Hezbollah confidently precipitated the
collapse of the Lebanese government led by prime
minister Saad Hariri and rejoiced over the fall of
president Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt.
Together with its "Resistance Axis" allies Iran,
Syria and Hamas, Hezbollah openly touted the
climax of several years of hard-fought victories
that had successfully cut into the preponderance
of power held by the United States, Israel and
most of the Sunni Arab regimes.
But that
trajectory, on course since at least the start of the
insurgency in Iraq and
accelerated by Israel's disastrous July 2006 war
that was vigorously encouraged by the George W
Bush administration, has now suddenly come to a
dead halt.
Worse still for Hezbollah, the
Party of God, reasonably predicting the future
course that the balance of power in the region is
likely to take has become a far more complicated,
perhaps impossible, task.
Indeed, for all
the commentary and analyses of Hezbollah as a
thoroughly radical and (obtusely) totalitarian
project, the reality is that the one thing
Hezbollah hates perhaps as much as Zionism is the
prospect of chaos - the unpredictable, the
unintended consequences lying in wait - with the
leadership usually preferring to pre-empt such
scenarios via pragmatic concessions and the
broadening of alliances that together can
stabilize their understanding of the future.
This predilection means that the current
situation the party faces all around it - but
especially vis-a-vis its only open land border, ie
Syria - is likely the main subject consuming the
time of its secretary general, Sayyid Hassan
Nasrallah.
You wouldn't guess this by
Nasrallah's public speeches of late.
Just
as Hezbollah avoided almost any public discussion
of the post-election crisis in Iran - its leading
patron and ultimate guide (on some occasions) when
push comes to shove - Nasrallah has almost
completely avoided talking about the deepening
instability and brutal government crackdown in
Syria.
Though a pragmatic choice not to
interfere in its vital allies' internal business,
Nasrallah's unwillingness to publicly explain the
party's stance - to explain the apparent
contradictions between his vocal criticism of the
Tunisian, Libyan, Bahraini, Egyptian and Yemeni
governments and his different (non-)positions on
Syria and Iran - is helping to effectively
undermine one of Nasrallah and Hezbollah's most
important and effective weapons to date: their
appeal to reason, especially when it comes to
regional matters.
Although the party's
many critics have long fought this notion -
preferring instead to argue that it only
dissimulates (it does, in part) and only bases its
power on fear (it does, in part) - Hezbollah has
in fact gone to great lengths to reason with a
wide range of constituencies around the world that
its cause, its case and its methods are
essentially rational and in the interests of
Lebanese, Arabs and indeed all Muslims (and
perhaps even the United States!). In this
Nasrallah has been a gifted narrator able to
inject self-criticism into his discourse.
This effort has been capped over the last
few years by Nasrallah's argument that the
strengthening of the Resistance Axis actually
makes sense for both those who would like to see a
negotiated regional settlement (two-staters) and
those who would like to see the outright end of
the Jewish state of Israel (one-staters).
After all, he asserts, Israel will only
negotiate minimally reasonable terms for peace if
it is compelled to by the balance of power around
it. Without that kind of credible, sustained
pressure, Israel will simply never give up on the
expansionist vision of Zionism - at least, that's
what the post-Oslo period of declining Arab power
has taught the region, he says.
On the
other hand, as Nasrallah emphasized only last
year, those who would like to peacefully
promulgate a single democratic state of Palestine
(which Hezbollah claims it supports, although it
is vague on the idea of possibly expelling Jewish
"settlers"), also rationally benefit from the
growing power of the Resistance Axis since its own
members' internal contradictions tick down at a
far slower rate than Israel's many "existential"
flaws.
"Syria is getting stronger with
time," Nasrallah claimed last May. "Iran is
getting stronger with time, Hezbollah is getting
stronger with time. The Palestinian resistance
factions are getting stronger with time. "The arc
of history is on the side of a Resistance Axis",
he said, which will steadily surround Israel and,
with its military power (possibly with nuclear
weapons) growing, thereby exacerbate Israel's
vulnerabilities to a breaking point.
Over
time, Nasrallah assured, demographic factors would
intervene, the Israeli economy would decline, the
Israel Defense Forces' (IDF's) ability to strike
its enemies hard, and at will, would be voided by
mutually assured destruction and enough Jews would
leave Israel out of pure self-interest and fear -
or agree to democratic power sharing - that a new,
unified state of Palestine would come into being.
In such conditions of de-hegemonization,
de-legitimization and perpetual suffocation,
Zionism would be effectively finished, Nasrallah
argued, with ample reference to a long litany of
Israeli thinkers, leaders and intellectuals (not
to mention US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
own warning last year to the annual American
Israel Public Affairs Committee conference).
While his argument has indeed seemed
reasonable to a great many Middle Easterners who
have witnessed the steady collapse of the "Peace
Process", a key problem with it is now sharply
evident: the internal contradictions of the
Resistance Axis, even at home in Lebanon, are
stark and they are ticking down to a defining
moment at a far faster rate than Israel's own bevy
of contradictions.
Hezbollah therefore
stands today with the potential of losing its
strategic depth, it's on the wrong side of reason
when it comes to the domestic turmoil in Syria and
Iran and its worst nightmare of chaos surrounding
it (and possibly bleeding over into Lebanon
itself) is becoming more likely by the day.
Suffice it to say then, the Party of God
finds itself suddenly at a very down-to-earth fork
in the road.
Will Nasrallah and Hezbollah
make the same mistakes now that the US, Israel and
their local allies made at critical moments during
the 2006-2010 period when their real power was
actually in decline, but they nevertheless pushed
aggressively as if their overall strategic
position was actually improving - a move that
produced extended violence and an eventual
reversal of fortunes?
In attempting to
answer this, one must first acknowledge that
Hezbollah as a Lebanese party cum army does have a
degree of choice.
Although Hezbollah's
most important relationship with Iran constrains
(and may even at certain junctures determine) its
actions, Nasrallah has evidently helped move the
party towards a degree of independence from both
Syria and Iran that would have been unthinkable a
decade ago (a view mostly buttressed by statements
from top US officials in the recent past).
More to the point, the "red lines" - the
junctures - that may prompt Iranian direction or
outright control appeared to have been moved
farther and farther out.
Indeed, just two
weeks ago, Nasrallah asserted:
If someone is angry with us because
we toppled his government, Iran has nothing to
do with it. I am sincere in saying this. The
Iranians knew from the media; we did not ask
them or tell them or anything like this. The
whole world has seen on television screens the
news conference on the resignation of the
ministers. The Iranians were just like everyone
else. Nobody should hold Iran accountable just
because our ministers left the government. Leave
this accountability aside.
Whether
Nasrallah is being truthful or not here - or in
his more expansive assertions over the past few
years regarding Iran's declining influence over
the party - is of less importance that what his
approach, his rhetoric, says about the party's
willingness, in fact its evident need, to
regularly proclaim its relative independence (and
in slightly insulting terms no less) – a move
generally reflective of the thinking of its vital
constituencies without which the party simply
could not operate in Lebanon.
Still, even
though Hezbollah may have a wider degree of
independent action than in the past when it comes
to its parent/partner in Tehran, it has
nevertheless helped to construct a thick wall of
suspicion, resentment and outright hatred
(including of a sectarian nature) with many of its
adversaries, all of which greatly limits its
maneuverability in this next stage.
That
it would take an almost "Jumblattian" effort
against Syria (exceptional even in Lebanon) to
reverse course with actors like Saad Hariri, many
Sunnis and others in the country, is no longer
really in doubt.
But could the party, in
part out of perceived necessity, take this task on
effectively and in a timely manner to truly
stabilize the country for a sustained period of
time as its far larger neighbor descends into
extended unrest? Probably not.
Though
Nasrallah on one occasion denied it, the party has
on several occasions before called its rivals
"traitors" and "agents", only to later join hands
in a national unity government, But the chasm
dividing the two sides in Lebanon now has never
been wider and more bitter - certainly not during
the post civil war period, but also not even
during worst days of the "Cedar" revolution when
Hezbollah and its allies literally fought with the
armed supporters of Hariri and his March 14
movement.
Adding to the difficulty in
reaching a sustained national accord, Hezbollah
faces the prospect of increased intervention and
sectarian subterfuge by an angry and wounded Saudi
Arabia; perhaps in Syria, certainly in Lebanon via
Hariri and evidently in the Gulf and North Africa,
all of which makes any bridge building by
Hezbollah, even if it wanted to, vastly more
challenging, costly and potentially dangerous.
And alongside the re-emergence of this
wealthy Islamic enemy that doctrinally hates
Shi'ites (and non-Wahhabis in general), there has
also been the renewed public push by Israel to
pave the way towards a much-anticipated, final
destruction of Hezbollah and their supporters.
In fact, with the release three weeks ago
of outdated and misleading IDF "maps" of Hezbollah
"positions" in civilian areas (as but one example,
some of the coordinates are actually bunkers that
were abandoned and/or destroyed by Israel during
and after the July 2006 war), the clear message to
Hezbollah is not, "We have good intelligence on
you so don't get into a fight with us" (ie a
message of pure deterrence), but instead came
across here as, "We don't really care where you
are or what you think of our intentions since we
are preparing the international ground for a broad
strike across Lebanon that will revenge the 2006
defeat and knock you out of the military balance
... for good. We're just waiting for your optimal
moment of weakness."
Given this
increasingly hostile environment then, the
response by Hezbollah in the near term will likely
be to split the difference between a grand
rapprochement (impossible at home) or a grand war
(not now with its strategic depth in question) and
move towards a prolonged period of digging in
deeper. This could come with limited tactical
moderation (facilitating the formation of a mildly
pro-Syrian government able to deal with rising
complaints from Damascus, entreaties to dwindling
centrist constituencies and further aid and
concessions for its allies) and, quite possibly, a
partial deceleration in its longstanding efforts
to radically challenge Israel's qualitative
military edge (perhaps forestalling the
"justified" military campaign which so many
Israeli leaders seem to want).
In the end,
it may be this last point that proves the most
important for the future of Lebanon and the
region.
Nasrallah well knows that he can
lure the Israelis into launching a wide,
pre-emptive war (which would bolster the party's
domestic and regional standing) by crossing
various "red lines" of military capacity. He has
said that he actually "craves" this option because
he thinks the Israelis won't be able to win - and
that a defeat or even another occupation quagmire
in Lebanon would swiftly collapse the core of
Zionism's strength.
But with Syria (and
the predictability of his supply lines)
increasingly on fire, the sustainability of this
preferred route is also now in grave doubt - just
at the point when Nasrallah had most raised and
radicalized the expectations of his base over the
Resistance Axis's long-term internal strength, the
brittleness of the Israeli socio-military
apparatus and the closeness by which one could
almost taste total victory-revenge ("in the next
few years," he promised in 2008).
Perhaps
then, the only thing that is relatively easy to
discern in this next period is that Hezbollah will
have to forge its course, one way or another, amid
an array of different, competing hands stirring
the pot, a massive quantity of arms floating
around on all sides, more wide open and
radicalized constituencies, less certain alliances
and, crucially, none of the underlying,
longstanding drivers of violence and
underdevelopment engaged in any sort of meaningful
mitigation process.
In this vortex of
chance, impulse, choice and contradiction,
Nasrallah may indeed revert to a "lite" version of
his (more often than not) pragmatic approach that
served the party so well since he became head of
Hezbollah in 1992. But like so many involved in
this next, defining stage of the post-modern
Middle East, he must find particular discomfort -
especially for a man dedicated to several radical
goals - in one gnawing question: will it be
enough?
Nicholas Noe is the
co-founder of the Beirut-based media monitoring
service Mideastwire.com and the Editor of
Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyid
Hassan Nasrallah (Verso:2007).
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