The popular perception of Hezbollah as simply an Islamic terrorist organization has been colored by American-Israeli propaganda (particularly wrt to relations with Iran and Syria), sloppy reporting, and a growing sense of Islamophobia in American culture.
Rami Khouri is a prolific Lebanese intellectual who writes widely on the Middle East. His austere, direct form of writing lays out arguments clearly and concisely. Like all writers of Middle Eastern affairs, his predictions are often wrong, but unlike most, his fault lines, when they occur, are easily traced. In short, Khouri is always a good read and well worth following, because even if his arguments turn out to be erroneous, they are a fount of useful information.
Attached below is his fascinating take on Hezbollah. I reformatted it to highlight his points but have not changed a word or the order of his words. Some readers find my highlighting distracting, others like it; if you are one of the former, the link below will take you to the original.
Chuck Spinney
Hezbollah’s Moment of Reckoning in Qusayr
22 May 2013
BEIRUT — The most fascinating aspect of the war in Syria this month — and perhaps also the most significant in terms of long-term regional geo-politics — is the direct involvement of Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese Shiite party and resistance group that is closely allied to Iran and Syria. The significance of Hezbollah’s participation in the battle for the Syrian town of Qusayr comprises several distinct elements:
- its reputation as a fighting force,
- its political wisdom,
- its perception among Lebanese,
- its independence from Iran,
- and its standing in the region and globally as it identifies more closely with the Syrian regime that has been increasingly isolated and sanctioned.
Together, these factors make this a potential turning point for the organization whose history since its establishment in the early 1980s has been one of the most remarkable achievements of modern Arab political life. It can be credibly argued that Hezbollah is the single most successful political party or organization in modern Arab history, given its many accomplishments:
- It has transformed Lebanese Shiites from a downtrodden and subjugated community to the most powerful single group in the country,
- forced Israel to withdraw from its occupation of south Lebanon,
- and shaped a regional “resistance and deterrence front” with Syria and Iran that defines many regional policies and confrontations.
These achievements have been countered by its single biggest weakness to date, which is inherent in all such resistance or revolutionary movements: difficulty in making the transition from liberation hero to governance maestro.
The multiple strengths that have defined Hezbollah’s many successes in community empowerment and military resistance —
- secrecy,
- external support from Syria and Iran,
- anchorage in a powerful form of theocratic nationalism,
- independence from state controls or public accountability
— have all proven to be weaknesses in its slow and imprecise move into the political arena in Lebanon. Since driving Israel out of the south of Lebanon in 2000, fighting a major war against Israel in 2006, and quickly asserting its military supremacy in Beirut in May 2008, Hezbollah has repeatedly shown that it is far more proficient at military resistance against external foes than at political engagement with domestic compatriots.
Based on its history, Hezbollah will not much care if Lebanese and Arabs criticize it for fighting alongside the Bashar Assad regime and buttressing Iranian strategic interests in the region. It does what it feels it needs to do to carry out its mission, which it sees as
- protecting Lebanon from foreign predators near and far,
- resisting the regional hegemonic threats of Arab or Western parties
- and achieving these goals by assisting its allies, most importantly Syria and Iran, and forever ending the humiliation and mistreatment of Lebanese Shiites.
Fighting inside Syria alongside the Assad regime will exacerbate all the pressures and constraints that Hezbollah already feels.
- More and more Lebanese will criticize it for dragging Lebanon into the Syrian war and fostering greater internal fighting in Lebanon among pro- and anti-Assad groups.
- Many Lebanese say Qusayr exposes Hezbollah as being a puppet of Iran, as many had always charged.
- Some of its own supporters may grumble about why dozens of able young Lebanese men in their prime are dying in a battle for a small provincial town in Syria.
- Many foreign countries will seek new ways to pressure, sanction and isolate Hezbollah,
- and public opinion around the Arab-Islamic world will become more critical and hostile, seeing it as mainly as a militia beyond state authority that responds more to Iranian strategic interests and commands than to Arab-Lebanese popular sentiments.
The bigger threat emanating from this episode is that by asserting dramatically Hezbollah’s ability and willingness to fight wherever, whenever and whomever it wishes, it could add to existing forces that threaten to fracture the integrity of the Lebanese state, which could force it to assume a greater role in running the entire country — something it has always said it does not seek. Should the Syrian war and Hezbollah’s role there lead to all this, it would also vastly increase the likelihood of
- massive internal Lebanese strife between pro- and anti-Hezbollah groups, broadly pitting Sunnis and Shiites against each,
- while also inviting another major war with Israel,
- or possibly participation in an American-Israeli-Iranian-
Syrian war.
The battle for Qusayr is only the haphazard spark within the larger Syrian war that could ignite this fire.
The real causes of this combustible condition of the Arab region remain the dysfunction of modern Arab states and central governments,
- the ascendancy of police states and military regimes,
- the repercussions of the century-long Zionism-Arabism conflict,
- and the continuing status of the Middle East as a proxy battleground for regional and foreign powers.
We will find out in the coming years if Hezbollah is merely another symptom of these problems, as its critics say, or, as its supporters say, the first credible historical antidote to Arab-Islamic weakness, complacency, subjugation and vulnerability.
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.
Phi Beta Iota: Loosely-read corrupt politicians focus on the artificial boundaries and financial constructs of the post WWII era. Those with intelligence and integrity focus on the natural-geographic, techno-demographic, and ideo-cultural domains — the socio-economic and political-military domains are superstructure, not core. The tribes, rooted in centuries of indigenous knowledge, kinship, and connection to specific places on the Earth, are rising from their oppression. This is an inevitable, unconquerable force.
