Hizbullah has overplayed its hand
By Michael Young Daily Star staff Thursday, December 07, 2006
In the broad details, there are striking similarities between the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and what is occurring in Lebanon today; between the "coup of Prague" and the "coup of Beirut," which Hizbullah and its comrades are presently sweating to implement.
As in Lebanon, the Czechoslovak communists benefited from a Cabinet crisis to kick off massive street protests. They controlled the government and the security ministries, and chose to act because they were expecting to lose ground in upcoming parliamentary elections. The communists had to strike quickly at a time when their external patron, the Soviet Union, was entering into a confrontation with the West. Indeed, Moscow had forced the Czech government to reverse its initial acceptance of Western aid under the Marshall Plan, fearing this would take Prague out of its orbit and offer more legitimacy to non-communist forces.
In Lebanon, too, Hizbullah is being pressed by its external patrons, Iran and Syria, to overthrow a system they fear losing. Syria seeks to reimpose its hegemony over Lebanon, and its priority is to undermine the tribunal dealing with the Hariri assassination. Iran, for its part, doesn't like the fact that United Nations Security Council 1701 is stifling Hizbullah along the Israeli border. Hizbullah may not control security ministries as the communists did in Czechoslovakia, but it has influential allies in the military, and its militia is more powerful than the army. It may not fear losing elections, but its setbacks in the July-August war, particularly the destruction visited on Shiites, obliged it to mobilize its supporters against the government so they would not turn their anger against the party. Like the Czech communists, Hizbullah is using both institutions and the street to seize power. It has also succeeded, like the communists did with the socialists in Czechoslovakia, in neutralizing a key actor whose opposition could have decisively damaged their ambitions: the Aounist movement.
Hizbullah's strategy is now clear, its repercussions dangerous. The party is pushing Lebanon into a protracted vacuum, in which low-level violence and economic debilitation become the norm. Hizbullah is calculating that its adversaries will crack first, because they have more at stake than do poor Shiites when it comes to the country's financial and commercial health. Its leaders know the powerful symbolism associated with dispatching thousands of destitute people into the plush downtown area, which best symbolizes that financial and commercial health - the jewel in late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's reconstruction crown.
Hizbullah's reckoning is profoundly cynical. Its manipulation of the alleged Shiite ability to withstand more hardship than other Lebanese shows disdain for Shiite aspirations. The fact that everyone will lose out after an economic meltdown, which is coming, seems obvious. But that Hizbullah should take it as a sign of strength that Shiites would lose relatively less because of their poverty is abhorrent. The party has nonetheless made clear to its interlocutors that it will not give up on Syria and Iran. Hence the perilous path it is pursuing, along with Syria's satellites and the futile Michel Aoun as water carriers.
The ideal Syrian and Iranian scheme looks like this. Syria's condition to allow a return to stability is that the March 14 majority agree to give up on the Hariri tribunal. Once that happens, Emile Lahoud's presence would no longer be as essential, so there might be room for a presidential election. The winning candidate would be neither from March 8 nor March 14. And it would not be Michel Aoun, whom Syria and Hizbullah don't trust, even as they ransack his vanity. The likely victor could be someone like Riyad Salameh, the Central Bank governor, or the army commander, General Michel Suleiman, who can play both sides. At the same time, a new government would be formed in such a way as to grant the opposition veto power, if not more. The Iranian and Syrian goal would be to have in hand the means to block any Lebanese effort to consolidate Resolution 1701 through further normalization of the situation in South Lebanon. This would be the culmination of a downward spiral for anti-Syrian forces, and with Hizbullah as their enforcer, Syria and Iran could systematically dismantle the remaining outposts of Lebanese autonomy.
Things won't be so simple, however. Hizbullah is straight-jacketed by two Syrian demands - no Hariri tribunal and no bargaining on Lahoud's removal - and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah cannot indefinitely bat away package deals to resolve the government crisis, particularly if this heightens Sunni-Shiite animosity. Besides, Syrian haste on the tribunal is pushing the party into a very damaging altercation with the rest of Lebanese society, and potentially the Sunni Arab world, which Iran cannot be happy with. The party knows it will soon have to prove that it backs the tribunal. It can also see that the situation in South Lebanon is improving, following Israel's agreement in principle to pull out of the Lebanese side of Ghajar. Stability is returning to the border area under the eyes of the international community, thanks to a plan the Siniora government helped shape. That is why Hizbullah, Syria and Iran regard the government and the expanded United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon as threats. It is perhaps no coincidence that the tension in Beirut is forcing the army to redeploy units away from areas where they had moved under Resolution 1701.
The Syrian and Iranian project can be derailed by a combination of other scenarios as well: Sectarian tension increases to the extent that President Bashar Assad's regime is threatened by a violent Sunni backlash from Lebanon, and perhaps Iraq; the international community, notably Israel, decides it cannot accept a return to the status quo ante in South Lebanon; and Lebanese leaders in danger of physical or political elimination because of a Syrian return - principally Walid Jumblatt, Saad Hariri, and Samir Geagea - pursue a bitter, existential fight, preventing Hizbullah from controlling the situation on behalf of Damascus and Tehran. The implacable theorems of Lebanon's formula of national coexistence have demolished far more powerful forces than Hizbullah.
Another flaw in Syrian and Iranian reasoning is hubris. Despite the tactical parallels in the staging of a coup, Lebanon is no Czechoslovakia. Tehran, Damascus, and Hizbullah imagine the country can be conquered, with Hizbullah somehow emerging on top. Only the fundamentally intolerant can fall for such a tidy, straightforward conceit. But that's not really how things work in Lebanon's confessional disorder. We may be in the throes of a faltering coup, but the ultimate challenge is to avoid being inadvertently manhandled by Hizbullah into a war nobody wants.
2 Comments:
“Another flaw in Syrian and Iranian reasoning is hubris. Despite the tactical parallels in the staging of a coup, Lebanon is no Czechoslovakia. Tehran, Damascus, and Hizbullah imagine the country can be conquered, with Hizbullah somehow emerging on top. Only the fundamentally intolerant can fall for such a tidy, straightforward conceit. But that's not really how things work in Lebanon's confessional disorder. We may be in the throes of a faltering coup, but the ultimate challenge is to avoid being inadvertently manhandled by Hizbullah into a war nobody wants.’”
First let me start by indicating that your conclusion is actually a very good refutation of what the whole analysis attempts to show in the article. The following is an attempt to explain why.
Syria has been controlling Lebanon’s system since the mid-70s that is not to go even deeper in history. So it is not a very convincing thing to say that it does not know how the society, the system and the inter-communitarian relations work in Lebanon. In a sense they actually modelled them themselves.
Firstly let me adhere to the comparison you make with the Czechoslovakia coup. Then let us look at your standpoint in the analysis, not in political terms but in critical terms. That is, what you set as normality, or yet the system of judgement used in your analysis (of course I am assuming that you do agree on the principles of linguistics and argumentation studies, that every argument is implying a system of meaning and judgement). This is rather clear in two instances of your text. Firstly in the vocabulary used in the text, “manipulation” is a good example, but also “militia”, and so on. That is not to say that they are or are not, that is to say that you are clearly defending a specific narrative namely that of the government. Therefore the text is not a scientific analysis, strategic or whatever you want to call it, maybe even a cold reading of reality, but is an attempt to argue for the sustainability of this narrative. I would not counter argue, however I will look for your contradictions within the system of judgement you are using yourself. The first fallacy is the description of Lebanon without Hezbollah as an autonomous country. This you say in the following sentence: “with Hizbullah as their enforcer, Syria and Iran could systematically dismantle the remaining outposts of Lebanese autonomy.”
Without saying anything about the Hezbollah’s subjected relation to Syria, be it thus or be it not, it is hard to argue that Lebanon is in any way an autonomous country while ruled by the opponents of the Hezbollah. In fact, I would find it intriguing if one can actually say that any of the presently active parties in Lebanon (including Hezbollah) is actually autonomous, even though I would give a small advantage to Michel Aoun until now, maybe not for long however).
I will be short and not go into detail (that is the falacies in the following themes: Shiite society and their political awareness, also their economic state at present times (remember that the Shiite society is not the same as in the 70s and 80s - you should be aware that the Hezbollah's supporters are not only poor shiite farmers but also rich shiite immigrants in Africa, then the theme of Hezbollah's relation to Syria, the international tribunal, and the Aoun -Hezbollah "alliance"), if you are interested in more details you can ask questions, and I will gladly respond on a point by point basis.
I will simply tell you that your article is a weak attempt to defend a narrative that is finding less and less consistent arguments to hold, while another one, namely that of the Hezbollah and more precisely that of the “opposition” which one needs to look at as a newly formed entity, no matter what one is hopping to see, is playing a better game (I am not even trying to say that they have a better system, or that they are “autonomous” whatever that means for you or for all the “free” Lebanese people – but I am saying that they are winning on every point, especially in appealing to the people – as you should know the communist narrative once appealed to people, not in Czechoslovakia but in south America, a similarly religious communism was formed if you know, it did not succeed in its coup d’état strategies however, but recently they learned from their mistakes and took over in different forms. I will just remind you of one thing, if you are analysing the Hezbollah strategy by considering that they are an ignorant, subjected, and backwards introverted group then you should revise your view. If you follow their discourses and new tactics – not merely the Nasrallah speeches – you will notice that they apparently have learned much from history lessons, at least much more than many others in Lebanon, they learned not from the Lebanese civil war, but more importantly from the mistakes of groups similar to them, namely communist parties.
In short, it is not a secret that the Hezbollah are an Iranian strategic force, and a Syrian one, it is not a secret either that the 14 of march factions are a Euro-Arabo-American (“moderate”, “western”, “democratic”) strategic force. And if one only looks at one of the two as a tool then one is simply fighting along the other axis (which puts your “autonomy” claim in the trashcan). If one wants to analyse, and actually have a good grade on the analysis one should see in terms of strategy (it is both instructive for you, and the 14 of march, and for your readers – maybe if you look at things with less false and contradictory presumptions – which are just trying desperately to sustain the media claims themselves designed to sustain a certain narrative ( I would advise you a good book called “metaphors we live by” by a certain Lakoff) – you might have a critical view not to be convinced by the Hezbollah on the contrary to develop a new strategy that can actually compete more effectively.
The only thing that leaves me disappointed is that I am sure that all I said in this comment you already know (that is if you actually went so far to read it of course), and unfortunately written journalism in Lebanon and elsewhere has become a slower, less spectacular form of television journalism, rather than trying to counter the simplification of television analysis. I hope you do not only see in this comment a “pro-Syrian” motivated attack on your “sovereign pen”, but a sincere expression of disappointment from someone who is trying to defend the educational role of written journalism.
@Walid
[disclaimer: the article you responded to is not from me, but written by Michael Young]
Thank you for your detailed response. I fully agree with you that the Lebanese press is sometimes shockingly biased. It seems that every party has its own newspaper/TV station which of course reflects the positions of their side.
Also, because I don't read/write Arabic, I am limited to English and French sources, which quite often are pro government. As such, i appreciate your comments even more because they provide the necessary balance.
If you happen to know more English sources that give a better insight in the position of Hezbollah, please let me know.
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