Hizbullahs New
Face In search of a Muslim
democracy Helena Cobban
8 In a war-torn country in the Middle East, there is a
political party that for 15 years has led an increasingly effective
drive to democratize national political life. This party has competed
in three rounds of parliamentary elections since 1992, winning
and retaining nearly ten percent of the seats. In the mid-1990s,
it spearheaded a successful campaign to reintroduce democratic
governance to the countrys municipalities, where no elections
had been held since 1963. When municipal elections were held in
1998 this party won control of about 15 percent of contested municipalities.
With a proven track record by the second round of elections, in
spring 2004, the party won control of 21 percent of the municipalities.
Though formally
democratic since the 1940s, this country has always faced deep
sectarian schisms and the debilitating influence of local clan
chiefs. In such an environment, political organizations whose
officials not only talk the democratic talk but also walk the walk
are very rare. Indeed, given the Bush administrations goal of
spreading democracy throughout the Middle East, you might think
American officials would be trying to learn from the leaders of this
party. Think again. The
country is Lebanon and the party is
Hizbullah, a majority-Shiite organization banned by the U.S.
government as a foreign terrorist organization and known to
most Americans only for its hostilities against Israeli and American
targets. But Hizbullah is also an explicitly Islamist political party
that participates cannily and effectively in Lebanons democratic
processes. As such, it is an intriguing case in its own right. In
addition, while it is an authentically Lebanese political formation,
Hizbullah has longstanding links to Shiite politics in both Iraq and
Iran, and a more recent relationship with the majority-Sunni,
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. In Iraq, Shiites makeup more
than 60 percent of the population, and as a result of the January 30,
2005, election the Shiite-headed United Iraqi Alliance list has
come to dominate the nations politics. In the Palestinian
territories, Hamas has done very well in recent municipal elections
and appears set to do well in legislative elections scheduled for
summer 2005. Hizbullahs track record in Lebanon can therefore
provide strong clues to how these other emerging Islamist forces
might behave. In recent
months, Hizbullah has come under new
pressure from the United States and the international
communityprincipally, to disband the robust militia it has
maintained in south Lebanon. Hizbullah and its ally Syria seemed
under particular pressure in late February when an anti-Syrian
movement provoked by the recent killing of the former Lebanese
premier Rafiq Hariri succeeded in forcing the new pro-Syrian premier,
Omar Karami, to resign. (He returned to power just as this issue was
going to press, in mid-March.) But despite that apparent setback,
Hizbullah has remained significant presence on the Lebanese political
scene. (It was notable, too, that none of the people raising
anti-Syrian slogans in the street demonstrations of late February and
early March raised anti-Hizbullah slogans too. Indeed, several
leaders of the anti-Syrian movement stressed the need to find a way
to continue to work with Hizbullah.) * * * Last October and
November I paid a number of visits to Hizbullahs headquarters in
what Beirutis call the Dahiyeh. This is Arabic for
suburb, though Beiruts Dahiyeh is a collection of three
large municipalities that abut the city on its southern border. The
Dahiyeh is a focal point for Lebanons Shiite Muslims. Some of the
communitys most powerful institutions, including both Hizbullah
and the network of social-welfare groups headed by the communitys
highly recognized religious leader, the 69-year-old, Najaf-trained
Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah, have their national
headquarters there. It was there that in the mid- and late 1980s
American and other western hostages were kept in degrading
confinement by Shiite militants, some of them linked in one way or
another to Hizbullah. The Dahiyeh street where many Hizbullah offices
are located is now named for the partys first leader, Sheikh
Ragheb Harb, who was assassinated by Israel in 1984. When I
worked in Lebanon in the late 1970s, nearly the whole Dahiyeh was a
vast shantytown, bursting under the pressure of hundreds of thousands
of Shiite newcomers. Some came fleeing the poverty of the traditional
Shiite areas around Baalbek, in east Lebanon. Others had escaped from
the intense IsraeliPalestinian fighting in Jebel Amel, a
traditionally Shiite area of south Lebanon. Still others were twice
or more displacedfirst from east or south Lebanon, and then again,
from one of the large suburbs of east Beirut that were forcibly
cleansed of Muslims by Christian Falangist militias in 1975 and
1976. Today the Dahiyehs
congested streets are lined with
tightly packed seven- and eight-story apartment buildings. Few of the
women on the sidewalks wear full hijab, though many wear tucked-in,
Islamic-style headscarves. Others wear no head coverings at all. At
noontime, even during Ramadan, the streets bustle with people doing
their shopping and children spilling out of school buses. A few
spindly trees have been planted along the crowded
sidewalks. In the
1970s, I spent a lot of time hanging around the workplaces of
officials of various Lebanese parties and Palestinian factions.
Hanging around was how most press interviews got done back
then. The functionary in question would sit behind a desk; the rest
of the room would be lined with chairs. People would wander in and
out. You might (or might not) gradually get close enough to ask the
functionary your questions. When I quit working in Lebanon in 1981,
Hizbullah did not even exist. Times have changed. On my
first visit to Hizbullah last fall, I was welcomed byMohamad Afif,
the head of the partys media-relations department and a member
of its 11-man politburo, who set up a series of interviews for me.
The functionaries I met were all men, though women work in other
party offices. The ones I metnone of them clericsall wore a
simplified version of western-style dress but with, crucially (as in
Iran), no necktie. They did not shake hands with me; they were
helpful but wary. This was understandable, since tens of Hizbullah
leaders and officials have been assassinated by Israel over the past
20 years and these men had never met me before. Z.H.,
who asked to be described simply as a source close to
Hizbullah, talked to me about the partys strategy for working
within Lebanons problematically democratic political system. At
the parliamentary level, the Hizbullah-led bloc now has 12 deputies
out of 128, including, as Z.H. eagerly noted, two Sunnis and one
Christian. Although Hizbullah has held a parliamentary bloc of
around this size since 1992, it has thus far refused to seek any
ministerial slots. Z.H. explained why:We feel that a party
thats in the government should influence its whole program . . .
But in Lebanon, you cant pursue your own partys program in
government because governments are always formed through coalitions.
Elsewhere, you can have one party in government, with one program.
And then, its easier to hold the party
accountable. Then, there are the expectations of the
people. We represent a great proportion of the people. But if you are
in such an impotent government, then you sully your reputation with
the people. In Lebanon, corruption is everywhere. The institutions
need to be completely renewed. This is very difficult, and will take
time. Also, the political structure here is
still sectarian. In
this system people are led not by reason but by emotions and
tribalism. We feel that most of the other politicians are leading
people as tribe-members, by appealing to their sectional interests,
rather than as citizens. So altogether, it
seems hard for
us to go into government at the present time and just reap all the
disadvantages from the way things are done
there. Z.H. is
quite right about the obstacles to accountable governance in Lebanon.
A rigid system of sectarian quotas has continued to operate even
after the 1989 Taef Accord, which (more or less) ended 14 years of
civil war. Taef did call for an eventual dismantling of the
countrys confessional system but meanwhile decreed its
continuation by requiring that the president be a Maronite Christian,
the prime minister a Sunni, and the speaker of parliament a Shiite.
(The last position is held by Nabih Berri, a very close ally of Syria
and the head of Lebanons other main Shiite party, Amal.)
Ministerial posts and seats in Parliament are allocated according to
an even more fine-tuned distribution among the countrys 15
religious and ethnic subgroups. The 1998 municipal
elections, held on a one-person-one-vote basis, created much greater
opportunities for democratic governance at the local level. Z.H. told
me that in localities where Hizbullah won municipal
elections,we have tried to reform the municipal
institutions, and in some places we have succeeded. We have tried to
learn how to lead in coalitions with other parties, in order to
provide good services to the people . . . It is important that the
municipalities should work for the benefit of everyone, regardless of
religion or region. You know in our tradition we have a saying that
the best person is one who serves others. People depend on our
members and friends to provide good services because they are not
doing so in a corrupt way. We are very attentive to
that. The Muslim
hadith that Z.H. invoked there was the
only religious source that I heard cited by him or any other
Hizbullah-related person in over three hours of intensive discussion
of politics. Indeed, these mens discourse seemed overwhelmingly to
be in the realm of good governance, civic equality, and the rule of
law, rather than theology. Ghaleb Abu Zeinab is the
politburo member who is in charge of Hizbullahs relations with
Lebanons non-Shiite communities. Given that the Shiites make up
probably just under half of the total Lebanese population, this job
has always been very important. Abu Zeinab and his boss,
Hizbullahs 44-year-old secretary-general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah,
have carried it out with considerable skill. Like Z.H., Abu Zeinab
stressed the importance of building a sense of common citizenship, as
well as bridges of understanding across the countrys faith
communities. We have always been living together here in
Lebanon, he said. He attributed responsibility for many of the
intercommunal crises that had wracked the country over the decades
mainly to outside circumstances, though he also criticized the
Maronites:The end of the Cold War allowed us to start to
get back to normal. This didnt solve all our problems, though . .
. The Maronites saw the Taef Accord as a big defeat. But it wasnt,
because it represented the true balance, more or less. But then,
between their disappointment with that and the economic downturn we
had in the 1990s there was a big emigration of Maronites and other
Christians out of the country. In addition, they boycotted the
parliamentary elections of 1992 and 1996. That emigration
has had complex implications for Hizbullahs political project.
If you look at who is registered as a Lebanese citizen, Abu
Zeinab said, it would be a few more Muslims there than Christians.
However, 30 percent of the registered Christians are outside the
country . . . Yes, the Christians are afraid of having a
one-person-one-vote system here. Thats why we dont have one
yet, even though Taef called explicitly for an ending of the
confessional system of government. He said,
however, that Hizbullah did not intend to force a one-person-one-vote
system onto the countrys Christians:If we want to get
to full democracy here we need to have everyone persuaded of its
benefits, and not afraid that they would be overthrown. Besides, we
look at the coexistence we have between the different confessions
here as an example, and we dont want to overthrow it. If it was a
majority-minority system here it would be explosive. So well
hang onto this confessional balance we have for now. But I dont
know what will happen in 20 years. As a religious
principle for us, we should serve the people. So we tried to present
a positive example in all the municipalities that we won. We made the
areas safe. We built basic infrastructure. Here in the Dahiyeh, we
lead all the three municipalities . . . And we have other big ones,
too: Nabatieh, Baalbek, Hermel. We presented a new
example, and this increased our popularity . . . We say that our
mayors should serve the whole of the people in their towns, rather
than serving just the party. In June 1982, Israels
thenminister of defense Ariel Sharon decided to invade Lebanon up
to and including Beirut, and to keep Israels troops there long
enough to wrest big political concessions out of the countrys
chronically weak central government. The Israel Defense Forces
immediate goal that year was to secure the expulsion from Lebanon of
the Palestine Liberation Organization fighters who had maintained a
strong guerrilla presence there since 1969. In mid-August 1982,
Yasser Arafat was forced to lead his fighters in an ignominious exit
from Beirut by sea. Beyond
dispersing the PLOs fighters,
Sharon also sought to install a client government in Beirut that
would make peace with Israel on his terms. The Falangist (extreme
Maronite) militias were Israels main allies in Lebanon. But they
were weak reeds on which to build a national government; and anyway,
Falangist militia boss Bashir Gemayyel, whom Sharon had groomed to
become president, was assassinated before he could takeoffice.
Israels troops rapidly found themselves bogged down as occupying
forces in a complex and increasingly hostile political and military
quagmire. When they first
invaded in June 1982, the IDF troops
found a ready welcome from many of the Shiites of Jebel Amel, who had
come to regret the warm welcome they gave the PLO guerrillas a decade
or more before. The Israeli invasion spilt the central command of
Amal (Hope), which was the major political force in the Shiite
community at the time. Most Amal units in the south did not resist
the Israeli advance, and some of them actively aided it. But as the
IDF came close to the south-Beirut Dahiyeh, it started to encounter
serious Shiite resistance. . . But then, after the Israelis had
won the military battle and forced the PLO fighters out of
Lebanon, Amals leader Nabih Berri entered the ruling coalition led
by Amin Gemayyel, brother of the late Bashir, who was the Israelis
(and Washingtons) fallback choice for pliant president.
A small
number of southern and southern-origin Shiites did, however, resist
the Israelis advance from the very beginning. Defying the Amal
leadership, they mounted hit-and-run raids against the Israeli troops
deployed in their villages in the south. In November 1982, local
assailants blew up the IDFs command post in Tyre, killing 75
members of the IDF and their local proxy militia, the South
Lebanon Army. Other tight Shiite networks started attacking
targets in Beirut associated with the United States, seen as
Israels crucial ally. Small networks in Beirut mounted stunningly
destructive attacks against American and French military bases, and
the American embassy (twice). They kidnapped numerous American
citizens and other westerners, assassinated the American president of
the American University of Beirut, and hijacked a number of passenger
aircraft. Those networks all
received crucial support from the
Shiite community based in Baalbek, a key region that the Israelis
never entered and that remained effectively under the control of
neighboring Syria. (Baalbek was also the headquarters of the 1,500
revolutionary guards that Khomeinist Iran had sent after the
Israeli invasion to help build Lebanons anti-Israeli
resistance.) Sheikh Ragheb
Harb, a fiercely anti-Israeli imam of
the large southern village of Jibsheet, became the leader of the
southern Shiite resistance. In February 1984, while the resistance
movement was still operating deep underground, the Israelis killed
him. One year later, in February 1985, his supporters came together
and issued an open letter announcing the formation of
Hizbullah, the Party of God. Sheikh Subhi Tufaili was its first
leader. One of the key
participants in Hizbullahs founding was
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Then 24, and from a family of modest social
standing, Nasrallah already had proven leadership abilities. At 15 he
had been named Amals chief organizer in his home village,
al-Bazouriyah, near Biblical Tyr. The following year he was tapped by
a local Shiite mullah who sent him to Najaf, Iraq, to study at the
prestigious Hawza seminary. The Hawza was then headed by
Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr, a renowned Shiite jurisprudent who in the late
1950s had helped found the Islamic Daawa Party, which had networks
of supporters throughout the Shiite world. In 1978, when anti-Shiite
tensions mounted inside Iraq, Nasrallah returned to
Lebanon. (Two
years later, Saddam Husseins secret services assassinated Sadr and
his sister, in Baghdad. Many waves of terrible, anti-Daawa
persecution followed in Iraq. But Daawa survived and, being part
of the victorious United Iraqi Alliance electoral list, is today more
influential in Iraq than ever before. Nasrallah and the many other
Hizbullah figures who have studied in Iraq or Iran retain good links
with their ex-teachers and fellow students in those
countries.) After Nasrallah
returned to Lebanon he resumed his
studies at a Baalbek seminary headed by Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi. He
also resumed working as an organizer for Amaland by 1979 had become
(at 19) its chief political officer for the whole Beqaa region and
a member of its politburo. Small wonder, then, that when he helped
found Hizbullah five years later he immediately became a key member
of its leadership. In 1985,
the IDF withdrew from a large region
stretching southward from Beirut and consolidated its positions
within the so-called security zone, a broad strip of land inside
Lebanon, running the length of its L-shaped border with Israel. Much
of South Lebanon then became a free-fire zone for Israeli artillery,
aerial bombardments, and periodic ground operations, all of which
inflicted considerable casualties in the southern Shiite villages.
But with the IDFs permanent positions now removed far from Beirut,
Hizbullah was able to establish a national headquarters in the
Dahiyeh, and from there a group of talented political organizers set
about building Hizbullah into a single, very effective nationwide
party with its roots reaching deeply into the Shiite communities of
the south, the Beqaa, and Greater Beirut. All kinds of people,
from hardscrabble farmers to well-educated members of the liberal
professions, were brought into the constellation of mass
organizations that the party established in every region, every
profession, and every sector of the economy. Timur Goksel, who last
year retired after 24 years as the chief political advisor to the
UNs (highly constrained) peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, told
me how surprised he was to discover that the members of the first
Hizbullah delegations sent to deal with him, in the mid-1980s, were
not wild-eyed Islamist radicals but calm, serious men who were
doctors, engineers, or businessmen: men of real substance in their
local comunities. Over the years, the party built a robust
organizational structure headed by a seven-member Shura Council.
(Professor Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh, of the American University of Beirut,
has written that from 1989 through 2001, three members of the Shura
Council were laymen, and four were clerics. But before 1989, and
again after 2001, the Council had six clerics on it.) The party also
has a formal politburo, which is supposed merely to advise the
secretary-general and the Shura Council, though its advice may well,
on occasion, be taken very seriously indeed. The politburo has
between 11 and 14 members, many of them laymen. When Hizbullah set
about establishing its nationwide organizing structure in 1985,
Nasrallah moved to Beirut to help lead that effort. In 1989 he again
left Lebanon briefly to pursue his studies (and consultations)
abroad. This time he went to Qom, Iran, longtime home of another key
Najaf-trained cleric: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In July 1991, as
part of Hizbullahs shift toward a strongly political
strategy, Nasrallahs mentor Abbas Musawi took over from Tufaili as
the partys secretary-general. Within months, Musawi was
assassinated by Israel; and the 31-year-old Nasrallah succeeded him.
One of Nasrallahs first accomplishments was leading the party
through the parliamentary elections of spring 1992, when they won 12
seats. He also continued to pursue Hizbullahs longtime goal of
forcing Israel completely out of Southern Lebanon. In December
1992, Israels newly elected prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, gave
Nasrallah a particular boost, and an opportunity for new political
influence in the (mainly Sunni) Palestinian political arena, when he
tried to expel more than 400 alleged militants from the occupied
territories to Lebanon in a single bold move. Israel had successfully
expelled small groups of Palestinians to Lebanon for many years,
despite this move being a clear breach of the Fourth Geneva
Convention. But Rabins attempt to expel such a large group ran
into immediate logistic and diplomatic problems. Lebanon refused to
give the expellees formal admittance to the country; they ended up
stranded on a hillside just north of the security zone while
diplomats around the world struggled to resolve the issue. For
several months, the expellees main contacts were with Hizbullah,
which immediately organized study groups in what became known as
Hizbullah University. Israel was finally forced to return all
the expellees to the occupied territories.
* * *
Nasrullahs
leadership strategycombining efforts at mass organizing and
inter-group negotiating with a militant image and targeted
violencehas many parallels with that pursued by the African
National Congress leaders in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. And
just as the ANC realized its longtime goal of establishing a
one-person-one-vote system in South Africa, so too did Hizbullah
succeed in May 2000 in winning an unconditional Israeli withdrawal
from Lebanon. The contribution
of mass organizing to
Hizbullahs early growth and to its success in winning Israels
withdrawal has seldom been recognized in the west. It is true that
Hizbullah built a smart, bold, and well-disciplined military wing
that inflicted nontrivial harm on the IDF and its proxy forces from
the so-called South Lebanon Army. That violence never came anywhere
close to overwhelming the IDF militarily, but it did continue
relentlessly, and the IDF was never able to suppress it. Meanwhile,
over time, the IDFs continuing losses in Lebanon spurred the
emergence of a broad pro-withdrawal movement inside Israel that by
1999 had propelled the withdrawal issue to the top of the national
agenda. The promise of withdrawal helped the Labor Partys Ehud
Barak win the 1999 election, and in late May 2000 he followed
through. That withdrawal was
very popular inside Israel. But since
2000, a number of Israelis have expressed concern that Hizbullahs
success had significantly dented Israels deterrent capability
throughout the region. Proponents of this view are largely right
in judging that Hizbullahs 2000 victory served as an inspiration
to, among others, militant nationalists and Islamists inside the
Palestinian territories. But they are wrong to attribute the victory
solely to Hizbullahs military capabilities. For what actually
brought Barak to his very sensible decision to withdraw was his
realization that winning the military battle in Lebanon (which Israel
did many times between 1982 and 2000) could never be translated into
winning lasting political gains there; Hizbullah always survived to
fight another day. And the roots of Hizbullahs remarkable
resilience lay in the success of its mass organizing. In 1996 the
IDF had launched yet another of the many extremely punishing
offensives it had mounted inside Lebanon since 1982. Operation
Grapes of Wrath, as it was named, turned out to be decisive.
Israeli armor, artillery, and bombers hammered the whole of south
Lebanon north of the security zone. Labor Prime Minister (and Nobel
Peace Prize winner) Shimon Peres mounted an intense campaign to
persuade the Lebanese that this punishment had come down upon them
because of Hizbullahs continued presence and anti-IDF
activitiesand that they had only to repudiate and dismantle
Hizbullah for it to stop. But because of Hizbullahs political
activities over the preceding years, virtually the entire Lebanese
body politic closed ranks around it. Reports from the time told of
middle-class women in the staunchly Christian parts of East Beirut
stripping off their jewelry and throwing it into the emergency
donation bins that Hizbullah opened throughout the whole country.
The Israelis continued their
assault for two straight weeks. But
as it became clear that they had no chance of attaining their goal,
and as international diplomatic pressures mounted on Israel, Peres
was finally forced to agree to a ceasefire on what were (for Israel)
extremely humiliating terms. Not only was there no mention of
dismantling Hizbullah, but the agreementsigned by Lebanon,
Israel, the United States, France, and Syriaspecifically allowed
Hizbullah to continue its military activities against IDF forces
inside Lebanon. Hizbullah won
its decisive victory over Israel that
year, though it took Israels political elite a further four
years to adjust the deployment of Israeli forces in line with that
reality. The 1996 victory was a significant fruit of Hizbullahs
political strategy. * * * In May 2000, as the IDF started to
withdraw, its proxy force, the SLA, disintegrated rapidly; within
hours the whole of the formerly IDF-held strip became a rolling
victory carnival for Hizbullah. The SLA men who had guarded and run
the notorious prison and torture center at Khiam slipped away from
their posts, and the people of Khiam, a predominantly Shiite town,
rushed in to free their loved ones. Hizbullahs yellow flags flew
exuberantly right up to Israels northern border. Villagers who had
over the years been forced out of the security zone or the
much-damaged areas to its north crowded home in cavalcades of cars
and tractors. Some SLA members fled to Israel. But the bloodbath
feared by many Israelis (and some Lebanese) never occurred. The
Hizbullah leaders issued strict instructions prohibiting acts of
vengeance in the liberated areas and any violations of the
international border with Israel. Both orders were
obeyed. But while the Israelis
were undertaking what they
understood to be a complete withdrawal from Lebanon, Hizbullah and
the Lebanese government suddenly claimed that a tiny wedge of land
called the Shebaa Farmswhere the security zone abutted the
Syrian-owned but Israeli-occupied Golanwas also part of Lebanon;
thus, it should also be evacuated. Israel considered the Shebaa Farms
to be part of the Golan, and had no intention of leaving. Hizbullah,
Lebanon, and Syria all claimed that Israels withdrawal from
Lebanon was not completeand therefore, Hizbullah had the right to
continue anti-Israeli operations within the tiny area of the
Farms. Syria, Hizbullah,
andarguablyLebanon all had their own
reasons for wanting to keep Hizbullahs military confrontation with
Israel simmering at a low level in the tightly confined space of the
Shebaa Farms. For Hizbullah, the claimed perpetuation of the
Israeli occupation of part of Lebanon buttressed its argument that it
needed to keep its guerrilla formations in place in south Lebanon. In
addition, maintaining a low level of confrontation against the IDF in
that small, nearly unpopulated area has proven a relatively low-cost
way for the partys leaders to give their military planners a
chance to test new tactics against Israel, while providing a tightly
controlled focus of activity for militants in the party who might
otherwise be bored by the dreary work of reconstruction and political
organizing that has been the focus of the partys work everywhere
else in the south. Keeping the
Shebaa Farms front alive was not a
risk-free strategy for Hizbullah, but its leaders generally
calculated and managed those risks remarkably successfully. Indeed,
since 2000, as from 1996 to 2000, the military situation along the
border has been one of highly asymmetrical but mutual deterrence
between the IDF and Hizbullahbut with these two crucial
differences from the earlier period: since 2000, the communities on
either side of the front line have enjoyed far fewer military alerts
and disruptions, and many fewer peopleLebanese or Israelihave
been dying there. The stakes that citizens of both nations have had
in the stability of the post-2000 situation have thus been high, and
the political leaders of both Israel and Hizbullah have (thus far)
been at pains not to jeopardize this stability. Daniel Sobelman, a
strategic-affairs analyst at the Israeli daily newspaper
Haaretz,
has been one of the most careful observers of this situation. In
August 2002 he wrote,Why in fact have the fears of Aman
[Israels Military Intelligence] of a total collapse in the north
following Israels unilateral withdrawal not been realized? The
answer lies in the indication that although Hizbollah has not ceased
guerilla activity over the last two years, it has revealed itself,
inter alia, to be a relatively disciplined and responsible
organization, aware of its operational limitations and sensitive to
the environment that sustains and shelters it. Recently, Nasrallah
himself attested as much, and declared in a speech . . . Once, in
a discussion of resistance operations, I told certain officials that
we are concerned about the nation, the state, and the future more
than you think. Why is this so? Because when, Heaven forbid, the
country is menaced by security, military, and political dangers or
economic collapse, then those people who have capital, bankrolls,
companies, children, luxury homes, and houses abroad, flee. They have
a second citizenship. It is very simple. They collect the rest of
their family and leave the country. [However] our houses, graves,
life, death, honor, and mortificationthey are all here. Where else
can we go? Late March and early April 2002 saw the most
serious of the small-scale engagements in the Shebaa Farms area to
date. Sobelman wrote, Hizbollah fighters launched a massive
mortar and Katyusha barrage in the Shaba Farms area . . . No
casualties were inflicted on the Israelis, but for the first time a
number of Hizbollah rockets fell on the Golan Heights. He linked
that action to the sharp intensification of tensions then taking
place in the occupied Palestinian territories. He noted that since
March 8, Nasrallah had been, calling on neighboring countries to
allow the passage of military supplies to the Palestinians in their
struggle against Israel. On a number of occasions Nasrallah stressed
that the hour had come for action and not just words. But on
April 12, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi visited Beirut,
where he met with the Lebanese leadership and Hizbollah
Secretary-General Nasrallah, and called on them to display prudence
and self-restraint in order to prevent Israel from finding a pretext
for attacking its neighbor. The very next day, Sobelman wrote,
Hizbullah sheathed its arsenal. In March 2002,
Hizbullahs people were apparently not alone in wanting to heat
things up along the Lebanese-Israeli border: Palestinian militants
living in the refugee camps that still dotted Lebanon were also,
apparently, eager to do so. But once Hizbullah and its backers in the
Lebanese, Syrian, and Iranian governments had agreed to return to a
more restrained policy in the south, the Palestinians did not stand a
chance. Sobelman wrote,Published reports from Lebanon
reveal that Hizbollah fighters deployed in the south assisted Lebanon
in blocking a number of independent acts by Palestinian groups. This
is an event of no small consequence: it implies that when necessary,
alongside its maximalist rhetoric, Hizbollah knows how and is willing
to put its radical ideology on the back burner for the sake of
Lebanons national interest and for the sake of guaranteeing its
own limited operations. Nasrallah himself explained
Hizbullahs restraint in April 2002 a little differently. In a
meeting with party activists on April 8, he reminded people
sympathetic to the Palestinians, As you remember I gave a
promise more than a year ago . . . I said if Sharon [sic] was
thinking about committing genocide against the Palestinians in order
to expel them in groups, then the Palestinians must consider that
they are not alone, and that Hizbullah will be on their side . . .
Therefore some people may ask, is there anything worse than [what is]
happening now in Palestine? We say yes there is something worse. This
would be the following stage which lies inside Sharons mind
and for which we must preserve weapons and put accounts into
consideration. It means that each time a stage begins; we should not
use all of what we have . . . Moreover if we used all of our weapons,
after that Sharon would be encouraged to expel the
Palestinians. Nasrallah, therefore, was urging his
followers to view the partys military capabilities in south
Lebanon as a kind of strategic deterrent against Israel,whose
employment should be contemplated only in the event of a much more
dire emergency than the Palestinians were then facing. He had another
(possibly contradictory) argument, too. Later in that speech he said,
Moreover, we must know that the military actions at the Lebanese
borders with Palestine cannot stop any Israeli invasion to the
West Bank. We can keep the enemy busy, yet the Israeli enemy
can fight on two frontiers. * * * Since April 2002, the
Hizbullah-IDF front has remained basically stable, but with lots of
political maneuvering. Each side continued to undertake undercover
intelligence-gathering operations against the other: Israel accused
Hizbullah of sending arms to Hamas, and Hizbullah accused Israel of
orchestrating the July 2004 assassination of the Hizbullah officer
Ghazi Awali in Beirut. At the diplomatic level, in January 2004 the
two sides concluded a three-year-long, German-mediated negotiation
that resulted in an extensive exchange of prisoners, hostages, and
the mortal remains of dead combatants. Meanwhile, Hizbullah had some
partial success in deterring Israels periodic incursions into
Lebanons airspace, using anti-aircraft missiles that were
militarily useless but noisy and slightly threatening to civilian
communities in northern Israel, and therefore somewhat politically
effective. Last November,
Hizbullah introduced a new
response to Israels continued, though now less frequent,
overflights over Lebanon. It launched a small drone aircraft
equipped with cameras that flew over Israel as far as the coastal
town of Nahariya before it successfully left Israeli airspace. (The
drone was reportedly able to transmit images as it flew.) Many
Israeli commentators responded with horror, speculating on the
terrible effects the drone could have had if it were loaded with
explosives instead of cameras. At a huge rally held in Baalbek a
few days later to mark International Jerusalem Day, Nasrullah
told his followers, I confirm what the Israeli chief of staff has
said: Mirsad I [the name Hizbullah gave the drone] can carry
explosives of about 40 and 50 kilograms. It does not have the
capacity of only reaching Nahariya, but deeper and deeper, against
electricity and water installations and military bases. He
reported that the drone had flown over Israel for a total of 14
minutes and added, At first, we did not use Mirsad I for a
military action, but to confront the violations. But if our country
faces aggression, we will use any means and capability that we
possess . . . We do not only have the capacity of confronting
violations of [Lebanese] airspace, but we also have the capacity to
respond to any aerial aggression or any kind of action from the air .
. . We do not just have one plane, we have enough of them, and we
have the capability of building as many planes as we
need. The French
wire service that reported these comments
added that the U.N. military-observer team in south Lebanon, which
repeatedly denounces Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace, said
the incursion by the Hizbullah drone had been followed by violations
of Lebanese airspace by five Israeli warplanes and condemned
both. * * * I watched portions of Nasrallahs speech at that
rally on Hizbullahs controversial television channel, al-Manar. As
at all his public appearances, Nasrallahs distinctive,
bushy-bearded form appeared behind a thick layer of security glass; a
couple of tough-looking security men stood behind him scanning the
crowd. Nasrallah is an articulate and effective public speaker. He
was relaxed, turning easily to address people from all parts of the
audience, and lacing his speech with asides in Lebanese vernacular
that poked fun at Israel or the United States. He spoke almost
without notes, looking down only once every five or six minutes at a
small piece of paper in his hand. Nasrullah is a hero to
many Muslims (and some non-Muslims) in Lebanon and further afield.
Many Lebanese speak with something near reverence about how, when his
18-year-old son Hadi was killed fighting the IDF in south Lebanon in
1997, the father turned aside any suggestion that he be treated any
differently from any other bereaved parent. Two other Hizbullah
fighters were also killed in that battle, along with six Lebanese
Army soldiers, three of whom were Christians. It reportedly took some
time for Hizbullah even to reveal that one of the three martyrs
it lost that day was the son of the secretary-general.
Some
Israelis speculated that they might be able to extract a high
price for the return of Hadi Nasrallahs body. But over the
weeks that followed, Nasrullah pointedly praised the sacrifice that
all the Lebanese, including our Christian
brothers, were making
for the defense of the homeland. When Hadis body was returned nine
months later it was as part of a broader swap that involved the
bodies of all the other Lebanese killed that day. Nearly all of
Lebanon was impressed by the humility and grace Nasrallah showed over
that affair. The former U.N.
official Timur Goksel has described
Nasrullah as a smart leader who can find a useful symbolic role
for the other mullahs in the party to play, even while he allows the
party technocrats to make most of the decisions. In Goksels
extensive experience, Nasrallah was also a man of his word. Ive
told the Israelis and Americans they would be crazy to try to kill
him, Goksel said in an interview. If anything happens to
Nasrullah, what comes after would surely be disastrous for
them. * * * The military parade that preceded Nasrullahs
Jerusalem Day speech was reportedly as impressive, and meticulously
organized, as the partys parades always are. A couple of days
before, I watched some al-Manar footage of an earlier Hizbullah
spectacle in which ultra-fit party activists performed breathtaking
stunts on high wires strung between some of the buildings in the
Dahiyeh. The Hizbullah leadership, as it
works to motivate
and organize its base, seems just about as good at bread as it is at
circuses. The AUB professor Judith Palmer Harik has studied the party
for many years now. She notes that in the chaotic, civil-war-ridden
circumstances in which Hizbullah was born, its provision of basic
social services won it considerable loyalty and respect. After
Hizbullah took over effective control of the conflict-pounded Dahiyeh
in 1988, it almost immediately started providing a reliable
trash-removal service there, five years before the central government
sent any garbage trucks into the area at all. Regarding safe drinking
water, Harik wrote,During General Aouns administration
[19881990], water and electricity services in the dahiyeh were
almost completely cut off due to fighting . . . Several wells dug by
UNICEF in the area reportedly failed. With help from the Iranian
government RC [the Hizbullah-affiliated reconstruction
campaign, or jihad al-binaa] resolved this emergency by building
4,000-litre water reservoirs in each district . . . and filling each
of them five times a day from continuously circulating tanker trucks.
Generators mounted on trucks also made regular rounds from building
to building to provide electricity to pump water from private
cisterns . . . [In August 2001] Hezbollah still provides the major
source of drinking water for dahiyeh
residents. Across
the
gamut of human servicesschools, hospitals, public-health services,
rural-development aids, low-income housing, revolving loan funds for
small businesses, and income-support projects for the
poorHariks story was the same: at a time when the Lebanese
government was unable or unwilling to provide these services,
Hizbullah and its affiliated organizations stepped in to do so; and
even when the government did finally return to the scene, the
relevant ministries still relied on Hizbullahs affiliates to pick
up the slack. One of the most
significant areas in which
Hizbullah has sought to serve the people has been in the
provision of judicial and quasi-judicial services. Amhad Nizar Hamzeh
has described how, during the chaotic and casualty-laden civil
conflict of the 1980s, Hizbullah started establishing its own Islamic
courts in areas that it controlledand that these courts continued
to operate even after the (partial) reestablishment of the Lebanese
state courts in the 1990s. He quoted deputy Secretary-General Naim
Qasim as saying that the partys municipal court is actually
less than a court. It is more of a committee headed by a judge or a
delegated party official who is usually a shaykh, and who is aided by
party members. According to Hamzeh, Hizbullah courts have imposed
and supervised hundreds of sentences of imprisonment and a number of
death sentences. (The most recent death sentence he mentions was in
1995.) Though Hamzeh writes that some cases were handed over to the
jurisdiction of state courts it is not clear to what extent this has
become a trend. In addition, Hizbullah has offered intensive
mediation services to end blood-feuding between Shiite tribes in the
Bekaa.
Harik, Hamzeh, and other close
observers of Hizbullah all agree that Hizbullahs social-service
affiliates, law courts, and schools provide their services on
a low-cost basis to those Lebanese who need them, whether Muslim
or Christian, and that subsidies are available for very-low-income
users. Many Christian parents send their children to Hizbullah-run
schools, especially in south Lebanon, where they are often judged
to provide the best education available. The budgets for the schools
and Hizbullahs other social-service organizations come from
a combination of sources: user fees, government subsidies (where
available), donations from Iran, donations from international
development bodies, and allocations from the khums, the
one-fifth share of ones income that a Shiite believer is
obligated to pay to Islamic charitable organizations. One researcher
told me that Hizbullah-related organizations now control the significant
income stream constituted by khums donations sent from
the numerous Lebanese Shiite emigrés in West Africa.
Harik
notes rightly that Hizbullahs commitment to, and success in,
providing these services on a continuing basis is unique among the
political parties in Lebanon. The roots of this commitment are
complex. Several of Hizbullahs founders had previously been
secular leftists. When I was in Lebanon in the late 1970s, several
Lebanese leftists I knewincluding a number of
Christiansunderwent a noticeable conversion to Islamism after the
success of the Iranian revolution. Hizbullahs social-service
activities have as much in common with some (secular) leftist
rhetoric as with the Khomeinist concept of concern for the
Mustazafeen (the deprived). But Lebanons secular leftist
movements never succeeded in organizing anything that even
approximates Hizbullahs efforts in this sphere. The chronically
weak Lebanese government has never provided even minimally adequately
basic services, either. As Harik notes, Hizbullahs effectiveness
in this sphere certainly helped build and buttress its political
support in many parts of the country. * * * In spite of its many
good works inside Lebanon, Hizbullah undoubtedly does have an Israel
problemor more precisely, a hating-Israel problem. In
addition, it clearly harbors great animus toward the United States,
though the attempt by some Americans to link Hizbullah to
al-Qaedas (militantly Sunni) network were patently
misguided. Hizbullahs
hatred of Israel, the United
States, and (on occasion) France is a problem because inter-group
hatred is always a problem. Because of Hizbullahs near-mythic
reputation in much of the broader Muslim world, it is also a
non-trivial factor in any attempt to build either a long-term peace
between Israel and its neighbors or a democratic order throughout the
Middle East. And it is a problem for Hizbullah itself, since the
undoubted influence of the United States and Israel in world affairs
has pushed many governments to take hard-hitting steps to quarantine
Hizbullah and prevent its integration into the normal political
affairs and political discourse of the region. How serious is
Hizbullahs hatred of the United States and Israel? At one level,
very serious indeed. An oft-cited source is the 1985 open
letter in which Hizbullahs founders publicly announced the
existence of the party: Let us put it truthfully, one version
of this letter goes. The sons of Hizbullah know who are their
major enemies in the Middle Eastthe Phalangists, Israel, France
and the US. It called for expelling French and American influence
from Lebanon and for obliterating the state of
Israel. The
standing of that latter part of the open letter in
Hizbullahs thinking, both then and now, is in some question.
However, since 1985, party leaders have frequently expressed
themselves clearly on the questions of the United States and Israel.
For example, in March 2004, Hassan Nasrallah discussed both countries
at length during the eulogy he gave for Hamass paraplegic
spiritual leader, Shaikh Ahmad Yassin, assassinated by Israel some
days earlier. Regarding the United States, Nasrallah referred to the
Satanism of this administration and said that Yassins
killingrepresents a new evidence that we can place before
the eyes of those who still possess different convictions and we say
to them: America is proving everyday, not only in Iraq, but again in
Palestine and through its veto that it is covering up for the
killing, terrorism and crime; rather it is a complete partner in the
killing, terrorism and crime. Therefore, how can you seek shelter at
or gamble on her? How can you believe that the American
administration is the final resort or help that can protect your
honor, dignity and thrones? Regarding Israel, he said,
The murder of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin informs all Arabs, Moslems and
nations of this world that Israel and its entity administered
by this hostile government is a monstrous, terrorist and cancerous
entity. This entity possesses an aggressive nature, which represents
one of the indications to crime. He notably criticized those in
the Hamas leadership who still . . . talk about peaceful
options. Regarding the possibility of reconciliation with Israel,
he said,the horizon of those losers and defeated people
who seek reconciliation at the doors of Bush and Sharon is blocked.
On the other hand, the horizon of the resistance is open.
Israel was defeated in Lebanon and we all know why it departed
Lebanon . . . Today, it wants to depart Gaza
. . . Sharon
knows that the vast majority supports this [unilateral] withdrawal
from Gaza Strip. This is a new victory for
the resistance
and the horizon is open. Neither Camp David nor Oslo or
all the Arabs were capable of expelling the Zionists out of Gaza.
However, the blood of the children and the martyrs as well as the
blood of the cleric of the martyrs, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin will drive
them out from Gaza Strip; and this horizon is open. In the future,
the scene will repeat in the West Bank, Shibaa Farms, Golan Heights
and the rest of the occupied Palestine. I understand the
phrase the horizon is open to mean that Nasrallah wants to see
all the land currently under Israeli control evacuated by Israel. For
Nasrallah, occupied Palestine refers to the Palestinian areas
occupied by Israel in 1967, and to Israel itself. Nasrallah seems
clearly to prefer the idea of a unilateral, un-negotiated Israeli
withdrawallike the one that Hizbullah itself imposed on
Israeli in 2000to one that the Israelis might win through
negotiation, since any such negotiation would obligate the
Palestinian or other Arab negotiator to accept territorial (and
probably also functional) limits on its subsequent exercise of power.
How can we square this
anti-Israeli maximalism with the
policy of Hizbullah self-discipline and abiding by the rules of
the game that Sobelman and others have identified on the ground in
south Lebanon? Part of the story is that, along Lebanons southern
border with Israel, Hizbullah and Israel have both been effectively
deterred from pushing any further forward. But Israeli deterrence
does not suffice on its own to account for Hizbullahs post-2000
restraint at the border, since Israels withdrawal of that year did
precipitate a significant shift in Hizbullahs behavior. Therefore,
despite the official rhetoric, that international border must mean
something significant to the Hizbullah leaders. Nasrallah may urge
the Hamas forces in Gaza to keep the horizon [of territorial
aspirations] open, but he has not done so along his own
countrys border with Israel. Indeed, his fighters actually
intervened on a number of occasions to prevent Palestinians based in
Lebanon from violating the Lebanese-Israeli border, and in 2002 he
resisted calls from many Arab voices to have the Hizbullah forces
open up the conflict along the border as a way of relieving the
pressures the IDF was imposing on the Palestinians in Gaza and the
West Bank. Nasrallah can be
seen, then, as an extremelypragmatic
political operator, both in his policies toward Israel and (as noted
earlier) in the policies he has adopted within Lebanon. Several
researchers have noted the tactical agility with which Hizbullah
leaders have been able to develop and pursue a pragmatic political
program (al-burnamij al-siyasi) containing
realizable short-
and medium-term goals while at the same time keeping in mind the
political ideology (al-fikr al-siyasi) that defines their
long-term goals. But these mens political choices can also
helpfully be seen (as Judith Harik has suggested) as the result of
their shifting use of the four intersecting ideological frames
within which they operate: Islamism, Lebanese nationalism, Arab
nationalism, and global anti-imperialism. What has happened, for
example, when the partys leaders were forced to make choices
between acting in the Lebanese nationalist interest and acting in
other frames? Thus far, inside Lebanon, they seem to have softened,
or deferred until later, their desire for a completely Islamic
government. Indeed, party leaders have always stressed that they do
not seek to force either Islam or Islamic government on anyone; they
simply invite Christians in Lebanon and elsewhere to be open to
hearing the Islamic call. But as they have pursued their goals
for Lebanon, they seem equally to have deferred until later the
pursuit of their Arab nationalist, and perhaps also their global
anti-imperialist goals. Certainly, if the main manifestation of the
Arab nationalist part of their ideology is its pro-Palestinian,
anti-Israeli component, these goals appear to have been much lower on
their agenda than the goal of strengthening the party within
Lebanon. * * * Inside Lebanon, Hizbullah has recently been
confronted with new and distinct challenges. Between 1996 and early
2004, the party enjoyed a generally high level of popularity in many
different parts of the Lebanese national community. But last summer
one of its key allies there, Syrias Baathist regime, made a
provocative, overreaching move that ended up posing a possible new
threat to Hizbullahs situation in the country. The Syrians had had
14,000 troops (and sometimes many more) deployed in central and
northern Lebanon since 1976, and it exercised broad power over
Lebanons chronically weak government. Then, late last August, they
persuaded the Lebanese cabinet to propose a constitutional
amendment extending the soon-to-end term of the pro-Damascus
president, Emile Lahoud, for an additional three
years. Successive American
administrations had maneuvered
for years to limit Syrias influence in Lebanon. After Syrias
August move, the Bush administration rushed to the Security Council,
where it won passage of resolution 1559, which called for all
remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanonand also for
the disbanding and disarmament ofall . . . militias in the
country. The council signaled the seriousness with which it viewed
this issue by requesting the Secretary-General to report back
regularly on the implementation of this resolution and by declaring
it would remain actively seized of this
matter. Lebanons
representative at the council stated that its internal constitutional
issues and the nature of any relationship it might have with
friendly Syria were its own concern and should not be subject
to intervention by other parties. On the question of the militias he
restated Lebanons (and Syrias) longstanding position, telling
council members that there were no militias in Lebanon. There was
only the national Lebanese resistance, which appeared after the
Israeli occupation and which would remain so long as Israel remained.
The resistance force existed alongside the Lebanese national
forces. The day after
the Council adopted resolution 1559, the
Lebanese parliament voted for the Syrian-sponsored amendment by 96
votes to 29, allowing Lahoud his extra years in power. But meanwhile,
the Security Councils adoption of a strongly anti-Syrian,
anti-Lahoud resolution had emboldened the many forces inside Lebanon
that had long chafed under the Syrian-Lahoudist order. These forces
included both Maronites long opposed to Syrias presence in the
country and some of Syrias former tactical allies in the country
like the leftist Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. On nationalist grounds
Jumblatt resented Syrias very unsubtle move to keep Lahoud in
office. (He also made a point of recalling that it had been the
Syrians who killed his much-loved father in 1977.) When I asked
Hizbullahs Muhammad Afif in early November about the threat he
felt that 1559 posed to Hizbullahs position in Lebanon, he
shrugged stoically and said, We are not afraid. . . . The Iraqi
people dont give up. The Palestinian people dont give up. And
we dont give up, either. In mid-February the stakes were
raised again. On February 14, unknown assailants (thought by many to
be Syrian agents) detonated a huge bomb in downtown Beirut that
killed the former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri. Blaming Syria, many
Lebanese flocked to the streets waving the countrys red, white,
and green flags. Parliamentariansled by Jumblattcalled for an
independence intifada against Syria. First one minister
resigned, and then on February 28 the whole government of the new
pro-Syrian premier, Omar Karami, stepped down. On March 5, Syrian
President Bashar al-Asad announced that Syria would pull
backthough he gave no fixed timeline for it. The Bush
administration kept up its pressure on Syria for a full withdrawal
from Lebanonand on Hizbullah to disarm its militia. Israel stepped
into the ring, too, with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom publicly
urging the attainment of both those goals.¨Ü In Lebanon, however,
amid the calls for Syria to withdraw there were none calling for
Hizbullah to be disarmed; and some of Lebanons leading anti-Syrian
politicians made a point of reaching out to Hizbullahs
leadership. The western media
gave positive coverage to anti-Syrian
demonstrations in Beirut involving between 25,000 and 50,000 people.
But they paid little heed to, for example, a February 19 gathering in
the Dahiyeh where hundreds of thousands of Hizbullah supporters in
mourning clothes held banners bearing the face of Hariri alongside
those of favored ayatollahs. When Nasrullah addressed the crowd, his
message was clear: We are gathered here this year to support the
resistance and to support the homeland. The homeland is supported by
the resistance. After
the Israeli government publicly joined the
anti-Syria, anti-Hizbullah campaign, Nasrullah shifted to a much more
activist anti-1559 and anti-Israel stance. In a big news conference
March 6 he warned his compatriots that Israel was planning a repeat
of the abortive May 17th agreementan arranged
peace
that Prime Minister Begin tried but failed to foist onto the Lebanese in
1983. Nasrullah called for huge peaceful demonstrations March 7 to
express appreciation to the Syrians, support for the continued
existence of Hizbullahs militia, and opposition to any peace with
Israel. * * * In April 1983, a Lebanese Shiite suicide bomber
rammed his truck into the entrance of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut,
killing 63 people including virtually the entire leadership of the
CIAs Middle East bureau, which was meeting there at the time.
After the bodies were removed the entire structure was demolished,
and embassy operations were moved elsewhere. During my
recent stay at the AUB, my regular running route took me past the
gaping hole where once I would interview ambassadors and other
American dignitaries. Just one block further west along the seaside
corniche stands a lovely stone mosque, a center of community life for
the Sunnis of this neighborhood. This time, every Friday, traffic on
the four-lane corniche would slow to a crawl by the mosque as a group
of young men in distinctive, Hizbullah-yellow vests, standing under a
grove of Hizbullah-yellow flags, held out large bins for passing
motorists to toss their donations into. They seemed to be doing well:
by midday the bins looked two-thirds full. Giving to Hizbullah in
this way seemed to have become a habit for many of those drivers, and
back in November I never saw anything but friendliness between the
Sunnis coming out of the mosque and the youths with the Hizbullah
bins. One Saturday, my spouse
and I drove to south Lebanon. I
wanted to visit the complex in Khiam that the Israelis and the SLA
used as a detention and torture center in their fight against
Hizbullah. After the liberation in 2002, Hizbullah and the Lebanese
Ministry of Tourism worked together to turn the prison into a place
of remembrance. I have a broad interest in the memorialization of
oppression and atrocities, and just last year visited Nelson
Mandelas famous former prison cell on Robben Island. I wondered
how the Khiam prison experience would be presented. I also wanted to
see some of Hizbullahs liberated
area. Outdoor advertising
is a big deal in Lebanon. Most of the new highways that snake through
the country are liberally, even dangerously, festooned with
billboardsalong the roadsides and medians, and even hanging from
the lampposts. Whenever there is space enough beside the road,
additional large billboards are set up to seduce the passing traffic.
In the Maronite parts of the country, a high proportion of these ads
feature luxury goods: drearily repetitive ads for an Armani perfume
were a big feature in November. Our route to the south took us down
the coast road to Sidon, then inland through the large Shiite city of
Nabatiyeh. As soon as we left Sidon the political billboards
and banners started: green for Amal, whose leader Nabih Berri is a
Nabatiyeh native, and yellow for Hizbullah. No Armani here. These
posters were nearly all martyrs remembrances: the face of an
achingly young man would be front and center, surrounded by his name,
images of red roses, a fuzzy representation of Jerusalems Dome of
the Rock, and perhaps the small bearded visage of a favorite
ayatollah. Soon enough the yellow took over, and the pictures of the
ayatollahs became larger and larger. (Hizbullah won Nabatiyeh from
the more secular Amal in last Mays elections.) Every so often
among the Hizbullah billboards would be an anomalous, somber
blue-and-white offering reminding drivers that U.S. Agency for
International Development had contributed to reconstruction projects
in this region. Nabatiyeh was
throbbing with life, its tangle of
streets showing lots of new construction. Three miles out of town
theres a Lebanese army checkpoint and then the road plunges down
toward the ravine of the Litani River. Here, Hizbullah has a huge set
of notices welcoming people to the liberated
zone. We went
first to Marjayoun, a Christian town that used to be a hub for the
occupation forces. Now it seemed sad andespecially after the
bustle of Nabatiyeheerily deserted. Then on to Khiam, further
east, where the prison had been housed in a former French army
barracks at the south end of town. The prison sits on an outcropping
of rock less than a mile from Israels northernmost tip. Its
approach is marked by a row of yellow flags, interspersed with the
red, white, and green of the national emblem. A big sign welcomes
visitors in the names of both the Ministry of Tourism and
Hizbullah. No one asked for
tickets or collected any entry fees. We
watched a short orientation movie, then took a self-guided tour
through the warren of little cellblocks. Between 1985 and 2000 more
than 2,000 prisoners were held here for some period of time. As in
the large detention centers run by the American forces in Iraq, or by
Israel in the Palestinian areas, the main goals were to punish and
control the local population and to try, where possible, to pressure
detainees to act as informants or collaborators for the occupation
forces in return for their release. The kinds of pressure
reported by survivors here were disquietingly familiar again now from
Iraq: stress positions, sleep deprivation, hooding, enclosure in very
small spaces, burning with lit cigarettes, humiliation and
psychological torture, some electrocution, painful suspension of the
body from the arms. A small
number of Khiams detainees did not
survive. The IDF and SLA did not allow the International Committee of
the Red Cross to make any inspections here at all until 1995. Former
detainees reported that once the ICRC inspection visits started,
conditions got a little better. What we saw showed the conditions
after the ICRC inspections started. They still looked significantly
worse than what I saw on Robben Island, where the lodging
areasboth the large collective cells housing 60 or 70 inmates, and
the small individual cells like Mandelashad windows large
enough to admit a fair amount of natural light, rudimentary lockers
for storing personal possessions, and proper flush toilets (though
without privacy). The cells I saw in Khiam had almost no natural
light, no place for personal storage, no proper toilets, and terrible
ventilation. The collective cells were crammed full of iron bunk
beds. They had no windows at all, one low-wattage light bulb each,
and a bare bucket in a corner for excretion. The individual cells
were tiny, bare closets with no amenities, and were designed to be
too short to lie down in. Some of these had a ventilation hole high
in the wall that let in a little natural light; others didnt.
Survivors have reported that detainees could be held in the isolation
cells for ten days or more. In
a small interior courtyard we saw a
girder-type utility pole to which particularly recalcitrant detainees
were tied, and then doused with water and beaten. Two people died on
that pole, according to a neighboring sign. Elsewhere were small
interrogation rooms, some with an adjoining chamber from which the
interrogations could be monitored through one-way
glass. As we
wandered around the cells the numbers of our fellow visitors slowly
increased: all Lebanese, all somber as they peeked into the cells,
and many of them apparently coming here as part of a longer family
day out. Once back in the main courtyard, we passed a sales kiosk
where we resisted the temptation to buy bright yellow Hizbullah
baseball caps, music videos from the al-Manar top ten, and CD
collections of the sermons of Nasrallah or other favorite
mullahs. Prisons are never
happy places, and places of prolonged,
extrajudicial detention and torture seem to retain their edge for a
very long time. But at least at Robben Island, the eloquently
presented Narrative of Suffering is complemented with a Narrative of
Post-conflict Reconciliation, in which we see, for example, pictures
of Mandela shaking the hand of his gruff (white) former warder.
Indeed, todays Robben Island is presented to visitors as one happy
community where former prisoners and former warders live side by
side, all sucking happily on the teat of tourist revenues. (Only a
small proportion of the visitors there seemed to be South African.)
Khiam does notyethave any uplifting narrative of post-conflict
reconciliation, or the influx of foreign tourist dollars that might
come with that. It may seem
inappropriately early to start
thinking of ways that a future reconciliation could be organized
between Hizbullah and the Israelis who ran the Khiam prison, or
between Hizbullah and the United States. Doing so wont be easy:
Hizbullah, the Americans, and the Israelis have all suffered a lot
from the conflicts of the pastthough it is worth noting that the
number of civilian casualties among Hizbullah supporters is orders of
magnitude higher than for either Israelis or Americans.
But still, I judge that one day
or another a reconciliation between these partiesas between
white and black South Africanswill come to be seen as not
only possible but necessary. To put it simply, Hizbullah is not
going to go away (and neither is Israel or America). Israelis
and Americans will have to find a way to start dealing with Hizbullah.
Starting to acknowledge the very real contributions that the party
has made to the reconstitution of Lebanons war-torn society
and the reenergization of its democracy could be one place to
start. <
Helena Cobban
is a global-affairs columnist for The Christian
Science Monitor
and Al-Hayat, and a contributing editor of Boston
Review.
Originally published in the April/May
2005 issue of Boston Review |