Hizbullah's New Horse-trading

Something very important has happened to Hizbullah in the last year: It has slowly and quietly become another political movement in a country full of them. It engages in the push and pull of politics, making both advances and mistakes.

BEIRUT -- The status of Hizbullah has become central to any discussion of events in Lebanon, which in turn instantly takes you -- like clicking on a political hyperlink -- to other sites in the region, given its linkages with Syria, Iran, Hamas, Palestine in general, Israel, other Shiites populations, and various Islamist and nationalist movements.

Something very important has happened to Hizbullah, however, in the last year: It has slowly and quietly become another political movement in a country full of them. It engages in the push and pull of politics, making both advances and mistakes, learning on the job. Unusually, it seems to be searching for a way out of the relative quagmire it has found itself in, partly through the consequence of its own policies. It has not become weaker in the past 14 months, but rather more constrained.

It continues to make a challenging yet erratic shift from a predominantly south Lebanon-based military resistance organization that confronts Israel’s occupation to one that must engage more directly in domestic Lebanese political horse-trading in order precisely to preserve its main role as a resistance and deterrence force. Fourteen months after last summer’s war with Israel in which it performed rather impressively at the technical military level, its military prowess today is as much a constraining as an empowering and defining element.

The nuances and complexities of Hizbullah’s status are important for Lebanon, but they also mirror a range of related issues throughout the Middle East: What are the Islamist movements’ ultimate domestic aims? What is the real balance among their religiosity, nationalism, resistance, communal empowerment, and politics? How do ties with Iran play in Arab circles? Is the Syrian-Iranian-led “resistance front” against the US-Israel-Arab conservatives the way of the future, or a cruel deception from the past? How far can armed struggle go in the battle against Israel, before the US-Israel combine uses devastating force to turn threatening neighbors into wastelands of total destruction -- and would such destruction have any long-term impact?

The mainstream Western media and political elites -- especially in the United States -- continue to ignore the considerable nuances and ever-changing realities of Islamist-nationalist groups like Hizbullah. It is simplistic and counter-productive for Western mainstream elites simply to condemn Hizbullah as a terrorist organization or a dangerous Iranian- and Syrian-manipulated militia, and engage it with confrontation, threats, vilification, ultimatums and sanctions.

The tendency in much of the Arab-Islamic world is to go to the other extreme, of seeing Hizbullah as a valiant, inerrant force for righteousness, self-respect and powerful Arab and Islamic self-assertion. The truth, as always, is at neither extreme.

A timely example of how to analyze the Hizbullah phenomenon constructively appeared this week in the form of a fine report by the respected International Crisis Group (ICG), entitled Hizbullah and the Lebanese Crisis (www.crisisgroup.org). It accurately captures the multiple dimensions of Hizbullah, along with the many factors that must be addressed in the current quest for a new political compact and balance of power in Lebanon and the region.

Its main thesis is that, “Amidst Lebanon’s political deadlock, all parties and their external allies need to move away from maximalist demands and agree on a deal that accepts for now Hizbullah’s armed status while constraining the ways in which its weapons can be used.”

The report correctly outlines the many dimensions of Hizbullah and its numerous, increasingly complex, and sometimes contradictory, relations with other political forces in the country and the region. These include its role in the aftermath of the 2006 war, the elusive election of a new president, Hizbullah’s weapons, its growing status among Shiites, its increasingly tense ties with Sunni Muslims, and the consequences of its failed move to try to topple a Sunni-dominated Lebanese government.

Sectarian tensions have increased in Lebanon in the past year, and the deployment of Lebanon’s army and a larger UN force at the Israeli border has constrained Hizbullah’s military posture. This has made its turn to domestic politics all the more urgent, but also messy. It makes mistakes that slightly deflate its once infallible status.

Patrick Haenni, ICG’s Senior Analyst, says that, “Hizbullah’s resort to street politics was ultimately self-defeating. The street battles quickly morphed into confessional ones, forcing Hizbullah into the sectarian straightjacket it has long sought to avoid”.

The net result is that Hizbullah as a domestic political player with a mixed performance is now subject to analysis, criticism and horse-trading offers that had always been alien to its world. Hizbullah’s new status as a domestic political player that challenges the government, makes deals and threats, and gets analyzed and kicked around at the same time is an important new development that probably opens the door towards more pragmatic politics -- if there are any pragmatic politicians in Lebanon willing to walk through the door. We shall soon find out.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global