Hizbullah’s Strengths May Generate Weaknesses

BEIRUT—Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s two speeches in Beirut earlier this week—before large crowds of Lebanese Shiites commemorating their annual ‘Ashura religious rites—did not break any new ground in domestic or regional affairs, but clarified trends that have been developing in recent years. Most of these trends continue the trajectory of Hizbullah’s political condition of the last decade, which comprises impressive, but contradictory and challenging, realities that seem to be accelerating.

Without judging its cultural or political ideology, I continue to see Hizbullah as the greatest success story of the modern Arab world in political and organizational terms. Its impressive feat is how, from the 1970s until today, it has transformed the core of the Lebanese Shiite community from the subjugated and abused third class citizens they were for many decades into the most powerful group in the country, and perhaps the strongest non-governmental party, social force and military unit in the entire Arab world.

This strength, however, may also be its weakness, because it has generated intense opposition to itself from many Lebanese, Arab and international quarters. This opposition has grown steadily since Hizbullah’s zenith in 2000 when it forced Israel to withdraw from south Lebanon, reaching the point where many Lebanese who dislike its various political, ideological, cultural and Iranian-linked identity dimensions not only openly criticize it politically, but also mock it culturally. Hizbullah says it does not care about such criticism and will continue along its chosen path of resistance.

This is one major dilemma: That at its greatest strength, it seems to be willing to operate outside and above the Lebanese political system, and ignore its many critics at home. It is natural that Hizbullah would show a strong and determined face of resistance and independence, but this is problematic if it leads to its operating in orbits beyond the arena of its Lebanese base and anchorage. If its message is that Lebanon is not, in fact, its base and anchorage, but rather that it is a regional actor that is merely domiciled here like an offshore bank operating regionally is domiciled in Bahrain or the Bahamas, then this raises even more problematic challenges.

More and more Lebanese might argue that if Hizbullah is working primarily for Syrian, Iranian, Palestinian and anti-Takfiri issues, it would be best for it to base itself in the epicenter of those resistance challenges on frontiers territories among Syrian-Iraqi-Iranian lands. The more Hizbullah accentuates its military actions abroad in the service of preserving the Iranian-Syrian-Hizbullah Resistance and Deterrence Front, the greater the criticisms it generates inside Lebanon accusing it of being mainly an agent of Iran.

Another dilemma that was accentuated by Nasrallah’s two speeches this week stems precisely from his insistence that the party will continue to operate militarily in Syria for as long as the government of Bashar Assad needs its help. Nasrallah stated that Assad needs Hizbullah’s military assistance in order to stay in power and roll back the challenges to it from foreign-assisted domestic and regional opposition groups. This raises two other dilemmas for Hizbullah:

First, if Assad is so weak that he needs Iranian and Hizbullah troops to remain in office, what is the benefit of such a weak and vulnerable strategic ally? The Syrian opposition groups are not particularly well organized, financed, equipped, trained or coordinated, and in fact are something of a mess right now; yet despite their weaknesses they have taken large swaths of territory from the Assad government. We are likely to see significant increases in Saudi and other Gulf assistance to the opposition, which will increase the capabilities of those fighting to overthrow Assad.

This means Hizbullah’s fighting days in Syria may just be beginning, which will only increase the criticisms and pressures on it in Lebanon, the Middle East and the world. Many people in recent years have asked if Hizbullah is a pliant appendage of Iran (which I do not believe); soon many may ask if the rump state of Syria under Assad government control is an appendage of Hizbullah, which probably is not a healthy situation for the party.

Second, the free movement of Hizbullah forces in and out of Syria to join the battle there means that the formal sovereignty of states in this region, as manifested in territorial borders, is slowly being erased. This is not only due to Hizbullah’s role in Syria, to be fair, but rather reflects a much broader recent legacy of free movement of Salafi-Takfiri fighters and political provocateurs across the Iranian-Iraqi-Syrian-Lebanese borders, along with refugee and arms flows across the Jordanian and Turkish borders.

We should now expect to hear counter-arguments that because Hizbullah fights at will inside Syria, pro-Saudi or other forces can enter Lebanon at will to support anti-Hizbullah groups here.


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.

Copyright © 2013 Rami G. Khouri -- distributed by Agence Global