BICOM

Key Points

 

• In an interview with the Beirut Daily Star, Foreign Secretary David Miliband this week reaffirmed Britain’s readiness to have contacts with representatives of Hezbollah in Lebanon.
• Hezbollah is a more disciplined, orderly and strategically-minded organisation than Hamas or any of the Sunni jihadi organisations. However, the fact that it competes in elections and joins coalitions does not mean that it is on the way to becoming a ‘normal’ political player within Lebanon. The movement’s military capacity and its political activities complement one another.
• Hezbollah, having successfully intimidated its opponents last year, has now received official acceptance from its opponents for its independent military capacity and appears to have retained its veto power within the government.
• A new manifesto, issued by Hezbollah in the last week, reflects the long-term strategy the movement is pursuing. The movement remains a client of Iran, remains outspokenly anti-western, and committed to Israel’s destruction. Hezbollah has been energetically re-arming since 2006 for an expected next round with Israel.

Introduction

In an interview with the Beirut Daily Star, Foreign Secretary David Miliband this week reaffirmed Britain’s readiness to have contacts with representatives of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Miliband told the English-language daily newspaper that ‘carefully considered contact with Hezbollah’s politicians, including its MPs, will best advance our objective of the group rejecting violence to play a constructive role in Lebanese politics’.[i] The Foreign Secretary’s remarks come against the background of a series of recent important political developments in Lebanon. This document will seek to assess the latest events and their implications. It is vital to ascertain whether the latest developments indicate a turn toward normalisation and ‘Lebanonization’ by Hezbollah, or whether the movement has successfully established a political environment in which it can pursue an unchanged agenda unimpeded.

Latest events in Lebanon

Following its surprise election victory this year, the pro-western March 14 coalition was determined to prevent the Hezbollah-led opposition from once again attaining an ability to veto cabinet decisions. According to the Lebanese constitution, a two -third majority of ministers is required for the taking of ‘basic national decisions’. The opposition would thus need one third plus one seat in the cabinet in order to exercise a veto.  After much wrangling, the opposition chose to accept the formula of 15 cabinet seats for March 14, ten for the opposition, and five to be named by President Michel Suleiman.

On the face of it, this appeared to be an achievement for March 14, leaving the opposition one seat short of a veto. In reality of course, much depended on the identity of the five ministers to be named by President Suleiman. If only one of these could be relied upon to vote with Hezbollah when the need arose, the party’s de facto veto would be in place. Suleiman’s five ministers have now been named. One of them is an ‘independent’ Shia, Adnan Hussein.  Lebanese sources confirmed that Hussein is expected to vote with the Hezbollah led opposition when called upon to do so. After five months of negotiations, Hezbollah appears able to re-assert its power of veto over the government.

The other important issue on the agenda in the negotiations was that of Hezbollah’s independent military capability.  Prior to Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, the movement sought to justify its holding of weapons by focusing on its war against Israel. It now claims that Israel’s failure to cede the Sheba Farms to Lebanon made this withdrawal incomplete – a view not shared by the United Nations, which judged Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon to be complete.

Any expectations that after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon, Hezbollah would revert to being a political party representing Lebanese Shia within the system, were not fulfilled. Hezbollah has retained its own arms and the movement dragged Lebanon into war with Israel in 2006. Furthermore, in May 2008, at a moment that the importance for the Lebanese political fabric cannot be overstated, Hezbollah turned its weaponry against its internal political opponents and took over West Beirut and part of the Chouf Mountains area.  This move followed attempts by the March 14-led government to move against Hezbollah’s control of security at Rafiq Hariri international airport, and to monitor Hezbollah’s independent telecommunications network in Lebanon.

The broader meaning of the May 2008 events was that they represented an attempt by the Lebanese government to move toward political normality in Lebanon, and away from a situation in which a particular political movement maintains its own armed forces and conducts its own foreign policy. Hezbollah, by its military mobilisation against the March 14 bloc, established that no such move would be tolerated.

The Policy Declaration of the new Government of the Republic of Lebanon, issued on November 26, contains no reference to the need for Hezbollah to divest itself of its independent military capability, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1559 passed in 2004. Rather, the statement explicitly endorses the role of the ‘resistance’ – universally understood within Lebanon to mean Hezbollah – alongside the Lebanese Armed Forces. The declaration states, ‘It is the right of the Lebanese people, army and the resistance, to liberate the Sheba Farms, the Kfar Shuba Hills and the northern part of the village of Ghajar, as well as to defend Lebanon and its territorial waters in the face of any enemy by all available and legal means.’[ii]

Recent events in Lebanon, therefore, have led to a situation in which Hezbollah, having successfully intimidated its rivals last year, has now received official endorsement from its opponents for its independent military capacity.  In addition, the movement – via the presence of Adnan Hussein as a Shia minister, plus the ten opposition ministers – appears to have effectively retained its veto power within the government. 

The current internal political quiet within Lebanon derives not from any change in Hezbollah objectives, but rather from the accommodation of other political forces to Hezbollah’s demands. This removes any immediate need for direct confrontation, from Hezbollah’s point of view. 

Hezbollah’s new manifesto

Last week, Hezbollah issued a new manifesto, replacing the movement’s earlier platform issued in 1985. The document differs from its predecessor in a number of significant ways. Whereas the 1985 manifesto openly called for the foundation of an ‘Islamic Republic’ in Lebanon, the new manifesto avoids such a call. In addition, the new manifesto has a large section on Hezbollah’s opposition to ‘sectarianism’ and its call for the replacement of Lebanon’s current consociational system of government with a system of ‘one person, one vote’.  The manifesto has been hailed by some analysts as further evidence of the process of ‘Lebanonization’ and normalisation which  Hezbollah is supposedly undergoing. [iii]

The text of the new manifesto, however, should be observed carefully. It does not depict a movement in a transition phase from its former radicalism.  Rather, the anti-western and anti-Israel views of Hezbollah are very much evident. The document depicts the US as the ‘root of all terror’, and a ‘danger that threatens the whole world’. 

In addition, it should be noted that the official English language version of the text differs sharply from the much longer Arabic version.  Journalists working in Lebanon are aware of Hezbollah’s tendency to present a very different message in Arabic to the one presented in English to the outside world.  The Arabic version of the text also does not contain an open call for the foundation of an Islamic republic in Lebanon.  However, it offers a much more accurate reflection of Hezbollah’s thinking.

The Arabic version’s first section refers to ‘resistance in the way of jihad’, and the ‘jihadi way’.  The section dealing with Iran speaks in loyal and reverential terms about the ‘blessed Islamic revolution led by the Vali al-Faqih Imam Khomeini’ – referring to the clerical regime in Iran. The section on ‘resistance’ deals with the movements ‘mujahedeen and its martyrs’. [iv] The Arabic version of the manifesto also contains an entire section entitled ‘Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque’, which asserts that ‘to liberate Jerusalem and defend Aqsa Mosque’ is a ‘religious duty’ incumbent on Muslims.[v]

The new manifesto reflects a more confident, sophisticated Hezbollah, which has succeeded in carving out a currently unchallengeable position in the Lebanese political fabric. The document lays down a series of unchanging principles including a continued commitment to ‘jihad’ against Israel and a long term strategy to achieve its goals.[vi] There is nothing in it to suggest that Hezbollah has moved substantively away from its core principles.  

Where is Hezbollah heading?

Hezbollah is undoubtedly a highly disciplined, orderly and strategically-minded organisation. This does not mean that it is on the way to becoming a ‘normal’ internal political player in Lebanon.  Hezbollah remains a client of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is estimated that the movement receives between $150-200 million annually from Tehran.[vii] It is Tehran which supplies the weaponry which has enabled Hezbollah to silence its internal enemies and to pursue war against Israel. Southern Lebanon remains very visibly an outpost of Iran, replete with pictures of Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, the occasional Iranian flag, and the ongoing, clandestine presence of officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. 

Hezbollah is pursuing a long-term strategy to achieve dominance in Lebanon. Its expressed opposition to ‘sectarianism’ reflects this. No census has taken place in Lebanon for over half a century.  However, it is generally believed that the Shia population has been on the increase as a proportion of the whole. Hezbollah believe, probably correctly, that the maintenance of the current consociational situation gives Lebanon’s Sunnis and Christians disproportionate representation in Lebanese politics. The movement assesses that in time it will come to dominate the country and reshape it according to the Shia Islamist principles to which it still adheres. 

In the meantime, Lebanon’s Shia are increasing their representation in important organs of the state. In particular, there are a growing number of Shia officers in the Lebanese Armed Forces, 70% of whose rank and file are Shia. Such developments should be taken together with the nature of the new government in Lebanon, and the failure of March 14 exercise any restraining capacity on Hezbollah’s military capacity.

Together they reflect a situation in which the Iranian client Hezbollah, having staked out its unassailable position in Lebanon, is now in the process of gradually absorbing the key institutions of politics and the state, making it increasingly difficult to identify where Hezbollah ends and the state begins.

At the same time, Hezbollah has been energetically re-arming since 2006 for an expected next round with Israel.  Recent visitors to Lebanon report a euphorically high, even delusional state of morale in the closed world of the movement’s cadres.  Among them it is genuinely believed that the next war between Israel and Hezbollah will form part of a larger regional conflict in which Israel will be destroyed. 

The notion that Hezbollah is close to disarming, or indeed that the movement possesses separate ‘political’ and ‘military’ wings, with different outlooks and approaches, is without foundation.  The movement’s military capacity and political agenda complement one another.  They have led to a situation in which Hezbollah now exercises considerable control over the ‘commanding heights’ of power in Lebanon.

Conclusion

The northern border between Israel and Lebanon is currently quiet. However, this should be attributed to a situation of fragile deterrence which has pertained since 2006. Though changes to its manifesto seek to emphasise a Lebanese national rather than sectarian agenda, Hezbollah remains a committed, armed and sophisticated force, outspokenly anti-western, committed to Israel’s destruction and inseparably linked to the Iranian regime. Despite Hezbollah’s poorer than expected performance in Lebanese elections, the outcome of the lengthy process of government formation appears to have left its veto power over government decisions, and its independent military capability, intact.

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[i] FCO Press Office Blog; 3 December 2009

[ii] Nafez Qawas, ‘Policy statement retains previous clause on Hezbollah’s arms’, Beirut Daily Star, 26 November 2009.

[iii] Hezbollah’s 2009 manifesto – English version

[iv] Hezbollah’s 2009 Manifesto (Arabic)

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid. 

[vii] Interview with senior official, Israel Defense Ministry