7
December 2006
Hizbullah has overplayed its hand
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.
* Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY
STAR.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=77455#