18
August 2006
The somber dream of a garrison state
Near
the end of his speech on Monday, Hizbullah's secretary general, Sayyed Hassan
Nasrallah, began sounding, ominously, like a president. I say ominously,
because Nasrallah has not been elected president, though the current tenant of
that office does make us pine for better. In outlining his vision of a stronger
state, the Hizbullah leader plainly implied he intended to help reshape that
state, and how else would he do so except by bending it around his own party's
priorities?
On
the same day there was an intriguing headline in the new daily newspaper
Al-Akhbar, which, once you've worked out the intricacies of its financing and
the identity of its journalists, mainly situates itself in the March 8 camp,
close to Hizbullah, with some splashes of Aounism. The headline read: "A
Government of National Unity, to Prevent 'Faulty Calculations.'" Given
that the story cut to the national unity government idea editorially, without
it being based on a specific news item or quote, it seemed more a warning than
anything else.
Then
on Tuesday we heard Bashar Assad effectively call for a coup d'etat against the
March 14 majority. The Syrian president declared that Hizbullah should transform
its military "victory" in the South into a political victory in
Beirut, and accused March 14 of being the intended beneficiaries of Israel's
onslaught. The Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, sensing a Syrian effort to
re-impose its control over Lebanon, will hold a press conference this morning
to start mobilizing the majority, which has seemed extraordinarily
faint-hearted in recent weeks.
Yet
March 14 should profit from Hizbullah's constraints. Unless implementation of
Resolution 1701 fails and the war resumes, in the foreseeable future Hizbullah
will be cut off from its vital space in South Lebanon. This doesn't mean the
party intends to withdraw its men from the South or crack open its weapons
caches to the Lebanese Army and the expanded United Nations force. If anything,
Hizbullah seeks to empty the UN resolution of its content. And unless Prime
Minister Fouad Siniora takes a firmer position in favor of a complete
demilitarization of the area south of the Litani River, he risks losing his
credibility at the Security Council. But there is a good possibility that one
thing will change in the short term, namely Hizbullah's ability to raise and
lower the temperature in the border area. Nasrallah may be declaring victory,
but with hundreds of thousands of his coreligionists rebuilding their homes and
lives, Hizbullah's latitude to fire at Israel, and to do so amid a UN force
reflecting an international consensus, will be relatively small.
This
raises the question of whether Nasrallah will compensate by turning his
attention to the domestic front. If the secretary general is so keen to build
up a strong Lebanese state, presumably he intends to contribute to that effort
from a position of authority. So, is Nasrallah on the verge of taking that
authority, flush from his tactical triumphs in the South and motivated by an
understandable desire to draw attention away from the devastation inflicted on
the Shiite community since July 12?
If
the answer is yes, then we must consider the mechanism of a sudden accumulation
of greater power. This brings us back to a government of national unity. For
some time, the Aounists have regretted their decision to be an opposition party
in Parliament, without power. But what they have regretted more is that
Hizbullah has done nothing at all to bring them into the Siniora Cabinet. Now
this may change. If there is anything explaining Michel Aoun's fresh rabidness
against the government (in an Al-Akhbar interview, no less), it is that he
feels, apparently like Assad, that the time is ripe to do away with the present
government majority.
Nasrallah
may soon agree, insisting that Hizbullah, along with the Aounists and other
groups in the country, particularly those close to Syria, are entitled to more
ministerial portfolios. He could justify this on the grounds that Lebanon's
reconstruction demands national concord. Would Nasrallah succeed? Maybe not,
because Parliament would still need to vote confidence in a new government, and
the March 14 majority does not want to lose its dominance. But the pressure
could mount, so that the fallback position would be to grant Hizbullah and the
Aounists a third of Cabinet seats plus one, allowing them to block votes on
major policy. Lurking over this would be Hizbullah's militants, angry with the
majority and eager to build up a system defending the "resistance
option."
That's,
of course, just one scenario. There are those who will argue that Nasrallah is
more cornered than his coolness suggests. He may have declared a historic
victory, but Lebanon has already started focusing on the price of that victory,
whether in monetary terms or in terms of unemployment, emigration, opportunity
costs, investor confidence, and much else. Nasrallah's supporters might buy
into his rhetoric, but businessmen won't. With a debt of some $40 billion and
losses estimated at between $6 billion and $10 billion, for a GDP languishing
at just above $20 billion, the shadow of a general economic collapse remains
near.
Shiites
would suffer as much as anyone else from such a calamity - probably worse given
their current vulnerabilities. And the reality is that when international
donors or investors look to Lebanon, they don't feel particularly comfortable
with a political and paramilitary organization that announces its passion for
martyrdom; they look to those people that Nasrallah has criticized for failing
to adequately defend his choices: Siniora and the bland technocrats of the
Hariri-led reconstruction era. Whatever Nasrallah and Aoun think of this
reality, neither man has the credibility to put Lebanon on even a tolerable
economic footing.
So,
what did Nasrallah mean by a strong state? You have to imagine that he was in
part thinking of his "defensive plan," whereby Lebanon would
essentially ask Hizbullah to be a vanguard in facing down permanent Israeli
threats. But since that plan has gone nowhere, since it effectively brought
Israel back into Lebanon, Hizbullah must have a newer version in hand. But
would the Lebanese go along with seeing their languid Mediterranean playground
transformed into a somber garrison state?
That's
where Nasrallah must be more amenable to the odd psychology of Lebanese
society, all compromises and consensus and winks and nods. The Hizbullah leader
is no aficionado of this. As he remarked at a May 2003 rally, Lebanon needed
"great men and great leaders, not leaders of alleyways, of confessional
groups, of districts." But that's who Nasrallah will have to deal with if
he decides to transform the state into something stronger, and he'll have to
accept that many of his countrymen don't want a stronger state if it means
living in a gigantic Hizbullah barracks.
It
is doubtless time for everyone to be modest, both Nasrallah and his March 14
rivals. Lebanon will fall back into civil war before it accepts the hegemony of
one side over the other, before one side imposes its version of the state over
that of the others. One truth stands out, though: Lebanon can no longer afford
to be a playground for proxy wars, since what will emerge is not a stronger
state, but no state at all.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.
Copyright (c) 2006 The Daily Star
Sat, 19 Aug 2006 19:44:20 -0400 (Eastern
Daylight Time)
From: "Naim S. Mahlab"
<nsm@videotron.ca>
What is to stop Nasrallah from
asking his militia to Join the
Lebanese army?
The Hizballah fighters, wearing
Lebanese army uniforms, can stay south of the Litani and continue their action
against Israel.
Nasrallah has the funds, supplied by
Iran, to continue this operation. The Mullahs in Iran can afford to continue
their support of Hizballah, and to control the Shiite communities in both Iraq
and Lebanon. This way they can play havoc in the region until they achieve
their aim which , I think, is to destroy Iraq as a political entity, and to
dominate the Fertile Crescent.
The Sunni Arab countries better
watch this development.
Naim S. Mahlab