BEIRUT — As I watched Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah making his frequent television addresses in recent weeks, particularly his Monday night one, after the fighting had stopped earlier that day, he seemed to take on the veneer of a national leader rather than the head of one group in Lebanon’s rich mosaic of political parties. In tone and content, his remarks seemed like those that a president or prime minister should be making while addressing the nation after a terrible month of destruction and human suffering. His prominence is one of the important political repercussions of this war.
The intense interest of some politicians, foreign leaders and many journalists in “when and how Hizbullah will be disarmed” is understandable. Israel, the United States, others in Europe and in some quarters of Lebanon have stressed this issue for many months well before the war. But this focus is too narrow to be a useful peg for a full analysis of the political implications of this war. Hizbullah’s arms should be assessed in the wider domestic, regional and international context in which they exist and operate.
That context has been clarified by this war, which inflicted severe human and material damage on the two countries. Now its political ripples will be felt throughout the Middle East, and perhaps further afield. One of these is the prominence of non-state actors, such as Hizbullah, that act with more efficacy and, in some cases, more legitimacy than some governments in the Arab world.
The significant political fact is not only that such an organization has become very powerful in tandem with the formal Lebanese institutions of state, but also that it has in part provoked and single-handedly fought a war with a neighboring state — and emerged in rather good shape.
So, Nasrallah speaks to the nation after the fighting stops.
This has serious implications for the whole region, which I expect we will now witness in the form of sharper political polarization, already seen in Lebanon. This polarization will take several forms. The first is rising tension and greater competition in the Arab world between official governments and the non-state actors who have stepped into the void of credibility and impact that many Arab state institutions have forfeited in recent decades. Other like-minded movements in the Arab world will seek to emulate Hizbullah’s organizational and political prowess.
A parallel polarization that has crystallized in the past year, and has been a theme of some recent Nasrallah speeches, is between countries and political forces within the region that wage a regional cold war for the political identity of the Middle East. Syria and Iran, along with groups like Hizbullah, Hamas, the Moslem Brotherhood and others, are actively challenging the more conservative, often pro-Western states such as Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt. This contest will simmer for many years.
This is closely linked to a wider contest focused around American-led pressure on Iran to stop its plans to develop a full nuclear fuel cycle. The wider struggle beyond nuclear capability and Iran is about the ideological, social and economic orientation of the Middle East region. The Iranian-Syrian-Hizbullah-led camp sees itself fighting back against Israeli and American hegemony in the region, while the United States, closely allied with Israel, for its part speaks openly about creating a “new” Middle East of societies closely linked to Western values and interests.
Israel and its role in the region is integral to these strata of polarization, all of which intersect sharply in Lebanon — especially in Hizbullah’s multiple roles as a political party, anti-occupation resistance group, and Islamist movement that sees itself as part of a wider regional identity.
The brutality of the mutual attacks against mostly civilian urban centers during the war should be seen as a harbinger of the political intensity the region will witness in the years ahead. This may reveal itself sooner than we wish in the American-Iranian confrontation at the UN Security Council — while tensions and polarization define most other political trends in the region: internal Lebanese and Israeli politics, Israeli-Palestinian relations, and internal politics in Arab countries whose Islamist and other opposition movements will be emboldened by Hizbullah’s experience.
The strength and assertiveness of the Islamist movements — whether through military confrontation like Hizbullah or winning elections as in many other cases — is a sign that majorities of Arab citizens are not content to remain docile and dejected in the state of subjugation and defeat that has defined them for decades.
Israel and the United States have shown they are prepared to destroy an entire country to assert their interests if not also their dominance in this region. And many Arab states watched all this on television, and sent relief supplies when Israel gave them permission to do so.
This convergence of worldviews and behavior does not augur well for a stable, peaceful Middle East. What we just witnessed in Lebanon and Israel may have been a terrible foretaste of larger furies to come, unless more rational minds prevail and work to ensure, once and for all, the equal rights of Arabs, Israelis, Iranians and all others in this region.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 15 August 2006
Word Count: 854
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