As storm clouds gather over Tehran and Washington, one of Iran's closest friends, Hizbollah, stands in the international spotlight. Hizbollah ('Party of God') emerged from a radical Shi'a social movement during the Lebanese civil war and earned a permanent place in the United States' annual list of terrorist organisations when one of its precursor militias sent suicide bombers to the US military barracks in Beirut in 1983. Its military wing Islamic Resistance fought the Israelis in South Lebanon, with the assistance of Syria and Iran. Since the conflict's end in 1990, and particularly since the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000, Hizbollah's continued possession of an indeterminate number of Fajr 3, Fajr 5 and Katyusha rockets has provided a headache for Lebanese politicians, an affront to American sensibilities, an obstacle to Israeli power in the region, and an invaluable source of leverage for its sponsors.
US policy on Hizbollah oscillates between active intolerance and wariness. Intolerance is currently in the ascendancy. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert arrived in Washington on Sunday, intending to talk to US president George Bush about, among other things, Hizbollah's links with Iran. Earlier this month a former head of Israeli military intelligence warned that Iran was likely to respond to a military attack by unleashing Hizbollah's force on northern Israel, a concern emphasised by a recent Israeli Defence Forces military exercise on the border to test "operational readiness".
In New York the US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has expressed disappointment that a draft security council resolution on Lebanon tabled last week did not mention Hizbollah's disarmament more explicitly. In Lebanon itself heavyweight figures have begun openly to oppose the Islamic Resistance. "Hizbollah must disarm now," Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said recently in an interview. "No more excuses."
But despite the obvious temptations of siding with Jumblatt, international policymakers are finding that the hard-line approach is a blunt tool. Hizbollah is now a mainstream political party with a minister in the cabinet. It commands considerable respect across all sections of Lebanese society for its successful campaign against Israel, and it has forged an effective, if incongruous, political coalition opposed to calls for its disarmament. Reflecting the reduced but still powerful influence of Syria, the coalition has forcefully linked the disarmament demand with Iraq and Palestine, portraying it as part of a pattern of western 'imperialism' in the middle east. Thus the louder the calls for Hizbollah's disarmament, the more entrenched the opposition becomes.
That Hizbollah has been able to do this is testament to the pragmatism of its secretary general, Sheikh Nasrallah. Throughout the nineties Hizbollah's military activities took place for the most part within a set of 'red lines' agreed with the Lebanese government. For the resistance to be effective it had to be seen to serve Lebanon's interest at least as much as those of its sponsors. A concerted public relations campaign, aided by the launch of a Hizbollah TV station, al-Manar, sought to establish the Party of God as a national liberation movement, not a Shi'ite militia. Such was the success of this strategy that the then prime minister Rafik Hariri remarked in 1996 that to oppose the resistance would be "political suicide".
Also on Hezbollah and Lebanon in openDemocracy:
Paul Rogers, "Hizbollah's warning flight"
(May 2005)
Zaid Al-Ali, "Lebanon's pre-election hangover" (May 2005)
Hazem Saghieh, "Lebanon's election, no solution" (June 2005)
Alex Klaushofer, "After Syria" (October 2005)
Hazem Saghieh, "Syria and Lebanon: keeping it in the family", (December 2005)
When Hizbollah first stood for elections in 1992, which in Lebanon's complex multiconfessional system meant sharing a slate with Christian, Druze and Sunni candidates, its previously stated goal of creating an Islamic republic in Lebanon was tactfully side-stepped. Instead, Nasrallah declared "a pillar of our movement is the need to respect others, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, and to forge relations with them".
A lot of Hizbollah's political support comes from its provision of basic social services in the Shi'a heartlands, much of which is underwritten by Iranian subsidies. This goes beyond ostentatious displays of generosity: Hizbollah transports about three hundred tonnes of rubbish every day out of the Shi'ite suburbs of Beirut. Hizbollah's high quality and affordable schools and hospitals in South Lebanon are attended by many Christians.
The real threat to Hizbollah does not therefore come from western attempts to "take them down", as former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage once put it. It comes from Lebanese calls for their demands to be met. Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora, an ally of Hariri and, in the current political configurations, part of the 'pro-west' alliance, came to London earlier this month to, in his words, "ask Tony Blair to ... put the necessary pressure on Israel to withdraw from Shebaa farms".
Since the Israeli army's withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000, Hizbollah has continued to fight Israel in the Shebaa farms, a twenty-five square kilometre strip of land which both Syria and Lebanon claim to be Lebanese, but which the UN classifies as Syrian, and therefore not covered by Resolution 425 calling for complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
Despite or perhaps because of its importance, the Shebaa farms issue has long been a diplomatic dead-end. However, under the direction of Special Envoy Terje Larsen, the UN has shown willingness to reconsider the issue. Siniora sat down with Larsen in New York last month and discussed what was needed for the Shebaa farms to be reclassified as Lebanon. The main requirement is for Syria to show the UN maps relating to the period, which it has so far been reluctant to do, preferring the ambiguity. But as investigations continue into Syria's role in the Hariri assasination, cooperation on border demarcation could become a card worth playing.
The question remains as to whether the US would put pressure on Israel to withdraw. US policymakers still have a tendency to regard Hizbollah with certain hysteria. Olmert himself is said to be open to the idea, but has to weigh up the uncertain benefits of withdrawal against the political fall-out from his West Bank disengagement. Nonetheless a UN diplomat involved in the negotiations says that there is a "real chance" of movement on the Shebaa farms issue.
What would happen to the 'Party of God' if Israel withdrew from Shebaa farms? Some claim that it would simply pour through early twentieth century territorial commissions to discover some other disputed piece of occupied land to justify keeping its arsenal. But the continuation of armed struggle has been dependent on Lebanese public opinion as much as on legal technicalities, and such a strategy would win Hizbollah few friends outside of the Shi'ite South. The most likely scenario would be for the group to retain some of its arsenal, but under a symbolic integration into the Lebanese army.
Resistance to Israel is the ideological glue that has kept Hizbollah's pragmatists and hard-liners together all these years, and some believe that Nasrallah would step up the policy announced in 2000 of "greater interference" in the Palestinian intifada. Again though, the extent and nature of this 'interference' would have to be within the limits of what Lebanese public opinion would tolerate.
Deprived of military leverage, Iran might cut back on funding for Hizbollah's social programmes. But according to Hizbollah expert Judith Harik, poverty amongst the Lebanese Shi'a is so dire that even with reduced funding "the more modest services that the Party of God could provide would continue to serve its religious and political goals".
Could Hizbollah then return to its roots as a social justice movement? It seems implausible, but since its explosive arrival on the scene in the 1980s it has displayed a protean ability to reinvent itself and adapt to the times. Fortunately for the hard-liners however, US grandstanding means that their rockets won't be converted into refuse trucks for a while yet.
