Hizbullah has overplayed its hand
By Michael Young -Daily
Star staff
Thursday, December 07, 2006
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.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
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.