When Syria erupted in 2011, the potential damage to Hezbollah
became immediately apparent. The downfall of President Bashar Assad and a tidy
win for the region’s Sunni powers and their American patron would not only have
denied the group geographic depth and logistical routes vital to its effectiveness
as Iran’s projection in the area, but it would also have located it, Shiite
force that it is, in a stretch of very hostile Sunni expanse.
At best, it was thought, Hezbollah, cut off and encircled,
would pragmatically turn definitively Lebanese and exclusively political; at
worst, it would resist, invite even further isolation and exposure and become
existentially vulnerable against its Sunni Syrian and Israeli neighbors. The
first scenario implied containment;
the second, military
defeat, possibly even elimination. Both betrayed a thirst for very neat outcomes
from a hopelessly messy Syrian situation.
That was then. But although it is very
clear by now that a clean victory in Syria—for any of the warring
parties—borders on the fantastical, thanks in part to the artfulness and tenacity
of Assad’s friends and dithering and incompetence of his enemies, most commentators
have yet to abandon their habitual predictions of gloom and doom for the Shiite
movement.
The argument that animates this prognosis is that Hezbollah’s
recent boldfaced plunge into the Syrian morass has shorn it of its nationalist credentials,
undermined its resistance against Israel and entangled it in a dangerous
Sunni-Shiite conflagration that is depleting its resources and encouraging Jihadist
wrath against its people. In short, the very raison d'être of the organization is now under threat, and
with it, Iran’s own strategic interests.
But such conjecture imagines the Syrian crisis wreaking havoc
only on Hezbollah’s plans, as if all holds still for its antagonists, when the
reality is that the past two years have scuttled everybody’s idea of a narrative
in the Levant. Pick through Hezbollah’s opponents one by one and you would be
picking through one-time possibilities that lie now in shambles: March 14,
hailed at birth as the “civil” coalition that engineered Syria’s ouster from
Lebanon in 2005; Saad Hariri, Saudi Arabia’s man and Lebanese Sunni zaim (boss);
the opposition in Syria…
You don’t have to be privy to members-only conversations or
strain yours ears too close to the ground to hear March 14’s leaders complain
about dire financial need, about Saudi chagrin with Hariri’s leadership and,
extraordinarily, about Hezbollah’s offers of support (many taken with thanks)
to cronies of a cash-strapped Hariri in critical cities like Tripoli.
Reliable whispers have it as well that Saudi fury with the fiascoes
of Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, head of intelligence and the man with the Syrian
and Lebanese files, has rendered
Lebanon unmentionable in the presence of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.
Among Bandar’s many bizarre tactics, none has been more unnerving--even to the
Kingdom’s keenest Lebanese allies--than his insistence on anointing the very
objectionable Samir Geagea (yes, that would be the war criminal) as President.
Such an interesting panorama, and we haven’t even touched on
the tensions that have begun to creep into the longstanding US-Saudi alliance as
the Obama and Rouhani administrations attempt a paradigm
shift in American-Iranian relations. It’s been a while since we’ve heard
Saudi Arabia rail
publicly against the US the way it has over the super power’s recent reticence
in Egypt and Syria. Moreover, I am not sure there is a word more accurate than panic
to describe Saudi reaction to an Iranian-American detente.
Mainstream
commentary here tends to obsess about how disappointed crucial allies, like Turkey,
Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are in a fickle and retrenching America. But more
consequential to the Middle East, frankly, is how unimpressed the US has been
with the delivery of these countries, especially on Syria. And should an over
burdened US be looking for regional stabilizers as it retreats, it would want,
in this post-uprising climate, to look beyond the Arab Gulf and, say, Egypt for
assistance. It is, of course too early in the day to declare a radical change
in US policy—there are just too many unknown variables and caveats. Suffice to
say, as Roger Cohen has helpfully offered,
one is hard pressed in the current turmoil to point to a regime more in command
of itself than the Iranian one.
The bottom line is that everybody’s in a sweat in the region. To
posit that Hezbollah could have done without the distractions and risks borne
out of its direct involvement in the Syrian debacle is to state the obvious. It
cannot feel too good to be fighting Sunni insurgents as the “great Satan” and
Israel look on with much gratitude. But in a environment that has turned virulently more
sectarian, Hezbollah’s Shiite constitution is actually more the boon than the
drawback conventional wisdom paints it.
In times when
Sunni extremists have become uncontrollably violent against minorities
from Pakistan to Iraq, it is of considerable comfort to Lebanese Shiites--including
those not particularly sold on Hezbollah’s agendas--that they have an army to
protect them. The suggestion that this army’s operations in the war raging next
door have needlessly drawn Jihadist vengeance against it and its followers is,
well, not credible in full view of unprovoked Sunni slaughter of Shiites in
places like Pakistan
and Afghanistan. Hezbollah has therefore had very little trouble convincing its
compatriots that Jihadists were sure to be heading for them even if the group
had opted for neutrality or non-interference in Syria.
The truth of the
matter is that when the Syrian uprising collapsed as a civil and national
project, so did Hezbollah’s own quandaries in having to side with brutality
against revolution.
This is a very nervous sectarian moment in the Middle East. But
as Toby Matthiesen pointed out in a recent piece
in Foreign Policy, “vicious
sectarian hate speech,” an enduring component of Arab politics, precedes
Syria’s bloodshed. Insisting that Iran and Hezbollah should have wisely retired
in silence to the sidelines of this Sunni-Shite conflict is to grossly underestimate
the role their Shiism plays in shaping their rejectionist axis. And while it is
indisputable that these two players have had to move Israel to the periphery of
their vision as they deal with Syria, the shift comes, in fact, as the last in
a series of adjustments.
Ponder this:
of the many conundrums that have beset Hezbollah since its inception in 1982,
none has been more intriguing than the paradox of retreat in victory. With the
stunning withdrawal of Israel in 2000 from Southern Lebanon came an avalanche
of unrelenting questions about the purpose of an exclusively Shiite arsenal.
With the robust performance against Israel in 2006 came devastation, the UNIFEL
and the Lebanese army as buffers on the Southern border--to boot, Hassan
Nassrallah’s famous had-I-Known apology.
With the 2008 whipping of West Beirut came the rude transformation of a
presumably noble resistance pointing its rifles outward into a militia thuggishly
using them inward.
Long before it crossed the borders to do battle for Assad,
Hezbollah had been contending with the burdens that came with too many
identities to match too much ambition by a formidable political party-cum-social
movement-cum-resistance-cum-army based in an embarrassingly silly state
pretending to represent a flagrantly sectarian country.
Considering these
herculean responsibilities and the lamentable state of its nemeses in this
marvel of a Mediterranean enclave, I would hazard that the Party of God is
fairing much better than most of us are willing to concede.
Happy Eid!
