Rory writes in today's Sunday Independent on the crisis in Lebanon. He points out they play three roles - fighting Israel, pushing for an Islamic Republic on the Iranian model in Lebanon - albeit now relying more on demographic changes, and as an asset of the Iranian state, which gives it some $100m a year, its missiles and even the military personnel to operate them.
The neutralisation of Hizbollah as the foremost instrument of Iran's imperialist ambitions in the region can hardly be a bad thing. In particular, a weakened Hizbollah would be less able to achieve its goal (first set out in 1985) of creating an Islamic republic in Lebanon as a stepping stone to the establishment of the worldwide caliphate.
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Perhaps most importantly for the West, a weakened Hizbollah would mean a weakened global Islamist terror network. By the mid-Nineties, when al-Qaeda was only commencing its global terror operations, Hizbollah, at times in partnership with its Iranian patron, had already claimed responsibility for attacks in Ankara, Turkey, against the Saudi military attache in the city and in Brussels, where it assassinated the Saudi-born Imam of a local mosque for his perceived refusal to condemn Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses (1989), as well as in Tehran against the French Embassy and Air France offices (1993).
It was also responsible for the two car bomb attacks in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that destroyed the Israeli embassy, killing 29 (1992), and the Israeli-Argentine Mutual Association, or AMIA, that killed 100 and wounded more than 200 (1994).
Also, in the meantime, I'm hoping that Michael Young, who has been contributing some unmissable copy, such as this piece in Slate, will be safe.
I lived through Israel's appalling siege of West Beirut in the summer of 1982, and this latest round is more bearable but also much more alarming. Bearable, because in most parts of the country the lights are still on, there is water, and one can still find fresh food, gasoline, and can even sleep. During the West Beirut siege, the inhabitants had virtually none of this, even as the Israelis bombed the city at will.
But this time, the attacks are also more alarming, because they are not limited, as they were then, to a sector of the capital. All of Lebanon is a target; all access roads, airports, and ports have been blocked or are in constant danger of being attacked, and a much larger swath of civilians are in danger. According to eyewitnesses in southern Lebanon, including journalist friends of mine, the destruction of villages is the worst they've ever seen—both intense and systematic—and it's not Hezbollah that is usually on the receiving end of the ordnance, it is civilians. Much the same is taking place away from the cameras in the northern Beqaa Valley, another majority-Shiite area. As for the Hezbollah stronghold in the Haret Hreik quarter of Beirut's southern suburbs, it has been reduced to dust. While this may have made it a legitimate objective, the suburbs have probably the highest concentration of inhabitants in Beirut, and virtually everybody has fled.
Michael's view from the ground is that international intervention would struggle to do any better than the current UNIFIL force to disarm Hezbollah.
But this plan will go nowhere if Hezbollah retains its weapons and can fire its rockets against Israel while hiding behind the international peacekeepers. Prime Minister Siniora, and probably much of the international community, is said to want a much more solid arrangement that involves Hezbollah's demilitarization.
Nothing yet compels the party to accept. Its fighting capacity seems largely intact, despite Israeli claims to the contrary. Many Lebanese are fed up with Hezbollah but know it holds the guns. Between Hezbollah and the Israelis, people say, one thing is certain: Lebanon is in for prolonged instability. Then they mention the rock in their stomach.
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