"...On July 12, 2006, highly-trained Hezbollah militants managed to kill several Israeli soldiers and kidnap two others in a carefully coordinated raid into Israel near the Lebanese village of Ayta ash-Shabb...... Hezbollah's actions on July 12 were to have serious implications for Lebanon and its citizens. ... Israel took its frustration out on the rest of Lebanon,
Subnational actors like Hezbollah represent a challenge to the international order as well as the states in which they operate. In Lebanon, Hezbollah today functions less as a proxy for Iran and Syria and more as an independent actor retaining the right to pursue a foreign policy agenda independent of the Lebanese state. The fact that Hezbollah retains the right to use force to pursue that agenda is what makes Hezbollah so dangerous to stability in the Levant and so challenging for policy-makers in Beirut, Jerusalem, and Washington.
To a large degree, Hezbollah must be understood from within the unique social, political and historical context of Lebanon in which it arose. For that reason, the "Hezbollah model" cannot be easily exported -- even to places such as the Palestinian Territories or Iraq. The fighting of 2009 in Gaza, for example, served to demonstrate that Hamas -- despite being founded shortly after Hezbollah -- continues to lag behind Hezbollah in its competence in combat operations, information operations, and even the provision of essential services.
Hezbollah: Origins and Early Development
Hezbollah is an organization born in the 1980s out of three largely unrelated phenomena: the Shiite political awakening in Lebanon, the Iranian Revolution, and the Israeli invasion of 1982.
The Shiite Awakening. Hezbollah inherited a political movement that had begun two decades prior to the founding of the organization. Traditionally, the Shiites of Lebanon were the national underclass -- the 'hewers of wood and the drawers of water for the other Lebanese communities'.Poorly educated, poorly organized, and pushed to regions of Lebanon far removed from the capital, ..... but what is certain is that by the 1960s, a combination of high birthrates and lower rates of immigration relative to Lebanon's other sects combined to make the Shiites a politically underrepresented sect.
In the 1960s and 1970s, however, the Shiite underclass of Lebanon was shaken out of its political stasis by two influential clerics, Musa al-Sadr and Mohamed Hussein Fadlallah. Both al-Sadr and Fadlallah -- but especially the charismatic al-Sadr -- started a process of community organizing among the Shiite community that went beyond the more traditional family-based charities and feudalism ....Al-Sadr founded a militia and a political organization, the Higher Shia Council, that began to force Beirut to take the Shiite community seriously as a unified political force...The militia he founded, Amal, continued to dominate Shiite affairs until the late 1980s when it was supplanted by Hezbollah...
It was only a matter of time, then, that Iran's religio-political evangelism began to be felt in the two countries in the Middle East containing large Shiite populations: Iraq and Lebanon. With Iraq, Iran engaged in a vicious eight-year war that proved disastrous for both sides. In a Lebanon already wracked by civil war, however, the revolution found more fertile ground. ....Hassan Nasrallah similarly notes the influence of Baqir al-Sadr on himself and hisown mentor, Abbas Moussawi. ......
The Israeli Invasion of 1982. While the political awakening of Lebanon's Shiite population and the Islamic Revolution in Iran helped to set the conditions for the rise of militant political Islam in Lebanon, Israel's 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon was the force which ultimately gave Hezbollah its meaning. .......
According to Hezbollah's deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem, the organization at its genesis was rooted in three "pivotal objectives":
1. Islam is the comprehensive, complete and appropriate program for a better life. It is the intellectual, religious, ideological and practical foundation for the proposed organization.
2. Resistance against the Israeli occupation, which is a danger to both the present and future, received ultimate confrontation priority given the anticipated effects of such occupation on Lebanon and region. This necessitates the creation of a jihad (holy war) structure that should further this obligation, and in favor of which all capabilities are to be employed.
3. The legitimate leadership is designated to the Jurist-Theologian who is considered to be the successor of the Prophet and the Imams (PBUT). .....
The last of these three core beliefs upon which Hezbollah was to be built as an organization reflects the organization's allegiance to Khomeini's Iran. But, according to Qassem, the second of the pillars -- Hezbollah's resistance against Israel -- was to be the most important function individuals within the organization were to carry out.....
Hezbollah Today
Today, Hezbollah is the most powerful political party in Lebanon. It has no serious political rival within the Shiite community of Lebanon and continues to receive both financial support from the Shiite expatriate community as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran. To the degree to which legitimacy is defined as convincing one's constituents that existing institutions are the most appropriate for society, Hezbollah can be said to enjoy more legitimacy than most other Lebanese political parties. Hezbollah provides a powerful political voice for an underprivileged community and also provides an impressive array of social services to its constituency. ...
Much has been made of the question as to whether or not Hezbollah could ever disarm.Hezbollah's leadership has made it clear, time and time again, that Hezbollah is first and foremost a resistance organization dedicated to continued conflict (Exum seems to expeditiously conclude this) with the State of Israel...... "The Resistance is Hezbollah and Hezbollah is the Resistance......"
There is little reason to believe that addressing territorial issues -- such as Israel returning the disputed Shebaa Farms region to Lebanon -- will lead Hezbollah to disarm. Conversations and interviews with Hezbollah supporters following the 2006 war revealed the degree to which Hezbollah's supporters consider the organization's arms necessary to not only defend Lebanon from Israel, but also to defend the hard-won political rights of Lebanon's Shiites.
For the supporters of Hezbollah and its political allies, the actions of May 2008 were seen as necessary and just. For Lebanese opposed to Hezbollah, meanwhile, the myth of Hezbollah as a national defender was shattered.... It will be very difficult for Hezbollah to ever again convince Lebanese outside their natural constituency that Hezbollah's arms are not as much a threat to Lebanon as they are to Israel....
The danger of creating a "society of resistance," though, is that one might succeed. It is hard to imagine even a leader as charismatic as Hassan Nasrallah gathering his young followers -- many of whom joined Hezbollah's military ranks as true believers in the righteousness of their struggle against Israel -- and ordering them to lay down their arms. And so Hezbollah has created a situation by which they are held hostage by the dreams of their own constituency. It may be in the interests of Hezbollah to someday abandon its armed mission and endorse a Lebanese or Syrian peace with Israel. Whether their own militarized constituency will accept that is hard to predict.
Challenges to Policymakers
Unfortunately, there is little that policy-makers in Jerusalem, Paris, or Washington can do to lessen Hezbollah's influence and power in the short-term. Supporting alternatives to Hezbollah in the Shiite community of Lebanon is a generational effort, and a return to the old class of notables who still presume to represent the interests of Lebanon's Shiites would not be accepted by the newly politicized community. (Many of those are coached and/or courted by Washington) Israel's adventures in southern Lebanon and Gaza have demonstrated that while the armies of nation-states can certainly cause pain and suffering, they cannot break the political hold enjoyed by non-state actors like Hezbollah and Hamas. Often, external military intervention only serves to increase the popular support of such groups.
Hezbollah's strength also poses other problems for the United States as it seeks to strengthen the Lebanese state. On the one hand, U.S. defense officials would like to increase the amount of military aid given to the Lebanese Army. Building up the security institutions of the state are seen as a way to gradually undermine Hezbollah's raison d'être and strengthen the state at the expense of sub-national actors. But the U.S. Congress and supporters of Israel are wary that any advanced weaponry might affect Israel's qualitative military edge over Lebanon or, worse, could wind up in the hands of Hezbollah......
Hezbollah, however, faces problems of its own. Again, its use of force to achieve short term gains in Lebanon will have long term consequences for any efforts to broaden its support beyond its natural constituency. And some observers argue that Hezbollah -- the longer it participates in the notoriously corrupting government in Beirut -- will eventually look a lot more like any other Lebanese party than it does today.
The big challenge for Hezbollah, though, remains its resistance mission. A peace deal between Syria and Israel, or a "grand bargain" between Tehran and Washington, would leave Hezbollah and Hamas as the two biggest losers. So Hezbollah has an interest in spoiling either. The days when Hezbollah can justify its arms in the face of an Israeli threat, though, might be more numbered than Hassan Nasrallah would like to admit. (if ...only the two icons above, materialize!)
2. Resistance against the Israeli occupation, which is a danger to both the present and future, received ultimate confrontation priority given the anticipated effects of such occupation on Lebanon and region. This necessitates the creation of a jihad (holy war) structure that should further this obligation, and in favor of which all capabilities are to be employed.
3. The legitimate leadership is designated to the Jurist-Theologian who is considered to be the successor of the Prophet and the Imams (PBUT). .....
The last of these three core beliefs upon which Hezbollah was to be built as an organization reflects the organization's allegiance to Khomeini's Iran. But, according to Qassem, the second of the pillars -- Hezbollah's resistance against Israel -- was to be the most important function individuals within the organization were to carry out.....
Hezbollah Today
Today, Hezbollah is the most powerful political party in Lebanon. It has no serious political rival within the Shiite community of Lebanon and continues to receive both financial support from the Shiite expatriate community as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran. To the degree to which legitimacy is defined as convincing one's constituents that existing institutions are the most appropriate for society, Hezbollah can be said to enjoy more legitimacy than most other Lebanese political parties. Hezbollah provides a powerful political voice for an underprivileged community and also provides an impressive array of social services to its constituency. ...
Much has been made of the question as to whether or not Hezbollah could ever disarm.Hezbollah's leadership has made it clear, time and time again, that Hezbollah is first and foremost a resistance organization dedicated to continued conflict (Exum seems to expeditiously conclude this) with the State of Israel...... "The Resistance is Hezbollah and Hezbollah is the Resistance......"
There is little reason to believe that addressing territorial issues -- such as Israel returning the disputed Shebaa Farms region to Lebanon -- will lead Hezbollah to disarm. Conversations and interviews with Hezbollah supporters following the 2006 war revealed the degree to which Hezbollah's supporters consider the organization's arms necessary to not only defend Lebanon from Israel, but also to defend the hard-won political rights of Lebanon's Shiites.
For the supporters of Hezbollah and its political allies, the actions of May 2008 were seen as necessary and just. For Lebanese opposed to Hezbollah, meanwhile, the myth of Hezbollah as a national defender was shattered.... It will be very difficult for Hezbollah to ever again convince Lebanese outside their natural constituency that Hezbollah's arms are not as much a threat to Lebanon as they are to Israel....
The danger of creating a "society of resistance," though, is that one might succeed. It is hard to imagine even a leader as charismatic as Hassan Nasrallah gathering his young followers -- many of whom joined Hezbollah's military ranks as true believers in the righteousness of their struggle against Israel -- and ordering them to lay down their arms. And so Hezbollah has created a situation by which they are held hostage by the dreams of their own constituency. It may be in the interests of Hezbollah to someday abandon its armed mission and endorse a Lebanese or Syrian peace with Israel. Whether their own militarized constituency will accept that is hard to predict.
Challenges to Policymakers
Unfortunately, there is little that policy-makers in Jerusalem, Paris, or Washington can do to lessen Hezbollah's influence and power in the short-term. Supporting alternatives to Hezbollah in the Shiite community of Lebanon is a generational effort, and a return to the old class of notables who still presume to represent the interests of Lebanon's Shiites would not be accepted by the newly politicized community. (Many of those are coached and/or courted by Washington) Israel's adventures in southern Lebanon and Gaza have demonstrated that while the armies of nation-states can certainly cause pain and suffering, they cannot break the political hold enjoyed by non-state actors like Hezbollah and Hamas. Often, external military intervention only serves to increase the popular support of such groups.
Hezbollah's strength also poses other problems for the United States as it seeks to strengthen the Lebanese state. On the one hand, U.S. defense officials would like to increase the amount of military aid given to the Lebanese Army. Building up the security institutions of the state are seen as a way to gradually undermine Hezbollah's raison d'être and strengthen the state at the expense of sub-national actors. But the U.S. Congress and supporters of Israel are wary that any advanced weaponry might affect Israel's qualitative military edge over Lebanon or, worse, could wind up in the hands of Hezbollah......
Hezbollah, however, faces problems of its own. Again, its use of force to achieve short term gains in Lebanon will have long term consequences for any efforts to broaden its support beyond its natural constituency. And some observers argue that Hezbollah -- the longer it participates in the notoriously corrupting government in Beirut -- will eventually look a lot more like any other Lebanese party than it does today.
The big challenge for Hezbollah, though, remains its resistance mission. A peace deal between Syria and Israel, or a "grand bargain" between Tehran and Washington, would leave Hezbollah and Hamas as the two biggest losers. So Hezbollah has an interest in spoiling either. The days when Hezbollah can justify its arms in the face of an Israeli threat, though, might be more numbered than Hassan Nasrallah would like to admit. (if ...only the two icons above, materialize!)
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