PLANK SEPTEMBER 20, 2012
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Hassan Nasrallah has always been more sophisticated than the caricatured nightmare featured in the breathless propaganda of Hezbollah’s many enemies. Even at his most noxious he usually managed to present himself as a man of principle. That’s why it was almost sad to see Nasrallah this week pandering like an old-time Arab despot to public anger over the misbegotten Prophet Mohammed YouTube clip.
“America, which uses the pretext of freedom of expression needs to understand that putting out the whole film will have very grave consequences around the world,” Nasrallah said at a Hezbollah rally on September 17, one of the exceedingly rare occasions on which he appeared in public since he went into hiding during the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon. Though the message sounds militant, it was actually just a flailing attempt to catch up to developments elsewhere in the region. Hezbollah, which used to set the Arab world’s trends, now finds itself forced to opportunistically jump on the latest global Islamist bandwagon.
In fact, Hezbollah’s embrace of the controversy over the video marks a final stage of its speedy evolution from revolutionary militant resistance movement to Machiavellian establishment power center. Lebanon’s Party of God once literally threw bombs at those who stood in the way of its ideology, attacking powerful enemies like America and Israel as well as smaller rivals at home. Today, Hezbollah represents the very sort of power it used to oppose. It dominates Lebanese politics as the majority party, choosing the prime minister; it commands a formidable standing army; its complicity in domestic political assassinations no longer is credibly debated; and it remains comfortable with its deep, compromised embrace of Bashar Al-Assad’s criminal regime in Syria.
There’s no mystery here: Hezbollah has become essentially conservative, fearful of the status of its political interests and financial and military networks. The very fact that Nasrallah felt compelled to risk emerging from his underground safe haven suggests that he fears very seriously for his organization’s future. It’s a remarkable change for a movement that was once confident in its ideological rigor and in its ability to earn unparalleled popular support in the region.
IN THE FIRST two decades of Nasrallah’s stewardship, Lebanon’s Party of God transformed itself from a potent but small militant group, best known for spectacular terrorist attacks, into the driver of the Axis of Resistance, crafting a widely appealing message of nationalism and fearless self-reliance built on an uncompromising opposition to Israel and the United States. Just two years ago, Nasrallah was still crowing about an open war with Israel and was still reaping the political benefit of being seen as the sole Arab leader to stand up to the U.S. and Israel.
Today, of course, his critical patron in Syria is teetering, threatening to vastly curtail Hezbollah’s military power, and his source of money and weapons in Iran is distracted by sanctions, a feeble economy and its nuclear showdown with the West. More importantly, the Arab world is awash in genuine retail politics. Indeed, what ultimately broke Hezbollah’s monopoly on popular legitimacy—what ultimately put the Axis of Resistance to rest as a meaningful political or ideological bloc in the Middle East—were the Arab revolts.
Like any establishment power with too much to lose, Hezbollah has kept a distance from uprisings that empower competitors. Still, there is no denying that those rivals have risen throughout the region; fire-breathers and populists have taken position all along the political spectrum from the Islamist right to the secular-anarchist left.
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood embraces many similar views to Hezbollah, without the call to violence and regional war. There are Salafi extremists running political parties, and there are secular nationalists who sound every bit as uncompromising as Hezbollah when it comes to Israel. To round out the picture, there are voices that oppose violence and endorse diplomacy and pluralistic electoral politics, again along all parts of the spectrum (although sadly, they form a minority). Even Hamas, one of the four pillars of the Axis, has quietly quit its alliance with Syria (and its reliance on Iranian money), gambling that a dignified and principled stand against Bashar Al-Assad will pay handsome long-term dividends in popularity and legitimacy.
Hezbollah, however, calculated that it had no such option. The Assad regime has long allowed Syria to serve as Hezbollah’s rear staging area. Weapons transit through the Damascus airport to Hezbollah training camps and depots. In times of war, trucks can ferry all manner of material into Lebanon from safe havens in Syria. Without Syria, Hezbollah could find itself isolated in the tiny confines of Lebanon, where about half the population detests Hezbollah and its project. For now, Hezbollah’s hard power is undiminished, but the future doesn’t look so secure for the Party of God.
And so, backed into a corner, Hezbollah has responded to the radical transformation of Arab politics much like American policy makers, improvising on an ad hoc basis. Hezbollah has doubled down on its anti-Israel and anti-American credentials, but has abandoned the more inclusive nationalistic part of its resistance credo that arguably propelled its meteoric rise and sustained power. Nasrallah used to unabashedly endorse any populist Arab movement that opposed dictatorship at home or Western ambitions abroad. Now, Hezbollah seems to pick and choose the occasions when justice matters: Yes for the Shia of Bahrain, less so for the citizens of Egypt, and not so much for the Sunnis of Syria. When Israel was occupying southern Lebanon or bombing its villages, and U.S.-backed tyrants were oppressing much of the region, the sense of a powerful, monolithic enemy united support behind Hezbollah. The new reality is patently more complex, with none of the old bugbears solely to blame for the Arab world’s woes. Without a villain, Hezbollah’s fundamental recipe for power and legitimacy loses its yeast.
Of course, Hezbollah has never become explicitly or exclusively sectarian. It has managed to maintain a tight, six-year alliance with Lebanon’s largest Christian party, Michael Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement. But this has never been an especially durable strategy. The contradictions are profound and irreconcilable. To some, Hezbollah is a pan-Arab guerilla front against Israel. To some it is a dogmatic Shia religious movement that sincerely embraces Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s theocratic theology. And to some, it is a shrewd and pragmatic political actor that knows how to make the trains run on time. Yet, it cannot be all of these things at once.
Hezbollah has never been free of such tensions and Nasrallah has always managed to masterfully hold the movement together despite them. As the disconnect has grown wider, however, the false narrative that Hezbollah uses to bridge the gap has grown ever more tenuous. It’s getting harder for even Hezbollah’s most committed supported to believe that Syria’s uprising is a foreign, American-backed plot to massacre innocents, create sectarian strife, and impose Israeli hegemony over the Levant. As the civil war next door spills ever more toxically across the border into Lebanon, claiming lives in Hezbollah’s neighborhoods, it has become impossible to maintain the charade of denial. As the nature of the Syrian regime’s brutality (and the cynicism with which Nasrallah has blessed it) begins to sink in, Hezbollah risks ending up looking more and more like a Shia sectarian movement, just another player in a polarized regional struggle.
If history is any guide, of course, Hezbollah will be nimble and adaptive, and use any circumstances possible to turn a bleak outlook to its advantage. Some holes, however, are too deep to climb out of. The fall of the House of Assad might be one of them. And, judging from his flailing, Nasrallah himself seems to know it.
Thanassis Cambanis is a fellow at The Century Foundation and author of A Privilege to Die. He is writing a book about efforts to create a new Egyptian order after Mubarak.
26 comments
hmm, I thought Nasrallah's appearance was to counter the Pope's amazing visit to Lebanon, trying to remind the world of the presence, and plight, of the Christians of the Middle East.
- K2K
September 21, 2012 at 8:13am
"... the caricatured nightmare featured in the breathless propaganda of Hezbollah’s many enemies." Is this article attempting to present Nassralah as a man persecuted and slandered by his "enemies' propaganda"? What's the meaning of this sentence?
- noga1
September 21, 2012 at 11:55am
This article is a de-facto lament for the great man.
- noga1
September 21, 2012 at 12:48pm
Thanassis Cambanis has now written about how the Palestinians will save the Syrian mess. Then he wrote how Gaza is to become independent from the Palestinian authority. Now he writes about Hezbollah loosing credibility in phase of the Arab spring. These artiCles are original for its ludicrous mediocrity and stupidity. TNR lost its top coverage of the Middle East when Martin Peretz left the magazine. Since then the ME coverage has been just terrible to worst. Now we are being threatened with Thanassis Cambanis writing a book about Egypt after Mubarak. Give us a break. Probably TNR will serialize such a book.
- JAIMECHUCH
September 21, 2012 at 3:48pm
K2K, malahat, noga1, jaime. Just got back from a Friday night party and thought to check the TNR. And you all are still here. It makes me feel good. Jaime, I agree, I do miss Peretz. Good night you'll.
- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD
September 21, 2012 at 8:26pm
Shana Tova, makover.
- noga1
September 21, 2012 at 8:30pm
I read this article as a political analysis deliberately attempting to take a stance of emotional distance and neutrality while evaluating an actor who's noxious, but also complicated and previously underestimated. The focus of the article is not on the ideological objectionability of Hezbollah, but the strategic and narrative bind they find themselves in. I see no reason for anger about this type of analysis, or the sentence objected to above, when taken in context. I feel this article did its job in helping me understand an aspect of the current middle east crisis more fully (and I don't have a bone in my body that's soft on Hezbollah or its founder).
- Curran1
September 21, 2012 at 9:01pm
hey makover (yeah, too late - I was paying my bills online using dial-up because I saw the headlines that Iran is cyber-attacking US banks) I have been wondering what Peretz is thinking these days - he has not published anything since his WSJ op-ed. Maybe Peretz will be an October surprise? or maybe not. I am going back to as little news as possible. maybe see y'all, maybe not, but will miss you know who you are !
- K2K
September 21, 2012 at 9:46pm
About 40 years ago I got into a heated discussion with an Arab friend about Jerusalem. He said the Arabs would never stop until they had Jeruslem - all of it. I argued that the UN had set the decision in place and other countries agreed. He said, "Dave, you don't understand the Arabs. We can wait a thousnd years!"
- ADROSSIN
September 22, 2012 at 9:36am
"Dave, you don't understand the Arabs. We can wait a thousnd years!" I would answer: "You don't understand Jews. We waited two thousand years".
- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD
September 22, 2012 at 9:51am
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/benny-morris-on-why-he-s-written-his-last-word-on-the-israel-arab-conflict.premium-1.465869 “The Palestinian national movement has remained unchanged, throughout the different periods of the struggle, whether under the leadership of Hajj Amin al-Husayni or his successor, Yasser Arafat,” says Morris with near-palpable disgust. “It did not even change during the years of the Oslo process. In the end, both sides of the Palestinian movement − the fundamentalists led by Hamas and the secular bloc led by Fatah − are interested in Muslim rule over all of Palestine, with no Jewish state and no partition.”
- noga1
September 22, 2012 at 6:53pm
thanks noga. am still reeling from reading how Islam views all of their Prophets. and why Jerusalem is not-negotiable to the Shi'a. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophets_in_Islam better company here :) see you later
- K2K
September 22, 2012 at 8:45pm
I'd point out that there is a tradition of leaders of militant and violent movements that have some kind of reasonably imaginable goal in view achieving that goal (or some of it), and then becoming political figures who give up violence in favor of regular politics. Channeling Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises, it would be pretty to think that Nasrallah could be one of them, but a movement that is so clearly a satrap of another country with a now collapsing dysfunctional system has major and possibly fatal problems. As Curran says, there is something useful in understanding the position of an enemy from the inside.
- ironyroad
September 23, 2012 at 2:50am
Uderstanding the enemy from the inside is one thing. Quite another when the one parleying AN understanding of the enemy opens his article with a sentence like "Hassan Nasrallah has always been more sophisticated than the caricatured nightmare featured in the breathless propaganda of Hezbollah’s many enemies." Who is Nassralah's chief enemy? Israel What "breathless propaganda" would that be, then? This? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGWhl_aolZo&feature=related Or this? http://photobucket.com/images/hezbollah%20nazi%20salute/ Or the evil of this? "Few innocent people have been tortured like the loved ones of the people murdered by Samir Kuntar, the Palestine Liberation Front monster convicted of a crime so brutal that even the designation terrorist is too good for him. This week, the loved ones will know that Kuntar will be feted to a hero's welcome staged by Hezbollah, whose claims to being a religious organization, stain the word religious with a level of sadism that is astonishing, reaching new levels with every gloat by the torture master who calls himself a spiritual leader, Hassan Nasrallah. But that will be only one aspect of the glee with which Hezbollah will likely take explicit pride and claim exultant victory. Not satisfied with keeping the families of kidnapped IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in the dark for two years as to their fate, a Lebanese report which appears to have been leaked by Hezbollah two days before the prisoner swap, stated that one of the soldiers had survived the kidnapping attack, but that the other was surely dead. Then, to torture the families further, the report refrained from revealing which of the two had been killed, or whether the other was still alive. But for sheer gratuitous sadism, the case of Samir Kuntar has few rivals. Consider the survivors of Kuntar's acts of murder. " (Of course in the end there were two coffins handed over).
- noga1
September 23, 2012 at 9:49am
http://www.haaretz.com/news/bradley-burston-the-pleasure-that-hezbollah-takes-in-torture-1.249790 "This week, the loved ones will know that Kuntar will be feted to a hero's welcome staged by Hezbollah, whose claims to being a religious organization, stain the word religious with a level of sadism that is astonishing, reaching new levels with every gloat by the torture master who calls himself a spiritual leader, Hassan Nasrallah. But that will be only one aspect of the glee with which Hezbollah will likely take explicit pride and claim exultant victory. Not satisfied with keeping the families of kidnapped IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in the dark for two years as to their fate, a Lebanese report which appears to have been leaked by Hezbollah two days before the prisoner swap, stated that one of the soldiers had survived the kidnapping attack, but that the other was surely dead. Then, to torture the families further, the report refrained from revealing which of the two had been killed, or whether the other was still alive. But for sheer gratuitous sadism, the case of Samir Kuntar has few rivals. Consider the survivors of Kuntar's acts of murder. " Of course at the end, two coffins were received. ____________ A article that provides an understanding of the enemy does not usually has embedded in it nuggets that attempt to not only humanize but also to glorify that enemy. Which is what this article is doing. What does an article like this do on the pages of the supposedly liberal, humanist TNR? How come we can now read fascistic adulation for an unredeemed evil Hitlerist on the pages of what used to be Marty Peretz's magazine? You know, the Marty Peretz YOU, ironyroad, accused of being a racist?
- noga1
September 23, 2012 at 10:10am
I'm just saying that the view from inside can be useful -- not that it's pleasant. I didn't say that Marty Peretz was a racist. I argued that on one occasion he used a descriptive frame for talking about Obama that had a clear predecessor in racist caricatures of African Americans going back more than a century and that I couldn't believe he was unaware of.
- ironyroad
September 23, 2012 at 12:28pm
ironyroad: I don't think I can understand what it is you wish to say. Do you find this article useful, DESPITE its author's obvious admiration for Nassralah? Do you think statements that humanize and glorify Nassralah have a legitimate place on the pages of a liberal magazine? I remember clearly what Marty wrote and what you had deduced from it. There was nothing in that statement that implied any racist stereotyping. To say that Obama needed to be taught by his generals has nothing even remotely racial/racist about it. It just doesn't. Still you went to a great deal of trouble insisting that racist allusion was deliberate and implicit in it. And yet you find nothing to complain about when a writer with an Arab name pays homage to an eliminationist, charismatic antisemitic Arab leader. I'm sorry if I can't help wonder whether the ethnicity of the names of the authors might have something to do with your hypersensitivity in the one case and the laissez-faire attitude in the other.
- noga1
September 23, 2012 at 1:25pm
such a dilemma - educated Americans relying on TNR.com2012 for insight into anything about Political Islam, of which Shi'a Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas are the prime examples. For the next time anyone cries over what is happening in Syria, without understanding who the opposition really is, and a bit about Hezbollah because they are supported by Iran and one key reason Syria is in a proxy war (and the USA seems allied with the Sunni patrons - Turkey and the GCC - at the expense of Syria's Christians, Kurds, and Druse), here is a very nuanced: "INTERVIEW "On Syria and way beyond" By Lars Schall "One of Europe’s most outstanding experts on the Middle East, Professor Guenter Meyer, addresses in this exclusive in-depth interview for Asia Times Online the Syrian civil war and its international dimensions. ..." (Copyright 2012 Lars Schall) http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NI22Ak01.html Certainly superior to ANYTHING to found at TNR.com
- K2K
September 23, 2012 at 4:16pm
Assuming the fact that one seldom finds the world always to one's taste, it's very USEFUL to try to grasp how an opposition force sees itself, in particular a very successful opposition. And yes, that indeed has a place in a politics journal that purports to cover world events from various perspectives -- in fact, if it refused the piece merely on the basis that Nasrallah is an evil Islamist and anti-semite, then TNR would be acting like a good-news-only in-house newsletter rather than a professional current affairs magazine. We obviously interpret the comments by MP on Obama different ways. In any case, I don't think he was/is a racist in any way.
- ironyroad
September 23, 2012 at 4:39pm
No one can understand today's Hezbollah, or Nasrallah, if they have never read "The Vanished Imam: Musa Al-Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon" (1986) by Fouad A. Ajami, [paraphrasing wiki] whose Shiite family had come to Arnoun, Lebanon from Tabriz, Iran in the 1850s.
- K2K
September 23, 2012 at 5:04pm
"Assuming the fact that one seldom finds the world always to one's taste, it's very USEFUL to try to grasp how an opposition force sees itself, in particular a very successful opposition. And yes, that indeed has a place in a politics journal that purports to cover world events from various perspectives " I have wonder if you EVER read my comments for what they say. Nowhere have I claimed that it's not "USEFUL to try to grasp how an opposition force sees itself, in particular a very successful opposition.". Why would I say something so stupid, Mr. ironyroad? But there is a substantially ethical difference between providing an analysis and explanation of such a success and writing as if the author is among the admirers of the leader of such "opposition". And that's why I puzzle the choice of TNR's editors to publish the piece as is. Imagine the editor of an academic journal in Religious Studies publishing an article that explains why Jesus must be seen as God's only begotten son. Not a detached view of the historical figure or his followers but a studious analysis of the gospels as proving Jesus' divinity. If TNR is a political magazine then let them publish political article that criticize and critique mass movements, not articles that lament how Nassralah's "enemies" malign him by their hateful propaganda.
- noga1
September 23, 2012 at 7:33pm
"And, unless there's something you know about the author that I don't, this is his analysis, not an account of how Hezbollah sees itself. (Though I'm sure the organization would be very happy with the completely gratuitous description of what a swell guy Nasrallah is, misunderstood, maligned, and so true to 'is principles and 'wot." malahat, unless I'm totally misreading this piece (and I take your point about it not technically being a self-analysis by Hizbollah), isn't it about Nasrallah NOT being "true to 'is principles and 'wot"? It seems to me to be a kind of swan song about how he failed to square the circle of unbending pro-Assad loyalty and claims to Lebanese nationalist populism: "The contradictions are profound and irreconcilable. To some, Hezbollah is a pan-Arab guerilla front against Israel. To some it is a dogmatic Shia religious movement that sincerely embraces Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s theocratic theology. And to some, it is a shrewd and pragmatic political actor that knows how to make the trains run on time. Yet, it cannot be all of these things at once." Unless you think that those comments are somehow unacceptable in the pages of TNR, then I'm not sure what kind of analysis of Nasrallah would not ask the question about contradictory aims. If your key point is that the piece does not share the Israeli view of Nasrallah, then I'd agree. But what to make of that? That TNR is becoming a vehicle for antisemitic demagoguery and cozying up to terrorism?
- ironyroad
September 23, 2012 at 7:41pm
"And yet you find nothing to complain about when a writer with an Arab name . . ." ?? I could be wrong but I read his name as Greek.
- ironyroad
September 23, 2012 at 7:45pm
one of the discordant notes is "...Of course, Hezbollah has never become explicitly or exclusively sectarian. It has managed to maintain a tight, six-year alliance with Lebanon’s largest Christian party, Michael Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement. ..." very misleading. Are there any Christians who are trusted Hezbollah members? No, it is a political coalition within the complex Lebanese factions since Hariri was blown up. Even Jumblatt has sort of "allied" with Hezbollah, yet that is never mentioned here. Perhaps the thought that political coalitions in Lebanon factor in whether one wants to be blown up in your car was somehow edited out?
- K2K
September 23, 2012 at 8:44pm
Yes, you are right. I confused him with the author on the Muslim "protests". It may not be cozying up to terrorists, ironyroad. Yet. But the premise in that first sentence cannot be denied. And that is puzzling. you know what they say, every journey begins with a first step. Such an opening sentence in a TNR journal may be harbinger of more to come.
- noga1
September 23, 2012 at 8:47pm
malahat -- all I was saying was that I think the piece is, when you come down to it, somewhat critical of Nasrallah rather than being a pure encomium. Noga -- what does strike me about this article upon third reading is how it is laboring to do something that is relatively unusual in TNR but more common in, say, the London Guardian or the like. Cambanis offers here a sort of "cooler-than-thou" journalism in which the author leaps balletically among various controversial positions and/or opposing forces, displaying both cozy familiarity and ironic detachment (e.g. I'm not afraid to get up close and personal with Nasrallah but having gotten there I will then couch my analysis in unforeseen terms by comparing Hizbollah to the U.S. hah! see you didn't expect that did you?) Just in passing, I wonder if this is also a peculiarity of Christian/secular journalism in the Middle East -- it reminds me a bit of that guy from the Beirut Daily Star who used to show up on Charlie Rose.
- ironyroad
September 24, 2012 at 11:39am