Patrick Haenni of the International Crisis Group (ICG) talks to NOW Lebanon about the IGC’s latest report, penned by Haenni, on Hezbollah. The ICG is an NGO that conducts field-based research and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts. 

NOW Lebanon: Can you tell us more about the IGC’s latest report?

Haenni: The report is very inward-orientated. Most of the field work was done on the ground among the Shia. We are really focusing on Hezbollah among the Shia first, then on Hezbollah in the internal political game, and Hezbollah and the state…

[The aim of the report is to] help us understand what is going on inside Lebanon. So our first point was: what’s the state of Hezbollah among the Shia [after last summer’s war]? The answer was very quick. At a huge level, all the Shia are with Hezbollah... At the level of the street and the leadership, people support Hezbollah as Shia, of course. [They also support] the four major Shia forces of Hezbollah, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the High Shia Council and Amal.

The important thing is not that everyone is with Hezbollah, but that the Shia population sticks with Hezbollah because of the weapons. This is a very tricky thing. All the discourse on social marginalization is not working anymore. People were [no longer] identifying themselves as marginalized or as poor. They now identify themselves as a political target. On the ground there was a switch in the definition of the Shia identity from a class-based identity to a more political one. And of course identifying yourself as a target, whether the enemy is Israel, America or the Sunnis, pushes you toward weapons. I think that [the weapons] are very important in terms of a solution because we consider the weapons to be a big problem; not because they are a challenge to the supremacy of the state but because [they are] fueling sectarian tensions.

There is a discourse going on [about] whether Hezbollah can recruit beyond the Shia. This is a crucial issue and this is [Hezbollah’s] weak point now. Hezbollah does not want to be considered a Shia force for the very simple reason that they believe this will lead to fitna [internal division]. How do you avoid fitna? You have to make deals or alliances with others. The strongest non-Shia alliance was based on ideological grounds with the Sunni Islamists, specifically al-Jamaa al-Islamiya. What is going on with this relationship now explains a lot [about] what is going on [on the Lebanese political scene]. Al-Jamaa al-Islamiya switched from an ideological point of view to a confessional point of view in terms of how they view Hezbollah now. During the [civil] war it was not like that at all. Al-Jamaa al-Islamiya was destroyed directly after the [2006] war… because of several reasons: the pro-Syrian stance of Hezbollah and more Sunni issues, like settling downtown with the tents, making huge demonstrations and entering into West Beirut -- a Sunni stronghold, according to al-Jamaa al-Islamiya. Basically there were a lot of tensions, and Hezbollah lost the Sunni militants, and so there were no longer the trans-confessional militant actors anymore. Hezbollah does not like this. Why? Because Hezbollah can no longer recruit the Sunnis at the same level as its main-stream competitors. Basically they lost influence.

What is left is the Christians and Michael Aoun. The relationship works and it is pretty strong. Very strangely, it works very well for Hezbollah because… Aoun is showing the agreement [they made] to the foreigners and saying this is the political process that is going to realize UN Resolution 1559. Hezbollah, at the same time, is saying to their people, “look we have these Christians that are ready to give legitimacy to our weapons because [the agreement] states that the Lebanese have the right to defend themselves.” For Aoun, this is a very weak statement. He was very supportive during the war last year at the political and social level, and he got nothing in return. Where is the political process [that will] develop UN Resolution 1559? Basically, there is none. So you still have this pending relation with the Christians, but it is very tricky for Hezbollah now because it puts them in a contradiction. They have to be supportive of Aoun; they desperately need him because if they lost him they would be a purely Shia force, and they cannot accept that. At the same time, they say they want a consensual president because they think in terms of consensus... The argument for consensus can always give to the minority the possibility to block the majority, which is crucial for Hezbollah now that they have lost their foreign cover since the withdrawal of the Syrians.

This brings us to [internal] politics. In [2005], Hezbollah realized that they had [to be internally involved to a greater extent], but the issue was still to secure their weapons. However, with things going on on the ground -- especially the military situation -- it is more than that. Hezbollah has a real interest in making the state part of its global project.

(…)

Now Hezbollah has a big problem. The South front is closed -- this is the International Crisis Group’s point of view -- not because you have UNIFIL or the army, but because the Shia would not have any place to go if there [is] a round two. So they will be stuck on this course due to the confessional and political tensions that are there. They are repositioning themselves now as a defense force much more than as a resistance force, putting their big weaponry north of the Litani, training in the Bekaa and withdrawing a little bit from the border with Israel.

The problem is that the Muqawama [resistance] will have feasibility only in a state of open war, so the idea of sending a message through the Muqawama… will not work anymore. How do you send messages if you are not visible? This means that Hezbollah will not give up the issue of the state. The issue is not to topple the government or to put in an Islamic state, even though certainly they would like it. They are real politicians, and this would be detrimental to the project of the resistance because you would have everyone against you, and Hezbollah does not want that. They have been very careful, not because they are moderates, but because they take into consideration the confessional equation on the ground. Hezbollah’s argument was to say, “We need the state, and we cannot wait until the elections, so we will go through street politics.” The problem with street politics is that it is confessional politics. This is the big dilemma for Hezbollah now. On one side they need part of the government, and on the other side the way to achieve this pushes the country towards confessionalism… So basically what happened is that after January, Hezbollah lost all political initiative, while before they were very pushy.

NOW: Have the opposition camps downtown been seen as a failure by Hezbollah?

Haenni: They recognized they failed. Well, they say that March 14 were too stubborn… I remember one saying, “I give [the government] three days [before they are removed].” The demonstrations, the sit-in and the general strike had a process of gradual escalation, and everything was stopped in January. The point is that Hezbollah is very strong in analyzing regional political equations, but was really underestimating the power of its adversaries locally. Hezbollah underestimated the level of popularity of March 14. They were saying that they were hugely popular and would prove that the others were not. And Hezbollah is definitely very popular, but so are the others. What do you do with a situation like this? There are two crucial issues: firstly, the weapons -- basically Hezbollah’s weapons, but also the weapons of the others, and secondly, confessionalism. Our argument with the weapons is that if you are too pushy on the issue and take an aggressive stance verbally or through strategies such as shutting the Syrian borders, the result is that all the Shia will stick to Hezbollah much more closely than before because they will be fearful. You really have to understand that the people on both sides live in an atmosphere of fear. Going aggressively for the weapons will just create fear among the Shia, [however] not doing anything about the weapons of Hezbollah will fuel the fears of the others. The only middle point that you can adopt is… to find a formula [for] developing accountability and limitations in the use of the weapons of the resistance. In other words, work on the terms of the rules of engagement. At this level we have the lever of the bayan wizari [a ministerial statement] in which the government gave the resistance legitimacy to act in order to free the prisoners and Shebaa Farms. But I think this statement was so unclear and gives Hezbollah the total liberation to act. So the deal would be to make the statement far clearer, for example, giving Hezbollah the right to exist as the Muqawama, but without use of weapons beyond the blue line, or letting them use weapons only in terms of reaction, but not… if there is a regional conflict.

Of course the big fear now is what will happen if there is a war on Syria or Iran. Will Hezbollah stay quiet? There is a feeling they won’t be quiet. The bayan wizari is important because if… [they] go beyond the rules of engagement, the costs are going to be heavy. [Hezbollah would] directly lose the support of Aoun because it would be too much for him, and [they would] lose a few of the Shia as well.

It’s true that there is a tremendous amount of support for Hezbollah now, but for a lot of people it is a very careful support. The Shia also fear the Islamic agenda, as well. There is a need to push Hezbollah to give guarantees that it won’t be more than it asserts to itself to be. If they are only – as they say -- a defensive force, that is perfect. The issue is to push Hezbollah’s legitimacy on political grounds much more than on military [grounds], and for that you need a state of peace. That would be a big word in Lebanon, truce.