A Victory for Islamism?: The Second Lebanon War and Its Repercussions

A Victory for Islamism?: The Second Lebanon War and Its Repercussions

Executive Summary

This study, translated from the original Swedish,
examines the international community’s long
series of failures in Lebanon between the May 2000
Israeli withdrawal and the 2006 war with Hizballah—
failures caused primarily by an inability to confront
Lebanon’s truly divisive issues. These problems
have repeatedly led to new crises and pose a danger to
the entire region.

The conflict between Lebanon and Israel is no
longer a conflict between two states. Since the end
of Lebanon’s fifteen-year civil war, Hizballah has
remained strong enough to drag the country into war
against the will of the sovereign government. In tandem
with its military operations, Hizballah, or the “Party of
God,” has provided legal, social, and political services
to many Lebanese. Hizballah is thereby able to keep
its conflict with Israel alive, making any attempt at a
peaceful solution impossible.

At the same time, Syria and Iran are working both
regionally and internationally to interfere with the
various initiatives intended to strengthen the Lebanese
government. This situation is an embarrassment
for the international community. In the face of threats
from Damascus and Tehran, the United Nations and,
to some extent, the European Union have allowed
themselves to be run over. The best example of this
trend is the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL),
whose presence in the South was supposedly bolstered
with the passage of UN Security Council Resolution
(UNSCR) 1701 near the end of the 2006 war. Shortly
afterward, Syria made it clear that any attempt to
patrol the Lebanese-Syrian frontier—the main access
route for arms from Iran to Hizballah—would be seen
as a hostile act and met by force and closure of the
border. The threat had its intended effect. Even before
the ink had dried on UNSCR 1701, the UN declared
that it had no intention of patrolling the border it had
been empowered to control. Today, three years after
UNSCR 1701 expanded UNIFIL’s authority and
increased its size from 2,000 to 15,000 personnel, the
force is still incomplete. This reluctance to seriously confront the basic problems of Lebanon and its neighborhood
is rooted in a fear of placing the UN in conflict
with Hizballah, even if such a move would benefit
the Lebanese government.

In contrast, Hizballah has been able to reinforce
its position in southern Lebanon at a time when the
government is held hostage by an ineffective “national
dialogue” process. Hizballah has no interest in ending
this dialogue; rather, continued discussion ensures
the indefinite postponement of demands for disarmament
and allows the party to keep the conflict with
Israel alive, effectively hindering any breakthrough in
Arab-Israeli negotiations. Since the armistice went
into effect in August 2006, Hizballah has received
regular shipments of arms and other matériel from
Syria, across the same border the UN has scrupulously
avoided monitoring.

Although assistance to the Lebanese government
has been the stated goal of a long series of generous
UN resolutions, in the end they have become nothing
more than rhetorical dust. The harsh reality is that
when confronted with the prospect of conflict that
may not be resolved though dialogue alone, the UN
chooses to bow down to threats of force. For Lebanon,
this amounts to a tragedy. The country has no chance
of strengthening its tenuous democratic structure if
Hizballah is permitted to remain a state within the
state, backed by its own militia.

Repercussions for Lebanon

The political fallout of the 2006 war continues to be
felt in Lebanon. In November 2006, Hizballah suspended
its participation in the Lebanese cabinet, paralyzing
the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
Simultaneously, the party erected a tent camp in
central Beirut, bringing normal business to a standstill.
Hizballah and its supporters then laid siege to the parliament
and the prime minister’s headquarters, further
undermining the state. Despite these actions, Siniora’s
rump government continued to function, albeit without
Shiite ministers.

The crisis escalated in spring 2008 when the government
demanded an investigation into Hizballah’s
security cameras at Beirut airport and its autonomous
telecommunications network. Tensions turned
to violence in May of that year, when Hizballah took
over West Beirut by armed force. The government
and opposition struck an agreement in Doha, Qatar,
to defuse the crisis, and a coalition government was
formed that once again included Hizballah ministers.
In fact, Hizballah’s position in the government was
strengthened by the Doha Accord, which provided
the opposition with a blocking third of ministers and
essentially gave the Party of God veto power over all
government decisions.

Hizballah’s increasingly obvious influence as a kingmaker
in Lebanese politics has allowed the party to
emphasize its demands for a more Islamic society and
perpetual war against Israel. Its success to date is based
on a strategy of adapting to the local political structure
while maintaining its long-term regional goals.

Repercussions for Syria

The 2006 war provided Syrian president Bashar al-
Asad with an opportunity to portray his nation as the
leading regional force in the larger, strategic struggle
against Israel. This, of course, was nothing new: such
rhetoric dates to Israel’s founding in 1948. The 2006
war instilled new life in the rhetoric, however, allowing
Asad to claim that Hizballah’s victory was a new beginning
on the path to total victory and Israel’s destruction.
Damascus was therefore able to demand increased
influence in broader political processes that began as a
result of the war.

The recurring political crises in Lebanon have
underscored the country’s importance in facilitating
Syria’s role as a regional actor. Through Lebanon,
the regime in Damascus is able to influence the situation
in the region and undermine any peace deal
with Israel that does not also satisfy Syria’s claim to
the Golan Heights. Furthermore, by serving as a way
station for all Iranian support to Hizballah, Syria has
considerable control over both Iran and Hizballah’s
ability to act. This situation allows Damascus to keep its options open in the event of new, direct negotiations
with Israel. The regime saw the outcome of the
2006 war as confirmation that its political approach
had been successful.

Repercussions for Iran

Iran has shown that it is not above supplying very
sophisticated matériel to Hizballah and other nonstate
players. Examples include the Chinese C-802
missile used in the near sinking of an Israeli ship in
July 2006, and the more advanced rockets and missiles
that Hizballah provided to Hamas during its
six-month ceasefire with Israel. Iranian support is
visible all over Lebanon, with each Iranian ministry
and department having a branch office in Beirut. In
addition, several Tehran-funded institutions operate
independent of direct government control, such as
the Iranian Red Crescent; the Committee of Ayatollah
Khomeini, which focuses on education and propaganda;
and al-Alam, an Arabic-language television
station that Tehran founded in 2004, with offices
adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Beirut. These Iranian
interests in Lebanon reach far beyond purely
military factors or rhetoric against Israel. Tehran’s
financial support to various Lebanese social and charity
organizations has had a significant impact on Hizballah’s
popularity.

Today, Tehran has partially fulfilled many of its
regional goals. While Iran’s Arab neighbors have
lost regional and international influence, Iran has
increased its clout, making it practically impossible to
ignore Iranian wishes when formulating regional policies.
From its status as special observer at Gulf Cooperation
Council meetings to the fact that the Obama
administration has announced a willingness to engage
it in dialogue, Iran has become the Middle East’s only
regional superpower. The country has significantly
expanded its influence not only in Iraq, Lebanon, and
the Palestinian territories, but also in Afghanistan.
It has developed a close alliance with Syria to ensure
that the conflict with Israel remains alive and that any
serious peace initiatives in the foreseeable future will
be destined to fail.

Conclusion

Seen in the light of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, the
war in Lebanon is just one of many unfinished Middle
Eastern conflicts. But the 2006 war did clarify an
important point: the conflict is not primarily about
occupation or Israeli settlements, although these factors
are obviously significant. Hizballah attacked Israel
just as it has done on several occasions since 2000
because it could not imagine a future in which Israel
exists. The conflict is about Hizballah’s active attempts
to prevent any form of peace process that might potentially
end in a long-term agreement with Israel.

This point has regional significance as well. Israel
and Hizballah were not the only parties that clashed
in summer 2006. Regional actors such as Iran, Syria,
and Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Egypt were
active as well. In this respect, the tensions that are fragmenting the region today—between Sunnis and
Shiites, Arabs and Israelis, Islamists and moderates,
not to mention Lebanon’s own sectarian communities—
have deepened.

Therein lies one of the war’s most tragic consequences:
Hizballah continues to proclaim the 2006
war as a victory for armed struggle. Indeed, the war
represents a victory for the belief that there is no need
to compromise or get involved in complicated political
processes with uncertain outcomes in order to get
results. It works just as well, perhaps even better, to
defeat Israel on the battlefield and force it to make
concessions. If a sufficient number of other Arab
actors adopt this destructive analysis of the war, the
foundation will be laid for a new series of armed conflagrations
and small-scale wars that could continue
for many years to come.

View the full study on The Washington Institute website