What is Hizbullah? ...... Juan Cole

[RedEarth]

Monday, July 31, 2006

What is Hizbullah?

Western and Israeli pundits keep comparing Hizbullah to al-Qaeda. It is a huge conceptual error. There is a crucial difference between an international terrorist network like al-Qaeda, which can be disrupted by good old policing techniques (such as inserting an agent in the Western Union office in Karachi), and a sub-nationalist movement.

Al-Qaeda is some 5,000 multinational volunteers organized in tiny cells. Hizbullah is a mass expression of subnationalism that has the loyalty of some 1.3 million highly connected and politically mobilized peasants and slum dwellers. Over a relatively compact area.

........


The Shiites of southern Lebanon are compact enough to likewise offer a subnationalism. Note that this is a new phenomenon. The Shiite masses were not socially and politically mobilized until at least the 1970s, and probably it is more accurate to say the 1980s. ("Social mobilization" refers to literacy, access to media, urbanization, industrialization and so forth; isolated small villages have difficulty organizing big movements.)

The main factor in causing these peasant sharecroppers to become politically aware and mobilized was the Arab Israeli conflict. The Israelis stole some of their land in 1948 and expelled 100,000 Palestinians north into south Lebanon, where they competed for resources with local Lebanese Shiites. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the Palestinians became politically and militarily organized by the PLO. The Shiites' conflict with the PLO in the southern camps in the 1970s was probably a key beginning, but from 1982 it was primarily their conflict with the Israeli Occupation army that spurred them on.

......

What the Israelis set out to do, if they intended to "destroy" or even substantially attrite Hizbullah, was completely impractical. What they have done is to convince even Lebanese formerly on the fence about the issue that Hizbullah's leaders were correct in predicting that Lebanon would again be attacked in the most brutal and horrible way by the Israelis and that an even more powerful deterrent is needed. I.e more silkworms, not fewer. . The days when the Israelis could lord it over disconnected unmobilized Arab peasant villagers with their high tech army are coming to a close. The Arabs are still very weak, but are throwing up powerful asymmetrical challenges (e.g. party-militias with silkworm missiles!). Israeli alarm about the new connectedness of their foe explains the orgy of destruction aimed at bridges, roads, television and radio facilities and internet servers. But it is too late to disconnect the south Lebanese, who can easily and quickly rebuild all those connectors.

http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/what-is-hizbullah-western-and-israeli.html

[mike_c]

1. K&R-- must read for Americans who get most of their info...

...from cable TV-- most Americans have no clue what Hizbullah is or does. They're simply told that it's a "terrorist organization" and that sums it up for them. Hizbullah is much more than a terrorist organization, and it's debatable whether that label is accurate even in part.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. It is accurate in part

they are a terrorist organization, and a social services organization and other things as well.

It is the terrorist part that concerns me

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. I've heard people blame Hezbollah for 9-11.

Just an example of this "huge conceptual error."

[endarkenment]

3. But will our hard core ICDNW folks listen?

"The Israelis cannot win this struggle against a sophisticated, highly organized and well armed subnationalism.

The only practical thing to do when you can't easily beat people into submission is to find a compromise with them that both sides can live with. It will be a hard lesson for both the Lebanese Shiites and the Israelis. But they will learn it or will go on living with a lot of death and destruction."

Juan Cole, as usual, provides illumination on a difficult topic. He makes the case that the IDF plan here is essentially ethnic cleansing, and he is correct.

[itzamirakul]

4. i am wondering what group of Arab muslims are attacking

Africans and committing genocide. My main interest is in any connection they may have to some of the expelled Arabs from the Holy Land. I am wondering if they are not incited against the Africans to keep them from being angry enough to speak out against Israel?

Everything has a reason.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. He has a point. This goes wa-a-a-ay back and this exchange

of military aggression has very little to do with just the two kidnapped soldiers. I never thought about a group of people who don't have sovereignty with borders and a recognized government, but then again, generations of their ancestors didn't have either. The land was captured, cut up, and meted out by the British and the U.N., leaving out a certain amount of "exiled" people with no place to literally call home. And their resentment not addressed. That's a geopolitical pressure-cooker recipe.

Come to think of it (apples and oranges, really but . . . ), American history would have been different if Geronimo, the Apaches, and other tribes had access to AK-47s and missiles when their land was taken away.

[endarkenment]

6. Actually the French are to thank for the mess that is Lebanon.

This was their prize in the joint dismantlement of the ottoman empire, and they established the hamstrung governmental system the Lebanese are stuck with.

[HongKonger]

11. And the British

are too thank for the mess that is Israel.

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. All of the Middle East

was carved by the UK and the French... Iraq is a frankestein, so is Lebanon, so is Jordan, so is Saudi Arabia... 1919... that critical summer led to our world.

[Jim Sagle]

7. Meet the new brownshirts, same as the old brownshirts.

[EVDebs]

8. What they've done is make it clear that any neighbors of Israel

will, in practicality, have to maintain a buffer zone of at least 12 miles or risk becoming a lunar landscape like S. Lebanon.

What is "impractical" is to expect the state of Israel to allow for its own destruction while rockets etc. are fired at it. Kicking a sleeping dog gets a similar result. I consider Israel a pit bull, and I give those dogs a wide berth whenever I see one.

[GAPeace]

9. Do Americans know the difference between Evil Arabs and Evil Arabs?

I wasn't aware they did know that difference.

Hezollah has committed terror (not on the scale of the IDF to be sure), but they aren't a terrorist organization. They're a political organization with a military wing. They're more like the IRA than Al Qaeda.

[EVDebs]

10. We've heard the Islamic 'sword verses' and Islam seems soooo humorless

and dour. Comedians do jokes about this here in the US btw, so don't go ballistic on me moderators. I've heard that Sufis are the most peaceful of the Islamic sects.

Does someone plan on a forced conversion or something ?

The Trouble With Islam Today
http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/

This book has gotten Irshad Manji a few death threats. So much for 'humoring' .

[Nothing Without Hope]

14. Juan Cole is the best. Here are TWO MORE ARTICLES on Hezbollah

one from the BBC and one from Al-Jazeerah, to give additional viewpoints on the history and nature of Hezbollah (or Hizbullah):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4314423.stm

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1666062&mesg_id=1666262

[Karenina]

15. The BASIC error Americans make

in their ignorance of other cultures, is that associations and organizations are structured in ways similar to their own. THEY ARE NOT and to truly understand the dynamics, one must jettison EVERYTHING s/he THINKS s/he knows, SHUT UP and LISTEN.

A Morroccan friend 'splained Al Q to me 2 years ago in both of our second languages. His WIFE, a native speaker of the language in which we conversed, was unable to understand him as clearly as I. (This happens a lot. I'll mangle the language trying to make a point and he'll interrupt her saying, "What she meant was..." ALWAYS accurately grasping the fine points). I LAUGHED SO HARD that evening my sides hurt the next morning.

The bottom line is, one cannot BOMB an IDEA with any success. One would think we'd have learned that by now.

[Nothing Without Hope]

16. ISRAELI paper op/ed on how these attacks will STRENGTHEN Hezbollah's

influence among its target clients, as must surely be obvious to anyone not willfully blinded:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/744860.html
August 01, 2006

Loving thy neighbor

By Adina Saperstein

(snip)

With Lebanon's economy destroyed, air and sea blockades in force, the continued destruction of the airport, ports and roads into Beirut and throughout the south and the Bekaa Valley, severe damage to many businesses, as well as to domestic marketing outlets such as supermarkets and restaurants, and the annihilation of the tourist industry, the country's economic growth has been reversed by years, if not decades.

Prior to July 12, Lebanon's economy was developing rapidly and dynamically. Rural areas were integrating with competitive industries, and incomes throughout the various population sectors were on the rise. This progress in economic development - particularly rural development in south Lebanon - reduces reliance on Hezbollah for a range of social services.

The idea that the destruction of the Lebanese economy will somehow mobilize Lebanese civilians against Hezbollah is a woeful miscalculation. Instead, with the economy of Lebanon in a shambles (with damage in the last two weeks already estimated at several billion dollars) and the communities of south Lebanon devastated, the current war has galvanized popular support for Hezbollah among the tens of thousands of people who will rely even more heavily on its network of social services - which in many areas of the country has always been stronger than the government's limited network (this is one of the main sources of Hezbollah's support and influence), and which is likely to recover far more quickly than the government's. In addition, widespread resentment among the Lebanese population of the destruction, which affects civilian lives and the economy as a whole, is mobilizing the broader Lebanese populace toward Hezbollah, not away from it, across ethnic, religious, and political divides.

(snip)

The article calls for US Jews to support humanitarian aid for Lebanese civilian victims of the war and the rebuilding of Lebanon.

Look through the responses to this article - "polarized" would be putting it mildly. "Bombing the idea" is all too popular, but there are equally impassioned calls for reason and compassion. Unfortunately, the current Israeli government is squarely in the "attack attack attack" camp.