America’s Victory in Lebanon
June 21, 2008
Mark Perry of the excellent Conflicts Forum draws on historical parallels from the US war of independence to put into context US setbacks in Lebanon.
The prime minister of His Majesty’s Government, the rotund Lord North–reputed (falsely) to be the bastard son of George III–once sniffed to his cabinet that if it were not for the interference of France, the American colonists would surely return to the loving arms of their mother country. He said this in the midst of the dark winter of 1776, when George Washington’s ill-clad army was traversing the ice-clogged rivers of New Jersey to do battle with Hessian mercenaries that the parsimonious North had hired. The result was predictable: when Washington attacked the Hessians (groggy from their Christmas libations), the British-paid militia dropped their arms and fled, giving the Americans their first military triumph.
North had great faith both in British power and in the Sceptred Isle’s capacity for good. He sent several messages to America’s leaders: all we want is what is good for you, he said–our interests are secondary. When told that his messages were greeted with derision, that the colonists had formed armed militias (those words, exactly) and that His Majesty should send an army to defeat them, North scoffed. The Royal Navy was the greatest navy in the history of the world; entire nation’s quelled at its appearance. “Four or five frigates will do the business without any military force,” he clucked dismissively. And so it was that while North’s Hessians were fleeing pell-mell through the streets of Trenton, the Royal Navy was blithely riding at anchor offshore–waiting for the rag tags to wet their homespun breeches.
Condoleezza Rice Was Right
June 3, 2008
‘A a new Middle East is being born’, argues regular Fanonite contributor Alberto Cruz of CEPRID in today’s guest editorial on the Doha Agreement.
The Doha Agreement for Lebanon has clarified a new re-ordering of the map of the Middle East. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was correct when, during the Israeli war against Lebanon in the summer of 2006, while Israeli planes bombed that Arab country’s civilian areas, especially Shi’ite barrios of Beirut and the country’s southern cities, she justified the massacre saying that it was assisting “the birth pangs of a new Middle East”. What Rice never dreamt was that with Hizbollah’s victory over Israel, that new Middle East was going to be one very different from the imperialist design, one that little by little would move away from the tutelage of the United States and its regional agents, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
Just as is happening in Latin America, there is an awakening in the Arab world. To the Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian struggles one can add that of workers in Egypt and, to a lesser extent but still worth highlighting, that of Jordanian workers against their government’s neoliberal, IMF-friendly policies. It is indeed the birth of a new Middle East, that of its peoples.
Four Days that Shook the Middle East
May 21, 2008
Today’s guest editorial on developments in Lebanon from regular Fanonite contributor Alberto Cruz of Centro de Estudios Políticos para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Desarollo (CEPRID).
The taking of Beirut by Hizbollah militants and their allies from May 7th to May 11th foiled a political military operation supported by the US and Saudi Arabia against Lebanese patriotic nationalist forces meant to weaken and defeat Hizbollah decisively .
Since Hizbollah defeated Israel in the war of the summer of 2006, both the US administration and the Saudi monarchy have promoted a dual strategy against that organization : on the one hand to reduce its prestige among significant parts of Arab people’s opinion from Morocco to Iraq, regardless of religious affiliation and on the other to disarm its military structure.
The campaign to undermine Hizbollah began from the very moment the war ended and spread further when that organization and the patriotic nationalist forces supporting it (Maronite Christians, and leftist secular groups) began a campaign of civil disobedience against the Siniora government in November 2006.
Two Labour Strikes, a Strategy and One Reality
May 16, 2008
Today’s guest editorial on developments in Egypt and Lebanon from regular Fanonite contributor Alberto Cruz of CEPRID.
On April 6th a general strike was called in Egypt. One month later, on May 7th, another one was called in Lebanon. The causes were the same in both countries: calls for an increase in the minimum wage and improvements to workers’ statutory benefits and also to protest against the neoliberal, IMF-friendly, pro-Western political attitudes of the respective governments. The responses of the Egyptian and Lebanese governments were the same, although with different results: attempts to defuse the protests with repression, confronting the people and increasing the minimum wage as a last resort. The media account of the two strikes was the same too: minimizing the effects of the protest in government and international media, while the few media that can be described as independent in these countries reflected the strike calls’ success.
Bush Tour Diminished by Hezbollah Show of Force
May 15, 2008
Jim Lobe, the best US investigative journalist, on Hizbullah foiling the latest Cheney-Neocon plan for the Middle East.
WASHINGTON - While this week’s trip by President George W. Bush to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt was never conceived as a triumphant “victory lap” around the region, the swift rout of U.S.-backed forces by Lebanon’s Hezbollah Friday has provided yet another vivid illustration of the rapid decline in Washington’s influence in the Middle East during his tenure.
The events in Lebanon will no doubt cast a long shadow over Bush’s tour, which begins Tuesday. After all, it was only three years ago that he hailed the “Cedar Revolution” there as vindication of the kind of democratic transformation of the region that he insisted the invasion of Iraq was designed to launch.
Three years and a brief war between Israel and Hezbollah later, the Iranian- and Syrian-backed group appears more powerful and entrenched than ever, just as its Sunni Islamist ally in the Palestinian Territories (PT), Hamas, remains solidly in control of Gaza and grows in popularity in the West Bank in major part due to the apparent lack of progress in peace talks — formally initiated by Bush himself at Annapolis last November — between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli government.
Sense, Mainly
May 13, 2008
by Qunfuz
The Lebanese government took the first steps towards dismantling Hizbullah’s vital communications network. The opposition closed roads and demonstrated. Pro-government thugs shot at civilians, as they have done many times before. This time, the opposition responded decisively. Disciplined Hizbullah fighters and their unruly allies from Amal and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party quickly took control of West Beirut. Hundreds of Hariri’s Future militia surrendered. In the Shuf, pro-opposition and pro-government Druze forces fought it out, with the opposition winning. The north was messier. In Tripoli the Sunnis fought, Hariri supporters against Omar Karami’s opposition-linked group. Future men ransacked and burnt offices of the Ba’ath Party, of Ayatullah Fadlallah, Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, and the Syrian Social Nationalists. (This party, by the way, is not Syrian but ‘Greater Syrian’; while the Ba’ath envisages a union of all Arab countries, the SSNP wants a state covering Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Kuwait and – believe it or not – Cyprus, a Fertile Crescent state.) At the time of writing, things have calmed down in Tripoli.
Voice of Hezbollah
May 4, 2008
There Will Be Blood
by Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, The Drouth, Issues 27; Dissident Voice, 5 May 2008; Information Clearing House, 5 May 2008; Atlantic Free Press, 6 May 2008
Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, edited by Nicholas Noe, Verso, 420 pp., £12.99, 978 1 84467 153 3
Since the assassination in Damascus of Imad Mughniyeh, a leading Hizbullah operative, a sense of foreboding once again grips Lebanon. The Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah says the bombing foreshadows Israeli aggression and has declared his willingness to wage ‘open war’ should there be another invasion. Fighting words are not uncommon to the region; leaders often compensate for lack of action with bravado. However, no one is ready to discount the significance of Nasrallah’s statement. Why?
As the Israeli Air Force decimated the exposed Egyptian infantry in 1967 Nasser’s propagandists were forecasting success. When the US-UK air armada pummelled the hapless conscripts of the Iraqi army in ‘91, Saddam’s propaganda mill promised imminent victory (which it duly claimed shortly after signing unconditional surrender). Likewise, Saddam’s Minister of Information greeted the US-UK invasion in 2003 with similar fanciful flourishes. An object of frequent ridicule, such mendacity is often adduced by born-again Orientalists as a function of the addled ‘Arab mind’. That is, until one voice emerged that undermined stereotypes and restored dignity and trust.
Syed Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of the Lebanese Hizbullah movement, has established a reputation for saying only what he means and promising only what he is able to deliver. Islamic Resistance, the guerrilla wing of Hizbullah, has evolved under his helm from its ragtag origins to the world’s most effective resistance movement, twice defeating the vaunted Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in battle. As a testament to his intelligence and organization skills, Hizbullah has also developed an efficient and extensive social service network — hospitals, educational institutions, a construction company and its own media — that caters to its mostly impoverished Shia constituency. As a result he has emerged as the most popular figure in the Middle East. The Syrian Bashar al-Assad according to Seymour Hersh claims to be in ‘awe of Nasrallah’ and ‘worships at his feet’. Secular MPs in Egypt revere him as an ‘heir to Saladin’. Christian divas in Lebanon have immortalized him in song. The modest Shia cleric is a living legend in the mostly Sunni Middle East.
Despite its regional popularity, Hizbullah remains a largely misunderstood phenomenon in the West where media demonology often conflates Hizbullah with al-Qaeda and Nasrallah with Usama bin Laden. Few in Europe or the US have heard Nasrallah’s voice. This may largely be due to the fact that all his speeches are delivered in Arabic. It is to introduce the Anglophone world to this important voice that Nicholas Noe has collected Nasrallah’s speeches and interviews spanning two decades in Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. With a competent translation by Ellen Khouri, the interviews and speeches elaborate on key events in Lebanon’s recent history. Nasrallah’s pronouncements are invariably thoughtful, nuanced and carefully worded, eloquence rarely giving way to rhetoric. At times fiery, they remain grounded in fact, and adversaries often ignore his promises at their own peril. The book reveals a methodical mind explicating on historical events and developments with an impressive attention to detail. The significance of some of the events may have diminished, however the chronologically ordered interviews offer useful insights into the strategic shifts in the movement’s outlook and the intellectual evolution of its leader.
