Lebanon: One year later

This week marked the anniver­sary of the end of last summer’s war between Hezbol­lah and Israel. It was a stu­pid war, as most wars are, but the end of the con­flict on Aug. 14, 2006 after 34 days of fight­ing saw a defi­ant Hezbol­lah and a chas­tened Israeli mil­i­tary. The day also saw a flat­tened Lebanon and a United States pol­icy for the region in tat­ters. It was a dis­as­ter for almost every­one involved. But a year later, it’s a good idea to come back and take a look at who really won the war and who lost. Where do all the major play­ers stand and how sig­nif­i­cant was the “divine vic­tory”?
Hezbol­lah

There’s lit­tle doubt that Hezbol­lah came out of the war polit­i­cally stronger, at least ini­tially. The group’s leader, Has­san Nas­ral­lah, had Lebanon in the palm of his hand, which is another way of say­ing he had it by the balls.

Hezbol­lah was roundly crit­i­cized for cap­tur­ing two Israeli sol­diers on July 12, 2006, a reck­less and uni­lat­eral act that dragged Lebanon into a war with Israel it didn’t want to fight. But Hezbollah’s never been one to worry about the rest of Lebanon. Despite all its blus­ter about being a “national resis­tance move­ment,” Hezbol­lah is still a Shi’ite mili­tia that draws its main sup­port from the mainly poor Shi’ite com­mu­ni­ties of the south and the Bekaa Val­ley — that is, when it’s not get­ting money and weapons from Iran and Syria. And while Hezbol­lah can claim a tech­ni­cal vic­tory — they sur­vived a furi­ous Israeli air bom­bard­ment and denied Israel the com­ple­tion of its stated objec­tives — in a mas­ter­ful bit of man­ag­ing expec­ta­tions they set the bar very low, with sur­vival as their only objec­tive.
But Lebanon was dev­as­tated. More than 1,000 civil­ians dead (a third of them chil­dren), a mil­lion dis­placed from their homes and bil­lions of dol­lars in dam­age to pri­vate and pub­lic prop­er­ties. Bridges, gas sta­tions, roads, power plants… All were destroyed by the Israeli Air Force.
And soon, Hezbollah’s polit­i­cal posi­tion began to erode. Before the war, the group was looked on with a degree of sus­pi­cion by Lebanese Sun­nis and Chris­tians but not out­right hos­til­ity. There was a bit of grat­i­tude even for the group’s guerilla war against the Israeli occu­pa­tion of the south that finally ended in 2000. I know a num­ber of Chris­tians who, before the war, openly expressed admi­ra­tion for Nas­ral­lah and thought him a tough, but fair leader. They didn’t agree with the Islamist pol­i­tics of the group, but nei­ther did they see it a threat to Lebanon.
No more. Since the end of the war, Hezbol­lah has over­played its hand time and again. It has walked out of the gov­ern­ment. With back­ing from Syria and, pos­si­bly, Iran, it has led an oppo­si­tion that has so far been unsuc­cess­ful in all of its objec­tives: remov­ing the pro-Western gov­ern­ment from power; scut­tling the inter­na­tional tri­bunal that’s inves­ti­gat­ing the assas­si­na­tion of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Rafik Hariri; and claim­ing for the Lebanon’s Shi’ites a greater share of polit­i­cal power. The gov­ern­ment is still in power despite nine months of protests and an eco­nomic paral­y­sis; the tri­bunal is mov­ing ahead as planned and the Shi’ites are more mar­gin­al­ize and pow­er­less than ever.
This week, in a bid to boost the morale of his sup­port­ers, Nas­ral­lah gave a 90-minute speech to a crowd of tens of thou­sands in the Hezbol­lah strong­hold in the south of Beirut. But sig­nif­i­cantly, Nas­ral­lah didn’t deliver his speech in per­son. He was in Dick Cheney-like seclu­sion, and his speech was dis­played on large video screens around the square. This is the behav­ior or a man who led his peo­ple to a “divine vic­tory,” hid­ing from Israeli war­planes on the anniver­sary of his big win?
Ver­dict: With points for sur­viv­ing Israel’s onslaught but deduc­tions for its crip­pled polit­i­cal judge­ment, a year after the war Hezbollah’s glass is both half-empty and half-full.
Israel

Things don’t look quite as good for Israel. It accom­plished none of its objec­tives when it went after Hezbol­lah: It didn’t demol­ish the orga­ni­za­tion, it didn’t crip­ple its abil­ity to fire rock­ets into Israel and it didn’t get its two sol­diers back.
Israel had the bad luck of being caught unaware and then hav­ing Dan Halutz, a for­mer chief of the Air Force, run the war. A a devo­tee of the the­ory that air power can win wars, he chose an aggres­sive strat­egy of bomb­ing runs against civil­ian infra­struc­ture in an attempt to split the Lebanese Chris­tians and Sun­nis from Hezbol­lah in the hopes they would turn on the Shi’ite group.
Israel also had its strongest weapon dam­aged: the idea of the invin­ci­bil­ity of the Israeli mil­i­tary. Arabs opposed to Israel now see that the most advanced mil­i­tary in the region could be fought to at least a stand­still and maybe even beaten.
But Israel isn’t all down. With Ehud Barak as defense min­is­ter, it has a proven war­rior on deck who’s expe­ri­enced in fight­ing Hezbol­lah. Israel is reem­pha­siz­ing train­ing for ground and guerilla com­bat (in the Golan, unfor­tu­nately, caus­ing Syria to get a case of the jit­ters). And it’s also the recip­i­ent of an extra $30 bil­lion in U.S. mil­i­tary aid as a means of build­ing its deter­rent back up. And there is a grow­ing idea that Israel didn’t “lose” the war so much as muck it up. The strat­egy was ter­ri­ble and its lead­ers inept. But if there’s one thing the Israeli mil­i­tary is good at, it’s learn­ing from its mis­takes. So if there’s another war with the Shi’ite mili­tia, don’t expect the Jew­ish state to wait to send ground troops in. The assault will be mas­sive, bloody and they’ll be up to Beirut before Hezbol­lah knew what hit them. Israel will take the casu­al­ties if they think they have a chance of win­ning.
Ver­dict: Mostly a loss, but also a learn­ing expe­ri­ence. Glass half-empty.
The United States

The United States’ response to this war was shame­ful. On the one hand, the White House cheered it on because Amer­ica has scores to set­tle with Hezbol­lah and bet­ter Israel do the dirty work than Amer­i­can GIs. On the other hand, the White House had adopted Lebanese Prime Min­is­ter Fuad Sin­iora as sort of a mas­cot for democ­racy — the scrappy lit­tle politi­cian who could stand up to Syria and take over after the death of his boy­hood friend Rafik Hariri.
When Sec­re­tary of State Con­doleezza Rice rejected calls for an early cease-fire as a return to the sta­tus quo ante and that the war was the “birth pangs of a new Mid­dle East” she put the final nail in the cof­fin hous­ing America’s pos­i­tive image in the much of the region. To pick up the pom-poms while Israel blasted pos­si­bly the weak­est Arab state in the region — and one that it had cham­pi­oned in the past — was con­fir­ma­tion that when it came to Israel, Amer­ica has no other pri­or­ity. Democ­racy, human rights, none of that mat­tered.
Through its aer­ial bom­bard­ment, Israel caused hor­ren­dous civil­ian casu­al­ties (almost all of the 159 Israeli deaths were mil­i­tary ones com­pared to the 1,000+ deaths of Lebanese civil­ians) and Amer­i­cans watch wars on TV. They got to see awful images of flee­ing refugees packed into cars with mat­tresses and house­hold goods tied down on top. They didn’t look at all like ter­ror­ists.
Had the U.S. used its clout to get the Israeli mil­i­tary to stand down, on human­i­tar­ian grounds, it could have won back much of the good will lost because of Iraq. It might have con­vinced some Arabs that it could be an hon­est bro­ker in the Israeli-Arab con­flict. When Hezbol­lah sur­vived, they were able to claim they had not only resisted Israel, but also thwarted the United States’ “plan” for the Mid­dle East.
Just truly dumb all across the board.
Ver­dict: The U.S. was left with a shat­tered, empty glass, like you’d find after a bar fight. But Wash­ing­ton was too drunk with power to real­ize what the fight was about or that its wal­let had been stolen.
Lebanon

Finally, Lebanon. Its econ­omy has been shat­tered for two sum­mers now. First, by the war and then by Hezbollah’s sit-in in down­town Beirut. Polit­i­cally, it’s at a stand­still, with pro-Western min­is­ters being picked off one at a time by an assas­si­na­tion cam­paign. Hezbol­lah owns parts of the coun­try and declares them no-go areas for any­one, includ­ing the Lebanese Army. Fuad Sin­iora is still in power, but he’s a weak­ened pre­mier and his fac­tion just lost an elec­tion to an oppo­si­tion can­di­date.
It’s fac­ing bil­lions of dol­lars in infra­struc­ture dam­age as well as addi­tional bil­lions added to its astro­nom­i­cal pub­lic debt that is 182 per­cent of its GDP, accord­ing to Cit­i­group. The econ­omy is just now com­ing out of down­turn but it’s not roar­ing back. It’s expected to grow only 1.8 per­cent in 2007 and 2.9 per­cent in 2008. The only thing keep­ing the econ­omy afloat is the strangely robust bank­ing sec­tor and mil­lions of dias­pora Lebanese send­ing remit­tances.
The coun­try is split almost exactly in half between the pro-government and oppo­si­tion fac­tions, and a civil war can’t be ruled out. Most Lebanese I’ve talked to expect one later this year or next. Lebanon was the true loser of the war.
Ver­dict: Out cold after a beat­ing. There’s no glass to even drink from.

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