On our way through the city, as we headed towards Mount Lebanon, Bechara took us briefly through
Hezbollah's stronghold in southern Beirut. It's like entering a completely different city. Gone are the high-rises, the outlet stores for European fashion brand names, the penthouses with water views... The storefronts suddenly took on a different character, and every few blocks you could see large portraits of bearded Mullah's & Ayatollah's beaming out over the neighborhood like patron saints. Occasionally along the streets you'd see a poster of a young man staring out at you with an unreadable expression, whose image was captioned with something cryptic in Arabic. Bechara explained to us that these portraits were of martyrs who had sacrificed their life as part of the struggle... Against whom? Israel? the West? An encroaching modernity whose relentless push compelled a death in service of the greater cause?
It's been a long time since I've been anywhere near that kind of fanatical fervor, that kind of absolute faith in a religious leader and their dogma. I was so enthralled with looking around that I don't think I fully heard Bechara's detailed explanation of this neighborhood, it's heritage, and its residents. On the surface it just looks like any other Arab street, although the haphazard layout of the buildings clearly demonstrated that there was no zoning authority operating when a lot of these structures were built. That's what happens when a city is at war for decades at a time... Looking around, you see people everywhere, almost entirely men, hanging out, drinking tea in front of stores, working on automobiles and doing all the things you see in any city in the world. It's strange to think that a sizable contingent of the population in this part of the city can transform in an instant into soldiers for Hezbollah, content to follow orders relayed to them from some leader they've pledged absolute loyalty to. I don't know of any analogous situation in any country in the world, where a paramilitary force in one country is financed largely by neighboring governments, and their political and religious institutions. It's hard to wrap your head around the role of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and what it's done here in the last 30 years... Syria and Iran are its primary financiers, but the group is headquartered here, in southern Beirut, in the southern and western areas of the city and its suburbs that appear a bit run down compared to the glitzy parts of the city. It was a trip to look out over this area as we hastily drove through it, to contemplate its citizens, it's advocates, it's soldiers, and the imported agenda they are willing to die for. I was under the impression Hezbollah was a lot more marginalized than it really is... This is no fringe outfit, no secret militia gathering in the dark, but a well-funded political party with seats in Parliament and widespread support amongst certain sections of Lebanon's population. I'll have to read more about this group, as my perceptions have been colored by the US media, with its inherent pro-Israel tilt, and it's sensationalist approach to "the war on terror." Not that I can ever fully understand any religious or political party that advocates violence as a means to achieve their ends, but there are stories and rationales and history here I am unfamiliar with. I suppose it starts with reading, once again, who this group is. Below is an excerpt from the
New York Times about Hezbollah. It's worth another look, considering these are suddenly people I can now put faces to, whose neighborhoods I am a fleeting guest in...
Hezbollah is a Shiite military, political and social organization in Lebanon with strong ties to Iran and Syria. Over the past generation, it has transformed itself from a shadowy militant group known primarily for terror attacks to the country’s pre-eminent political and military force.
The United States regards Hezbollah as a terrorist group financed by Iran, which has supplied as much as $200 million a year, and by Syria. But as Iran’s economy buckles under sanctions related to its nuclear program, and Syria reels in the face of widespread protests, that aid has diminished, even as Hezbollah’s financial needs have grown alongside its increasing legitimacy.
The result, American officials and analysts say, has been a deeper reliance on criminal enterprises — especially the South American cocaine trade. The books of a Lebanese bank that was sold after American officials exposed its money-laundering operation offer evidence of an intricate global apparatus that appeared to let Hezbollah move huge sums of money into the legitimate financial system, despite sanctions aimed at cutting off its economic lifeblood.
Hezbollah first came to notice outside of Lebanon in 1983, when it was blamed for the bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 240 soldiers. Now it has an armed militia more powerful than the Lebanese Army and a sprawling infrastructure that delivers welfare to its Shiite constituency, Lebanon’s largest community.
In 2012, Hezbollah found itself increasingly on the defensive over its support ofBashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, in his year-long crackdown on unrest in his country. Hezbollah faced an increasing risk of finding itself isolated, possibly caught up in a sectarian war between its patron, Iran, the region’s Shiite power, and Saudi Arabia, a protector of Sunni interests in the Middle East.
Syria’s conflict is testing Hezbollah’s longstanding contradictions. It relies on public support, yet sometimes behaves autocratically; it is a national group founded to fight Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, but owes its military might — and the funds that rebuilt the south after the 2006 war — to Iran’s desire to project power; and it styles itself pan-Islamic, but it depends on rock-solid support from Lebanese Shiites for whom it won long-denied power as it became the Middle East’s most formidable militant group and Lebanon’s strongest political force.
Most of all, Hezbollah won respect by sticking to its principles, even among rival sects and the leftist cafe regulars in Beirut who are skeptical of its religious conservatism. Now it is paying a price for its politics of pragmatism in Syria.
Background
Founded three decades ago as a guerrilla force aimed at the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has never before had such a prominent place in the country’s official politics. Yet much of its power, and its ability to operate with some impunity, derives from elsewhere: from its status as a state within the Lebanese state.
Its militia is considerably stronger than the national army. Its social service agencies perform many of the functions of government, and it controls the international airport and the smuggling routes along the Syrian border, as well as the budgets of the government agencies charged with policing them....
