The many faces of Hezbollah
Before Ahmed (not his real name) enters the United States from Canada, he deletes photos of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah from his iPhone.
Ahmed is in his late 20s and laughs with his whole body, which he does for most of the time we talk in his shop in one of Beirut’s Shia neighbourhoods. He and his friends joke about how often they get stopped at the American border. It’s pretty often. Their Canadian citizenship makes them unusual Beirutis, but their political affiliations make them unusual Canadians.
These are young Hezbollah supporters. They are also self-professed moderates and fans of Eckhart Tolle, the spiritual self-help guru. (All moderates but one that is; the youngest stays silent and is described as a “chop-the-head-off-a-Sunni” kind of guy). Even for the others, “moderate” is a relative term. They idolize Hezbollah’s military in Syria, speaking proudly of certain victory in Qalamoun, and one denies that Assad ever used chemical weapons in Ghouta. (“That’s what you think happened; that’s not what did happen,” he says when we mention the harrowing massacre of 1,400 people).
These young men may not be the only face of Hezbollah support in Lebanon, but they are one face of it. Outside of Lebanon’s borders, that face is usually invisible: it appears as though the organization peddles only violence and chaos. But supporters of Hezbollah are supporters for a reason, and it’s difficult to understand the escalating conflict in the Middle East between Shia Muslims and Sunnis without understanding what purposes Hezbollah serves, both locally and regionally.
A deeper understanding of Hezbollah just became more urgent. On Nov. 19, the Iranian embassy, located in a predominantly Shia neighbourhood in Beirut, was attacked by suicide bombers opposed to Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian war: there is every reason to believe that the suicide attacks were the beginning of the escalation of violence in Lebanon, not its climax.
Hezbollah was raised in the cradle of the country’s 15-year long civil war. Its fighters, trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), fought the Israeli Army when it occupied — or attempted to liberate, depending on whom you ask — Lebanon. They first appeared in Lebanon on the beaches in 1982, running straight at Israeli tanks, hurling grenades and wearing pieces of fabric around their heads ripped from their shirts. Hezbollah suicide bombers attacked the U.S. embassy and the U.S. and French barracks, and the organization kidnapped and killed foreigners. After the war, it attacked Israeli diplomats and civilians in South America and the United Kingdom, and in Bulgaria last summer.
But — like all militias during the civil war — Hezbollah won popular support where it protected and provided for its sect, Shia Muslims. A decade after its first sightings, Hezbollah had grown into Lebanon’s most powerful militia, but also into a political party and source of social support.
Hezbollah now holds 12 seats in Lebanon’s parliament and runs hospitals, clinics, schools, and agricultural centres. It offers social assistance to poor families and bereaved families of Hezbollah fighters. In 2006 a UN news agency estimated Hezbollah’s health and social programs have annual budgets in the hundreds of millions — most of which comes from donations from Shiites.
Ahmed, for one, sees his support for Hezbollah as primarily an extension of his support for — and belief in — all of Lebanon.
“We are supporters of good deeds,” he says. “We support everyone who wants to give back to the community and help one another.”
Of course, the dangerous connections between the IRGC, Hezbollah, and the beleaguered Syrian president are clear: Hezbollah’s role as a violent IRGC-sponsored force has become integral to Assad’s desperate attempt to hold on to power. For many Sunni Muslims in Lebanon and Syria, Hezbollah is a loathsome servant of death and instability, drawing Lebanon into wars that it wants no part in. But Hezbollah’s role is not limited to fighting; if it were, its fighting would not be supported by so many Lebanese Shia. Because while Hezbollah supporters still rely on the party’s protection in fragmented Lebanon, they also rely on its social support and ideological guidance.
Despite Hezbollah’s political and social dimensions, some international actors use dangerously reductive language in describing Hezbollah fighters (“terrorists”) and predominantly Shia residential neighbourhoods (“Hezbollah strongholds”).
Such language conjures a onedimensional image of a multi-faceted group and can implicitly justify attacks in civilian areas. Moreover, it reinforces loyalty for Hezbollah among its deeply entrenched support base. As did the EU’s decision this summer to list Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist organization (Canada, which pushed the EU toward the blacklisting, has considered all of Hezbollah, including its charitable wings, a terrorist organization since 2002).
“I don’t think Hezbollah supporters are afraid of the EU,” says Bassel Salloukh of the Lebanese American University in Beirut. “If anything (the EU’s decision) legitimizes Hezbollah’s claim that there is a war, by which I mean a local war. For many of them I think there is a belief that there’s a grand battle against the party.”
That belief in a grand battle strengthens the bond between Hezbollah and its supporters, initially forged by Hezbollah’s protection and then its policies. Lebanese of all sects share the sense of being under siege: such was the refrain in the long, sad song of the civil war. This week, supporters of Hezbollah became more deeply entrenched in it.