Has Hezbollah's Rise Come at Syria's Expense? Part I

 

by Robert G. Rabil

 

1^st part of 3

 

The Iranian and Syrian relationship with Hezbollah developed from a combination of ideological, domestic, and regional factors. Both Tehran and Damascus found Hezbollah to be a useful proxy to further regional objectives. Today, however, Hezbollah's position has changed. Tehran's growing strength is matched by Damascus's regional weakness. As overt Syrian suzerainty over Lebanon fades and Hezbollah increases its regional role without regard to the Lebanese government, the nature of Hezbollah's relations to Syria has changed. The group has outgrown its subservient relationship to Damascus. Hezbollah is no longer the junior partner in the axis.

Background

Hezbollah's roots lie in both the Lebanese Shi'i revival of the 1960s and 1970s and, more directly, to the return of Lebanese clerics who had studied in Najaf under the supervision of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. After the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Jerusalem sought to set up a Lebanese government friendly to itself. Tehran and Damascus sought proxies to undermine this new government and, in Tehran's case, advance its new revolutionary agenda. In 1982, Shi‘i political activist Hussein al-Musawi broke away from Amal, then the Shi‘i community's main political movement, and allied himself with radical Shi‘i clerics to form Hezbollah (Party of God).

Tehran adopted the new group. It bankrolled it and sent its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to train it. Syrian president Hafez al-Assad also supported Hezbollah. He and the Iranian leadership agreed to a strategic framework to govern their relationship with the group: Tehran would organize Hezbollah, subsidize it, and provide it with weaponry. Damascus would oversee Hezbollah operations against Israeli troops to ensure that Hezbollah operations did not expose the Syrian army to military confrontation with Israel and would allocate the Bekaa Valley as a location for the IRGC to establish training camps. In addition, Syrian authorities would secure a supply route and assist with logistics.[1]

In a number of terrorist attacks through the 1980s, Hezbollah proved its capability and lethality. But Assad's support for Hezbollah's terrorism was not unconditional. He expected to maintain a tight grip over the group. When, on July 19, 1982, Hezbollah, acting under Iranian direction but without Syrian knowledge kidnapped David Dodge, the acting president of American University in Beirut, Assad was furious and threatened to expel the IRGC from Lebanon.[2] Damascus and Tehran also sparred over Hezbollah's June 14, 1985 threat to execute hijacked TWA flight 847 passengers on the tarmac of Beirut International Airport. On June 17, 1987, Syrian troops beat Hezbollah members for kidnapping ABC correspondent Charles Glass near a Syrian checkpoint[3] and, later that year, Syrian troops shot twenty-seven Hezbollah fighters after they refused to obey a Syrian officer's order to remove a West Beirut checkpoint.[4] Clashes the following year between Amal and Hezbollah reflected continuing tension between Damascus and Tehran. Still, such tension was the exception, not the norm, and improving processes to resolve conflicts improved their working relationship. Assad began to see Hezbollah not only as a "resistance movement" but also as a strong Lebanese political force.[5]

Transforming Hezbollah

On October 22, 1989, Lebanese deputies meeting in Saudi Arabia signed the Ta'if accord, a compromise brokered by the Syrian government and mediated by Saudi and Algerian diplomats, ending the 15-year Lebanese civil war.

The agreement recognized Syria's "special relationship" with Lebanon, a trusteeship augmented by the May 20, 1991 Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation, and Coordination and the September 1, 1991 Lebanon-Syria Defense and Security agreement.

As the Syrian government exerted more formal suzerainty over Lebanon, Hezbollah clerics such as Secretary-general Hasan Nasrallah and Political Council president Ibrahim Amin al-Sayyed understood the need to compromise the party's ideology to adjust to Lebanon's changing circumstances. Although the mission of "Islamizing Lebanon" remained a central tenet of their party, it became a long-term objective. In the more immediate term, Hezbollah sought to become a mainstream political party. At the same time, Damascus sought to use Hezbollah both to pressure Israel for a return of the Golan Heights and to undermine the development of any opposition movement in Lebanon.

Such objectives were difficult to reconcile. How could Syria build Lebanon's state institutions and support Hezbollah's military role? Assad established rules to govern the relationship among the state, Lebanese political forces, and Hezbollah, which the Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon would oversee:[6]

1. Pro-Syrian officials would staff Lebanese state institutions and the army.
2. The cabinet of ministers would exclude any anti-Syrian official, and Damascus would retain effective veto power over sensitive government portfolios such as the ministries of the interior, defense, and foreign affairs.
3. The Syrian chief of intelligence in Lebanon would oversee elections and gerrymander districts to control them.
4. Hezbollah would take the lead on military operations against Israel but enjoy the implicit political support of the Lebanese government.
5. Unless otherwise approved by Damascus, Hezbollah would limit its operations to the Israeli-occupied "security zone" in southern Lebanon.
6. Neither Hezbollah nor the state could use force against the other with Damascus the arbiter in disputes.
7. Lebanese political parties could pursue their objectives so long as they did not conflict with Syrian policies.
8. Absent Damascus's approval, no political party could use external forces to advance a political agenda.
9. While Damascus would supervise Hezbollah's operations against Israel, Hezbollah could decide the timing within windows specified by Damascus.
10. Hezbollah could capitalize on its resistance role and financial assistance from Iran to advance its political agenda but could not do so at the expense of pro-Syrian parties such as Amal.

Assad, through his intelligence apparatus in Lebanon, enforced those rules. For example, Ghazi Kana‘an, Syria's intelligence chief in Lebanon, closely oversaw the 1992 and 1996 parliamentary elections. The Lebanese government toed the Syrian line and exiled, jailed, or liquidated major opposition figures.

The year 2000 marked a new phase in the Hezbollah-Syrian relationship. Israel's unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon undercut the legitimacy of the Syrian presence. With Syrian encouragement, Hezbollah exerted a claim to Lebanese sovereignty over the mountainous Shebaa Farms.[7]

On June 10, 2000, Hafez al-Assad died; his son Bashar took the reins of power. Though Bashar sought to observe the rules governing Syria's relationship with Lebanon and Hezbollah, he enhanced Hezbollah's political status and power not only by receiving Nasrallah warmly in Damascus but also by supplying Hezbollah with increasingly sophisticated weaponry.

His rapprochement accelerated after the United States launched military operations against Iraq in March 2003. Assad said he "wished that its [U.S.] military plan would fail in Iraq"[8] and his foreign minister, Farouq al-Shara, told the Syrian parliament that "Syria has a national interest in the expulsion of the invaders from Iraq."[9] Syrian officials turned a blind eye toward jihadist infiltration from and through Syria into Iraq.

Relations between Damascus and the United States deteriorated. On May 3, 2003, the Bush administration sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to Damascus to demand Syria close terrorist organizations' offices, decommission Hezbollah's armed groups in Lebanon, and support the extension of Lebanese army authority throughout southern Lebanon. On December 12, 2003, over State Department objections, the Congress passed the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act calling upon Syria "to halt Syrian support for terrorism, end its occupation of Lebanon, and stop its development of weapons of mass destruction."[10] With the cosponsorship of the French government and its successful passage, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 placed Lebanon on the international stage with the call for Syria to withdraw from Lebanon and for Hezbollah to be disarmed.[11]

Encouraged by these events, many Lebanese sought to reclaim their country from Syrian occupation. While Damascus sought to extend the mandate of pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud and accelerated the delivery of enhanced Iranian weaponry to Hezbollah, former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt began to rally anti-Syrian politicians.[12]

The Syrian regime fought back. It responded, according to the suspicion of many governments and U.N. investigators, by ordering the February 14, 2005 assassination of Hariri, which sparked mass protests—the so-called Cedar Revolution.[13] Several bombings, assassinations, and violent clashes followed in subsequent months. But, under significant international pressure, on April 26, 2005, Syrian forces officially withdrew from Lebanon.

Damascus still used Lebanon's state institutions to support and give political cover to Hezbollah, which opposed the Cedar Revolution, and directed Lebanon's state security apparatus to support logistically the arming of Hezbollah. [14] The directors of institutions who provided safe routes for shipping arms by land and air and those who interceded to handle emergency cases included such pro-Syrian officials as Brig. Gen. Jamil Sayyed, the chief of the General Security Department (known as Sûreté General); Gen. Edward Mansour, director-general of the State Security Apparatus; Gen. Ali Hajj, chief of the Internal Security Forces; Brig. Gen. Raymond Azar, chief of Military Intelligence; Brig. Gen. Mustafa Hamdan, commander of the army's presidential brigade; and Col. Ghassan Tufeili, chief of the "Eavesdrop Apparatus" in Military Intelligence.[15] Syrian rearmament not only of Hezbollah but also of Palestinian groups in Lebanon such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and the Abu Musa Organization coincided with the Lebanese debate about their disarmament.

Perhaps Syrian officials hoped that their campaign of violence and intimidation would demonstrate that only Damascus could prevent Lebanon from descending into chaos. Syrian actions both undercut Lebanon's national dialogue and undermined the argument that Hezbollah needed to disarm. The Israel Defense Forces launched air raids against Palestinian terrorist bases in Lebanon on May 28, 2006, to retaliate against rocket attacks on its northern border. Lahoud responded by commending Hezbollah's "resistance" and criticized political forces calling for the party's disarmament.[16]

Robert G. Rabil

 

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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