By Michael Bluhm BEIRUT: While Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah ratcheted up the pressure on the country’s feeble Cabinet with his Thursday call for a boycott of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), he still appears intent on not using Hizbullah’s weapons to bring down the government, a number of analysts told The Daily Star Friday.
Hizbullah and its Syrian backers evidently fear the damage they could suffer if indicted by the court, which could well see its ongoing probe and any potential trials suffer as a result of a boycott, the analysts added. Nasrallah’s restrained tone, however, underlined that the key political actors in Lebanon – and Hizbullah in particular – still want the STL controversy to stop short of any armed internal conflict, the analysts said.
While Nasrallah has in previous speeches denounced the tribunal as a US and Israeli tool to weaken Hizbullah, Thursday’s call for a Lebanese boycott aimed at the domestic scene and will squeeze the rickety government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, which has signed a cooperation agreement with the STL and provides 49 percent of its funding, said Hilal Khashan, who teaches political studies at the American University of Beirut.
Nasrallah “delivered an ultimatum to the government … that if you continue to collaborate, you will be serving the Israelis,” said Khashan.
Nasrallah skillfully took advantage of the Wednesday visit by tribunal investigators to a gynecology clinic in the Dahiyeh, one of Hizbullah’s main bases of support, said Habib Malik, who teaches history at the Lebanese American University and is the son of Charles Malik, one of the founders of modern Lebanon and co-author of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The visit resulted in a crowd of some 150 Hizbullah backers confronting and attacking the investigators, who are seeking the culprits in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
With tribunal investigators committing a double trespass of intruding on the Dahiyeh and allegedly pursuing access to gynecological records, Nasrallah was able to paint the court as insulting Hizbullah’s honor, land and women, Malik added. “It does strike a raw nerve,” he said.
But by taking such a calm tone, Nasrallah was able to use the perceived transgression to move against the court, Hariri and the Cabinet, while leaving himself the opportunity to later tamp down any furor over a potential indictment by keeping the same serene manner – and then reaping the benefits of acting as a peacekeeper, Malik said.
“His tone was far more reserved – I would even say pragmatic, realistic,” Malik said. “He could very easily have fomented passions.
“He’s a very skillful Machiavellian pragmatist. Far from being the dogged ideologue that he has given the impression that he is, he’s much more nuanced. The man never ceases to amaze me.”
While mining the clinic incident, Nasrallah’s endorsement of a boycott also reveals that the group – and the Syrian state which supports it – remains worried about the impact of its members being indicted, said Raghid al-Solh, political analyst and adviser to the Issam Fares Center, a non-partisan think-tank. Being indicted in the assasination of Hariri would make Hizbullah or Syria a pariah in much of the international community and carry severe repercussions for anyone convicted in the killing, Solh added.
The indictment’s “implication is quite threatening to Hizbullah and to the Syrians – it’s a matter of survival,” Solh said, adding that Damascus and Hizbullah view the tribunal as revenge for Hizbullah’s performance against Israel in the summer 2006 war.
Indeed, Syrian President Bashar Assad, which Saad Hariri and many others in the Hariri-led March 14 political camp blamed in Rafik Hariri’s murder, might well be nudging along Nasrallah in his campaign against the court, Khashan said. Saad Hariri last month said he had made a mistake in so quickly accusing Damascus in his father’s killing.
“Even though Hariri has exonerated the Syrians … the Syrians are pushing Hizbullah to take a tough stand,” Khashan said. “Assad is as nervous as Hassan Nasrallah.”
What muddies the potential motives for Nasrallah’s boycott call is that Hariri had effectively in July cleared Hizbullah as a party to his father’s killing, Khashan said. Hariri said the tribunal’s indictment would name Hizbullah members, but they were operating as rogue elements outside Hizbullah directives. “What puzzles me is that Hariri gave [Nasrallah] a dignified exit,” Khashan added.
Regardless of the forces behind Thursday’s speech, a boycott of the court by Hizbullah, its allies and supporters – and any other Lebanese who heed his call – could significantly hamper the probe and any later trials, Solh said. “It might really affect its future,” he added.
As the tribunal becomes more of a political cudgel wielded by Lebanese and international parties to score points or sow instability, the entire cause of unmasking Hariri’s killers, curtailing impunity for political violence in Lebanon and empowering the institutions of international justice suffers, Malik said.
“The greatest victim in all of this is the international tribunal itself,” he said. “In this particular case there is a kind of expedient, utilitarian dimension. All of that does international law a disservice,” he added.
“The greatest victim in all of this is the international tribunal itself,” he said. “In this particular case there is a kind of expedient, utilitarian dimension. All of that does international law a disservice,” he added.
While Hariri has yet to personally respond to Nasrallah’s speech, he has little reason to give further ground on the court, because the premier has this year made a number of concessions to Hizbullah and Syria on the tribunal, while the US has recently shown a renewed commitment to Hariri, the March 14 faction and STL, Khashan said.
“I don’t think the government will heed [Nasrallah’s] ultimatum,” Khashan added. “I don’t think Hariri will make any further concessions. Hariri already made a 180-degree turn. He cannot really move an inch beyond that. I don’t think the government will budge. There are no more concessions.”
At the same time, support for the boycott among Cabinet ministers aligned with the Hizbullah-led March 8 political alliance will weaken the government, Malik said. “This piece of mendacity called national-unity government will come under severe strain,” he said.
An indictment which splits the ministers could well bring to an end the national-unity Cabinet, which arose after the May 2008 Doha Accord ended days of civil strife and temporarily papered over the fundamental differences between the March 14 and March 8 camps, Malik added.
Hariri, who only entered politics after his father’s assassination, finds himself with little maneuvering room after making firm and public commitments to support the tribunal staunchly, but also to Hizbullah and to Syria and to avoid civil strife, Solh added.
“Perhaps he didn’t realize the implications of these commitments,” Solh said. “It tells you something about his limitations. If he had more experience, he would have been more careful in dealing with this issue to avoid any contradictions.”
As for the popular reaction to Nasrallah’s boycott call, some of the country’s Sunnis – already disillusioned by Hariri’s performance – are expressing doubts about the tribunal, in that it might only provoke more unrest by making Rafik Hariri a martyr who drives a permanent wedge between the country’s Shiites and Sunnis, Malik said. If the choice eventually comes down to the tribunal or stability, many Lebanese might decide to give up the STL, he added.
However, Khashan said that, akin to the March 14, 2005, mass demonstration which gave the political coalition its name, at least 1 million Lebanese – mostly Christians and Sunnis – would remain “absolutely” willing to demonstrate their support for the tribunal. Taking the longer view, while the population appears almost evenly – and adamantly – split over the STL, divisions among Lebanese are a historical reality, and once the tribunal crisis passes, another issue will arise to divide the country’s constituencies yet again, Solh said.
For the near future, Nasrallah’s call will likely lead to Hizbullah supporters causing disturbances similar to the Dahiyeh clinic contretemps, and perhaps organizing demonstrations in Downtown Beirut, Khashan said. The Dahiyeh incident “was a sample of what’s to come if the government does not denounce the tribunal and cease all forms of cooperation with it,” he said. “This was just the beginning.”
Nonetheless, Hizbullah seems averse to exercising its military supremacy to end the state’s cooperation with the tribunal, Khashan said. Regardless of any indictment, Hizbullah would attract broad international condemnation for using its arsenal against the state or to cut it off from the tribunal, he added.
“I really doubt very much that Hizbullah will stage a coup,” he said. “They will put themselves in another trap if they do that. They will turn Lebanon into another Gaza. It wouldn’t serve their strategic objectives in Lebanon. This would be a fundamental blunder.”
In addition, the Syrian-Saudi July 30 pledge to foster stability should also help prevent the controversy over the court from spilling into civil strife, Malik said. “I don’t think it’s in Syria’s interest that things blow up here – I don’t think it’s in Hizbullah’s interest, either,” he said. “I don’t see the all-out explosion actually occurring. I see people stepping in at the last minute to rein in the hotheads and reap the political benefits.”
In the end, Nasrallah’s raising of tensions with the boycott call – as well as the looming indictment and the country’s polarization over the international tribunal – means that Lebanon appears to be heading for a period of increased turmoil, Khashan said. “Momentum will be building for more escalation,” he added. “We have just entered a long tunnel. The worst is yet to come.”
No comments:
Post a Comment