The Daily Star - CBC report tarnishes Hizbullah image further Analysts say group cannot tolerate to be accused since ‘it would be delegitimized’ locally and abroad - November 25, 2010

By Michael Bluhm BEIRUT: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) report alleging Hizbullah’s involvement in former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination has further tarnished the party’s reputation, even thought the documentary did not budge the polarized stances paralyzing the political scene, a number of analysts told The Daily Star Wednesday.

The report spurred immediate reactions from Hizbullah and its allies in the March 8 political coalition; their response did not deviate from their established strategy of attacking the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), said retired General Elias Hanna, who teaches political science at various universities. CBC said it had acquired its information implicating Hizbullah from a number of former tribunal investigators. Political tensions have risen in Lebanon as the court prepares to file its indictment in the Hariri case, and political leaders have said they expect the court to accuse Hizbullah members.

Telecommunications Minister Charbel Nahhas of the March 8 camp’s Free Patriotic Movement held a news conference Tuesday, presenting evidence which he said showed that Lebanon’s telecommunications sector had been under Israeli control at the time of Hariri’s February 2005 killing.

March 8 leaders are trying to “hollow out” the looming tribunal indictment by rejecting any telecommunications data used to connect Hizbullah cadres to Hariri’s assassination, Hanna said. Hizbullah and March 8 tactics to undermine the court also include a call to boycott the STL from Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, as well as moves to block the payment of Lebanon’s 49-percent share of STL funding, Hanna said. Hizbullah “cannot tolerate to be accused,” he added. “Locally, it will be delegitimized, [and] regionally and internationally.”

The Hizbullah response to the CBC documentary also hinted that the group considers the accusation of some of its members as a fait accompli, said Habib Malik, who teaches history at the Lebanese American University and is the son of Charles Malik, one of the co-founders of modern Lebanon and co-author of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hizbullah knows it cannot respond to any potential indictment by using its weapons either in Lebanon or against Israel, so the group is angling to minimize the possible damage, Malik added. “They’re getting ready, in a sense, to cut their losses.”

While adding to the sense of inevitability surrounding the indictment of Hizbullah members, the CBC report also serves to further chip away at Hizbullah’s shaken reputation of in the Middle East, said Hilal Khashan, who teaches political studies at the American University of Beirut. Since its military successes against Israel in the summer 2006 war, Hizbullah has seen its image sullied by the sit-in that emptied Beirut’s Downtown from December 2006 and armed clashes in western Beirut in May 2008, Khashan added. Hizbullah gunmen seized swathes of western Beirut after the former Cabinet took steps that Hizbullah believed encroached on its prerogatives.

“Hassan Nasrallah has resigned himself to the issuance of the indictment,” he said. “Hizbullah’s position in the Arab-Islamic world reached its peak right after the summer 2006 war. Since then its image in the Arab-Islamic world has been declining. Their invasion of West Beirut in 2008 did a lot of damage to Hizbullah.

“Hizbullah is seen more as an instrument in Iran’s hands rather than as an agent of anti-Israel liberation.”
In spite of the turmoil accompanying the wait for the indictment, the CBC documentary did not increase the chances for violence over the expected charges, Malik said. Prime Minister Saad Hariri, son of the slain former premier, moved quickly Tuesday to defuse any heated reactions to the CBC report, saying he did not believe any leaks served the cause of justice and that he would wait for the official indictment. In his response, Hariri did not deviate from his approach of taking any steps necessary to avoid confrontation over the tribunal, Khashan said; the prime minister had previously apologized for rushing to blame Syria in the killing and said only rogue elements of Hizbullah might have been involved in his father’s assassination.

Hariri and his partners in the March 14 faction have long been deadlocked with March 8 representatives in the Cabinet, and the CBC documentary might only make it harder for the wrangling ministers to reach consensus on any issue, said Raghid al-Solh, political analyst and adviser to the Issam Fares Center, a non-partisan think tank.

Hanna said that “political paralysis all over Lebanon for a certain period of time” will likely reign until the indictment is revealed.

Khashan said the possible leaks of information to CBC appear part of a plan to intermittently let out the results of the investigation, in order to preempt any shock in Lebanon when the charges are announced. A May 2009 article in the German magazine Der Spiegel first said investigators believed Hizbullah participated in Rafik Hariri’s assassination, while Saad Hariri told Nasrallah early this summer that the indictment would name Hizbullah members, Khashan added.

“This is allowing the Lebanese to brace themselves for the indictment,” Khashan added. “What we are seeing right now [in CBC] is just preparation for Lebanese politicians and the public.”

Indeed, CBC’s investigation will only likely reinforce opinions that have become hardened in the country’s various communities, he said. Backers of the March 14 camp “would see the evidence as compelling; if you are a Hizbullah supporter, you would talk about conspiracy theories,” he added. “If you talk to level-headed Lebanese … they will still place the tribunal in high esteem.”

“New information in Lebanon does seem to alter people’s perception of the situation,” Khashan said.

Hanna, meanwhile, said that the CBC report, in hewing to the standard line of speculation about the investigation’s direction, can also serve as encouragement for Hariri and his allies in resisting Hizbullah attempts to stymie the court, while yet again blackening Hizbullah’s name before the indictment comes out. Whether accurate or not, the appearance of the CBC story stemming from a leak in the tribunal could also harm the reputation of the court, he added. Some might accuse the STL of selectively leaking information for political purposes, while at the very least such a significant leak would do little to burnish the tribunal’s credibility, Hanna added.

In the end, the CBC report only serves to swathe the court in more speculation and conspiracy theories, which only sabotage the causes that the tribunal was founded to pursue: fostering accountability and ending impunity for political violence, Malik said.

“It’s really disappointing and sad that international law should have to undergo this kind of abuse,” he said. “The greatest loser in this whole drama since the tribunal was created is international law.”