The Rise and Decline of Lebanon's Shi'ites
NORTON, AUGUSTUS RICHARD
RENT BY RADICALISM The Rise and Decline of Lebanon's Shi'ites BY AUGUSTUS RICHARD NORTON Marine Lieutenant Colonel William R. Higgins, who was kidnapped February 17 on a dangerous strip of...
...Hezbollah's attitude toward UNTPIL is unremittingly hostile...
...In the last half-century, though, the modernization of the agricultural sector, national population growth, and the ready availability of cheap Palestinian labor combined to force them off the land...
...The mystery surrounding his disappearance also was richly evocative of the central belief of Shi'ism, the occultation of the 12th Imam, who is expected to reappear and usher in a reign of justice on Earth...
...Moreover, the Islamic Republic of Iran has poured money, materiel and human resources into Lebanon, especially since 1982, for the express purpose of promoting the fortunes of Hezbollah, a splinter group that seeks to establish Islamic rule in the country...
...recently there have been between 50 and 100 per month, according to Israeli and United Nations reports...
...At the same time, Palestinian guerrilla groups drew large numbers of Shi'ite recruits by stressing a common plight...
...Many Lebanese look to the country's August 1988 presidential elections as a potential turning point...
...As a result, our view of these people is very skewed and selective...
...They made a fertile recruiting pool for an array of political organizations ready to tap their frustrations and promise solutions to their problems...
...Lebanon has confounded all except the most strident pessimists...
...But as the resistance gained its deadly momentum Amai did come to play the most important role...
...Although it sometimes acted in cooperation with Hezbollah, more often the two groups were in competition...
...The Shi'ites were not only fed up with the arrogance and usurpations of the Palestinians, but blamed them for the damage caused by the Israeli Defense Forces...
...Shi'ites from the South and from the Bekaa Valley streamed into Beirut, where they struggled to make ends meet filling petty positions in the service economy...
...The old bosses, desperately trying to hold on to the remnants of their former supporters, now were overshadowed by the Movement of the Deprived that had grown up around the cleric al-Sayyid Musa al-Sadr...
...have provided a model for sacrifice and courage in Lebanon, which is approximately one-third Shi' ite, as well as in predominantly Shi'ite Iran and Iraq...
...A significant number of them have declared their commitment to Islamic rule in Lebanon and their fealty to Hezbollah...
...And Amai, allied with Syria yet lacking the power to enforce its writ in Beirut and in southern Lebanon, is going to be very much enmeshed in the bloodshed...
...Amai has not been particularly creative in the past few years, nor are its coffers overflowing...
...For many of them, indeed, the prospect is no doubt repugnant...
...Today most Shi' ites are staunchly dedicated to the proposition that the Palestinian "ministate" existing in Lebanon that was dismantled in 1981 must never be resurrected...
...It is surely remarkable that a people who remained in the shadows until the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 have succeeded so thoroughly in captivating headline writers, National Security Council staff members, Israeli Cabinet ministers, the Presidents of the United States and France, and television viewers around the world...
...But as the Shi'ites began to emerge from underdevelopment in the 1950s, the community's long-established power brokers were increasingly considered anachronistic and a wide range of secular political parties gained appeal...
...It has not brought the two organizations closer to a resolution of their struggle for the political soul of Lebanese Shi'ism...
...Having lived through some cruel and punishing experiences, they readily recognize that they are far better off with a United Nations force than without one, whatever its demerits...
...By the eve of the 1975-76 civil war it was already clear that they were a community to be reckoned with...
...To date, the Amai movement has been reasonably effective in preventing the re-establishment of an armed Palestinian presence in the South...
...For all the hopes that 1988 will be the year the violence bottoms out, it is more likely to resemble 1986 and 1987...
...In August 1978, Musa al-Sadr vanished while making a private visit to Libya...
...No outside power has shown the capacity or the will to stem the tide...
...Despite their seemingly genie-like eruption following the 1982 Israeli invasion, Lebanon's Shi' ites in fact started to shake off their inertia in the late 1940s...
...It is highly improbable that the majority of Lebanese Shi' ites want to go so far as to set up an Islamic republic in Lebanon...
...Upon returning to his ancestral home in Jabal 'Amil in 1959, he established himself as a person of great talent and enormous energy, and within a few years was already a serious rival to the entrenched Shi'ite leaders...
...Israel moves military units in and out of the security zone as the situation warrants, using it as a base to conduct forays into Lebanon...
...Amai has the advantage of being profoundly representative of the Shi'ite mainstream...
...Historical events such as the martyrdom of Imam Husain in 680 A.D...
...The power vacuum that would result from UNIFIL's removal is frightening both to Western observers and the Amai leadership...
...Correspondents and others who had scarcely seemed aware of their existence a few years earlier began to reflexively describe them as long "downtrodden, underprivileged, ignored, and quiescent...
...Taking its cue from Teheran, Hezbollah has been rabidly criticizing the UN peacekeepers, insisting that they serve Israeli and Western interests...
...Amai saw itself as a basically Lebanese movement seeking to reform the nation's political system, rather than to institute an Iranian-style "mullahocracy...
...The great promise Amai's steady consolidation held out, though, was not fulfilled in 1982...
...But if alSadr loomed large in life, he achieved heroic proportions as an apparent martyr, coming to symbolize the condition of the Lebanese Shi'ites...
...Amal has gone to considerable lengths to define the geographic limits of permissible military actions against the Israeli forces and their Lebanese allies, while continuing to participate in the attacks lest it be seen as an objective ally of Israel...
...Amai has therefore bonded itself symbiotically to the only legitimate institution that operates in the region, namely the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNTFIL...
...Indeed, for many the stereotypical Shi'ite is something between a crazed religious fanatic bent on martyrdom and a pitiless thug...
...The Israelis, for their part, have after an extended period of clumsiness begun to demonstrate a keener sensitivity to the nuances of Shi'ite politics...
...Yet our judgment is based on the actions of what is essentially a fringe element...
...Regrettably, both for the Lebanese and for regional security, there is nothing on the horizon to suggest the optimists will shortly have their day...
...Unfortunately, the Lebanese Shi' ites most often came to our attention in the context of terrorism, hostage-taking and various forms of gruesome bloodshed...
...The combined efforts of this admixture of Leftist, Amai, and Hezbollah elements forced Israel to withdraw the bulk of its troops from southern Lebanon by June 1985...
...Once intent on reforming the Lebanese political system, the organization is nowlike most Lebanese-simply intent on surviving...
...Yet in Lebanon's present climate of obduracy and immobility, Hezbollah's sweeping prescriptions are attracting new supporters...
...Many of them were schoolteachers, among the first to benefit from the increasing availability of education, and they wanted to ensure their place in a social and political structure that would otherwise be deaf to their claims...
...RENT BY RADICALISM The Rise and Decline of Lebanon's Shi'ites BY AUGUSTUS RICHARD NORTON Marine Lieutenant Colonel William R. Higgins, who was kidnapped February 17 on a dangerous strip of road south of the port city of Tyre, is the latest victim of Shi'ite radicalism in Lebanon...
...Since its creation in 1978, UNIHL has managed to provide a substantial degree of security and prosperity in the South...
...The symbols of the government have been allowed to survive in Southern Lebanon, but political authority is badly fragmented and the State is little more than a flimsy memory...
...The Shi'ites are found in three areas of Lebanon: the Bekaa Valley in the North, the Beirut area, and the South...
...Israel's 1978 Litani Operation was a watershed, because it signaled the beginning of an intensive anti-PLO drive that persisted until the 1981 ceasefire pressed by the United States...
...To appreciate Lebanon's Shi'ite community as a whole, to understand its legitimate hopes and aspirations, it is necessary to have some knowledge of its roots and cultural development...
...By 1976, one year after becoming known publicly, it seemed to have faded into insignificance...
...Augustus Richard Norton, a previous NL contributor, is an associate professor of comparative politics at West Point and the author of Amal and the Shi'a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon...
...Critical leadership roles were assumed by non-clerics in their 30s and early 40s, largely members of the emerging Shi'ite middle class...
...The average Lebanese civilian is certainly sick and tired of the killing, the rule of the militias, and the empty rhetoric, but clubs are still trump and are bound to remain so in the next several years...
...The forces challenging Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon represented a wide range of ideological persuasions...
...There is no denying that the overthrow of the Shah of Iran has been an inspiration to Shi'ites everywhere...
...Syria, like Israel, seems to have lost its taste for doing more than playing Lebanon as it is...
...Along with Iranian spokesmen, it has condemned the UN force as Israel's protector and as an example of "superpower arrogance.' In August 1986, UNTPIL was subjected to direct armed attack...
...cannot provide for itself, and by mobilizing popular support...
...That has pushed Amai in a more radical direction...
...Since the vanguard was made up of Leftist groups that had earlier been aligned with the PLO, it is inaccurate to depict either Amai or Hezbollah as the initiator or architect of the struggle, despite their respective claims...
...Whenever it seems the situation could not possibly get any worse, it invariably does...
...Nonetheless, these lay leaders and their followers are devoted to Shi'ism...
...Of late, too, Shi'ite politicians have raised millions of dollars on fundraising visits to Lebanese coreligionists abroad...
...Amai reciprocates by performing some services UNIFE...
...Its militia, called Amai, an Arabic acronym for the Lebanese Resistance Detachments, did not perform impressively in the civil war...
...A further complication for Amai has been the increasingly active stance of Shi'ite clerics in the South on the Iranian model...
...Meanwhile, both Amai and Hezbollah continue to compete for the same impoverished, angry, impatient, yet pragmatic constituency...
...Consisting of some 1,500 poorly trained men, it was more widely noticed for its defeats than its victories...
...Regardless of their organizational loyalties, the Lebanese Shi'ites share a deeply held sense that they have not been treated fairly, and they are no longer willing to play a subordinate political role...
...Many were young, with marginal skills, lofty ambitions, and plenty of time on their hands...
...Besides being the residential locale for about half a million of its members, it is the cultural heartland for Shi'ism in Lebanon...
...Yet the Israelis did not depart in toto...
...Shi'ism, whose adherents comprise a sect accounting for roughly 10 per cent of all Moslems world-wide (Sunnis make up the vast majority), is rich in potent symbolism...
...In the early 1980s the country's previously little known Shi'ites suddenly became regular fare on the network news programs and in the glossy weeklies...
...Finding that moderation was a declining currency, the organization's leaders eventually decided that political (and physical) survival necessitated a more extreme posture...
...Just as the Shi'ites are internally riven, the Christian Maronite community, which for so long dominated Lebanese politics, is factionalized and marked by deadly feuds...
...Lately their military ripostes have been designed to avoid undermining Amal...
...The Shi'ite mainstream rejects this assertion, but public opinion polls carry little weight in the factional chaos that Lebanon has degenerated into over the last half-dozen years...
...But, Hezbollah is handsomely financed by Teheran to the tune of several million dollars per month, and in Lebanon's appalling economic climate men and women will sell their loyalty to feed their children irrespective of their political beliefs...
...The third factor helping to foster the revival of Amai was the steadily growing animosity between the Shi'ites and Palestinian guerrillas in southern Lebanon...
...The problem is to calibrate them so that they do not provoke massive counterattacks but still exert pressure on Israel to close up its security zone...
...Thus in the '60s and early '70s Shi'ites swelled the ranks of anti-establishment organizations like the Communist Party, attracted by ideologies that promised radical social, economic and political reform in Lebanon...
...The country's economy is in shambles, what is left of the middle class is being engulfed by poverty, and in Beirut street crime competes with political violence as the major threat to public safety...
...This posture has put it on a collision course with the PLO, and there is a credible body of evidence showing PLO-Hezbollah collaboration...
...Most Americans have a hard time empathizing with them, however hapless they might be...
...In the 1950s an equally important external migration got under way...
...The reaction of the people of southern Lebanon was strongly negative...
...Most likely he was killed on the orders of Muammar el-Qaddafi, whose ire he had reportedly aroused...
...Then, during 1978-79, Amai was rescued from obscurity by three developments: the disappearance of its founder, the Islamic revolution in Iran, and the stunning deterioration of relations with the PLO...
...Because of this popular disapproval, the most serious assaults on UNIFIL have ceased...
...Typically, these adjectives continue to be used without much understanding of the factors that explain why the Shi'ites, though still downtrodden and underprivileged, are quiescent and ignored no longer...
...The bleak employment prospects within Lebanon prompted many Shi'ite men to explore the rich opportunities the Persian Gulf and West Africa offered in the hope of breaking the bonds of poverty...
...Even if the elections are held-and that is hardly assured -it is questionable whether a leader exists at the moment who could start a process of healing and reconstruction...
...This was an extraordinary defeat (the lessons of which seem to have been thoroughly assimilated by the Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza...
...Among the Shi' ites themselves a new political wrinkle surfaced as well...
...Extremism has been a Lebanese growth industry, and among the Shi'ites the Iranian-supported Hezbollah (Party of God) is a leading manufacturer...
...The fruits of their enterprise are readily observable today in southern towns, where impressive homes stand...
...they retained control of a so-called security zone, where a Lebanese Christian militia led by General Antoine Lahad continues to act as their proxy...
...Of these, it is the South (administratively defined as one of Lebanon's five provinces) that holds the key to the community...
...It has become popular to depict the Shi'ite phenomenon in Lebanon as an offshoot of the Islamic revolution in Iran, where Shi'ism has been reinvigorated by charismatic clerics like the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...
...An unarmed observer, Higgins was one of 17 American officers serving with a 75-man unit of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization...
...The Islamic revolution in Iran was, perhaps inevitably, a further spur to Amal's revitalization, yet it was not viewed as a model for action...
...But it would be a mistake to overlook the distinctive character of Shi'ite activism in the Lebanese milieu...
...Their traditional occupation had been farming...
...But an ominous pattern of harassment, sniping and other violence against the force persists, with the Higgins kidnapping as the latest manifestation...
...Not surprisingly, the security zone has been a magnet for Shi'ite attacks...
...Amal's resurgence reflected the Shi'ites' determination to control their own fate and throw off the abhorred burden of the PLO...
...Along with funds, Iran has enhanced Hezbollah's appeal by dispatching to Lebanon a cadre of welltrained organizers and technicians in a position to offer meaningful assistance to people who really need it...
...They also left behind a cadre of several hundred Israeli officials, including intelligence agents, Arab affairs officers and soldiers, who operate behind the facade formed by the Lahad militia...
...Even the reintroduction of 7,000 Syrian troops into Beirut in February 198 7 has done little more than cap the violence...
...The modest incremental concessions that might have placated them back in 1982 would not do the trick now...
...As Lebanon moved closer to the carnage that began in 1975, nearly all of the country's political factions evolved military components, including al-Sadr's Movement of the Deprived...
...The president of Amai, Nabih Berri, was born of an émigré merchant family in Sierra Leone and trained as a lawyer in Beirut and Paris...
...One of the most fascinating and alluring personalities in recent Lebanese history, al-Sadr was bom in Iran in 1928...
...The dynamic is well illustrated in the South, where after more than a year of sitting on their hands, they began actively to oppose the Israeli Army's presence...
...The core region, known to the Shi'ites as Jabal 'Amil, is a venerable center of Shi'ite scholarship and has played a central role in the sect's history...
...In addition, they recemented Amal's alliance with Syria, whose influence in Lebanon was on the rise...
Vol. 71 • February 1988 • No. 3
