In October, Lebanon was elected to one of ten non-permanent member seats on the United Nations Security Council. Come January 2010, Lebanon will assume Asia’s “Arab League” seat, replacing Libya for a two-year term on the critical international body.

The UNSC seat was the brainchild of Lebanon’s president Michel Suleiman, who used his 2008 UN General Assembly address and his side meetings during the 2009 gathering to press Lebanon’s candidacy. The notion of a seat on the council reportedly appealed to Suleiman, who prides himself on returning Lebanon to the “international political arena.”

Washington quietly opposed Lebanon’s candidacy. Senior administration officials were concerned about potential problems for the bilateral relationship that could arise from Lebanon’s voting decisions. While the pro-West March 14 coalition won the June 2009 elections, it was clear—even prior to the formation of the government in November—that Hezbollah and its local and international allies Syria and Iran would exert preponderant influence within the new government and the state’s foreign policy. Indeed, in the current government as with the previous one, Hezbollah—via its subsidiary Shiite party, Amal—controls the foreign ministry.

It’s not difficult to envision the kind of problems that will ensue. In the coming year, for example, it is all but assured that a resolution to implement “crippling sanctions” against Iran will come before the Security Council. Given Hezbollah’s influence—and the ever present threat of violence—the best Washington could hope for during a UNSC vote would be a Lebanese abstention. More likely, under pressure from Syria and Iran, Lebanon might vote against such a resolution.

Worse still, if history is any indication, Lebanon’s ambassador to the UN, Nawaf Salam—who himself is sympathetic to March 14—could be ordered to abstain or oppose Security Council resolutions in connection to UNSCRs 1701 and 1559, if not the Hariri tribunal, which Hezbollah and its allies do not support.

An article from the Lebanese opposition daily Al-Akhbar published on November 17 hinted that a resurgent Damascus—whose influence in Lebanon, according to Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa, is stronger now than it was when it maintained troops in the country—would try to take advantage of Lebanon’s seat to promote its own interests in the Security Council. Here’s a translation of the short article:

On the sidelines of the summit that brought together the Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, Assad’s political and media advisor Buthaina Shaaban agreed with the delegation accompanying Suleiman to raise the level of coordination between Lebanon and Syria’s mission to the United Nation in New York, and that Syria will increase the number of its representatives (at the UN mission) to coincide with the Lebanese increase that came after Lebanon was elected a non-permanent member of the Security Council.

So in addition to flexing its muscle in Beirut, according to Al-Akhbar, Damascus is looking to control Lebanon’s UN mission more closely.

Given the potential pitfalls, Washington discouraged the government of Lebanon from moving forward, and reportedly even asked Riyadh to forward Saudi Arabia’s candidacy instead. Saudi Arabia wouldn’t bite, and Lebanon wouldn’t back down. So in January, Beirut will take its seat on the UNSC, a position that not only promises to annoy the administration and Congress—which has to sign off on the significant aid packages to Beirut—but also to be yet another source of increased tensions at home.

Despite the inherent problems associated with the Lebanese seat, Suleiman, not surprisingly, is exceedingly pleased. Some Lebanese scholars are, too. Carnegie’s Paul Salem recently told the Daily Star: “I’m very, very happy about it.… It boosts Lebanon’s presence in the UN and the Security Council… to push the items on its agenda.”

While Lebanon’s international profile might be raised, it’s hard to see how the benefits to Beirut outweigh the downsides.

The Washington Post reports that some in the administration see the Lebanese Hezbollah as a possible model for transformation of the Taliban. Describing the Taliban as a movement “deeply rooted” in Afghanistan, much like Hezbollah is in Lebanon, proponents of a Hezbollah model for the Taliban see a scenario in which the Taliban participates in Afghan politics, occasionally flexes its military muscles to benefit its political positions at home, but does not directly threat the United States even if it remains a source of regional instability.

According to the Post, while the idea has been discussed informally “outside the Situation Room meetings,” it has not yet been presented to President Obama. That’s a good thing because the notion is deeply flawed, and its implementation would have dire consequences for Afghanistan, the region more broadly, and U.S. counterterrorism efforts all.

Hezbollah in Lebanon is a destabilizing force, as is the Taliban in Afghanistan. Not only does Hezbollah maintain an independent militia in explicit violation of United Nations resolutions, it uses this private army to create semi-independent enclaves throughout the south of Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley where Lebanese Armed Forces are not allowed. In these spaces, Hezbollah maintains training camps, engages in weapons smuggling and drug trafficking, and maintains tens of thousands of rockets aimed at its neighbor to the south, Israel. Hezbollah collects intelligence on people traveling through Beirut international airport, and has built its own communications infrastructure beyond the reach of the national government.

In Afghanistan, an independent Taliban militia that controls territory of its own; maintains bases and training camps; facilitates weapons smuggling; and engages in every aspect of the narcotics production pipeline from poppy cultivation and processing to taxing delivery and smuggling abroad, would certainly seek to maintain its control over its own territory. Indeed, an increasing number of major Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) arrests over the past few months have targeted drug kingpins closely tied to the Taliban, like Haji Juma Kahn and Baz Mohammad.

Neither will Hezbollah today nor a similarly modeled Taliban tomorrow tolerate government challenges to its private army or other sources of power. In the words of then-Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Donald Kerr, such groups are out for themselves, and will turn on their fellow Lebanese or Afghan citizens, respectively, when under pressure. “Events in Lebanon since May 7 [2008] demonstrate that Hezbollah—with the full support of Syria and Iran—will in fact turn its weapons against the Lebanese people for political purposes,” Kerr explained. “Hezbollah sought to justify its attacks against fellow Lebanese as an attempt to defend the resistance against attacks by the government.” Scores of Afghan civilians have been killed in Taliban suicide bombings, including the most recent attack outside the Indian embassy which claimed the lives of 17 Afghans, including 15 civilians and two Afghan police officers. It is all the more difficult to imagine a scenario in which the Taliban play a stabilizing political role in Afghanistan in light of the fact that, unlike Hezbollah, the Taliban adhere to a strict salafi-jihadi doctrine which is anathema to secular politics and requires the strict implementation of shariah law.

Commenting on the philosophical distinctions some in the administration make between the Taliban and Al Qaeda, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs distinguished between the Taliban as an Islamist element in Afghanistan and “an entity that, through a global, transnational jihadist network, would seek to strike the U.S. homeland,” like Al Qaeda. But in the assessment of people like Bruce Reidel, an Al Qaeda and Taliban expert who oversaw the administration’s policy review regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban’s ties to Al Qaeda run deep. “It’s a fundamental misreading of the nature of these organizations to think they are anything other than partners,” said Reidel. “Al Qaeda is embedded in the Taliban insurgency, and it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to be able to separate them.”

Here too, Hezbollah—a group involved not only in politics in Lebanon but in terrorist activity worldwide—is the wrong model. Even as the Hezbollah-led March 8 coalition campaigned ahead of Lebanon’s June 7 elections this summer, the group was forced to contend with the unexpected exposure of its covert terrorist activities both at home and abroad. At home, Hezbollah stands accused of playing a role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Abroad, law enforcement officials have taken action against Hezbollah support networks operating across the globe, including in Egypt, Yemen, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, Azerbaijan, Belgium, and Colombia. Just this past week, a court in Azerbaijan found two Hezbollah operatives guilty of plotting attacks on the Israeli and U.S. embassies in Baku, among other plots, and sentenced them each to 15 years in prison.

The Taliban is primarily involved in attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, though it has been tied to at least one plot in the United States and another in Europe. In the United States, a group of eleven jihadists in Northern Virginia were found to have connections with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Lashkar-i-Taiba. In Europe, the Pakistani Taliban—distinct from but closely allied with the Afghan Taliban—claimed responsibility for a failed plot to bomb subway trains in Barcelona in 2008. And while historically the Taliban was an adversary of Iran’s, the United States believes since at least 2006 Iran has arranged frequent shipments of small arms, RPGs, explosives and other weapons to the Taliban. The Qods Force also provides the Taliban in Afghanistan with weapons, funding, logistics and military training, according to the U.S. government.

As National Counterterrorism Center director Michael Leiter made clear in his congressional testimony last week, Hezbollah is a very poor model for a future Taliban. According to Leiter, the U.S. intelligence community holds the following to be true:

While not aligned with al-Qa’ida, we assess that Lebanese Hizballah remains capable of conducting terrorist attacks on U.S. and Western interests, particularly in the Middle East. It continues to train and sponsor terrorist groups in Iraq that threaten the lives of U.S. and Coalition forces, and supports Palestinian terrorist groups’ efforts to attack Israel and jeopardize the Middle East Peace Process. Although its primary focus is Israel, the group holds the United States responsible for Israeli policies in the region and would likely consider attacks on U.S. interests, to include the Homeland, if it perceived a direct threat from the United States to itself or Iran. Hizballah’s Secretary General, in justifying the group’s use of violence against fellow Lebanese citizens last year, characterized any threat to Hizballah’s armed status and its independent communications network as redlines.

Modeling the Taliban after Hezbollah is a recipe for failure. It would doom efforts to promote democracy in Afghanistan and engender long-term instability in both Afghanistan and Pakistan along the traditional Pashtun tribal belt that straddles the country’s shared border. It would embolden one of Iran’s newer allies in the region and empower a salafi-jihadi organization with close and ongoing ties to Al Qaeda to firmly establish control over parts of the country from which it would continue to produce massive quantities of drugs that ultimately make their way to the West. Looking to Hezbollah as the model for a future Taliban displays both ignorance of Hezbollah and naïveté regarding the Taliban. No matter how you slice it, that’s a dangerous combination.

MESH Admin: There is an Arabic translation of this post.

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If early returns hold up and the March 14 coalition emerges victorious in Lebanese parliamentary elections, sending a resounding defeat to Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, then one of the most important “unsung heroes” in the vote will have been… Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden’s surprise visit to Beirut on May 22 was not just gutsy. By reminding Lebanese voters that Washington will review financial assistance and other aspects of our relations with Lebanon depending on the outcome of the election, Biden played Middle East hardball. Lebanese voters—especially the critical swing Christian voters—seem to have gotten the message. They cast their ballots in droves for candidates opposed to the Hezbollah-backed alliance and, in so doing, appear to have turned the tide in the election. (Of course, those voters had ample reason to say “enough” to Hezbollah and its Aounist allies, but Biden may have pushed them over the top.)

Biden’s Lebanon foray is a salutary reminder for the Obama administration in its overall engagement with the Middle East. Elsewhere in the region, the administration seems to be directing a policy devoid of sticks (except toward Israel’s settlement policy, which is another story altogether). The President’s Cairo address to the world’s Muslims, for example, included not a single hint of “negative incentive”; while he eloquently made the case for religious freedom, democracy, women’s rights, and peaceful nuclear energy, there were no suggestions of negative repercussions for any country that rejects the President’s entreaties. After the polite applause is forgotten, the result is likely to be indifference on the part of most Arab and Muslim leaders (except, again, on settlement policy).

In Lebanon, Biden’s timely reminder to locals of what they might lose by cutting deals with radicals and extremists suggests that Chicago politics is alive and well in the Middle East. The Chicagoan in the White House should pay attention.

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On June 7, Lebanon goes to the polls to elect a new government. Just over a week out, the race is too close to call. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Either the pro-west March 14th coalition, in power since 2005, retains power; or the Iranian- and Syrian-backed March 8th coalition led by Hezbollah gains de jure control over the state, and with it the Lebanese military.

The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) is an important, understudied and perhaps the sole respected national institution in a divided country. The LAF possesses a legitimacy and widespread support that are virtually non-existent in other Lebanese institutions. That said, there are serious questions regarding the potential of the army—and of other domestic security agencies—for enhancing state sovereignty.

Despite my reservations, since the end of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon in 2005, I have supported U.S. efforts to build a strong LAF that is loyal and accountable to the state, a project I worked on while I served at the Pentagon. Since 2005, Washington has provided over $400 million to improve the capabilities of the force, which languished during the years of Syrian suzerainty. Despite the significant infusion of U.S. assistance, however, there is little indication that, to date, the LAF—or other U.S.-funded security institutions—are moving in this direction. At best, it’s going to be a long-term project.

The LAF remains a consensus institution, only able to implement the decisions of the Lebanese government with the tacit approval of Hezbollah. A few examples provide insight into the nature of the problem, with both the LAF and other national institutions:

• Perhaps the best example of this dynamic is what happened following the Fatah al-Islam takeover of Nahr el Bared in May 2007. Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah initially opposed the operation—terming LAF entrance into the camp as a “red line”—but he later relented, according to Hezbollah sources (likely due to overwhelming Lebanese popular support for a military response following the massacre of two dozen LAF troops), allowing the operation to proceed.
• There is some pretty convincing evidence of freelancing within the LAF in support of Hezbollah during the 2006 Summer War between Israel and the Shi’ite militia. While the LAF was largely a non-combatant in the hostilities, Hezbollah fired a Chinese-made, Iranian-provided C802 land to sea missile that hit and nearly sank the Israeli SAAR 5-class missile cruiser, the Hanit. According to Israeli sources, the missile provided no early radar signature—allowing the ship to employ countermeasures—because it relied on LAF naval radar. Israel responded by destroying LAF naval radar stations.
• The LAF did not implement the government’s decision in May 2008 to remove LAF General Wafiq Chucair, the Hezbollah-sympathetic officer in charge of Beirut airport. Hezbollah had responded to the personnel decision, and the edict of the government to dismantle the organization’s dedicated fiber optic network, by invading Beirut. The government’s decision was in fact later overridden by then-COS Michel Suleiman, who later became President of the Republic.
• During Hezbollah’s May 2008 invasion of Beirut, the LAF did not oppose the organization’s military assault on the capital. In fact, evidence suggests the LAF colluded with Hezbollah in the operation, leaving areas as Hezbollah entered and returning to accept transfer of responsibility after Hezbollah withdrew. Moreover, there were complaints that the LAF did not arrive early to protect March 14th ministers from the onslaught.
• More recently, and equally problematic if true, were reports recently leaked by Cairo that Lebanon’s Sureté Générale (Al-Amn al-’Aam) provided the doctored passports to Hezbollah operatives apprehended by Egypt.

Washington’s provision of weapons is an important factor in the development of LAF capabilities. In the long term, however, it might be equally if not more useful if the United States and other western states provided civil affairs training geared toward building unit cohesion and developing a primary allegiance to the state, a loyalty that trumps sectarian allegiance.

Of course, depending how the June 7 elections turn out, the discussion could be moot. Hezbollah already exerts a preponderance of influence over the LAF, and has long been believed—in coordination with its Syrian allies—to have significant sway within the military intelligence (G2). However, should March 8th win, the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration should rethink the current level of funding for this “national institution.”

From Oren Barak

The puzzle that my book grapples with might be familiar to those who have seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a movie that came out in 1975, the same year that Lebanon’s civil war broke out:

Cart Master: Bring out yer dead.
[A customer puts a body on the cart]
Customer: Here’s one.
Cart Master: That’ll be ninepence.
Dead Person: I’m not dead.
Cart Master: What?
Customer: Nothing. There’s your ninepence.
Dead Person: I’m not dead.
Cart Master: ‘Ere, he says he’s not dead.
Customer: Yes he is.
Dead Person: I’m not.
Cart Master: He isn’t.
Customer: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill.
Dead Person: I’m getting better.
Customer: No you’re not, you’ll be stone dead in a moment…

The “Dead Person” is Lebanon and the puzzle is how did this state, which so many observers had referred to as a “non-state state” (or a “failed state,” to use a more up-to-date term), manage to endure despite the long and devastating conflict (1975-90) and be resuscitated in its aftermath. The book suggests that the Lebanese Army has played a significant role in Lebanon’s survival.

Initially, I planned to write a more general account of Lebanon’s process of state formation, the causes for its “failure” in the 1970s and 1980s, and its reconstruction in the 1990s. But after some deliberation, I decided to focus on the Lebanese Army, which encapsulates these dramatic developments. After all, this was a military that was weak before the conflict, which had become paralyzed and nearly disintegrated along the lines of ethnicity, clan, and region in the initial stages of the war, but which managed to stay intact throughout this period and be successfully reconstructed in the postwar era. Indeed, today the Lebanese Army enjoys an unparalleled position in Lebanon, demonstrated not only by the widespread public support for its activities, such as the military operation that it launched against Fatah al-Islam, the radical Islamic faction in Tripoli, in 2007, but also in the election of the army commander, General Michel Suleiman, as Lebanon’s president in 2008.

It is important to note that this trajectory is markedly different from that of other military institutions in divided societies that witnessed intrastate conflict. In Yugoslavia, for example, the Yugoslav People’s Army disintegrated along with the state, and some of its men joined the various ethnic militias. Some of them, including high-ranking officers, soon perpetrated war crimes against their former compatriots. Although some Lebanese soldiers, too, joined various militias during the civil war, the bulk of the army’s personnel did not.

In order to solve the puzzle of the Lebanese Army’s endurance during the conflict, I decided to trace its origins from the creation of the first Lebanese military units by the French Army during the First World War until the attempts made by the Lebanese Army to restore Lebanon’s authority in the postwar era. Yet, when going through the vast resources that I gathered—the army’s bulletins, the Lebanese official gazette, memoirs and biographies of numerous Lebanese soldiers, Western archival material, the Lebanese and Arab press, and secondary works on Lebanon—I realized that any discussion of the history of the Lebanese Army (and of any military institution for that matter) must not limit itself to “objective” facts, but also relate to the ways that the army and its leaders—always conscious of the critical importance of history in the process of state formation—wished this past to be remembered.

Writing about a military institution in the Middle East, a region where security matters are still paramount, is no easy task. Yet, in the Lebanese case, I was struck by the wealth of resources on the army, most of which were previously untapped. Among others, this enabled me to collect biographical material on 4,453 officers who served in the Lebanese Army from its inception to the present in order to identify change and continuity in patterns of recruitment and military service. In this way, I was able to show that the Lebanese Army has gradually become more representative of the various sectors of Lebanese society—ethnic groups (or communities), large families (or clans), and regions—and this transformation preceded the political reforms that facilitated the ending of the conflict. Military institutions in divided societies, in other words, can be, and perhaps ought to be, representative institutions! I believe that this finding is relevant to other divided societies, including present-day Iraq.

In The Lebanese Army, I hope to achieve three main goals. The first is to call attention to the significant developments that have taken place in Lebanon in recent decades, and especially to the strengthening of the state’s institutions not only in the coercive sense but also in terms of their legitimacy. In my view, this process has considerable implications for Lebanon’s close neighbors, and especially for Israel, where many still treat Lebanon as a “non-state state.” A second goal is to encourage additional studies on military institutions—and on the realm of security generally—in divided societies, including most Middle Eastern countries. Finally, the book challenges scholars to rethink existing explanations for the “weakness” and “strength” of states in our times, as well as these concepts themselves. Lebanon, for one, is certainly not “dead” and there are many lessons to be learned from its experience.

Order from Publisher | Amazon | Excerpt

This interview with Timur Goksel (click here if you don’t see the embedded clip below), a former political advisor to the United Nations Interim Force in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), is interesting in two regards. Goksel is someone intimately familiar with Lebanon’s Shi’ite community, and his observations (many of which I happen to agree with) are worth listening to. But he is also someone who, to me, often appears so taken up by the domestic narrative of the Hezbollah-Shi’ite relationship, one that he has witnessed from up close, that he underplays broader, equally significant, aspects of Hezbollah’s behavior.

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As I said, much of what Goksel says here is accurate. Don’t expect the Shi’ites to push Hezbollah to disarm, because the party’s weapons are tied into the community’s sense of strength and revival. Hezbollah has also, for the moment, indeed taken a more pragmatic approach to the idea of an Islamic state. This no longer seems to be a priority, as the party has opted for a much more effective strategy, one it developed after it successfully participated in Lebanon’s first postwar parliamentary elections in 1992: namely, integrating its supporters into the state and using this as a means of preserving its political, military, and geographic autonomy—in other words, and paradoxically, joining the state to better keep the state at arm’s length away from Hezbollah’s vital interests.

I also agree with Goksel that to truly understand Hezbollah, one must understand the sociology of the Shi’ite community. However, where I think he comes up short is in the larger picture (at least in this video), particularly with regard to the party’s regional links, interests, and calculations. Only once, I believe, does Goksel mention Iran, in the context of the Amal-Hezbollah deal negotiated in Damascus in 1990 under Syrian and Iranian auspices. Otherwise, his tendency is to talk about Hezbollah as a largely Lebanese Shi’ite phenomenon.

Is there any real doubt, however, that Hezbollah, as a military and political organization, is an extension of Iran’s security and intelligence apparatus and, more broadly, serves Iranian regional interests? Iran’s achievement was certainly to anchor Hezbollah in the Lebanese Shi’ite reality, but it is not that reality that explains why Hezbollah is arming Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and elsewhere; why it possesses a military capacity, including long-range missiles, that cannot conceivably be justified in a Lebanese context; why it is helping train the Mehdi Army in Iraq; why its youths are being sent to Iran for military instruction and political and religious indoctrination; and why Iran can rely on sympathetic Shi’ite networks in South America and West Africa.

Yes, Shi’ites fear that Hezbollah’s disarmament will again lead to their marginalization, even if Hezbollah has been instrumental in heightening this utterly unrealistic existential fear. But let’s reverse that. Would the community agree to surrender Hezbollah’s weapons in exchange for greater political power in Lebanon? In fact, I believe Hezbollah would consider this excellent idea the kiss of death, which is why it has so strenuously sought in the past three years, after the 2006 summer war, to maintain the community in a state of near permanent hostility towards its political foes in the country—including a vast majority of Sunnis, the Druze, and a sizable portion of the Christian community. Hezbollah best retains authority over the community in times of polarization, allowing it to set the communal agenda and block out dissenting voices.

Repeatedly, Hezbollah has expressed its refusal to hand its weapons over to a sovereign Lebanese state. Those who criticize the state, particularly its past shortcomings with respect to the Shi’ites, may be justified in doing so. But this is really just a vicious circle, so you can turn back that question against the critics by asking: What kind of state does Hezbollah desire when it has spent years politically, geographically, and ideologically separating Shi’ites from Lebanese society, even using their hold over certain state institutions to reinforce this? There is an overriding explanation: If Shi’ites embrace the Lebanese state, Hezbollah would lose much of its power, its justification for retaining its weapons, and its regional usefulness to Iran, which defines the party’s strategy.

That’s the other side of Goksel’s comments, and one that somebody with his knowledge surely can tell us much more about. Perhaps he did; he just didn’t happen to do so in this particular segment, which requires some necessary counterpoint to make the whole more intelligible.

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Earlier this month, the United Kingdom announced that it is reopening dialogue with the political wing of Hezbollah. Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom has only banned Hezbollah’s terrorist (External Security Organization) and military wings. The ban on the terrorist wing came in 2000, while the ban on the military wing only came in June 2008 in response to Hezbollah’s “providing active support to militants in Iraq who are responsible for attacks both on coalition forces and on Iraqi civilians, including providing training in the use of deadly roadside bombs,” for plots to kidnap British security workers in Iraq, and for its support for terrorist activity in the Palestinian Territories.

Meanwhile, the European Union has not yet designated any part of Hezbollah—military, political or otherwise—although it did label Imad Mughniyeh, the late Hezbollah chief of external operations, and several other Hezbollah members involved in specific acts of terrorism.

But despite the differences between U.S. and European perceptions of and policies toward Hezbollah, there is one critical area where all parties’ mutual interests converge, namely law enforcement. Regardless of divergent political considerations or definitions of terrorism, combating crime and enforcing sovereign laws are straightforward issues. More than any other Islamist group, Hezbollah has a long record of engaging in criminal activity to support its activities. The United States and its European counterparts have a particularly strong shared interest in combating the group’s increasing role in illicit drug trafficking.

Just this past week Admiral James G. Stavridis, the Commander of U.S. Southern Command who has now been nominated to head NATO troops as Supreme Allied Commander Europe, testified before the House Armed Services Committee about the threat to the United States from the nexus between illicit drug trafficking—”including routes, profits, and corruptive influence”—and “Islamic radical terrorism.” While Hezbollah is involved in a wide variety of criminal activity, ranging from cigarette smuggling to selling counterfeit products, the connection between drugs and terror is particularly strong. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), 19 of the 43 U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations are definitely linked to the global drug trade, and up to 60 percent of terror organizations are suspected of having some ties with the illegal narcotics trade.

Hezbollah is no exception to this statistic, and in recent years has augmented its role in the production and trafficking of narcotics. Hezbollah has utilized the vast Lebanese Shi’a expatriate population, mainly located in South America and Africa, to its advantage. According to Michael Braun, former assistant administrator and chief of operations at the DEA, “Both Hamas and Hezbollah are active in this [Tri-Border] region [see map at right], where it is possible to make a profit of $1 million from the sale of fourteen or fifteen kilos of drugs, an amount that could be transported in a single suitcase.”

For example, Admiral Stavridis’s testified that in August 2008, the U.S. Southern Command and the DEA, in coordination with host nations, targeted a Hezbollah drug trafficking ring in the Tri-Border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. In August 2008, the United States, in cooperation with Colombian investigators, identified and dismantled an international cocaine smuggling and money laundering ring based out of Colombia. This operation, which was made up of a Colombian drug cartel and Lebanese members of Hezbollah, used portions of its profits—allegedly hundreds of millions of dollars per year—to finance Hezbollah.

Such revelations should not surprise. Back in December 2006 the U.S. Treasury listed Sobhi Fayad as a Specially Designated Terrorist. Why? Because, Treasury informed, “Fayad has been a senior TBA [Tri-Border Area] Hezbollah official who served as a liaison between the Iranian embassy and the Hezbollah community in the TBA. He has also been a professional Hezbollah operative who has traveled to Lebanon and Iran to meet with Hezbollah leaders. Fayad received military training in Lebanon and Iran and was involved in illicit activities involving drugs and counterfeit U.S. dollars.”

Africa is additionally becoming an area of concern regarding terrorist groups engaged in drug trafficking. According to Admiral Stavridis, drug traffickers have expanded their presence in West Africa as a “springboard to Europe.” Hezbollah has long maintained a strong presence in Africa, and has utilized Africa as a strategic point to from which to raise and transfer funds and to engage in criminal enterprises, such as diamond smuggling.

The nexus between drug trafficking and terrorist activities—specifically those of Hezbollah—represent an immediate law enforcement challenge for the United States and its European allies. While the Europeans may not view Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, they are certainly eager to prevent Hezbollah from running criminal enterprises within their borders. Countries are particularly determined to prevent the importation of illegal narcotics across their borders, whether by organized criminal networks, terrorists groups, or the hybrid narco-terrorist networks that DEA officials describe as “meaner and uglier than anything law enforcement or militaries have ever faced.”

So while there is no common understanding between the United States and the United Kingdom on whether or how to engage Hezbollah or even how to classify Hezbollah and its various component parts, there is no “gray area” as to whether drug trafficking is illegal. The United Kingdom and other European nations are no less eager than the United States to combat the flow of drugs into their countries and to prevent Hezbollah from operating criminal enterprises within their territory.

The British decision to openly engage Hezbollah politically is misinformed, to be sure. But do not be surprised if the Brits talk to Hezbollah “political” leaders on the one hand while arresting some of their cohorts involved in illicit narcotics on the other. Officials may openly describe these actions as targeting criminals, not Hezbollah, but the effect will be much the same.

From Jonathan Schanzer

During the violent Hamas conquest of Gaza in the summer of 2007, when hundreds of Palestinians were killed by their own, I was struck by the weak and fleeting media attention, particularly compared to flare-ups of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict over the years. I also noted that Middle Eastern studies professors avoided the subject. With the notable exception of the Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh and a few others, it seemed as if observers of the Middle East were only interested in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which is tired and well-worn ground. I quickly realized that there was an important book to be written.

The Palestinians are usually described as one united people with one goal: statehood. My book questions this. In fact, throughout the book, which tracks the histories of both Hamas and Fatah, it becomes increasingly clear that the Palestinians actually lack a coherent vision for their future. The Hamas faction seeks an Islamist polity. The Fatah faction seeks a more secular one. Opposition to Israel is perhaps the only issue upon which they truly agree. Yet, Fatah has elected to engage the Israelis (for now), while Hamas is steadfast in its refusal.

What is surprising to some readers is that the Hamas-Fatah conflict is two decades old, dating back to the outbreak of the first intifada of 1987, when the upstart Hamas organization began to challenge Yasir Arafat’s Fatah faction with competing bayanat, or leaflets, on the streets of the West Bank and Gaza.

Over time, what began as a political rivalry gave way to sharp disagreements and acrimony over Fatah’s engagement in peace talks with Israel during the Oslo years. Upon the prompting of Israel and the United States, Fatah met Hamas suicide bombings against Israel with Fatah crackdowns. Quietly, a Palestinian civil war was brewing.

After the failure of the peace process in 2000 and the subsequent al-Aqsa Intifada, the Palestinians fell into complete disarray. When Yasir Arafat died in 2004, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) all but collapsed. Clans, families and tribes controlled the streets of the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas worked assiduously to fill that vacuum.

In the Palestinian elections of January 2006, Hamas won by a large margin. Only after the final votes were tallied, Fatah refused to allow Hamas to assume control of the government. Conflict erupted between the two sides, marking a bitter standoff. After more than a year of sporadic violence and venomous public exchanges, Hamas carried out a brutal, lightning coup that crushed the PA in Gaza. In June 2007, reports emerged of Palestinians being pushed off tall buildings to their death. Some Palestinians shot rival faction members point blank in the legs to ensure permanent disabilities. Human rights groups reported unlawful imprisonments and torture in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

This unresolved conflict has very serious consequences. For one, Washington and Jerusalem lack a legitimate interlocutor. As they negotiate with Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah faction, they only deal with the ruler of the West Bank (and it is disputable that Abbas even has control of that), and a party that lost the 2006 elections. If they negotiate with Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, they would be negotiating with a terrorist organization, which runs counter to the policies of both governments.

Perhaps a more serious policy challenge is the West Bank-Gaza Strip split. The Palestinians are now represented by two non-states and two non-governments. How can the international community regard them as one political unit?

My new book suggests that it is now the internecine Palestinian conflict—not the Palestinian-Israeli conflict—that represents the first and most obvious obstacle to regional peace. Once this thorny, under-reported conflict is settled, it may be possible to resume productive talks. So long as the Palestinians are a house divided, peace will almost certainly be elusive.

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The recent exchange of five Arab terrorists for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hezbollah at the start of the 2006 war was a major defeat for Israel, one that must not be repeated. While one can understand the anguish felt by the families of the captured Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwassser and Eldad Regev, the manner in which the exchange was negotiated and then carried out could only be described as a debacle. Indeed, one wonders if the exchange was carried out by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in yet another attempt to curry public favor as he faces mounting public pressure to step down as prime minister.

The first mistake was not ascertaining, in advance, whether the two Israeli soldiers were alive or dead. Israel did have leverage with Hezbollah on this issue. Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah had staked his reputation on freeing the notorious Lebanese terrorist Samir Quntar, and Israel could have used this fact, at a minimum, to get Red Cross representatives to visit Goldwasser and Regev, to determine if they were alive. Indeed, it is a bit incongruous that terrorists like Quntar are allowed visits by the Red cross and even by Palestinians like the mother of another imprisoned terrorist, while captive Israelis are not allowed to have such visits, so that their families do not know whether they are alive or dead.

One way to deal with this imbalance—directly linked to the case of Gilad Shalit, the prisoner held by Hamas in Gaza—is to prohibit visits to Hamas legislators and terrorists imprisoned in Israel until Shalit is allowed regular visits. Similarly, Israel could end visits to the remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israeli hands, as punishment for the callous way Hezbollah treated Regev and Goldwasser. While some on the left might decry such policies as descending to the level of the terrorists, when one is dealing with cruel organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, it is necessary to use strong tactics. Reciprocity remains the basic principle in international relations, and so long as Hamas and Hezbollah do not abide by the Geneva Convention in their dealings with Israeli prisoners, neither should Israel.

Israel’s second mistake was the release of prisoners with “blood on their hands.” All this does is encourage more kidnapping, and more terrorist attacks on Israel. A number of the prisoners released by Israel went on to carry out additional terrorist attacks against Israel, the most notorious being Abbas Alsaid, who after his 1996 release helped plan the Passover attack in Netanya in 2002 which killed 30 Israelis. Indeed Quntar himself, after the prisoner exchange, vowed to attack Israel again

Israel’s third mistake was to ignore the domestic political situation in Lebanon at the time of the prisoner exchange. While Hezbollah, as a result of the Arab-mediated political settlement between itself and the Sunni government, had strengthened its political position in Lebanon, it had been strongly criticized by both Sunni and Christian Lebanese for turning its guns on them in the mini-civil war that erupted this past spring. By agreeing to the prisoner exchange when he did, Olmert enabled Nasrallah to portray himself as the hero of all the Lebanese, by getting the Lebanese prisoners back. Indeed, the Sunni-led government had no choice but to proclaim a national holiday on the day of the prisoner release to celebrate the “liberation of prisoners from the jails of the Israeli enemy.”

Israel’s fourth, and perhaps most serious mistake, was to weaken its deterrence posture vis-à-vis Hezbollah. Hezbollah, which has proclaimed itself as the guardian of Lebanese security, thereby repudiating both international and Lebanese calls for it to disarm, has threatened to use force to regain the disputed Shebaa Farms area, which is claimed by Lebanon, but which Israel captured from Syria in 1967. After the high price paid by Israel to regain the bodies of Regev and Goldwasser, Nasrallah may well be tempted to undertake another hostage-taking raid—or worse—in order to pressure Israel to turn over the territory to Lebanon, thus once again demonstrating that he is a true Lebanese nationalist hero. The only solution for Israel at this point is for Olmert to resign, and a new Israeli government to take power, one that would take a much tougher position on prisoner exchanges and one that would restore Israel’s deterrence posture.

This report of the return of Samir Quntar to his home village of Abay on Thursday is how you would expect a news story like this one to play in a foreign media outlet. (If you do not see an embedded clip, click here.)

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No imagination. No real sense of what’s going on. Just an examination of the superficial paradoxes of the scene, particularly Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s welcoming of Quntar as a resistance fighter when only two months ago Jumblatt’s followers were fighting Hezbollah. Oh Lebanon! Land of contradiction, of fickleness!

What is really going on is far more interesting. Roughly speaking, the Druze have a dual political leadership structure in their community, with Jumblatt heading one faction and Talal Arslan heading the other, in the latest reflection of the traditional Jumblatti-Yazbaki dichotomy. Arslan’s power happens to be vastly more limited than Jumblatt’s, even as Jumblatt has a vested interest in puffing Arslan up to protect the dual structure of power tilted to his own advantage, to maintain Druze unity, and to prevent the emergence of Druze upstarts.

Even before Quntar, a Druze, was released from prison in Israel, both Jumblatt and Arslan realized he might be co-opted by Hezbollah and used against them. Indeed, the first thing the party did to the released prisoners was dress them up in military fatigues and send them out on a round of welcoming ceremonies. That’s why Quntar arrives in Abay in a Hezbollah uniform. Jumblatt’s and Arslan’s rally for Quntar was motivated by the need to avoid Druze ill feeling by ignoring their coreligionist; but more importantly by a desire to defend their leadership over the Druze by containing Quntar, which they did by embracing him to better defuse him. Although Quntar presents no threat to their power base, he could emerge as a small headache. For example, he could conceivably be brought into parliament in next year’s elections in the Baabda constituency, where Hezbollah and the Aounists, if they decide to bother Jumblatt, have considerable electoral sway.

What is interesting in this context is that the Syrian intelligence services have set up a similar such figure in the Druze community. His name is Wiam Wahhab, and while his Druze support is negligible, he has retained public attention because he is one of Damascus’ megaphones in Lebanon. Wahhab’s rise had threatened Arslan much more than it did Jumblatt, though Arslan and Wahhab are both close to Syria. In a new reversal, Quntar’s release threatens Wahhab, while Arslan, thanks to his collaboration with Jumblatt, has re-entered the Druze political scene in relative force after a period of relative quiet. This was made possible because last May the Jumblattis and the Arslanists united in fighting Hezbollah.

A sign of Quntar’s limitations among the Druze was not recorded in this video. When the Hezbollah representative, Muhammad Fnaysh, made a speech, he was booed on several occasions; and when Quntar praised Syria in his statements, he was booed as well. The Abay gathering had little to do with Samir Quntar. It was about the traditional Druze leadership affirming itself against Hezbollah, against an interloper, by neutralizing what Jumblatt and Arslan fear may be a Hezbollah creation in their midst.