Rethinking Hizballah: Legitimacy, Authority, Violence PDF
Preview Rethinking Hizballah: Legitimacy, Authority, Violence
Rethinking hizballah Dedicated to Kalila, Nadim, Xavier and Nikolas Rethinking hizballah legitimacy, authority, Violence SameR n. abboud Arcadia University, USA and benjamin j. mulleR King’s University College, Canada First published 2008 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2012 Samer n. abboud and benjamin j. muller Samer n. abboud and benjamin j. muller have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data abboud, Samer nassif. Rethinking hizballah : legitimacy, authority, violence. 1. hizballah (lebanon)--history. 2. hizballah (lebanon)-- Influence. 3. Power (Social sciences)--Lebanon. 4. lebanon--Politics and government--1975-1990. 5. lebanon--Politics and government--1990- 6. lebanon-- Social conditions. i. title ii. muller, benjamin j. 322.4’2’095692-dc23 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data abboud, Samer nassif. Rethinking hizballah : legitimacy, authority, violence / by Samer n. abboud and benjamin j. muller. p. cm. includes bibliographical references and index. iSbn 978-0-7546-7966-0 (hardback) 1. Hizballah (Lebanon) 2. Lebanon--Politics and government--1990- 3. Political violence--lebanon. i. muller, benjamin j. ii. title. jQ1828.a98h6214 2012 324.25692’082--dc23 2012020462 iSbn: 9780754679660 (hbk) iSbn: 9781315606057 (ebk) Contents Preface and Acknowledgments vii 1 Introduction 1 2 Lebanon’s Sectarian System 13 3 Legitimacy, Authority and Resistance 39 4 Violence and Legitimacy in the Lebanese Context 1985–2010 61 5 Sovereignty, International Relations and the Curious Case of Hizballah 83 6 The Special Tribunal for Lebanon 99 7 Conclusion 119 Bibliography 129 Index 137 This page has been left blank intentionally Preface and Acknowledgments For those familiar with the diverse and complex politics of the Middle East, and specifically Lebanon, many of the claims and considerations raised throughout this text will be familiar. In the pages that follow, we grapple with the complexities of Lebanon’s domestic politics, while also considering the global/local dimensions of the actors operating there. This has led us towards an analysis that is as much about what we refer to as “the curious case of Hizballah,” as it is about the extent to which the knowledge claims and approaches to understanding valorized be International Relations have rendered such a case “curious.” Hizballah has evolved considerably since its formation in 1985. Its Iranian- inspired political program and desire for an Islamic Republic in Lebanon eventually gave way to a more pragmatic politics that saw its leadership opt for gradual engagement and integration, rather than confrontation, with the Lebanese political system. Indeed, today, Hizballah is a political party and organizational network that operates like any other in the Lebanese arena. It competes in local and national elections, operates a vast array of social and cultural institutions, and serves as one of the main political parties that participates in inter-communal negotiations. Its raison d’être was, and remains, resistance to Israeli occupation and aggression. There are varying explanations for the relationship between its resistance activities and its socio-political activities that we delve into in the coming pages, but our goal here is not to track Hizballah’s evolution in the Lebanese political system. Nor is our goal to provide explanations for this evolution. Rather, our goal here is to interrogate Hizballah’s positioning within the discipline of International Relations (IR), more specifically, within the dominant frameworks and theories offered by what Ling and Aganthangelou call “the house of IR.” In making an effort to unpack the complexity of Hizballah, the manner in which it is constituted out of the sui generis aspects of Lebanese state-society relations, and the way in which novel forms of legitimacy and authority in global politics can be seen to emerge as a result, we have critically engaged IR theory. In varying degrees and at varying points throughout the text, we not only strive to expose the shortcomings of IR, specifically its inability to take seriously and with the necessary refinement, an actor like Hizballah, but also the wide ranging accounts that have emerged and continue to emerge, which provide popular, journalistic visions of Hizballah. These conceptions not only reinforce the Orientalist accounts prevalent in the media, so persuasively unpacked in Said’s Covering Islam (1997), viii Rethinking Hizballah but also emphasize the extent to which there is little space – indeed, perhaps only a small guest room – in the so-called “house of IR.” As such, our analysis here also focuses on the extent to which IR has little space to deal adequately with the rich, fecund and diverse politics of the Middle East and the sort of analysis forwarded by Arab scholarship. The point is not to valorize some specific indigenous knowledge claims, but to make room for complex and diverse actors and actions that are not captured by IR, or perhaps more aptly put, whose capture leads to the eventual taming of such fecund political possibilities. We do not purport to “know” Hizballah in these pages. Until spies within the organization were discovered in 2011, the organization had demonstrated remarkable impenetrability. Our intention is thus not to speak to the inner working of the organization – something which is virtually impossible – but rather to the ways in which it has embedded itself within Lebanon’s Shi’a milieu, and how this embeddedness reflects and generates forms of authority, legitimacy, and the right to violence that is beyond the analytical purview of the house of IR, which is content to dismiss Hizballah as misfits and terrorists, outliers of an orderly world. That Hizballah has emerged as an actor of global relevance has been underscored by many of the transformations Lebanon has endured in the last twenty-five years. The end of the Lebanese civil war and the establishment of a Syrian-dominated order; the collapse of that order in 2005; continued Israeli occupation in the South of the country and repeated wars to “wipe out” Hizballah, most recently in 2006; the Global War on Terror; the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al- Hariri and the subsequent establishment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon; and, finally, the Arab uprisings. All of these events have brought to the fore Hizballah’s central role in domestic and regional politics, forcing us to reconsider how we can think beyond the house of IR to a more inclusive, nuanced, and sensitive understanding of how an actor such as Hizballah emerges within the global system and how it is differentially positioned within it. This book is no different than most: it is the product of a great many influences, discussions, conference and workshop presentations, and the invaluable input of the many colleagues and scholars present in these wide ranging contexts. There is no greater debt than to our close friend and colleague, John Measor. A generous and engaging scholar, John’s influence is ubiquitous in the argument presented here; which, in whole or in part, was debated, stirred, and rehashed together with John over many dinners at conferences and late-night sessions on Skype. This personal and professional relationship that all three of us are fortunate enough to have is one that we value greatly, and is responsible for stirring and maintaining much of the intellectual vitality we each possess for our research. We are especially grateful for the generous research support provided by King’s University College, the Centre for American Studies at the University of Western Preface and Acknowledgments ix Ontario, Susquehanna University and Arcadia University. Both in providing financial support for us to travel to one another’s institutions for some critical face-to-face meetings necessary to work out the more challenging dimensions of the argument, as well as the final completion of this text, and enabling us to rely on the extremely capable research support of both Summer Thorp and Jacob Skinner, to whom we are deeply indebted for helping to make this text come into fruition. Over the course of writing this text, we’ve had the opportunity to present this work at a number of conferences and workshops, and the many colleagues there provided excellence feedback guidance. We would like to especially acknowledge some supportive peers and colleagues, Tozun Bahchelli, John Bodinger de Uriarte, Tom Cooke, Marc Doucet, Miguel de Larrinaga, Can Mutlu, Dave Ramsaran, Jennifer Riggan and Mark Salter. Also of particular note, Youssef Masrieh and Rami Siklawi, two scholars living in Lebanon during the writing of this text provided specific on the ground regional knowledge that helped enrich this book immensely. Their local knowledge, research assistance and support are integral to the project that is now here in print. Our greatest debt is to our respective families. Our spouses, Sonia and Michele, provided much needed encouragement and unwavering support throughout the project, often giving us the proverbial “kick in the pants” to get us on track as the regular obligations of teaching and administration kept us away from the project, sometimes for far too long. This project also required time away from family, which Sonia and Michele took in stride, and which is why this text is dedicated to our children, that remind us of the importance of Elmo, hockey practice, and artistic pursuits, from which even a manuscript can only temporarily detain us. Finally, this project would not have been possible without the dozens of people in Lebanon who took time to speak with us over the course of this research. These conversations further confirmed our understandings of how non-Western forms of organization, authority, and legitimacy were simply absent from the dominant conversations being had in the discipline of IR. Without the insight and perspective of these people, whose lived realities form our “curious case” this project would not have been possible. We thank them immensely.
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