[LCM Articles] What we still don't understand about Hizbollah

[Elias Muhanna]

Good piece in the Observer.

--------------------------------------------
What we still don't understand about Hizbollah

This week, world terrorism expert Robert Pape will share with the FBI the
findings of his remarkable study of 462 suicide bombings. He concludes that
such acts have little to do with religious extremism and that the West must
engage politically to halt the relentless slaughter

Sunday August 6, 2006
The Observer

Israel has finally conceded that air power alone will not defeat Hizbollah. Over
the coming weeks, it will learn that ground power won't work either. The problem
is not that the Israelis have insufficient military might, but that they
misunderstand the nature of the enemy.

In terms of structure and hierarchy, it is less comparable with, say, a
religious cult such as the Taliban than to the multi-dimensional American civil
rights movement of the 1960s. What made its rise so rapid, and will make it
impossible to defeat militarily, was not its international support but the fact
that it evolved from a reorientation of pre-existing Lebanese social groups.
Evidence of the broad nature of Hizbollah's resistance to Israeli occupation can
be seen in the identity of its suicide attackers. Hizbollah conducted a broad
campaign of suicide bombings against American, French and Israeli targets from
1982 to 1986. Altogether, these attacks, which included the infamous bombing of
the marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, involved 41 suicide terrorists.

Researching my book, which covered all 462 suicide bombings around the globe, I
had colleagues scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and
testimonials and biographies of the Hizbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified
the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. We were shocked to find
that only eight were Islamic fundamentalists; 27 were from leftist political
groups such as the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union; three
were Christians, including a female secondary school teacher with a college
degree. All were born in Lebanon.

What these suicide attackers - and their heirs today - shared was not a
religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign
occupation. Nearly two decades of Israeli military presence did not root out
Hizbollah. The only thing that has proven to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon
and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the occupying force.

Previous analyses of suicide terrorism have not had the benefit of a complete
survey of all suicide terrorist attacks worldwide. The lack of complete data,
together with the fact that many such attacks, including all those against
Americans, have been committed by Muslims, has led many in the US to assume
that Islamic fundamentalism must be the underlying main cause. This, in turn,
has fuelled a belief that anti-American terrorism can be stopped only by
wholesale transformation of Muslim societies, which helped create public
support of the invasion of Iraq. But study of the phenomenon of suicide
terrorism shows that the presumed connection to Islamic fundamentalism is
misleading.

There is not the close connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic
fundamentalism that many people think. Rather, what nearly all suicide
terrorist campaigns have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to
compel democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the
terrorists consider to be their homeland.

Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by
terrorist organisations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the
broader strategic objective. Most often, it is a response to foreign
occupation.
Understanding that suicide terrorism is not a product of Islamic fundamentalism
has important implications for how the US and its allies should conduct the war
on terrorism. Spreading democracy across the Persian Gulf is not likely to be a
panacea as long as foreign troops remain on the Arabian peninsula. The obvious
solution might well be simply to abandon the region altogether. Isolationism,
however, is not possible; America needs a new strategy that pursues its vital
interest in oil but does not stimulate the rise of a new generation of suicide
terrorists. The same is true of Israel now.

The new Israeli land offensive may take ground and destroy weapons, but it has
little chance of destroying Hizbollah. In fact, in the wake of the bombings of
civilians, the incursion will probably aid Hizbollah's recruiting.
Equally important, Israel's incursion is also squandering the goodwill it had
initially earned from so-called moderate Arab states such as Egypt and Saudi
Arabia. The countries are the court of opinion that matters because, while
Israel cannot crush Hizbollah, it could achieve a more limited goal: ending
Hizbollah's acquisition of more missiles through Syria.

Given Syria's total control of its border with Lebanon, stemming the flow of
weapons is a job for diplomacy, not force. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan,
Sunni-led nations that want stability in the region, are motivated to stop the
rise of Hizbollah. Under the right conditions, the US might be able to help
assemble an ad hoc coalition of Syria's neighbours to entice and bully it to
prevent Iranian, Chinese or other foreign missiles from entering Lebanon. It
could also offer to begin talks over the future of the Golan Heights.

But Israel must take the initiative. Unless it calls off the offensive and
accepts a genuine ceasefire, there are likely to be many, many dead Israelis in
the coming weeks - and a much stronger Hizbollah.

Robert Pape is professor of political studies at the University of Chicago. His
book, Dying to Win: Why Suicide Terrorists Do It, will be published in the UK
by Gibson Square this month.


--
Elias I. Muhanna
Arabic & Islamic Studies
Harvard University
6 Divinity Ave.
Cambridge MA, 02138
emuhanna at fas.harvard.edu