Dahiyeh back to Lebanon
The ISF starts implementing a security plan in Dahiyeh to control what Hezbollah couldn’t.
The Internal Security Forces (ISF) recently implemented what it has called a “security plan” in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut in Dahiyeh, where the Party of God has been forced to remove part of its much-coveted security cover due to a sharp rise in drugs, prostitution and street crime, much of which has been blamed on the economic fallout from the civil unrest in early May, when Hezbollah took over large parts of Beirut. Hezbollah’s actions at the time may have been bundled up in a very neat and ruthless political equation, but it was an equation that failed to calculate the social and economic consequences it brought upon many within the Shia community.
According to ISF sources, within hours of the police moving in, 106 people with outstanding warrants had been arrested. Most were later released after paying their fines, and no clashes or friction between the police and residents was reported.
Meanwhile, Minister of Interior Ziad Baroud announced a halt to all illegal construction work in the area, a move that has reportedly been welcomed by both Hezbollah and the ordinary citizens of Dahiyeh, a sprawling and unregulated concrete jungle that is also home to Hezbollah’s main party headquarters and which was heavily bombed during the 2006 July War. It was also, until this recent development, a no-go zone for the ISF and the Lebanese army. Any attempts to enforce the law often resulted in bloody, and sometimes fatal, clashes between Hezbollah’s security and Lebanese police. The message was clear: Hezbollah was a mini-state, and the Dahiyeh was its capital.
However, after the May 7 takeover of Beirut by Hezbollah and its allies in Amal and the SSNP, many Lebanese Shia, especially those who lived in the Dahiyeh and who worked in blue-collar and poorly-paid jobs in other areas of Beirut, have begun to feel the resentment over what was tantamount to an attempted coup. They automatically were tarred with Hezbollah’s brush whether they supported the party or not. Jobs, mainly in Sunni-owned companies, were lost, and livelihoods were suddenly on the line. In the predominantly-Sunni Gulf states, where Lebanese Shia have been working for years, in some cases providing for more than one family, contracts, visas and work permits suddenly became more difficult to renew.
The result is that a localized economic downturn in Dahiyeh has seen, according to an ISF source and several Dahiyeh residents, an worrying increase in crime, especially prostitution and drug dealing, but also street crime such as purse snatching and car thefts.
Hezbollah has neither a judiciary nor a police force. It can claim to be able to take on the might of the Israeli army or even take control of Lebanon in the blink of an eye, but it cannot control crime, nor can it, apparently, stop social disintegration within in its own community, despite providing social services and broadcasting moral probity through its media; hence the decision by Hezbollah to place a call to the ISF.
According to an ISF source who preferred to remain anonymous, there was only one condition: that Hezbollah’s weapons would not be targeted in the crackdown. If they were left alone, Hezbollah was ready and willing to coordinate with the ISF. It was, in a way, a win-win situation for the party. If the state intervened to apprehend common criminals without interfering in Hezbollah’s political authority in Dahiyeh, the party could maintain its popularity among its constituents and wider support base and show it was willing to engage with the state. Meanwhile, its political agenda and military apparatus would remain intact.
It is also no coincidence that the ISF “entered” the Dahiyeh on the same day Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah called to Saudi Arabian Ambassador to Lebanon Abdel Aziz Khoja, thanking him for the educational fund that Lebanon recently received from the Kingdom, and one day before reconciliatory efforts between Hezbollah and Future Movement leader Saad Hariri.
All these local and regional dynamics, and the good news that the state has reclaimed a measure of control over an area of Beirut that it had lost, do not, however, detract from the inescapable fact that Hezbollah, through its reckless behavior in early May, has brought upon its constituents a sense of unnecessary hostility from the wider Sunni community at a time of considerable economic uncertainty. When will it learn?