Democracy under fire
With the 2009 parliamentary elections approaching, Hezbollah’s weapons are still an internal threat.
The May unrest that threatened to suck Lebanon into a sectarian vortex clearly demonstrated the readiness with which Hezbollah can and will deliver violence to achieve political ends. With parliamentary elections less than one year away, the fear is that the party will not be shy about using its weapons once again, this time to influence the vote, either in those areas where it is able to do so directly or through its allies. Candidates who will be opposing Hezbollah in the South, Tripoli, and areas of Beirut are aware of the threat, especially in light of the government’s long-awaited ministerial statement, which once again rubber stamped the weapons that brought so much death and devastation in May.
Last week, former minister MP Marwan Hamadeh wasted no time in expressing his concern that Hezbollah may use the threat of violence to try to either dominate the 2009 parliamentary elections or simply obstruct them. There is much at stake. Hamadeh believes that the election results – and by extension the subsequent government – will once and for all determine the fate of Hezbollah’s arms. “When it comes to elections, the electoral law should stress arms with the same firmness and clarity as it addresses media and finance,” he said to NOW Lebanon, stating that weapons are already being shipped to, and used against, people in Tripoli, Beirut and other parts of Lebanon. “There are also areas, such as the southern suburbs, that are simply out of reach [of the authorities] because they are sheltered by arms,” he added.
Those campaigning against Hezbollah on their own turf face particular difficulties. Nonetheless, they are adamant that they will campaign on a transparent and democratic ticket to peacefully confront the threat of armed intimidation. “Weapons cause psychological fears within communities, and this can influence the election results,” said Ahmad al-Assaad, a high-profile Shia from the South who heads the Lebanese Choice Gathering, a group that wants to offer an alternative to Hezbollah’s martial politics.
Talking to NOW Lebanon, Assaad said that the only way to change this reality is through confrontation, by forming electoral lists of independent candidates in all cazas where there is a Shia presence. “This would provide people with a choice, and that’s how change starts.”
During the 1960 elections, National Bloc founder and former Minister Raymond Eddé insisted that polls could not take place that year as long as there were armed groups, in this case the residual fighters from the 1958 revolution – fighting not dissimilar to the unrest of May this year.
Today, his nephew and current head of the party, Carlos Eddé, is staking out a similar position. “Arms, whether overt or covert, are a threat to the right of all citizens to circulate, gather and talk freely; everything an electoral campaign is all about,” he told NOW Lebanon. “How can one expect people to publicly criticize opponents when the target of this criticism is the very weapons that are creating the air of intimidation? It is political blackmail,” he said, adding that given this suffocating atmosphere, it is hard to see how free and fair elections could really take place.
“The use of arms is not a theoretical threat,” Eddé continued. “Hezbollah and its allies time and again have assured that they will use force and violence against their opponents, assurances that have been followed through with actions, as we saw in May, and assurances that we have no reason to doubt can be converted into similar actions again.”
Meanwhile, as the ministerial statement was being drafted, Tripoli MP Ahmad Fatfat declared in a speech in his hometown, that the Lebanese would not accept a statement imposed by force. “We are against a Resistance that has become a militia deployed on the streets of Beirut, the Bekaa and Tripoli,” he said. He also reminded those gathered that Iran’s vice president, who also heads Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, recently offered to swap Lebanon’s stability for Western approval of Tehran’s nuclear program. “This means only one thing,” Fatfat concluded. “The weapons deployed in Lebanon are to defend the nuclear program that exists in Iran.”
Hezbollah is a Hydra: It is an extension of Iranian foreign policy that bullied its way into a blocking third in the new government, gifting Michel Aoun, its Christian ally, with five ministers to get the best out of the electoral districts it doesn’t directly control. Furthermore, there is no reason to think that Hezbollah would think twice about once again using its weapons, or the threat of violence, to influence the vote elsewhere, if things do not move in its favor. It may have forced the government to back down on the issues that sparked the crisis May, but it also lost the moral high ground. Many fear that now the mask has slipped, it now has nothing to lose.
Picture: Armed Amal supporters walk down a street past a burning car in Beirut on May 7, 2008 (AFP/ANWAR AMRO)