Nir Rosen - Aftermath

In June 2007, a Sunni member of Parliament called Walid Idu was blown up. He had been very pro-Syria until 2005, like many of the Future Movement’s members. When Idu’s body was brought to the hospital, sectarian chants could be heard. “Allah, Hariri, Tariq al-Jadida!” some shouted, modifying the Shiite pro-Hizballah chant “Allah, Nasrallah, and all of Dahiyeh!” Others chanted the names of early Sunni leaders like Omar and Uthman, and warned that the blood of Sunnis was boiling and that they wanted revenge on President Lahoud, Syrian President Assad, and Hizballah’s Nasrallah. At Idu’s funeral procession some mourners chanted for Hariri, Saddam, and Zarqawi, while others chanted for the United States. “Sunni! Sunni! Sunni!” they shouted. Some also shouted support for Libya, apparently because Libya was implicated in the death of the Amal Movement’s founder, Imam Musa Sadr. “My dick, Nasrallah, and all of Dahiyeh!” others shouted, and “We don’t want sectarianism, but God is with the Sunnis!”

According to Omar Nashabe, a Sunni journalist with the leading independent paper Al Akhbar , “March 14 created the environment by supporting Sunni assabiya .” He told me that when Lebanon’s mufti, the main Sunni cleric appointed by the state, spoke at the government headquarters in Beirut following the initiation of the Shiite sit-in the downtown area close to the Prime Minister’s office, he had called Siniora “our prime minister” (meaning the Sunnis) and stated that nobody (meaning the Shiites) would be allowed to remove him. Nashabe mocked the bogeyman of the Persian invasion. “Traditionally Maronites were said to be closest to the West,” he said. “After Hariri’s death it was the Sunni sect. The Saudi government pushed this to show that Sunnis are close to the American agenda, but most combatants of Fatah al-Islam were Saudis.” Nashabe explained that groups like Fatah al-Islam are not necessarily linked to any regime, nor do they have to be state-sponsored. Instead they benefit, like other criminal groups, from the tensions and organized crime in Lebanon. Like the Sunnis in Iraq, the Sunnis of Lebanon feel weak and on retreat compared with the Shiites, with no clear identity. As a result it often seems as if they support a hodgepodge of different and contradictory causes, like the disparate chants heard at Idu’s funeral.

According to As’ad Abu Khalil, “Hizballah’s arms existed from the 1990s until 2005, and back then it was praised by the same Sunni voices who were aligned with them. The Hariri Saudi alliance has been successful in alarming Sunnis in the wake of Hariri’s assassination. After the failure of Israel they tried to drive a bigger wedge between Sunnis and Hizballah. The Saudis surpassed the success of Al Qaeda in deepening the Sunni-Shiite rift—they are the heirs of Zarqawi in that regard, utilizing their media and defining every political issue in pure Sunni-Shiite term. The Saudis are the pillar of the American agenda in the Middle East and want to further American interests. The U.S. wants to weaken Hamas and Hizballah. So they make Hizballah seem not as a resistance movement (as it was perceived by Sunnis up until 2005) but portray it as a sectarian force that furthers Iranian interests in the region through their media, publishing houses, statements of their politicians. They control the culture industry in the region. Saudis control Arab newspapers in the Arab world and outside.”

To understand the point of view of Hizballah’s policy-makers, I met with the cerebral Nawaf al-Musawi, a key adviser to Nasrallah, as well as one of Hizballah’s most ubiquitous public faces and head of its foreign policy unit. Just recently Ahmad Fatfat, a key Future Movement figure who was the former interior minister and current minister of youth and sport, had described Nasrallah’s May 2007 statement on red lines (see Chapter Six) as the worst political mistake the Shiite leader had ever made. I asked Musawi about this. Nasrallah had been concerned about three issues, he told me. “First, protecting the Lebanese army, because it is the guarantee that prevents civil war from happening. If it is weakened, the pro-American faction in Lebanon will ask for the deployment of multinational forces. Second, preventing a new ‘War of the Camps’ in Lebanon and preventing Palestinians from being targets of new massacres and tragedies. This would destroy Lebanon and deepen the suffering of Palestinians, and would disperse the Palestinians and negate their right of return. Third, preventing Lebanon from becoming a place of war for Al Qaeda. This would transform Lebanon into an oven, and the coals of this oven would be the bodies and property of Lebanese and Palestinians. The Bush administration transformed Iraq into a place of war with Al Qaeda, and now it is a place of massacres, and we don’t want our country to become a place of massacres. So let the Bush administration solve their problems away from Lebanon.”

He rejected the notion that Sunni ideology had changed. “The new thing that happened with Hariri was the increase of Saudi influence in the Sunni environment,” he said, “And this happened with Syrian approval and cognizance, because without Hafiz al-Assad’s approval, Hariri would never have been prime minister. The Lebanese Sunni position reflects the Saudi position. The sectarian tension in Lebanon is enhancing Saudi influence in Lebanon. And the other way around as well: Saudi influence is enhancing sectarian tensions in Lebanon.”

Musawi insisted that the Future Movement, which dominated the Interior Ministry, was supporting jihadist Salafis in Lebanon. “These were the Sunni reserves to fight the Shiites,” he said. “Until Nahr al-Barid, the Ministry of Interior characterized the Palestinians as part of the Sunni reserves that would fight with them against Shiites. This idea of building a Sunni militia to fight Shiites began after the killing of Hariri. Since 2005 I was warning European officials on a constant basis and let them know that we see what the house of Hariri is doing with Sunni extremists and Salafis, and this is a very dangerous game and it will be against he who plays with it, as it happened in Afghanistan. As for us, we are not looking for any war with anybody, internally or externally. Our only objective is to defend and protect our country and preserve its stability.” He blamed Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to Washington, for the creation of groups like Fatah al-Islam. “It is Bandar’s project to take Saudi Salafis and bring them here to fight Hizballah.”

Musawi dismissed the notion that Hizballah wanted to impose a Shiite state. “We understand the political reality of Lebanon very well,” he said. “No single group can rule by itself. The Lebanese can’t be governed except by consensus, and we want a democratic and consensual country.”

In recent months a military alliance backed by the United States had been established in the region, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had even explained that American arms shipments to Saudi Arabia were meant “to counter the negative influences of Al Qaeda, Hizballah, Syria, and Iran.” “It’s an illusion,” Musawi said. “Even the countries allied with the U.S. know Bush will not stay long. So these allies are not serious. The Saudis have their own concerns, Egypt and Jordan have their own concerns. If Rice says this, it doesn’t mean the Saudis will do this. They will do what’s in their best interest.” But like other Hizballah leaders, Musawi was concerned about the role of Jordan. Its intelligence agents were said to be in Lebanon, and Sunni militiamen were being trained in Jordan.

He rejected accusations that the demonstrations in downtown Beirut were an “occupation.” “Beirut is a cosmopolitan city in the international sense,” he said, “and a city for all Lebanese and its demographic fabric is proof of this. It’s not true that Beirut has one sectarian identity. It has Orthodox, Maronites, Shiites, etc., and Beirut is our capital. The Shiite presence in Lebanon is an old one. We are not refugees or guests. If they don’t like it, they can go find another place.”