Hezbollah, Engagement, and U.S. Options
Reprinted from Real Clear WorldJoshua Gross, F10
June 18, 2009
Earlier this month, the Lebanese people rejected Hezbollah, thus avoiding a painful confrontation with the United States. However, the razor-thin margin of victory for the March 14th coalition should compel American supporters of Lebanese democracy to pause and reflect. Next time the democrats might fail to outmaneuver their antagonists.
At this crucial juncture, the Obama administration should anticipate the ramifications of a Lebanon where Hezbollah’s influence borders on dominance and develop the policy tools necessary to recalibrate relations with states that operate in a zone between democratic legitimacy and unlawful armed resistance.
Engaging Hezbollah is not a new idea, nor would it be a reflection of a softer U.S. foreign policy. In 2005, President George W. Bush carefully alluded to the possibility that the U.S. would accept a political role for Hezbollah, providing that certain conditions were met, stating, "We view Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and I would hope that Hezbollah would prove that they're not by laying down arms and not threatening peace".
Our contemporary system for designating terrorist entities was born with the U.S. Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which established a formal list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). Groups designated FTOs have their assets immediately frozen, while material support for FTOs is criminalized. A secondary, less castigatory list known as the Terrorist Exclusion List (TEL) similarly isolates and stigmatizes dangerous groups. Hezbollah was labeled a terrorist organization by President Clinton in 1995 and has been on the FTO list since its creation.
Since entering Lebanese electoral politics in the 1992, Hezbollah has refrained from using violence to influence the outcome of elections. However, this does not preclude Hezbollah from participating in other forms of intimidation. The siege of downtown Beirut in May 2008 was part of a longer pattern of violent contestation for supremacy within the Shia community, most destructively during the “War of the Camps” against Amal in 1986 and 1987. Political participation has forced Hezbollah to be more pragmatic in its domestic politics—as evidenced by their coalition with Michel Aoun’s Christian Free Patriotic Movement—but has not moderated its bellicose rhetoric and actions against Israel and the U.S.
Rose-colored glasses are known to shatter in Lebanon, and wishful thinking about a possible Hezbollah about-face—where the armed resistance movement would become “responsible” and trade in its weapons for vague promises of power-sharing, good governance and legitimacy—should be balanced with a clear-eyed assessment of Hezbollah’s likely strategic calculations. Policy makers will not easily forget—nor should they—that Hezbollah has U.S. blood on its hands, most notoriously the deaths of 241 Americans in the bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in October 1983, or that prior to 9/11, it was responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist group.
However, should the President deem it in the national interest to “talk to terrorists”, we must not be hamstrung by what Leslie Gelb, writing in the recent issue of Foreign Affairs, calls, “the demons of ideology, politics, and arrogance,” that, “ensnare leaders into thinking about what they supposedly must do, rather than about what they can do.” While Hezbollah may glorify violence, hijack civil society, cleave citizens from the state, and intimidate their opponents, they are still the most powerful representative of Lebanon's majority Shiite community and a vital source of social services.
The U.S. approach to Hezbollah diverges from that of the EU, and now the UK. In February 2009, the UK commenced low-level contacts, even inviting Hezbollah MP Hussein al-Hajj Hassan to give an address before the House of Commons. Because Hezbollah is not on the EU list of terrorist organizations, their European financial assets are not frozen and they are able to fundraise without major restrictions. The U.S. must seek a middle ground, where contact—should it be deemed in the national interest—is possible, but financial flows remain frozen. Regardless of our strategic interests in the region, allowing Hezbollah to fundraise in the U.S. or inviting a Hezbollah MP to Capitol Hill would be disgraceful.
According to deputy leader Sheikh Naim Kassem, “Hezbollah has decided to turn the page on the last phase and open a new page for the coming stage.” The U.S. should maintain its public poker-face for the time being, while closely watching British efforts to determine if incentives for disarmament and moderation exist. The British can be our strategic conduit and a sounding board for elements of Hezbollah seeking greater international legitimacy. During the post-election horse-trading, the U.S. should signal that it could modify its policy toward Hezbollah, but that a Hezbollah-allied Minister of Defense or Interior in the proposed national unity cabinet would be nonstarters.
Mindful of the alleged 30,000 rockets pointed at Israel, the U.S. should define an acceptable détente that would redefine Hezbollah as a responsible opposition party.
A similar experiment is playing out across the world in a somewhat similar context. Nepal’s Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)—until their government collapsed several weeks ago—was Nepal’s democratically elected majority party and a U.S. designated terrorist group. While U.S. contacts with the Maoists have been complicated by their inclusion on the TEL, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher hinted during a recent visit—during which he met Maoist leaders—that the U.S. would consider removing the Maoists from the list should they “act within the political system and abandon the past practices of terrorism and violence”.
Regardless of whether or not the U.S. chooses to engage Hezbollah, our terrorist designation process should be better calibrated to fight terror while engaging armed groups inclined toward moderation and participation. The terror lists, while valuable, are inflexible and lack clear gradations. All of the groups on the FTO lists are violent and dangerous, but not equally so. The U.S. should craft a more flexible and surgical designation process while articulating a clear process—both words and actions measurable by benchmarks—by which terrorist entities can remove themselves from the terror lists. Without such information, they have no incentive to reform and no pathway to follow.
Hope may win Presidential elections in the U.S., but Lebanon has never been fertile ground for such capricious emotions. U.S. policy toward Lebanon and Hezbollah should be neither recklessly guided by dubious best-case scenarios, nor confined by a doctrinaire straightjacket leftover from the Bush Administration.
• Joshua Gross is a Master's candidate at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.