Hizbullah In Lebanon Research Articles

Exporting the Iranian Revolution: Ecumenical Clerics in Lebanon

AbstractFrom the dawn of the 1978–79 Iranian Revolution until the consolidation of Hizbullah in the late 1980s, a network of Iranian, Lebanese, and Palestinian clerics played a crucial role in spreading the revolution to Lebanon and laying the groundwork for Hizbullah. Whereas the historiography of the post-1979 Iran–Lebanon relationship is overwhelmingly focused on Hizbullah, the present study, by drawing on oral history interviews with these clerics and archival materials, contends that the Iranian Revolution came to Lebanon primarily through these Shi‘i and Sunni clerics, who joined ranks and established the Association of Muslim ‘Ulama’ in Lebanon in the wake of the 1982 Israeli invasion. This study argues that these clerics modeled their struggle on the ‘ulama’-led and mosque-based example of the 1978–79 revolution, which this paper describes as the Khomeinist script, to transcend sect to seed a revolution in Lebanon and mass mobilize against the invasion. This article concludes that the ecumenical script was highly appealing to non-Shi‘i Islamists, a key factor in the success of exporting the revolution and the rise of Hizbullah in Lebanon.

Lamenting Karbala in Europe: Husayni Liturgy and Discourses of Dissent amongst Diasporic Bahraini and Lebanese Shiis

ABSTRACT The presence of Shii communities in Europe is increasingly felt, especially as they establish independent religious and social infrastructures. Supporters of different Shii–Islamist political parties have established transnational links connecting diasporic communities with their countries of origin. These links have shaped and been shaped by religious, political and social dynamics in the Middle East. This article examines how lamentation poetry performed in Shii ritual gatherings is used to articulate political dissent among diasporic communities. The lachrymal expressions and descriptions that characterize Shii lamentation poetry have the ritualistic function of metaphorically identifying participants with Imam Husayn and his cause. Organizers of these gatherings, however, use lamentation poetry to narrate and give meaning to geopolitical developments in the Middle East, especially since the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003. This article constitutes the first attempt to examine the political contextualization of Shii lamentation poetry, embedded within the political discourses of two Shii Islamist parties, the al-Wefaq Movement in Bahrain and Hizbullah in Lebanon. Unlike other studies on Shii ritual practices, it is informed by a multi-sited ethnographic study of female-only and male-dominated ritual spaces in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Lebanon, Iraq and Bahrain.

Researching Hizbullah in Lebanon

As one of the Middle East's more open countries, Lebanon is fairly congenial to foreign researchers. Classified as “partly free” by Freedom House, it ranks ahead of all the region's countries, except Israel, Tunisia, and Turkey. However, when it comes to researching Hizbullah, this openness and congeniality subsides. While Hizbullah contains political and social branches, it is first and foremost a military and guerilla organization—the self-proclaimed Islamic Resistance in Lebanon (al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya fi Lubnan). Like any military and guerrilla organization—especially one that is subjected to Western terrorist designations and economic sanctions—Hizbullah is innately and justifiably secretive, vigilant, and suspicious of foreigners and outsiders, including academics, scholars, and researchers. Based on my personal experiences researching Hizbullah in Lebanon, these characteristics have ebbed and flowed with its organizational evolution and situational context. At the international, regional, and local levels, the complexities and dynamics of the politics surrounding Hizbullah have shaped my experiences as a researcher in Lebanon and have demonstrated the importance of being aware of these politics and adapting to them. These convoluted and shifting politics have also revealed the inherent merits and challenges of ethnography—a rigorous, informal, and improvisational endeavor and process that necessitates, above all else, flexibility.

The Struggle against Hizbullah and Hamas: Israel's Next Hybrid War

Israel has fought against hybrid foes—those with both guerrilla and regular military capabilities1—several times in the last decade. It confronted Hizbullah in Lebanon in 2006 and Hamas in the Gaza...

Why does Iran need Hizbullah?

The political and military commitment of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Hizbullah in Lebanon has gone through the baptism of fire once again. The Syrian crisis has become a critical theatre of war for the three way alliance between Iran, Hizbullah and Syria, celebrated as the ‘axis of resistance’ in Tehran. The Iranian leadership has used the Syrian crisis to further consolidate its ties with Hizbullah and warn potential enemies of the risks in underestimating Iran’s capacity to take the war to them. Iranian leaders call this a strategy of deterrence, warning Israel and the United States of massive retaliation in case they take any action against Iran. Hizbullah is key to that policy. This paper will explore relations between Iran and Hizbullah in the broader context of Iran’s external relations and geo-strategic calculations. It notes the significance of Iran’s revolutionary ideology and its version of Shia Islam in lubricating this relationship. Hizbullah adheres to the ideological principles advanced in Tehran and shares Iran’s Manichean worldview which divides the world between the oppressors and the oppressed. In this perspective, the United States and Israel are seen as the principal oppressors of the Muslim world. This religious and ideological platform has facilitated a close strategic partnership between Iran and Hizbullah. The Syrian crisis has demonstrated that both parties place significant value in this partnership and are prepared to go to extreme lengths to protect it. This consideration has played a major role in Hizbullah’s military steps to defend the Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

The Martyrs' Revolutions: The Role of Martyrs in the Arab Spring

This article examines popular representations of modern martyrs in the Arab world, comparing national models of martyrdom representations prior to the Arab Spring, namely those from Iran, Palestine and Hizbullah in Lebanon, to portrayals of martyrs during and after the Arab Spring. It argues that the Arab Spring brought forth a new model for the martyr in the Arab world, which (a) moves the production of martyrs' images from the state to the citizen; (b) personalises portrayals of martyrs through stories of their personal lives; and, (c) transitions from portrayals of victimisation to empowerment and agency. In the Arab Spring model, the martyr is both a symbol and narrative framework used to galvanise opposition to state regimes. Unlike the pre-Arab Spring models, which portrayed the martyr's death as an honourable sacrifice for the larger national or religious community, the Arab Spring martyr is portrayed as a needless victim in the fight for the universal values of dignity and human rights, as both a product and producer of meaning associated with agency. As the meaning of the ‘martyr’ continues to evolve in the post-Arab Spring era, it has come to represent the power of the people more broadly.

The unlikely terrorist: women and Islamic resistance in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories

Islamic resistance groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories have been accused of using terrorist tactics to achieve their aims. Although some critics suggest that such groups may also have hijacked the democratic agenda in ways that disadvantage women, their supporters claim that they are promoting a model of modernity that is empowering women. This article examines the reasons why some Lebanese Shi'i and Palestinian women support the resistance against Israeli invasion and occupation that is justified in terms of religion. Far from seeing the actions of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories as acts of terrorism, many women welcome the resistance as it brings dignity and meaning to their lives and enhances feelings of national identification.

Hizbullah's alleged Scuds raise storm clouds over Lebanon

On 13 April 2010 Israeli President Shimon Peres gave public voice to serious Israeli concerns that Syria had recently supplied Scud missiles to Hizbullah in Lebanon. Damascus dismissed the charge as a fabrication designed to justify Israeli aggression against Lebanon, a line echoed by Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri. But on 27 April, while not repeating Peres's specific allegation, United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned of the destabilising impact of such an acquisition by Hizbullah.

Historical Breakthroughs in Arab-Israeli Negotiations: Lessons for the Future

This article analyzes the conditions that might facilitate the long awaited diplomatic breakthrough in the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians in the Obama presidency. In order identify ten specific factors, the article relies on the rich historical record of peace negotiations, particularly since 1967. The analysis indicates that, despite the presence of a number of the factors which have facilitated past agreements, there are others which militate against excessive optimism. The arrival of Barack Obama's administration in Washington in January 2009 generated particularly intense speculation with regard the possibility of trying resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all. In the year before his inauguration, a number of veterans of the Oslo peace process of the 1990s wrote how to (or hownot- to) books in impatient anticipation of a dawn in Washington with regard the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or even with regard the Middle East as a whole. Authors included Aaron David Miller, Daniel Kurtzer with Scott Lasensky, Martin Indyk, and Dennis Ross with David Makovsky.1 All of these books combined personal experience with policy prescriptions, and all made it clear that their authors fervently hoped that the new President would reverse George W. Bush's legacy. They joined a number of predecessors,2 who have not only described and analyzed the Arab-Israeli negotiations, but also have formulated a series of learned, lessons explicitly intended be relevant for future negotiations. The new wave of policy prescriptions was grounded on the general, even universal, perception that not only might Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking be galvanized by the new administration, but that this is a particularly crucial time for peacemaking in the Middle East in general (including, in addition the issue of Israel/Palestine, the issues of Iran, Lebanon, and the Golan Heights). For much of George W. Bush's term, most observers, both in the US and abroad, believed that as long as he was President, no long-term solution the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was likely, nor would a serious attempt be made achieve such a solution. In fact, the one exception proved the rule: very few considered the November 2007 Annapolis Conference be a serious effort.3 Most observers, of whatever political persuasion, perceived Bush as an unabashedly pro-Israel politician who rarely even tried portray himself as an honest broker between the sides. While Bush touted himself as the first US President openly advocate the two-state solution, few took this pronouncement very seriously. With two bloody wars within 30 months - Israel against Hizbullah in Lebanon (2006) and against Hamas in Gaza (2008-2009) - a new urgency for dealing with the conflict was established. The Arab League made clear rather forcefully that if Israel did not accept its Peace Initiative, announced in 2002 and reconfirmed in 2007, it would soon be withdrawn. And Arab leaders, who have warned repeatedly that the key dealing with the Arab and Muslim worlds in general must be a consensual settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, clearly expected action from Obama. These near-universal expectations of a break in the diplomatic stalemate were not unreasonable. Even apart from the current collection of crises, several characteristics of candidate Obama suggested that he would be strongly inclined make the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a high priority on his agenda: a) he is in general a very engaged, resolute man, likely prove himself be an activist President; b) he appears approach virtually all issues in a comprehensive manner, looking for fundamental solutions; and c) during the presidential campaign of 2008 he spoke about the concerns of both parties the Middle East conflict - Israelis and Palestinians - with great passion, dwelling specifically on Israel's security concerns and on Palestinian suffering. …

Militant Islamists: terrorists without frontiers

In this book, Alaolmolki, an expert on the transnational politics of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, provides a global view of militant Islamist ideologies, activities, and connections. Unlike many extant books on this topic, Militant Islamists does not examine only one particular factor or driving force in political violence such as suicide bombings; rather, this work studies transnational militant Islam on several levels: domestic (e.g., the role of poverty and lack of democracy in Arab and Muslim nations); regional (e.g., the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; Hizbullah in Lebanon; Jemmah Islamiyan in Southeast Asia; Hizb al-Tahrir in Central Asia); global (e.g., the role of the United States and Western Europe in inadvertently helping transnational Islamists). Ultimately, the author traces the effects of the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq on militant Islamist terrorism, concluding that militant Islam is spreading, not receding, and that the United States would better rely on soft, rather than hard (military), power to overcome it.

Israel and the Middle East at a Crossroad

It is far easier for a country, and definitely for Israel, to cope with a situation in which the threat of extremism comes from a country. It is more difficult to deal with situations in which a country, say Iran, spreads its tentacles abroad, as in the case of Hizbullah in Lebanon, or when such a country strengthens terror organizations in a different region, like Hamas in the Palestinian Authority. In these cases, we must contend with terror organizations, some of which are well placed in certain countries, and some that are spread out around the world. It is in the middle of this conflict that Israel finds itself.

Torn Between God, Family, and Money: The Changing Profile of Lebanon's Religious Terrorists

Based upon this researcher's prior work and the conceptual denouement from geocultural immobility to religious terrorism, the author speculates that the reverse may be achieved and a zealot's motivation for religious terrorism might be purged once his or her basic Moslovian needs are fulfilled. Thus, this article attempts to empirically assess in some elements of Hizbullah, the effect of newly found wealth, money, and family exigencies on the Lebanese Shi'a's religious zealotry, his or her perceived religious commitments, and their acts of terrorism. This research concluded that Hizbullah in Lebanon, an organization originally established as a religious network with narrowly defined politico-socioeconomic goals, has eroded. Many of its individual cells now serve primarily their own self-interest instead of their perception of God's will. These cells are defying Hizbullah's main leadership wishes and committing criminal actions designed to serve cell or family interests. Its sophisticated network is already being used to transport and harbor criminals across the Mid-East and Europe. This research stress that the well-established Hizbullah cell organizations that protect each and every element and coordinate with other terrorist organizations are ripe to be exploited for international criminal activities. More importantly, this research attempts to explain and delineate the process by which nations may manage, control, reform, or even eliminate such international affliction.

"Wilāyat al-faqīh" and Hizbullah's Relations with Iran

Hizbullah in Lebanon has succeeded in employing Imām Khūmaynī’s theory of wilāyat al-faqīh (‘the guardianship of the jurisprudent’) as a cornerstone in its politico-religious ideology from 1978, molding, interpreting and adapting the original theory to suit Lebanese social and political conditions. In order to negotiate successive changes in the political system, Hizbullah has shifted its ideology to become a key player affecting the dynamic changes taking place in the Lebanese public sphere. However, it is assumed in many circles that Hizbullah is the proxy of Syria and Iran. Concentrating on the presumed Iranian influence, this article argues that Hizbullah has instead pursued an independent course of action in its attempt to influence the political system of Lebanon.