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West Asia on the edge after an assassination

— Photo: AP

An iconic hero: With a picture of Imad Mughniyeh for backdrop, Hizbollah fighters at a rally in a Beirut suburb.

The assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, a top commander of the Lebanese Hizbollah, has set off a new round of tensions involving Lebanon, Israel, the United States, Syria and Iran. His killing in Damascus in a car bomb explosion, widely believed to be the handiwork of the Israeli Mossad, has stirred powerful emotions in the region. To his supporters, Mughniyeh was an iconic hero who petrified his adversaries — Israel and the United States. For those who were at the rece iving end, he was a hate figure — a ruthless murderer and an arch-terrorist.

Mughniyeh has been ascribed the responsibility of masterminding the 1983 bombing of military barracks in Beirut, in which 241 American Marines were killed. The incident led to the exit of U.S. forces from Lebanon. The blame for the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29 people, has also been pinned on him. This attack was widely viewed as Hizbollah’s retribution for the assassination of its head, Abbas Al Mousawi, by Israel in February 1992. Mughniyeh had also been accused of masterminding the hijacking of a passenger airliner and staging a spate of high-profile kidnappings.

Critics, however, say there is hardly any evidence in the public domain suggesting that Mughniyeh masterminded these acts — all of which required a variety of complex skills that are unlikely to be rolled into any single individual.

The fallout of Mughniyeh’s assassination is expected to be extensive as it has broken the unwritten rules of engagement that had locked the two adversaries, Hizbollah and Israel, at the end of the Lebanon war of July-August 2006. The car-bombing which killed Mughniyeh has reopened the strong possibility of renewed conflict, which could draw Israel, actively backed by the United States, Hizbollah and its key supporters — Iran and Syria — into a bitter confrontation. The assassination of Mughniyeh has implanted a dynamic of unmitigated violence that could now profoundly alter the political and ideological discourse in West Asia.

The Hizbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has announced that Israel — whom he blamed for Mughniyeh’s killing — would be targeted. In rain-drenched Beirut, he said before a crowd of hundreds of thousands who had gathered to attend Mughniyeh’s funeral: “You have killed Hajj Imad [Imad Mughniyeh] outside the recognised battle zone. Our battle with you has been, and continues to be, on our Lebanese land. You used to kill us on our Lebanese land and we fought your usurping entity back. You have crossed the border.”

Then came the stern warning: “If you want this kind of open war, then let the entire world listen: Let it be an open war. We have a sacred right to self-defence and we will do everything this right entitles us to do to defend our country, brothers, leaders, and people.”

For Hizbollah, Mughniyeh’s assassination is not about revenge. Instead, it is a major episode that demands a befitting response within the framework of its ongoing resistance to Israeli occupation and persistent efforts to dominate Lebanon. While seeds of resistance were visible among Lebanese Shias in the early 1950s, the Hizbollah movement became a vehicle against Israeli preponderance after the latter’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

At the present juncture, Hizbollah views itself as a movement with a core Shia support base that has grown in strength substantially. It says it is now strong enough to effectively counter Israel, as was demonstrated in the 2006 Lebanon war. On the military front, Hizbollah argues with considerable conviction that it successfully repulsed the Israeli invasion of south Lebanon during the 33-day conflict. From a political standpoint, it thwarted the plan of the United States and Israel to co-opt Lebanon into their orbit of influence. It also undermined the Bush administration’s goal of making Lebanon a springboard for shaping a “New Middle East.” Hizbollah acknowledges that Iran and Syria are its strategic allies.

In an interview with Lebanese academician Amal Saad Ghorayeb published in the monograph In Their Own Words: Hizbollah’s Strategy in the Current Confrontation, the head of Hizbollah’s foreign policy unit, Seyyed Nawaf Al-Mousawi, has been quoted as saying: “We do not deny this alliance [with Iran and Syria], we shout it from the rooftops. We are part of a resistance axis to American hegemony in the region, from the resistance in Afghanistan to the resistance in Palestine.”

However, Hizbollah denounces attempts to characterise it as a proxy of Tehran and Damascus. Mousawi points out that Hizbollah’s agenda “intersects with part of, I repeat, part of, the Iranian and Syrian agendas.” In saying this he is implying that the group freely pursues its own priorities which fall outside the ambit of this common agenda.

Mughniyeh’s assassination comes at a time when Hizbollah has been seeking a prominent role for itself inside the Lebanese government.

Hizbollah wants that out of the total strength of the Lebanese Cabinet, one-third of the members plus one should belong to the group. Hizbollah has been staging a long-drawn protest to fulfil this demand, which would allow it to veto any move that, in its view, would be detrimental either to its own interests or Lebanese national interests.

Hizbollah functionaries have been openly saying that they do not trust the March 14 forces, its key rivals, who currently head the government. In fact, they are accused of pursuing an American and Israeli agenda in Lebanon. In an interview with the Associated Press, Mahmoud Qomati, the head of Hizbollah’s politburo, said: “Now we are demanding it [a greater share of Cabinet posts] because our experience during the war and the performance of the government has made us unsure. On several occasions they pressured us to lay down our weapons. So after the war, we had no choice but to demand this guarantee that would give us legal and constitutional strength. If we take one-third plus one, the government will not be able to impose its decision on us.”

Nai’im Qasim, Hizbollah’s deputy secretary-general, has said on several occasions that the opposition does not wish to dominate the government. Instead, armed with a minority veto power, it wants “to participate in fateful and strategic decisions.” To its critics, who see in Hizbollah’s political demand an attempt to foist Iranian and Syrian interests on Lebanon, Hizbollah has a credible counter-argument. Nasrallah has pointed out that once a new national unity government is formed, its composite composition would ensure that neither side would be capable of imposing a foreign agenda on Lebanon.

Hizbollah officials have repeatedly said that their political struggle adds another dimension to the resistance. Sheikh Nabil Qaouk, the Hizbollah commander for South Lebanon, has been quoted as saying: “Although the war ended on the military level, it did not end on the political level. There is now a political assault to achieve the same aims as the military war. And this time the instruments are Lebanese.”

There is speculation that Israel and the United States might turn Mughniyeh’s assassination into an opportunity to attack Hizbollah, in order to derail the organisation’s attempts at political consolidation as a follow-up to its military gains in the war. Despite Israel’s military embarrassment in 2006, a full-fledged attack is now possible as Hizbollah has so far defeated the core objectives of Israel and the United States in Lebanon. It has refused to disarm. It has also declined to rubber-stamp the proposal for an international inquiry into the assassination of the former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, unless its concerns about the tribunal’s terms of reference are fully addressed. It has continued to remain a key ally of Iran, which Israel says is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons and is a threat.

Hizbollah itself has been well aware of the possibility of a major attempt by the United States and Israel to change the political landscape of West Asia. In an address on January 15, Nasrallah pointed out that from the beginning of this year till May, the U.S. could mount a major effort to alter the situation in its favour in three areas — Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. He stressed that this was on the agenda during the recent visit of U.S. President George Bush to the region. During this visit the “green light” for mounting a fresh onslaught on Gaza was shown to Israel, he asserted.

Hizbollah is bound to retaliate vigorously against Israel following Mughniyeh’s assassination. Nasrallah has warned that his commander’s killing marks a new phase in Hizbollah’s resistance against Israel. He declared during his address at Mughniyeh’s funeral: “From the July 2006 war, which was closely linked to Imad Mughniyeh, to the blood of Al-Hajj Imad Mughniyeh in February 2008, let the whole world note — and I take responsibility for this — that we should start writing the history of the phase which signals the beginning of the collapse of the State of Israel.”

While a major Hizbollah strike against Israel is expected, there is a real danger that it could become a pretext for a prolonged conflict that spills into the region and that would be hard to contain. A scarred but resource rich region, which is part of India’s extended neighbourhood, could once again experience a renewed cycle of violence, undermining New Delhi’s vital interests.

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