US embassy cable - 04BEIRUT3713

C O N F I D E N T I A L  BEIRUT 003713 
 
 
PARIS FOR ZEYA, LONDON FOR GOLDRICH 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/29/2014 
TAGS: PTER, KISL, PGOV, SOCI, LE, SY 
SUBJECT: LEBANON:  THE TWO FACES OF HIZBALLAH; PART ONE -- 
THE POTENTIAL FOR "LIBANISATION" OF HIZBALLAH 
 
REF: A. BEIRUT 3300 
     B. BEIRUT 2733 
     C. BEIRUT 2925 
     D. BEIRUT 2808 
     E. BEIRUT 3519 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Vincent M. Battle for reasons 1.5 (b) 
and (d). 
 
Summary 
------- 
 
1.  (C) A number of Lebanese observers who favor the idea of 
transforming Hizballah into a normal political party see 
hopeful signs of this happening.  Specifically, they point to 
expressions from some Hizballah members of common interest 
with Christian oppositionists and more recently the 
supporters of the "Beirut Declaration".  According to these 
observers, with Hizballah's leadership feeling "cornered" by 
regional and local developments, Hizballah's upcoming August 
conference is a potential milestone in its "libanisation." 
Skeptics hold that, party conference or no party conference, 
Iran's Islamic revolutionaries, not the Hizballah 
rank-and-file, still set the organization's direction.  At 
least one independent Shi'a politician would prefer to see 
Hizballah go the way of another, now-defunct civil war-era 
militia.  End summary. 
 
Signs of interest in the "Beirut Declaration" 
--------------------------------------------- 
 
2.  (C) Several personalities involved in the "Beirut 
Declaration" (Ref A), a call for genuine post-civil war 
reconciliation and reassertion of Lebanese sovereignty, have 
suggested that their agenda struck a sympathetic chord within 
Hizballah, at least among many of the rank-and-file.  For 
example, Shi'ite political scientist Saoud el Mawla pointed 
to the attendance of three members of Hizballah at a June 27 
gathering organized by Member of Parliament Fares Souaid (who 
belongs to the anti-Syrian Qornet Shehwan Gathering).  The 
event was a follow-on of sorts to the stillborn public 
launching of the Declaration, cancelled after GOL 
authorities, apparently nervous about any sign of 
Christian-Muslim consensus regarding Syria, clumsily 
intervened. 
 
3.  (C) While the three were not official representatives of 
Hizballah, Mawla said their attendance indicated growing 
interest among Hizballah's rank-and-file in the Declaration's 
message.  They were clearly interested in engaging "Christian 
opposition" elements (hence their attendance at Souaid's 
event), but seemed less interested in "old leftist" 
co-religionists like Mawla, whom they have known, and argued 
with, for years. 
 
4.  (C) Although the rank-and-file was showing interest in 
new directions, such as the "Beirut Declaration," Mawla 
described a Hizballah leadership that is "on the defensive," 
particularly in the aftermath of the Hay es-Selloum riots 
(Ref B).  Feeling "cornered" by post-9/11 developments in the 
Middle East, it is sticking to a doctrinaire position on Iraq 
and lashing out at its sometime partners, such as the General 
Confederation of Labor, as well as its chief political rival, 
the Amal movement of Chamber of Deputies Speaker Nabih Berri. 
 
Discontent in the ranks? 
------------------------ 
 
5.  (C) Other observers have similarly described Hizballah as 
feeling "cornered" by developments in the region.  Nasir 
al-Ass'ad, a political commentator with Beirut's 
"al-Mustaqbal" newspaper, described the Hay es-Selloum 
incident -- in which several people, all Shi'as from the 
Biqa' Valley, were killed by Lebanese soldiers -- as a 
watershed.  Many Hizballah members, with hindsight, saw Hay 
es-Selloum as a "trap" for Hizballah set by Syria's security 
apparatus and its Lebanese allies, supposedly telegraphing 
their readiness to clamp down on Hizballah as part of a 
U.S.-Syrian grand bargain (Ref C). 
 
6.  (C) Despite insinuations of U.S. involvement made by 
Nasrallah immediately afterward (Ref D), many in Hizballah's 
rank-and-file had come to believe this could not possibly 
have been the case, according to Ass'ad.  Seeing their 
longtime protector, Damascus, now seemingly ready to offer 
them up, many Hizballah members were increasingly interested 
in making Hizballah less of a Syrian "tool."  This 
rank-and-file discontent only grew after the June 11 meeting 
in the town of Chtaura between Nasrallah and Berri, brokered 
by Syrian military intelligence (Ref E), according to Ass'ad. 
 
 
"Libanizing" Hizballah 
---------------------- 
 
7.  (C) Ass'ad said that, during Hizballah's planned party 
conference in August, all issues were to be "on the table," 
including Hay el-Selloum, a definition of "resistance" 
activities, dialogue with Lebanon's Christians, and relations 
with Iran and Syria.  He described the conference as a 
potential milestone in the "libanisation" of Hizballah, that 
is, the transformation of it into a normal political party. 
He saw the "Christian opposition" and Prime Minister Hariri 
supporting this, but at the same time looking to see the US 
reaction. 
 
8.  (C) Ass'ad said that maximalist U.S. demands for the 
disarmament and dissolution of Hizballah would jeopardize the 
"libanisation" process, since the Hizballah leadership -- 
perhaps seeing "libanisation" as a slippery slope toward 
Guantanamo -- might resist it.  A political rather than 
military solution was necessary to defuse the many "time 
bombs" that make up Hizballah's paramilitary elements, 
according to Ass'ad. 
 
9.  (C) Ziad Majed, a young independent political activist 
and member of the Cultural Council of Southern Lebanon, 
agreed that "libanisation" of Hizballah is the goal of 
Lebanon's oppositionists, both Christian and Muslim.  This 
was the implication of the "Beirut Declaration," he added. 
 
Limits to growth 
---------------- 
 
10.  (C) Majed doubted Hizballah had a clear vision of its 
future, even though it appeared to be at a crossroads.  While 
it was the most popular political party in Lebanon, its 
identity as an organization of, by, and for Shi'as put sharp 
limits on its ability to gather support from other 
confessional groups.  Among Shi'as, it could bank on its past 
record of fighting Israeli occupation, a patronage network in 
the form of  social welfare programs, and the "easy answers" 
afforded by its brand of political Islam. 
 
11.  (C) While most ordinary Lebanese identify corruption as 
a serious national problem, Majed doubted Hizballah would try 
to rally broader national support through an aggressive 
anti-corruption stance.  Doing so would put Hizballah in an 
uncomfortable position with its ally, Syria, whose officials 
in Lebanon over the years have become deeply entangled in 
corruption. 
 
A splash of cold water 
---------------------- 
 
12.  (C) Nizar Hamzeh, an American University of Beirut 
political scientist and expert on Hizballah, dismissed 
predictions that Hizballah's upcoming party conference might 
lead to fundamental changes.  "Libanisation" has in fact been 
going on since the late 1980s, he pointed out, when Hizballah 
decided to accommodate (if not accept) Lebanon's confessional 
system of government, eventually participating in the 1992 
parliamentary elections. 
 
13.  (C) Hizballah's Members of Parliament, far from 
representing a "libanising" strain capable (as is sometimes 
suggested) of transforming Hizballah from an armed movement 
into a normal Lebanese political party, in fact serve mainly 
to give Hizballah a moderate face that other Lebanese (and 
many foreigners) are comfortable dealing with, Hamzeh said. 
They have no power base within Hizballah.  Instead, the real 
power base for Hizballah's leadership is Iran's supreme 
religious leader, Ayatollah Khameinei, and the Islamic 
Revolutionary Guard Corps.  Hizballah's leadership is 
"appointed" by them, not elected from within the 
organization, Hamzeh said. 
 
14.  (C) Hamzeh suggested that Hizballah was fairly modest in 
its long-term aspirations.  Its leadership pins its hopes on 
demographic change in Lebanon, with Christian emigration and 
Shi'a birth rates leading to a redistribution of power among 
Lebanon's confessional groups, and Hizballah receiving a 
share in a Shi'a-dominated government. 
 
15.  (C) Although some of his Qornet Shehwan colleagues are 
intrigued by signs of Hizballah support for the "Beirut 
Declaration," former Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S. Simon 
Karam expressed skepticism to us.  While Hizballah has made 
helpful gestures before (such as on behalf of Christian 
oppositionists detained by Lebanese authorities in 2001), 
efforts to engage Hizballah on the issue of Lebanese 
sovereignty always fall flat. "They're not interested," he 
said.  Rather, their helpful gestures tend to be little more 
than political maneuvering aimed at getting other Lebanese 
actors to make reciprocal gestures in support of "the 
resistance." 
 
Going the way of the LF? 
------------------------ 
 
16.  (C) Not everyone is holding out for "libanisation" of 
Hizballah.  One independent Shi'a politician trying to 
compete against the Hizballah-Amal duopoly in the South, 
Ahmad al-Ass'ad, told us he was convinced that, were Syria 
ever to turn off the tap of Hizballah's Iranian financial and 
material support, Hizballah would quickly become much less 
formidable.  It might well follow the path of another 
political-military movement that emerged during the Lebanese 
civil war, the Lebanese Forces (LF).  While the LF once 
challenged the army for dominance of Lebanon's civil war-era 
"Christian enclave," it was quickly disarmed after 1990 and 
now exists as a group of squabbling, politically 
inconsequential factions. 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
17.  (C) At the same time that many Lebanese observers see 
hope for "libanisation," others point to a contradictory 
trend.  Specifically, they see Hizballah becoming even more 
of a militant, transnational movement, with a disturbing 
resemblance to the Palestinian "state within a state" of the 
1970s and early 1980s, and with the same potential to invite 
Israeli military intervention and fuel civil strife.  Part 2 
of this series will examine this second face of Hizballah. 
 
BATTLE