Hints of a shift in US policy toward Hezbollah suggest tacit recognition of the organization's status as a highly popular and legal political party with the largest single bloc of seats in Lebanon's Parliament. To have come even this far, perhaps baby steps to outsiders, policymakers had to overcome 20 years of entrenched and unquestioned orthodoxy.
There is no greater policy challenge in Washington than to engage in even suggestively rational discourse on the Iranian-backed, Syrian-supplied militant organization. Hezbollah's role in kidnapping and killing scores of Americans, including 241 Marines in a 1983 suicide bombing of their barracks; propagating anti-Semitic incitement through Al-Mannar TV; and fueling Palestinian extremism to destabilize the peace process are as much a part of the organization's reason d'etre as is the extensive social services and political network it operates in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah's terror tactics have engendered over two decades of bipartisan antipathy. The Pentagon and State Department are equally resolute in opposing even a glimmer of accommodation. UN Security Council Resolution 1559, while not mentioning either by name, is clearly aimed at both Syria, which is the target of increasing international pressure to withdraw its forces, and Hezbollah, which must disarm.
Yet even after Sept.11, Washington has failed to find widespread international backing for its unyielding, hard-line stance. Of course, Israel has a similarly muscular position. In 2001, Canada banned financial support for Hezbollah and in 2002 added the organization's "social arm" to this prohibition. But the EU, despite heavy lobbying from Washington and Tel Aviv, remains divided and many member states, with Paris in the lead, maintain contact.
In the past month, the implications of a rapidly evolving and potentially explosive crisis in Lebanon has forced President Bush to exhibit uncustomary, if modest, flexibility.
The gruesome assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in downtown Beirut unleashed a political firestorm that could revive either the country's much-abused democracy or its still-smoldering inter-confessional tensions that fueled a brutal 15-year civil war. To his credit, President Bush reacted with alacrity and admirable resolve to the initial challenge: Winning the support of Hariri's friends and Syria's allies to compel Damascus' compliance with 1559. The level of international coordination was extraordinary; so too was Washington's silence on the subject of disarming Hezbollah.
The Bush administration has helped create conditions that will force Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon without resort to force, but such conditions do not currently exist for disarming Hezbollah. This situation will prevail unless and until real democracy takes root in Lebanon and the party has to choose between political realism and ideological rigidity, between votes in Lebanon and Iranian patronage.
A similar choice confronts US policymakers. Political realism would argue that Hezbollah's widespread popularity among all Lebanese - which will likely mean substantial gains in fair and free elections - is incontrovertible; ideological rigidity would argue that even a whisper of political realism is heresy.
The choice for Lebanon is even more stark: Were the US administration to push prematurely for the disarming of Hezbollah, a victory for the ideologues, Damascus would find every excuse, perhaps even inciting unrest, to maintain its suffocating presence; but should President Bush continue to put democracy first and remove its more obvious impediment, Syrian interference, then Lebanese are able to decide their own future.
The complete withdrawal of Syrian troops and security personnel weeks ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for late May guarantees millions of Lebanese the most free and fair democratic process since 1976, when the civil war began.
Privately, the party's leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah may be quite pleased to see Syrian influence wane. Damascus deliberately reduced Hezbollah's representation in Parliament in order to give rival party Amal additional seats and the third most powerful position in the government, speaker of the Parliament. Hafiz Assad and his son played one Shiite party off against the other in order to weaken both, particularly Hezbollah. If there is to be any chance of peacefully disarming Hezbollah, it will require that the party and its followers be given a political role more commensurate with the organization's popular support. Hezbollah is a formidable political, social and spiritual force among Lebanon's long-downtrodden and often disenfranchised Shiites, who now comprise a plurality, about 40 percent of the population.
As demonstrated on the streets of Beirut on March 8, when more than 500,000 Lebanese - out of a total population of 4.5 million - peacefully turned out to protest "foreign interference", Hezbollah is far more than a militia. While a number of commentators have attempted to trim or malign the turnout, this was as genuine as the far smaller opposition rallies. The demonstration was not a call for Syria to stay, despite complimentary rhetoric and a few Bashar posters. Instead, Nasrallah used the rally to show the world, in particular Washington, that Hezbollah is a major player in Lebanon's domestic and foreign policies, including peace with Israel. Demonstrators chose to fly the Lebanese flag, not Hezbollah's.
As half a million Lebanese demonstrated last Tuesday, President Bush addressed an audience at the National Defense University, saying, "The Lebanese people have the right to determine their future, free from domination by a foreign power." Bush's instincts are absolutely correct. Democracy and the rule of law will coax - or coerce - Hezbollah's reformation much more effectively than heavy-handed unilateral pressure from Washington.
Most Lebanese, including Shiites, are looking to a future of economic prosperity and political stability, not a return to civil war or continued foreign military intervention. If Hezbollah's electoral victories do not moderate the party's militancy, it could expect to lose substantial support in future elections. If, however, either Israel or the US decides to solve the problem militarily, Lebanese will unite in defense of the organization that was mostly responsible for ending Israel's 22-year occupation of the south.
Maggie Mitchell Salemis a political and communications consultant based in Washington, DC. Previously she was director of communications and outreach at the Middle East Institute and for seven years served as a Foreign Service officer at the US Department of State.
