LONDON, 12 August 2006 - Washington has dumped Tony Blair and its disdain of the UN. America is now working with France, the old colonial power, to shape Lebanese events via the international organization. Friction between Washington and Paris as well as strong objections from the Arab League are delaying a “first-stage’’ UN resolution on a cease-fire. Immediate Israeli withdrawal is not in the current text.
The Lebanese government has offered 15,000 troops to replace the Israeli Defense Force and to monitor Hezbollah while a robust French-led UN force moves in. The key is to get UN forces in and Israelis out, without letting Hezbollah regroup and rearm. A quick-fix solution could allow a rapid-reaction French component to link up with the existing UN forces, as lead components of a Lebanese military intervention. A UN resolution could save face all round, but it is more likely that the fighting will go on.
The IDF is moving into phase three of its operations: a slower, meat-grinder advance that could, depending on diplomacy, accelerate to a big ground push to the Litani River and probably beyond. Despite memories of the previous quagmire, the IDF may stay until all UN troops are in place. Israelis have little faith in the Lebanese Army doing what it has been unable to do since 2000.
So generals in NATO should take note. The conflict in Lebanon is inspiring a potent kind of warfare, which could have a profound impact throughout the Middle East. Previously Israel could capture Beirut in seven days; now it has struggled for four weeks to control small villages right on its own border.
Hezbollah is a novel hybrid, combining the sophistication and weaponry of a formal army blended with the near-invisibility of a hit-and-run insurgency. It has dramatically modernized guerrilla tactics, but it also holds territory and seats in the Lebanese Parliament and government. Hezbollah is responsive to the ayatollahs in Iran but — like Sinn Fein IRA in Ireland — it has an authentic constituency base, one which was partly created by Israel’s 1982 invasion.
Western experts are struggling, not least with naming this new phenomenon. Some call it network warfare. Traditional armies are large, often cumbersome and organized in a strict disciplined hierarchy; networks such as Hezbollah have numerous widely dispersed fighters who can improvise quickly, not least in their use of high-tech communications and propaganda. Israeli special forces are surprised to come up against Hezbollah fighters with almost the same quality of equipment — and training — as themselves.
Hezbollah has waged a sustained war of attrition against a nation across a state border. To relieve the pressure on Hamas — the fighting continues in Gaza as well — it opened up a second front in the north and maintained a high-tempo war against the regional superpower. Hezbollah has learned from the Chechens’ fight against a much stronger power, Russia. It has challenged state monopolies of force: air and naval power. It withstood the shock-and-awe tactics of bombing from the air by escalating its counterattacks with rockets.
Thinking in the old paradigm, Israel struck at the infrastructure of the Lebanese state with air attacks, only belatedly engaging Hezbollah on the ground. This is a massive own goal, not least because it undermines the Arab world’s most moderate (and also weakest) government.
Hezbollah has done a lot better than the conventional forces of all the Arab states that have fought against Israel since 1948. It has won a stunning propaganda victory and shattered Israel’s deterrence posture.
Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, has done what Osama Bin Laden could never do: He has united Shiites and Sunnis throughout the region, especially the young, in the belief that a Muslim renaissance could come via the gun. Just as Iraq demonstrated the limits of US power, the war on Lebanon displayed Israel’s weakness. Radical Islam has been the victor in both conflicts.
Israel will now be far more reluctant to fight Hamas, despite the differences in terrain and organization. Likewise, the Israeli experience must give the US pause before attacking Iranian forces who will fight just as effectively as their students in Hezbollah.
Hezbollah’s success will galvanize jihadists from Boston to Bolton to Bombay. The supine political response of the Sunni Arab leaders (who privately loathe Shiite success) has played badly in the Arab street. Militant Islam could soon displace the secular despotisms — ironically even the one in Syria that supports Hezbollah.
The Lebanese war is a race against time: Will Hezbollah run out of fighting spirit and rockets before the world — and even the US — runs out of patience with Israeli tactics and forces a cease-fire? So far, no Islamic fanatic has put unconventional warheads on their Iranian missiles. Whether that remains the case may depend on how long the bloodletting goes on. If diplomats conjure up an intervention army far more successful than the existing ill-fated UN force, a regional war that could include Syria may be avoided.
America’s embrace of UN diplomacy is a welcome return to pre-paranoia, pre-9 11 politics. The Middle East may now be treated in a more holistic way. If Lebanon works, the French might be persuaded to repeat the miracle by supervising a UN buffer between Israel and Palestine as the old road map to the two-state solution is finally realized.
But if the UN fails, Hezbollah’s deadly hybrid could be replicated across Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. Iran acquires nuclear weapons. America withdraws from Iraq as civil war compels a messy partition. NATO forces succumb to domestic pressure and the Taleban retake Kabul. A female Democrat president in Washington reverts to isolation. Such pessimistic probabilities dictate a rapid and orderly Western military withdrawal from Arab lands. Whoever rules would sell their oil.
The aspiring French-led diplomacy in Lebanon trumpets the failure of the Anglo-US policy of constructive destabilization. Only a genuine negotiated cease-fire, allied to a powerful UN intervention force, could — just — lead to a regional settlement.
— Dr. Paul Moorcraft, a former senior instructor at the UK’s military academy at Sandhurst and the Joint Services Command and Staff College, is director of the Center for Foreign Policy Analysis.
