Word: hizballah
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...Hizballah's efforts to apply the brakes to a Syrian withdrawal signal a failure of initial opposition efforts to forge an anti-Syria consensus with Nasrallah's movement. It may be touted as non-sectarian, but in reality it represents an amalgam of traditional political forces from the Christian, Sunni Muslim and Druze communities. Hizballah speaks for the majority of Shiites. And its response to the opposition campaign betrays a measure of suspicion that its rivals may be engaging in the longstanding tradition of Lebanese factions drawing in foreign allies to reinforce their own positions...
...Syrian withdrawal may be a major setback to Hizbollah, because Syria guarantees the air bridge from Iran that keeps Nasrallah's militias supplied with weapons. (For Damascus, enabling Hizballah in this manner was considered a strategic trump card in pressing Israel towards concluding a peace deal that would return the occupied Golan Heights to Syria. ) But the U.S. has made shutting down the movement's armed wing a priority, shared by Israel and, of course, legally mandated by Resolution...
...Tuesday's muscle-flexing may also be an attempt to ensure that Hizballah keeps its weapons in a post-Syria arrangement. The movement is adept at staying on-side with Lebanese public opinion, complementing its military activity, directed largely against Israel for the past decade, with a massive welfare operation among the Shiite poor and by contesting parliamentary elections - Hizballah is currently the single largest party in Lebanon's patchwork parliament. Its share of parliamentary seats may even grow if the Syrians depart, since Hizballah advocates have long believed the Syrians actually cheated Nasrallah's movement...
...Hizballah's short-term priority, however, may be ensuring that Syrian withdrawal takes place not on the basis of Resolution 1559, which it rejects, but on the basis of the Taif Agreement brokered by the Arab League in 1989 to end the Lebanese civil war - which also mandates Syrian withdrawal, but does not require Hizballah's disarmament. Indeed, its success in fighting the 18-year Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000, won Hizballah national acclaim across the political spectrum in Lebanon. (Today, it relies on a flimsier pretext for maintaining an army, claiming that it is fighting...
...Nasrallah may be hoping to convince the leaders of other factions to put the issue of Hizballah's militia on the back burner, arguing that it's a necessary hedge against any Israeli intervention. He may eventually even pursue the same option as have the Kurdish parties have in Iraq, maintaining their private militias on the basis that they'll be nominally integrated into the national army. Many in the Lebanese opposition may be inclined to accept this proposition, at least for now, not allowing the issue of Hizballah's arms to detract from the broad support for Syrian withdrawal...