The Lebanese government is not serious about disarming Hezbollah, despite its recent legislation, Hezbollah expert Hanin Ghaddar told The Jerusalem Post on Monday night.
Ghaddar, a Friedmann Senior Fellow in the Washington Institute’s Linda and Tony Rubin Program on Arab Politics, has personally seen how significantly entrenched Hezbollah is within Lebanon’s military and government.
Once a journalist for the Lebanese newspapers As-Safir, An-Nahar, and Al-Hayat, she was sentenced in absentia to six months in prison in 2018 for commenting on the Lebanese army’s treatment of Sunnis and affiliations with Hezbollah.
While the United States saw the sentence revoked, she told the Post she has not returned to her home in Al-Ghazieh since, believing she will likely be targeted for her work exposing the Iranian terror arm.
A military court official told Agence-France Presse that Ghaddar was found guilty of “defaming the Lebanese army, harming its reputation, and accusing it of distinguishing between Lebanese citizens.”
“We all know that this did not happen because the military court wanted it to happen. It happened because Hezbollah was behind it,” she said.
The same military courts that sentenced Ghaddar allowed multiple Hezbollah terrorists out on bail for the symbolic price of $21 for breaching Lebanon’s new arms laws.
In early March, Beirut banned military activities by Hezbollah after it opened fire on Israel to avenge the targeted assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dragging Lebanon into another war against the Jewish state against the government’s will.
Despite the terror group continuing to fire drones and missiles onto northern Israel, in violation of a ceasefire agreement, L’Orient Today reported that Lebanon’s prisons were emptied on Tuesday of the final Hezbollah members held under the new law.
Ghaddar claimed that the legislation was only “ink on paper so far,” as Beirut is lost on how to go about reasserting its sovereignty without creating a larger war and isn’t sure it can win.
Civil war still impacting Lebanese politics thirty years later
Lebanon’s devastating civil war, still very much in living memory, having only concluded in 1990, has left authorities reluctant to rock the boat, even at the expense of its own civilians’ lives.
“They fear Civil War. Although it’s not really a civil war. Civil war [is when] the people fight the people. This is more about the Lebanese state army fighting an insurgency,” she explained.
“They really don’t want to start a conflict between Hezbollah and the army, [but] then what’s the alternative? They haven’t made a decision to go there, but we still haven’t heard an alternative way of doing it (getting rid of the foreign terror group) or an implementation of an alternative, if they have one, and they haven’t spoken about it.”
A major issue keeping the limited actions Lebanon has taken from being effective, Ghaddar said, was the fact that it was being limited to Hezbollah’s military capabilities.
“Their military infrastructure cannot be rebuilt and regenerated after every war unless they have the other two foundations, the political power, and the financial power,” she explained.
“The financial power is still there. They still control the channels. They still control the customs. They still control a number of points of entry, [and] they still have a lot of power inside the government through their allies, mostly their Shia allies, [parliamentary speaker] Nabih Berri, and the Amal movement.”
As long as the channels are still intact, she warned that Iran would continue to send funds and Hezbollah would go through the cycle of rebuilding and restarting wars.
The terror group was also allowed to deeply embed itself within numerous ministries, including in the health and financial sectors, during the last government, Ghaddar added, creating new complexities for disarming it.
Over one million people displaced in Lebanon
Ghaddar’s family is among the 1.1-1.3 million people currently displaced in Lebanon, according to UN figures.
Despite the frustration experienced among the civilian population, she asserted that the majority in Lebanon held Hezbollah responsible for their situation – not Israel – including many of Hezbollah’s own Shia base.
While the Shia community was unlikely to soon publicly rise against Hezbollah or condemn the group publicly, they could see “the resistance has failed.”
“Brainwashed about the divine victories of Hezbollah and the whole resistance narrative” for more than 40 years, Ghaddar cautioned that it would take longer than two months to convince the Shia community of the need to rid themselves of Hezbollah.
However, she said they were starting to think of the situation in practical terms instead of ideological ones.
“Today, they are thinking practically, because ideology is no longer easy,” she explained, highlighting the fact that there was no reconstruction or compensation for the homes and jobs destroyed during the last war.
Hezbollah’s motivations have also become more apparent, as crowds are now waking up to the fact that Lebanon was reduced to little more than a “bargaining chip” for Iran, she continued.
Recent developments, including the talks held between Israeli and Lebanese officials in Washington, have also been like a “slap in the face” to Hezbollah and its supporters, as the sacrifices they have made in the name of war against Israel have been both costly and counterproductive, Ghaddar said.
“Lebanon decided to pave its own negotiations track away from the Iranian’s track.”
Asked for her predictions on the coming months and years, Ghaddar offered a few possible scenarios.
Firstly, she said it was possible Tehran would survive, and Hezbollah could regenerate if the deal doesn’t cover proxies, forcing Israel and Lebanon to continue the perpetual cycle of war, though with a larger buffer zone.
An alternative outcome is whether, through a resumption of attacks on Iran or through a deal, the Islamic Republic ceases its nuclear enrichment and use of proxies.
Ghaddar warned that it was “unlikely” Iran would make such a deal.
The final option she gave would be for Lebanon to remove itself from the axis altogether by seriously targeting all pillars of Hezbollah control. This would require significant pressure from the international community, especially the United States.
“As soon as the IRGC is done, Hezbollah will be done. Hezbollah is the Quds Force,” she asserted.
“The Lebanese army should be doing its job of actually disarming Hezbollah, in parallel to targeting the customs officials who are helping Hezbollah. The Lebanese army needs to be cleaned from officials who are coordinating with Hezbollah.
“The other security institutions need to be cleaned. There are a number of cash companies that are helping Hezbollah launder money that need to be shut down. A lot of things can be happening,” she highlighted.
Speaking on the issue of borders and customs, Ghaddar said she put little weight on the new Damascus regime’s projected image of success in ridding Syria of Hezbollah.
“They have been successful in some cases, but I’m sure they haven’t been successful everywhere, because I don’t think they have the capacity to control their own country,” she explained.
While she theorized some smuggling was undoubtedly being carried out along the Syrian border, Ghaddar warned that Hezbollah was domestically producing mid-range missiles from dual-use materials entering the country.
“Even if Syria stops them, as long as they have access to Lebanon’s ports and customs, they will be able to get what they need to build weapons locally,” she claimed, adding officials have continued to “turn a blind eye” to these activities.
This, she concluded, was why it was necessary to target the other pillars holding Hezbollah up, not just its military arm.