Resolution 1701, progress so far

Sometimes it's nice to be wrong. Lebanes troops have entered South Lebanon, Israeli forces are letting UNIFIL take over their position. This ceasefire could conceivably work.

On the other hand...

UNIFIL is supposed to be beefed up to 15,000 troops, but the world community isn't exactly being generous. France in particular has been far less forthcoming than it initially promised, sending a mere 200 army engineers, and apparently wants to pass off as much responsibilty as possible to other EU nations (that's my interpretation of their request for a European Union meeting over the issue, anyway).

Meanwhile, a raid by Israeli special forces has Kofi Annan saying that he is 'deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side' of the ceasefire in southern Lebanon.

Sidenote: of all the articles I found in Google news, this one was the only one that put "violation" in inverted commas in their headline. Interesting the way media bias works.

Also missing from most of the news reports on Google is why Israel did what it did. Here is why:

Israel defended Saturday's operation, saying it was aimed at preventing the transfer of weapons from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah, an action barred by the resolution.

Israel won't accept "a cease-fire in which Hezbollah can use that cease-fire just as a timeout to regroup and rearm and prepare for the next round," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.

"Israel would not have to do these sort of operations if the international forces and the Lebanese forces were following through on their commitment ... preventing these arms shipments for Hezbollah."

In Washington, a White House spokeswoman said the Bush administration took "note" of Israel's statement.

"We note that the prevention of the resupply of weapons to Hezbollah by Iran and Syria is a key provision of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701," said Jeannie Mamo. "And the incident underscores the importance of quickly deploying the enhanced UNIFIL."

This is correct with regard to what Resolution 1701 says: there is to be "no sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its Government". The trouble of course is that the word of the "Zionist aggressor" counts for very little in the region, so the claim of illegal arms transfers to Hezbollah will most likely be viewed by Israel's neighbours as nothing more than a pretext to try and continue hostilities.

Even accepting Israel at its word (and I do so until proven that I should not do so), that leaves the matter of enforcement. Who decides what to do in the case of a violation of a UN Resolution? The Israeli government believes that it has the right to enforce Resolution 1701 as it sees fit, apparently. The Secretary General has made it clear that he disagrees, and I tend to agree with his disagreement: legitimate power to decide upon appropriate enforcement of a UN Resolution resides with the UN Security Council.

Of course, "legitimate power" is not the same thing as "effective power", which explains why Israel did what it did: they don't trust the Security Council to be able to effectively enforce the Resolution which is supposed to make Israel safe from Hezbollah, so they executed an illegitimate, but effective, response of their own. From a realist perspective, perfectly sensible. From a liberal internationalist perspective, a horrible thing to do, especially when they claim that their illegitimate action was legitimised by a UN Resolution: it brings back memories of George W Bush insisting that he had to ignore the UN in order to enforce the will of the UN on Iraq as laid out in Resolution 1441.

What's it mean from a reality-based perspective? Well, I guess we'll see.

A bit of thoughtstream on the recent UN ceasefire...

My description of the UN Security Council as having no judicial organ doesn't appear to be completely accurate. From time to time the Secretary General of the UN has expressed a statement one way or the other over interpretation of a UN resolution. Such skerricks as I've found suggest that this is a power that the Secretary General must exercise with great restraint lest they lose what hard-to-gain international legitimacy they have by coming down too strongly on one side or another.

The ceasefire is more or less holding at the time of writing. Given past criticisms of the UN, I should in fairness praise the efforts of that body in successfully getting the fighting to stop in a conflict where neither side wants the fighting to stop. But as the news outlets keep saying, it's a brittle truce.

Both sides are already working on ways to circumvent the Security Council's desires, and the concrete implementation of Resolution 1701 has some nightmarish difficulties associated with it. There's no clear guide for what happens when. Lebanese forces are in no hurry to enter Lebanon until Israel has pulled out. Israel has no intention of pulling out until UNIFIL takes control of the area. UNIFIL isn't going in until Lebanese forces are in place.

Meanwhile, the Hezbollah members of the Lebanese government have stated flat out that Hezbollah is not going to disarm. Of course, as a non-state actor, Hezbollah is beyond the mandate of the UN, and it's up to the Lebanese government to deal with internal security matters. Unfortunately, in a military conflict between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah, the government would almost certainly lose.

Israel is a state entity, and is expected to follow UN resolutions, so their circumvention has to be a little more crafty than flat-out disregarding it: as Resolution 1701 calls for “the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations", Israel has taken it upon itself to continue any defensive operations. It has also taken it upon itself to define what constitutes "defensive" - the continuing naval, air and land blockade of Lebanon, for example.

I very much fear that the current ceasefire is the sort of ceasefire which only gives the antagonists time to rearm.

"Lebanon, and all of Lebanon, rejects any resolution that is outside" these demands, Berri said.

So sayeth the Parliamentary speaker of Lebanon, a Shiite Muslim. The full force of why "democracy promotion" in the Middle East was such a horrible idea is starting to hit me. And it doesn't make me feel better that it's a reflection of current trends in Western democracy.

It seems to me that a democracy can only function effectively when there is room for agreeing to disagree or "loyal opposition". An Opposition may oppose, a protestor may protest, but at some level there is a sense that though there are disagreements, there is sufficient common ground for them all to work within the framework of one democratic system. Lebanon doesn't yet have this, and consequently the ballot box becomes less about what's good for all and more about what's bad for those bastards that you were shooting at just 20 years ago.

Note what Berri said: all of Lebanon. I find it highly suspect that all Lebanese are opposed to the proposed UN resolution, but I can believe that he's trying to get Lebanese people to jump on the pro-Hizbolla bandwagon. But I find his motives suspect. Is he, as I strongly suspect, aiming to bring about a Shiite takeover of Lebanon at the ballot box?

In the 1980s there was civil war. In Condi Rice's "new Middle East", the democratic framework in Lebanon is ripe for takeover if Hizbollah can garner enough support from other factions within Lebanon to get voted into a full majority position of power. Once that happens then they can do what both the US government and the Australian government currently do, and claim to always represent the will of all of the country as if the people who don't vote for them simply don't exist. Or worse, they can do what the elected president of Zimbabwe has done, and start deliberately targeting their opposition for abuse. Of course, it isn't democracy that best guards against this government-sanctioned abuse of those who don't agree with the current government: it's liberalism.

Also shaping my opinions about this are this article, and comments left on it. It may seem strange that an article specifically claiming that Hizbollah is not motivated purely by Shiite ideology of restoring the Caliphate throughout the Middle East prompts me to think the opposite, but the comments jumping up and down to celebrate Hizbollah's pan-Arab appeal left me with the feeling that this was exactly the goal: Hizbollah's is actively pushing the impression that they fight for all of Islam, and all of the Arabic world, against the evil US/Western/Zionist pigs. Hizbollah I suspect wants wide-ranging appeal, but only for the purpose of seizing complete control of Lebanon through the democratic process, at which point they will seek to transform it into an Islamic Republic. The comment that solidified this belief in my mind was in response to a Lebanese who claimed to oppose Hizbollah, noting their goal of spreading Shia revolution:

Lebanese,

You are a Maronite. Are you not?

You guys belong with the French and the Crusaders. Please wake up and come back to your roots. You love the zionists and hate the Muslims of any colour.

Or, to put it another way: "you're either with us or with the enemy". Sound familiar?

So Lebanon is going to go down the crapper because of a Neoconservative promotion of democracy that gives no regard to the liberal safeguards on democracy needed to prevent the creation of a tyranny of the majority: a tyranny that Hizbollah is now I believe actively trying to create for the purpose of bringing about a Shia revolution.

1978 Secretary General report on Lebanon

I've been looking for this: Report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolution 425 (l978). It describes the procedure (and more importantly, the limitations) on the Uited Nations force that's been in Lebanon since 1978 (designated UNIFIL).

This line is some serious legalese: "(d) The Force will be provided with weapons of a defensive character. It shall not use force except in self-defence. Self-defence would include resistance to attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties under the mandate of the Security Council. The Force will proceed on the assumption that the parties to the conflict will take all the necessary steps for compliance with the decisions of the Security Council."

I think I need to sleep before I can translate that into regular English.

Semi-random thoughts: the Israeli withdrawals from Gaza and Lebanon were unilateral - neither Palestinian or Lebanese governing bodies had any say in the decision at all. Critics contend that the pull-out sends the message that "terrorism works". They may have a point - so long as they're only talking about unilateral withdrawal.

Had the Israeli government made at least an attempt to allow the PA or the Lebanese government to have some input into the decision, then the impression from the withdrawal might be more that "negotiation works" rather than "terrorism works". But the Israeli government refuses to negotiate, apparently because that would give the impression that "terrorism works"....

AM report in which a Hamas representative describes the pull-out as a step that promises not peace, but war.

Also, an Al-Jazeera interview with Hasan Nasrallah in which he says this:"I can tell you that they[the world community] do not want to destroy the resistance of Hezbollah in Lebanon. They want to destroy any spirit of resistance in Lebanon, whether inside Hezbollah or any other party. They want to push the country to the point where words such as resistance would become unacceptable, and where words such as martyr, jihad, wounded, steadfastness, confrontation, liberation, freedom, glory, dignity, pride, and honour are unacceptable. All these words should be erased form the Lebanese people's dictionary, from the press, from the political literature, from the political mind, from the people's mind. This is what Israel is doing, and this is what the United States, which wants to re-arrange the entire region anew, needs."

The concept of the thymotic "desire for recognition" I've gleaned provides an interesting framework for trying to understand the mindset driving radical Islam. It appears to me that its adherents sincerely believe that every aspect of their personal dignity - their steadfastness, freedom, glory, pride, etc. - is under threat from the West in general and the United States in particular. Part of this is a reaction to the changes that modernisation has brought to Islamic civilisation, giving a name and a purpose to what otherwise seems to be uncontrollable, impersonal forces that are threatening to make a centuries-old way of life irrelevant to modern living in order to give them someone to blame for it. Part of it is also, I suspect, that it is true in some cases: there are plenty of people in the West who have as their stated goal the complete destruction of the Islamic way of life, on the grounds that its "satanic", or "a death cult" or "evil". Here's one such example: Islam The Lies and Deceptions

They start accumulating in countries and then start terrorizing it with gangs of rapists, violence and civil disruption.

They are possessed, demon possessed. They seek to spread fear and violence, they are pawns of the devil who feeds off of the fear and suffering they create for power.

Just as their leader, Mohammad, they use "God" as an excuse to prey on innocent people. Mohammad was a robber and a thief, his followers are no different.

It is not the Most High God they serve, but Satan.

Signs you've been exploring the darker sides of the Internet for too long #1: you can read something like that and you've become so inured to hate speech that you don't even flinch.

The appeal of radicalism to adherents of Islam, and the population of the Middle East in general, can be blunted by granting dignity and recognition to them that they are not currently getting. Critics may assert that what radical Islamists want in terms of recognition is to be recognised not just as worthy human beings themselves, but superior in worth to all others on the grounds that they alone follow the One True Religion. This may be true for the more fundamentalist muslims, but not all Muslims are Fundamentalists.

If Bin Laden, Hezbollah, Hamas and the like can successfully convince these moderates that their dignity is under attack, then they may be swayed to support a jihadist movement that they would not otherwise support, or at least, they would be less likely to oppose it.

I think this is why the first anti-Zaqarwi protests by British Muslims only occurred after the bombing of a mosque in Iraq. Showing contempt for Westerners is one thing, but Zarqawi showed conempt for something which Muslims hold as a vital part of their worth as human beings: Islam.

Notes on Lebanon situation

It's war by any other name, reprinted from the Asia Times. A curiosity: originally the info I saw presented on Hezbollah's prisoner abduction stated that it occurred on Israeli territory. It was only several days later that I saw the claim made that the soldiers were on Lebanese territory. Truth is always the first casualty of war, isn't it? Over here we have "The original border crossing, the capture of the two soldiers and the killing of three others was planned, according to Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader who escaped assassination by the Israelis on Friday evening, more than five months ago." Hmmm....I think I'd like to see a direct quote from Nasrallah before I consider the matter any further....

Of note in the Asia Times article I think is that it suggests this is part of an attempt by warmongering members of Hizbollah and Hamas to force these organisations back onto the path of militancy rather than developing a more pragmatic, diplomatic approach.

Oh yeah, and why now? Iran I believe, even if only in the form of providing, for lack of a better phrase, moral support: Ahmadinejad is getting big points in the Islamic world for his public anti-American and anti-Israeli position, or so I've been led to believe.

No, I don't think "regime change" is desirable, or even possible, in Iran - in fact I think such a thing would be spectacularly stupid. But I'm not going to sit back and give a theocratic, fundamentalist authoritarian government a free ride just because the US opposes its existence. In case people hadn't noticed, a LOT of countries are getting antsy about Iran of late.

"I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante E Whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one." - Condoleezza Rice's latest soundbite.(One source here)

What in the name of the Sam Hill Peckett....? "New" middle east?

Don't tell me the neoconservative vision of transforming the Middle East into democracy through military action ("draining the swamp" as Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld have so diplomatically put it) still has currency in the Bush Administration? From this remark I can only conclude that the US wants the Israel push against Hezbollah to continue for the foreseeable future.

Yep, same old, same old: unilaterally declare that one country has the right and duty to enforce a UN resolution (Israel enforcing UN Resolution 1559 through military action in Lebanese territory whether the democratically-elected Lebanese government likes it or not in this case) any way it sees fit. I'm no fan of the UN Security Council - it's basically designed to be unable to respond to a situation like this where one side of the dispute isn't a nation-state - but I really don't see how giving Israel free rein advances peace and human rights. It seems more likely to topple the current Lebanese government and result in an even more Islamist-aligned one to me, either through a coup or a democratic vote.

That lack of consideration that extremists can get elected in a democracy is one of the fundamental problems I've had with neoconservative philosophy - the governmental system that keeps the First World from fighting amongst itself isn't "democracy" as they claim, but "liberal democracy". By leaving the "liberal" off, there is no conception of "illiberal democracy", a government system in which a dominant majority can (and often does) oppress a hated minority via the voting process. It's liberalim, not democracy, that promotes the concept of granting the same rights to others as you ask for yourself. Honestly, I've had discussions with people who seem about as able to conceive of the concept of "illiberal democracy" as one could conceive of the concept of a "square circle".

Besides which, you'd think that they'd have paused when the very terrorist organisations that "democracy" was supposed to supplant started getting elected to power by popular vote. But no, apparently the definitely-not-a-civil-war-because-they're-not-wearing-uniforms that's happening in Iraq, and that's causing as much death and carnage as a civil war does, and is being fought for the same reasons as a civil war is, along with Hamas getting elected to power in Palestine, along with this latest flare-up, is all just a few eggs getting broken to make the omelette of Everlasting Peace. The ends justifies the means, apparently: a philosophical tenet which I think is the cause of good people being led to embrace evil whenever they accept it as true.

Not happy.

Wikipedia on Lebanon

Okay, so I lied a little in my last entry. One more link provision. Okay, two.

Wikipedia really does seem to be coming through as an excellent source for information on the conflict in my opinion. The official Wiki article is informative, but reading the related Discussion page as well is a very good way of becoming aware of how the points of view about all the information affects what information gets presented, and how. Fascinating.

study notes on Hezbollah

Fun facts as I find them:
"Majlis al-Shura" is a term commonly used in Arabic states to describe parliamentary bodies, elected asemblies or similar. Liberal muslims views this as evidence for the existence of an Islamic concept of a democratically-elected state, while hardliners view the Shura's only role as correctly interpreting Islamic rule, with no regard for how they get into that position. The supreme decision-making body of Hezbollah is called the Majlis al-Shura.

Threat analysis of Hezbollah. No idea who wrote this (Intellecom, inc? Never heard of them), but this quote:
"It must be understood that although this organization is closely ideologically and spiritually linked to Iran, it is not a singular political/militaristic body that currently shows total subservience to the latter; but is rather more like a coalition of Lebanese Shi'ite Imams who each have their own political thoughts and views and built their own networks of followers and ties to Iran's political, military and clerical establishment"

seems to concur with what I'm reading elsewhere: Hezbollah has a clear organisational structure, and has strong ties to Iran within that structure, but it is not a monolithic entity.

JESUS! From the earlier PDF:"The decision by Hizbollah's SSA to abduct foreign citizens was usually initiated at the highest level in the main Majlis al-Shura within the Hizbollah through consultation with its senior clergy and two permanent representatives from Iran." Now, it's been Israeli soldiers rather than foreign civilians that have been abducted now, but still...Oh boy, continuing: "In making the abductions authorized by Hizbollah's national SSA, the Operational officers maintained close liaison with offficial representatives from Iran's embassies in Beirut and Damascus as well as with Pasdaran(Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) officials."

A faction of Hizbollah headed by one Sheikh al-Tufayli was bitterly opposed to Hizbollah taking part in Lebanon's 1992 elections at all. His successor to the position of leader of Hezbollah, Sheikh Abbas al-Musawi, led Hizbollah to being more involved in the Lebanese democratic political process. I'll stop simply repeating the PDF file info now.

Ooh, another good find: Inside Hizbollah's decision-making process paints the Israeli kidnappings the way I'm starting to see it: it was authorized at the highest level of Hizbollah, with knowledge and input from Iranian officials. But the highest decision-making body is called the "Shura Karar" according to that article? Contradiction, currently unable to resolve, suspect this is due to insufficient knowledge of post-1994 Hizbollah history. Anyway, I think I'll keep an eye on Counterterrorism blog, see if it lives up to its name.

Enough for now. I want to switch to full information absorption mode for a bit.