HOLLOW STATES: LEBANON

May's dispute between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah is an interesting example of the contest between hollow states and virtual states over legitimacy and sovereignty. As in most conflicts between gutted nation-states and aggressive virtual states, Hezbollah's organic legitimacy trumped the state's in the contest (an interesting contrast between voluntary affiliation and default affiliation by geography). The fighting was over in six hours.

A Parallel Communications Backbone
What's more interesting than the actual fighting is what the conflict was about. In summary, the government made an attempt to slow the expansion Hezbollah's fiber optics network, which provides secure/robust communications and surveillance (via automated cameras) to the group. Specifically, the government tried to shut down surveillance nodes of the network overlooking Beirut International Airport. Hezbollah responded by defining the network as a core part of its organization and that they were willing to defend it with violence if necessary.

So, we can now conclude that in addition to a 4GW militia and social services, a parallel communications/surveillance network is a core feature set of virtual states. This tracks with our emerging experience in Sadr City. It also implies we may see interesting virtual variants of this via the parasitic piggybacking of open source insurgencies (the PCC, al Qaeda, etc.) on cell phone networks and the Internet.

Comments

[Duncan Kinder]

"a parallel communications/surveillance network is a core feature set of virtual states. "

John: wouldn't the logical extension of this be the development of new languages?

Global guerrillas are emerging from slums, which are economically isolated and physically distinct jumbles of people. At the same time, guerrillas, being global, need to talk to one another, which requires some sort of talky-talk.

According to linguists, this is the sort of context that engenders new languages.

See, eg. the Wikipedia article on creoles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language

[Duncan Kinder]

To provide a working illustration of signal noise ratio approach, as applied to the thesis that a new language / new languages are evolving as part of the Global Guerrilla, it would be pertinent to pay heed to reports of any new "slum argot."

This would be, quite literally, "chatter."

[Allen Varney]

Earlier this week, Gary "The War Nerd" Brecher made much the same point about the organic legitimacy of Hamas and the Iraqi Shia militias in his sporadic Exile column:

http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=19027&IBLOCK_ID=35

[Allen Varney]

Sorry, sorry! Not Hamas, Hezbollah. Sorry!

[John Robb]

Duncan, are you thinking "subculture" development as an organizational strategy?

Allen, really like Gary's column when he posts. You got it, organic legitimacy aka "primary loyalties" is a core tenet of 4GW thinking.

[NietzschesGhost]

I find it interesting that Brecher felt it necessary to point out the importance Hezbollah placed on having "their guy" reinstated as head of security at the airport.

To me, this seems to suggest a single point of failure that could be exploited to the state's advantage.

[Jeffery]

I have a question. Is a "hollow state" a weak goverment with a large disparity in income distribution?

[Duncan Kinder]

Re: "Duncan, are you thinking "subculture" development as an organizational strategy?"

It's rather more of an environmental effect.

Here's the MIT OpenCourseWare course on Creoles:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Linguistics-and-Philosophy/24-919Spring2004/Readings/index.htm

Note that this course apparently deals only with Caribbean Creoles. However there are African, Pacific, and other Creoles. Many scholars think that the Middle English of Chaucer actually was a creole emerging from the mix of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French.

Creoles are gramatically complex languages based upon pidgens, which in turn derived from two or more prior languages. Creoles typically, but not always, emerge within a single generation

[John Robb]

Jeffery, it doesn't seem to be a requirement. However, it is a contributing factor.

Thanks Duncan.

[rick]

Several years ago, I had suggested that the way to establish 'peace' in Iraq was not through military force, but through providing Iraqis w/ the ability to monitor their environment, including state forces. I thought it would be far cheaper to provide millions of web cams to the Iraqis to set up outside their homes and outside locations such as police stations and markets, and to provide them w/ the technology to post the info to public websites. Basically, I think empowering 'Little Brother' would have done a lot to facilitate a less violent and perhaps greater transition than what we have seen relying almost exclusively on military force, and this could have been achieved at a far lower cost than maintaining 130K+ military presence for 6 yrs.

[Azr@el]

The most amazing thing about what has transpired in Lebanon is the match up between old style militias and 4GW militias. The old style militias ran the gauntlet from Jumblatt's clannish Druze PSP militia to Hariri's paid by the week SecureMinus security force. They professed loyalty to their ethnic party bosses and the fist full of currency shoved into their back pocket. The new was represented by Hizb-Allah's composite force made up of it's unpaid RESERVES and a motley collection of allied Shia, Sunni and Druze sarayas. The result? As the Lebanese Armed Forces stood by as referees, Nasrallah's forces routed the combined pro-government militias.

Here you had the best of the last civil war, The Druze militia of Jumblatt turned into dogmeat in a few hours of heavy combat with Hizb-Allah's reserve troops and their allied Druze saraya affixed to Talal Arslan. Key villages overlooking the strategic Bakae valley Beirut road fell as if their defenses were nothing more than soft butter to the oppositions hot steel. Plus you had the theoretically best solution to future small scale warfare, mercenaries, shown for what they are; opportunist who will not stand and die for their paymasters when the jig is up, especillay when their opponents are highly trained well armed religious fanatics. Excuse a little bit of herbertesque; but I would say it's fair to call the Hizb-Allah prototypical soldier-fanatics.

Conclusion? Don't be so quick to get rid of cluster munitions. Don't be so quick to count out what a shrewed chess player can do with Iranian trained infantry. And never forget what Bush's legacy is; the U.S. loss of the middles east, one nation at a time.

[John Robb]

Az, excellent recap!

[ramsis]

az
The Druze chief Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party fought off Hezbollah's invasion even though he told them not to. A tiny percentage of Druze are partially loyal to Talal Arslan, Hezbollah's only Druze ally, but they defected in large numbers when Hezbollah launched its attack. They fought on the same side as the rest of their community. hezbollah had their asses handed to them in mountains overlooking the dahiyeh. After three days of pitched battles, its gunmen were unable to conquer a single village—even when they brought out mortars and heavy artillery.

[Azr@el]

ad ramsis

You've been surfing the Lebanese blogs, haven't you? I've traveled in the middle east extensively and I've always been surprised by not just the multitude of narratives but also the multitude of BS. I've sat in cafes in Alexandria hearing excited old men recollect in broken English how Egypt defeated Israel 3 or 4 times, I've spoken with educated Iraqi professionals who are of the opinion that they conquered Iran in that poorly remembered war and I've heard Libyans speak of how they sunk a U.S. Navy carrier sometime in the 80's. And politely, I resisted the urge to chuckle. I understand how nations, tribes and ethnicities can have divergent narratives of the same event; this is very much true right here in the states where an African-American's view of the antebellum South is at complete odds with some Caucasian Southerners who garner a sense of pride from that period of their history. But ultimately I'm of the school of thought that at the non-quantum level there is only one truth, it may be interpreted differently according to your cultural lens , but that the cat is either dead or alive.

And with respect to Lebanon, the truth is that Hezbollah eviscerated all opposing militias. With particular respect to Jumblatt's PSP, sometime on may 9th they killed two of Arslan's supporters, Druze supporters, and kidnapped a third man. After two days of skirmishing between Arslan's LDP and the PSP, Hezbollah launched a lightning attack, in the early morning hours of may 11th, with it's second echelon reserves. Later that day, Walid Jumblatt went on Lebanese television to announce his unconditional surrender with the hand over of his heavy weapons caches, his taking of personal responsibility for the death's of Arslan's supporters and to plead for the lives of his people. Normally leaders do that when they've lost, and lost big. According to several western sources, which in my prejudice I trust far more than any Lebanese source, it was a complete rout. Within a few hours of heavy fighting, Jumblatt's badly mauled militia, thinking this was a war of extermination, retreated to their villages to make a last stand, at which point Hezbollah ran wild bypassing the villages and grabbing key strategic passes and junctions. When Jumblatt realized his forces "heroic last stand" play had in effect opened the doors to the kingdom, allowing Hezbollah complete freedom of passage to bring in heavy weapons ( not an easy thing to do in mountain terrain without control of the roads ) and to seize commanding terrain he understood the predicament of his forces and did the only rational thing.

Now, you could just ignore this reality and make up your own version of how things have come to the point where they stand now. I will warn you however, just like the the various Arabs who've told me tales of their "victories", you too will have to come up with a vast conspiracy sub-story to explain how the rest of the world doesn't know what you know. In the case of Israel's serial defeat by Egyptian military, I was told the rest of the world doesn't know because the jews run the world and censor all the papers ,even the net. Why doesn't the world know that Iraq conquered Iran? I can't remember but I'll bet it's the work of the jews. And the sunk U.S. carrier? It was all hushed up they painted a new ship like the old ship, and all the dead sailors? The jews paid off their families. And why did Jumblatt surrender and hand over all of his heavy weapons and allow the Lebanese Armed Forces to come in and take over key strategic villages like Nifa and high ground positions dominating Mt Lebanon such as Al-Barouk? If you haven't thought of anything yet, may I humbly suggest it was the jews.

[ramsis]

well one things for sure there is no shortage of differing opinions in respect to lebanon. as far as I can tell there isn't many credible reports coming out of the mountains. West Beirut is where almost every journalist in Lebanon lives and where almost every hotel for visiting journalists is located. As yourself I also get most of my news from the western media but perhaps at times their reporting can seem a bit disconnected from certain ... how would you put it, realities.
The reality is clashes erupted between the two militias and true initially Walid the weather vane Jumblatts malitia retreated back to their villages but from that point on those villages took everything hezbollah threw and did not surrender. It was at this point hezbollah chose to abandon their efforts to pacify the druze villages. Instead they propped up walid on western TV who called for peace and calm and his (Ahem) supporters just continued to fight on.
most of the druze that live in those mountains would sooner not have anything to do with either Walid or Nasrallah. They simply want to be left out of Irans latest show of force. or you can blame Israel and George bush for all this and simply leave it at that.

[Azr@el]

There doesn't appear to have been any attempt by Hezbollah to "pacify' villages. As soon as Hezbollah took command of all strategic points in the mountain the Lebanese Armed Forces, just as in west Beirut, moved in to occupy villages sitting on the main Beka-Beirut roads, i.e. Nifa. This has been a bit too suspicious; two armed forces with corporate cultures as different as the Hezbollah and the LAF should have serious coordination problems. Yet, the campaign in the mountains was flawless. Something in the back of my head says there's more to this story.

With respect to Jumblatt, please don't make the mistake that he is stupid, a traitor to his people or not without immense personal following amongst the Druze. He would never have capitulated unless he feared for his people. The Druze haven't survived for a thousand years by choosing cowards as leaders.