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The future of non-state actors in the middle east: Hezbollah and Al-hashd al-sha’bi?

By Robert G. Rabil

In response to Lebanon’s downward spiral toward failed statehood, the Lebanese National Convention, a civil society organization dedicated to a sovereign, free and independent Lebanon in which rule of law, culture of state laws and institutions, and regional political neutrality prevail, organized the Lebanese National Congress as a forum to address the most pressing issues afflicting Lebanon as a state and a nation. The following is the transcript of Professor Robert G. Rabil’s keynote address on The Future of Non-State Actors in the Middle East delivered on June 26, 2021.

I thank General Khalil Helou and the Board Members of Lebanon National Convention for giving me the opportunity to deliver a keynote address to Lebanon National Congress on the Future of Non-State actors in the Middle East. 

In principle, non-state actors do not fall under the purview of the state. They have goals that either conform or conflict with those of the state. They can be grouped into three categories: 1) Multinational corporations, 2) NGO’s, and Powerful Groups (armed and non-armed). Non-state actors can also be considered civil society organizations that work for bettering society and the state. 

The functionality of Multinational corporations is not the same. Multinational corporations in authoritarian states could act as an arm of the state. Russia’s arms-export Rosoboronexport and China’s COSCO, AIIB, Huawei, Baidu, Ping An, Ali Baba, Shanghai International Group and many others do their state’s bidding. They could influence politics and undermine the international system. For example, China, Russia, India, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico’s multinational corporations have made investments in sectors sanctioned in countries such as Venezuela, Iran, Myanmar, Cuba, and Zimbabwe.  

NGO’s have broad activities addressing health, human rights, refugees, food, environment and other issues. They promote and defend specific causes. Their impact on politics especially in authoritarian states is limited. 

Powerful groups combine classical (violent and peaceful) and hybrid groups. The Gates Foundation is an example of a powerful group that impacts society. ISIS and al-Qaeda are powerful terrorist violent groups that impact politics. Hybrid (political and armed) groups such as Hezbollah and al-Hashd al-Sha’bi (Popular Mobilization Units) affect society and state, as well as influence domestic and regional politics.  

Non-state actors have been bolstered by globalization, technology and collapse of the Soviet Union. Guided by China’s and Russia’s state policies, non-state actors have played a role in the ongoing international system’s transition from unipolar to a multipolar world. Multinational corporations and Powerful Groups have been a key in extending Russia’s sphere of influence. China’s multinational corporations are fundamental to President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to rejuvenate China and locate it at “Middle Earth.” BRI works to integrate the economy of China (through infrastructure projects, trade and communications) with almost 100 countries in Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa. The Middle East is geo-strategically located at BRI’s center of operations. Besides the land routes connecting China to the Middle East, Beijing’s maritime route has relied on creating hub and deep sea ports in a form of pearl of ports in Cambodia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan leading to the Eastern Mediterranean and Europe

The port of Gwadar in Pakistan is the gateway to the Gulf. China has built this port as a hub for trade but also as a naval base. Nuclear submarines can dock there. The port is a nodal point for Gulf energy exports to China through Pakistan. Already China’s trade with Arab Gulf exceeded that between the Arab Gulf and United States (China’s trade with EU also exceeded that between EU and USA).

The other maritime route runs through the Red Sea, where China has built a military base in Djibouti at the mouth of the Sea. China Multinational corporations have gained access to Israel’s major ports Haifa, Ashdod and Eilat. The Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG) won the development contract for Haifa port. The contract grants Beijing control of the port for 25 years. To the south is Ashdod, Israel’s busiest port, a subsidiary of China Harbour Engineering Co. Ltd. won the contract to build a new port there.  Both ports make up an important link in east-west maritime trade route. In this respect, China’s multinationals have gained access to Europe’s historical and geostrategic ports in Greece and Italy. Chinese giant COSCO Shipping won a contract to run the port of Piraeus in Greece for 35 years. Similarly, China gained access to the old port Trieste in Italy. For China, having a toehold in one of Europe’s historic ports would bring favorable customs conditions, a faster trade route to the heart of the Continent and direct access to railroads for moving its goods into the European Union, especially to landlocked countries in Central Europe. 

This pearl of ports connecting China to Europe via the Eastern Mediterranean is undoubtedly better served by having a central transshipment port. China has already set its eyes on Lebanon’s Tripoli Port. China Harbor Engineering Co. expanded the port to accommodate large freighters. Lebanon was admitted to AIIB (China Infrastructure Investment Bank). The Union of Tripoli Municipalities signed an agreement with China’s Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce, effectively incorporating the Port of Tripoli into BRI. China-Arab Association supports the agreement. China also helped expand Mouawad airport (formerly Qulea’t) probably to help transition it from military to civilian airport. Significantly, in a sign of China’s interest in Tripoli’s Port, COSCO’s giant vessel docked in Tripoli in October 2018, clearly to check the depth and viability of the Port.

China’s interest in Tripoli’s port is also strategic to the country’s potential investment in Syria. Tripoli’s proximity to Syria makes it a useful logistic and economic hub for China’s potential reconstruction efforts in Syria. Reportedly, studies are being made to explore establishing a Beirut-Tripoli railway as part of a wide network connecting BRI with Lebanon and Syria. These studies also are considering re-establishing the Tripoli-Kirkuk oil pipeline. True, progress towards rehabilitating Syria and investing in Tripoli is blurry; nevertheless, discussions are ongoing between China and Russia, on the one hand, and China-Russia-Saudi Arabia-UAE on the other. Russia, supported by China, is leading mediation efforts and trying to come to an agreement balancing its need to protect its investment in Syria with much needed financial investment from China and other regional countries, with the objective of stabilizing Syria and reinforcing its presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. Much about the future of the Eastern Mediterranean and Tripoli rests with China-Russia potential plans. In other words, China-Russia’s political, economic and military investment in the Eastern Mediterranean would directly or indirectly whittle away at American influence there. Moreover, notwithstanding America’s strategic reorientation policy towards China, some American analysts and bureaucrats are questioning the importance of this region to America’s overall national interests.         

Herein, non-state actors play a key role as tools of state policy. Significantly, Hezbollah, as a hybrid non-state actor (see below) may well play a considerable role in encouraging and/or pressuring the state to accommodate China’s investment in Lebanon. In this respect, when Hezbollah’s leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah speaks about Lebanon’s reorientation or move to the East, one cannot discount his strategy to support the move towards China as an extension towards Iran, since, on the one hand,  the China-Iran strategic cooperation is geo-strategically important for China. And, on the other, a move towards China may undermine American influence in Lebanon.  

At this point, it’s noteworthy to establish the background against which hybrid non-state actors have emerged and operated locally and regionally, especially al-Hashd al-Sha’bi and Hezbollah. The U.S. has shattered the Middle East regional order by invading and occupying Iraq; nevertheless, the U.S. has not been able to build a new regional order. Regional countries and non-state actors are jockeying for power with the objective of having a say in any future regional order. The main question here is: what’s the role of non-state actors? 

One needs to look first at Iraq’s al-Hashd al-Sha’bi as paradigm of a hybrid non-state actor influencing the country’s domestic and regional politics. Al-Hashd, as a non-state actor, saliently appeared on Iraq’s political scene when Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa (religious edict) calling on volunteers to rise up to fight ISIS. Islamist factions and parties coalesced under al-Hashd as a Shi’a Umbrella organization leading the efforts to defeat ISIS. To be sure, the origins of al-Hashd can be traced to 1982 when Ayatollah Khomeini helped found the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) as an umbrella organization of Islamist Shi’a (including Da’wa party) parties to oppose Saddam Hussein’s rule during the Iran-Iraq war. Badr Brigades (today Badr organization) served as a military arm to SCIRI. 

The weakness of Iraq as a state following its invasion of Kuwait in 1990, bankruptcy of Arab politics, and Iran’s influence with Shi’a Islamist parties were essential fodder to reinforce Iraq’s non-state actors. Following US invasion of Iraq in 2003, non-state actors (Badr and Mahdi Army, though disbanded) emerged as powerful groups affecting Iraq’s politics under US occupation. Early on Badr set its eyes on Iraq’s interior ministry. In the following years, al-Hashd (comprising Badr organization, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, kataib Hezbollah, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Kataib al-Imam Ali, among others) gained political traction by fighting to defend the state, competing with the state, and acting beyond the limits of the state. Badr captured the Ministry of Interior and its leader Hadi al-Amiri served as Minister of Transport; al-Hashd (under Fatah alliance) has had representation in the parliament (2014-2018; 2018-2022). 

Significantly, by 2014, al-Hashd, led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, made a systematic effort to become part of the state and a state actor. Leading the fight against ISIS, al-Hashd had the opportunity to fulfill its goal. In February 2016, Prime MInister Abadi issued an executive order making al-Hashd an independent military formation and part of Iraq’s armed forces, attached to the general commander of the armed forces. In November 2016, Iraq’s parliament passed a law linking al-Hashd to the Prime Minister, being the Commander-in-Chief. In other words, al-Hashd is neither under the purview of the Ministry of Defense nor Ministry of Interior. Today al-Hashd is integral to the state, independent of the state, and not accountable to the state. And it makes its decisions independent of the state, forcing the state to support them. For example, when the Kurds decided to hold an independence referendum in 2017, al-Hashd took a decision to seize Kirkuk, which the government later on supported. 

Al-Hashd as part of the state has a budget over $2.2 billion allotted to approximately 120,000 fighters. At the same time, Al-Hashd is involved in illicit activities, cashing in millions of dollars. It makes local and regional decisions independent of the state such as taking over Kirkuk and fighting in Syria, as well as reinforcing its defenses in Iraq and Syria in support of Iran’s regional policies. In other words, al-Hashd has reengineered, reinvented the state. It cannot be looked at as only a proxy of Iran. It acts as a hybrid non-state actor, an Iranian proxy (though not all factions), a supporter of the state, a contester of the state, and significantly a powerful political actor whose influence permeates both the political and military realms of the Iraqi state. Given the fact that al-Hashd’s transformation into a powerful hybrid non-state actor took place under US presence in Iraq, more or less frustrating American efforts to reorganize Iraq into a viable, sovereign state undergirded by the rule of law, one could not but wonder whether American elimination of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani in Iraq was planned as part of a strategy to eliminate al-Muhandis as well.                 

No doubt, al-Hashd’s evolution into a hybrid non-state actor influencing both the politics and armed forces of Iraq is a case in point to be aware of when dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah today is a hybrid non-state actor influencing the politics of Lebanon but as of yet not in control of the country’s armed forces. Surely, there are officers who support or empathize with Hezbollah; but Lebanon’s armed forces as a whole pride themselves on being a sovereign national entity tasked with securing the nation and state.  

To be sure Hezbollah is a product of Lebanon’s socio-political environment. True, it subscribes to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Wilayat al-Faqih (Rule of the Just Jurist); nevertheless it is a Lebanese party whose members are born out of the fabric of the country’s society. In addressing how to deal with Hezbollah, it is important to examine the background against which Hezbollah (preceded by the emergence of other non-state actors  such as the PLO, Ba’th party, PFLP, Syrian Social National party, etc.,) was able to emerge as a powerful non-state actor that transformed itself into a hybrid non-state actor. 

In this respect, I found it necessary to review the works of not only Lebanon’s historian luminaries (Hitti, Salibi, Hourani, among others) but also of foreign diplomats, activists and scholars who lived in Lebanon during its formation stage in the nineteenth century. I focused on the works of French Ambassador to Lebanon Eugene Poujade, Jesuit historian Henri Lammens, British Colonel Charles Henry Churchill, British Diplomat Lord Dufferin, and Protestant missionary Henry Jessup, among others.

One would clearly glean from the afore-mentioned works that Lebanon had been plagued by a weak entity/state, feudalism that transitioned from tax farming during Ottoman rule to political feudalism since independence, foreign intervention, and contested national identity. Sectarianism and inter and intra-communal strife began to afflict Lebanon in the nineteenth century as a result of two interconnected processes: feudal families lording their power over peasants (commoners) and political and economic gains by religious communities taking place at the expense of other communities. Consequently, Lebanon went through terrible civil strifes in the early 1840s and in 1860. 

In response to the massacres of 1860, Mount Lebanon was granted a special autonomous status grounded in a sectarian system that became the nucleus of independent Lebanon in 1943. However, the structural problems that plagued Lebanon remained unresolved and became steeped in the country’s confessional system. A weak state Lebanon invited foreign intervention despite the national motto of “No East/No West.” Lebanon’s identity remained contested. Paradoxically, Lebanon had an Arab face while at the same time embraced “No East/No West” concept. Significantly, Christians failed to “Lebanonize” Muslims and Muslims failed to “Arabize” Lebanon, as was hoped for by the authors of Lebanon’s National Pact. Moreover, feudal leadership based on tax farming transformed into a feudal political leadership, which subsequently increased its power at the expense of that of the state. The confessional system became a fodder of spoils for the class of confessional/sectarian elite who nurtured a patronage system that permeated the whole Lebanese bureaucracy. 

Civil strife broke out in 1958 and 1975, and Lebanon’s socio-political landscape provided the suitable environment for the PLO, PFLP, Ba’th and many no-state actors to flourish and affect the politics of the country. The Taif accord that ended the 15 year civil war reordered the distribution of confessional powers but kept the confessional system intact. The socio-political flaws that plagued Lebanon deepened. Moreover, Syria formally occupied Lebanon, dictating its domestic and regional policies. This is the general background against which Hezbollah emerged as a strong non-state actor, thanks in no small measure to Syria and Iran’s support. 

Hezbollah gained national momentum by forcing Israel from southern Lebanon in 2000. But witnessing the growth of Hezbollah as a state within a state, Lebanon’s political elite made a last ditch effort to curb its power. This resulted in Hezbollah seizing Beirut in summer 2008 and ending any attempt by the political elite to resist Hezbollah and by extension Iranian strategy in the Middle East in general and Lebanon in particular. Significantly, Lebanon’s infamous political class made a Faustian pact with Hezbollah: Political elite would cover the legitimacy of Hezbollah, and, in turn, Hezbollah would sanction the robbing of the state by the political elite. Consequently, Lebanon spiraled downward into a failed state! Lebanon’s October 17 Revolution has failed thus far to relieve Lebanon from the yoke of the corrupt political class and Hezbollah. 

As a hybrid non-state actor, propagating its “resistance” under the banner of “People, Army, and Resistance,” Hezbollah today is integral to the state, independent of the state, not accountable to the state, a recipient indirectly or directly of state largess, a mastermind of illicit activities, a defender of politicized and/or clientelist Shi’ism, an Iranian proxy, and a regional militant actor. Hezbollah, however, has neither controlled Lebanon’s armed forces nor integrated/inserted itself in the armed forces. Herein, the armed forces have to draw the lesson from how al-Hashd integrated itself with Iraq’s armed forces and prevent Hezbollah from becoming integral to or controlling Lebanon’s armed forces.                          

Most importantly, dealing with Hezbollah without addressing the historical flaws of Lebanon’s society consequent upon the country’s weak state, feudal political leadership, and contested national identity, which invite foreign meddling in Lebanon’s affairs, is tantamount to treating the symptoms not the roots of the disease afflicting the Lebanese body. Having said that, it’s hardly possible to eliminate Hezbollah as a non-state actor. Armed non-state actors in many countries have adapted, adjusted themselves to shifting political conditions and reinvented themselves. This is the case with Hezbollah and al-Hashd. Apparently, Washington has recognized this fact and has pursued a policy to degrade and contain them. More specifically, Washington has apparently come to the conclusion that it is paramount to work with and help weak states change the sociopolitical conditions that allowed armed non-state actors to thrive. 

Lebanon, as a failed state, has suffered from governmental paralysis, crumbling public services, breakdown of utility supplies and educational and health facilities. The Lebanese Lira has lost 90% of its value, and medicine and other vital necessities are substantially in shortage. A plurality of Lebanese is facing starvation. Many ideas have been floated ranging from federalism to placing Lebanon under Chapter Seven to address the country’s dire conditions. These ideas are apt but difficult to implement. Federalism needs more intra and inter-communal consensus, which is lacking. Notwithstanding the difficulty of deciding in which area to place Lebanon’s mixed districts that cover wide swaths of the country, which bore the brunt of civil strife (1860, 1975-1990), Lebanon’s feudal political class in each community/confession are not at one politically. Placing Lebanon under Chapter Seven is complicated. Should the U.S. internationalize Lebanon’s condition in the UN, will China and Russia support the initiative? Which country is going to take the lead and spearhead Lebanon’s salvation? Which country(ies) will provide troops and/or funds? What’s the reaction of Hezbollah and political class? Pursuing these ideas is worthwhile but Lebanese should not rely exclusively on them.    

Lebanon needs help now. Lebanon in the immediate term needs help in providing livelihood essentials (foodstuff, medicine, energy products, etc.). NGO’s, supported by the army, should handle and distribute donations. The international community should increase pressure (including employing coercive methods) on political class to form a government of technocrats to stabilize the currency and introduce needed reforms. 

In the short to medium term, civil society actors should work to enlarge their ranks and create a cross-sectarian large grassroots movement to promote reforms and prepare for forthcoming elections. Their work, in collaboration with the US and EU, is key to changing the socio-political conditions that allowed Hezbollah and other non-state actors to thrive. Integral to their efforts is their readiness to address Lebanon’s weak state, political feudalism, and foreign intervention, paving the way for a new generation of political leaders.  

In the medium to long term, Lebanese language (in its classical and colloquial form) should be promoted as the medium to express Lebanon’s unique history and culture, with the objective of sharpening Lebanon’s national identity. Which also means that Lebanon’s economic orientation or foreign direct investment in Lebanon will not dictate its political or cultural orientation. 

All along, efforts should be made to make sure the Lebanese Armed Forces remain solvent and the shield for national stability. Its functions need to be diversified so as to act as a vessel of national identity fusion, a tool of socio-cultural advancement, and an instrument of technological innovation. Mandatory military conscription for at least one year for all Lebanese citizens should be introduced to help the army achieve its goals. 

Absent a civil war, as the army gains strength and a new generation of political leaders emerges, one could hope that Hezbollah’s popular base of support will peter out and its political and communal influence will be reduced to insignificance.

*Robert G. Rabil is professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of Embattled Neighbors: Syria, Israel and Lebanon (2003); Syria, United States and the War on Terror in the Middle East (2006); Religion, National Identity and Confessional Politics in Lebanon: The Challenge of Islamism (2011); Salafism in Lebanon: From Apoliticism to Transnational Jihadism (2014); The Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon: The Double Tragedy of Refugees and Impacted Host Communities (2016); and most recently White Heart (2018). The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of FAU. He can be reached @robertgrabil.