Hezbollah has seized West Beirut and forced the closure of pro-government media - the reasons for the choice of target will become more evident in a moment. There are reports of eleven dead and 'dozens' wounded.

After months of Western media boredom with the umpteenth failure to elect a new President, what is going on in the Lebanon is now becoming of a matter of global interest once again.

What Happened

Hezbollah claimed that the pro-Western Government of Siniora had effectively declared war on it with a couple of measures designed to show the militia who was boss. 

The Government had declared Hezbollah’s telecommunications network to be illegal and unconstitutional and had removed an alleged Hezbollah-linked general from his job as head of security at Beirut airport.

Sunni-led Government and Hezbollah have thus been making strike and counter-strike at their respective technical communications infrastructures. Control of information, access and propaganda is vital to both.

The parallels with Al-Maliki's move on Basra are scarcely coincidental. Perhaps the Government had been watching Al-Maliki’s tactics in Iraq and believed that pressure might be exerted in the same way against its problem militia.

Perhaps months of tension over the Presidency has driven the Sunni Government of Siniora into ever more provocative acts in order to try and bind both internal security and the West into active support for its 'right' to govern.

Al-Maliki used the attacks on Basra and on Sadr City as means to bind the military to the state (by shaking out dissent), recapture control of key economic assets (the ports in the case of Iraq are echoed in the importance of controlling the airport in Beirut) and provoke the militia into wasteful resistance and internal splits.

Hezbollah - The Tougher Nut To Crack

Hezbollah are, however, just that bit hardier and more sophisticated than the Mahdi Army. It is alleged, plausibly, that the Mahdi Army has been learning directly from the organisational sophistication of its older brother.

It is probable that Al-Maliki was acting pre-emptively to halt the inevitable development otherwise of a similar state-within-the-Iraqi-state.

The Mahdi Army and Hezbollah have something else in common. Americans and Sunnis like to present both as creatures of foreign powers - Iran and Syria respectively - but this is nonsense. Allies are not controllers - although I might reconsider that statement in a British context.

Both operations are Shia first but still nationalist second. Neither is keen to see Iran or Syria be more than counterweights to what they see as an imperialist and colonialist Western offensive or occupation. 

So, any attempt to position the Hezbollah as anti-Lebanese in order to bring the military into play and to tip the balance of forces against it is not a certain strategy by any means - and less so than in Iraq in relation to the Mahdi Army.

The Presidency And A Weak State

A strong Lebanese Presidency could work (in Western theory) to integrate Hezbollah into the State as an internally-directed political movement rather than as an externally-directed revolutionary front that threatens Israel.

More to the point, Lebanon with a President is de facto part of the Western camp. Lebanon is effectively neutralized internationally without a President.

General Suleiman is the West’s candidate not because he is pro-Western (in fact, he is more of a Lebanese nationalist) but because it is in the West’s interest to take Lebanon out of its status as political no-man’s land.

Since Suleiman is also ‘candidate for the army’ (the least sectarian institution within the state), the army must also be presumed to be for order and for proper state formation, at least in principle. But it is also vulnerable to its own internal sectarian pressures.

The military had not moved in support of the Government at the time of writing, other than to act like a UN peacekeeping force to guard buildings seized by Hezbollah.

The situation is thus not directly comparable with Al-Maliki’s where the purpose was the capture of an unstable military for the Government interest. 

The Lebanese Army is not only retaining its factional neutrality – so far – it is becoming positioned as the arbiter between both Government and militia and defender of the nation against both Israel and Syria. 

It has even warned in effect that the Government’s brinkmanship (though not cast in these terms) contains dangers to military unity.

Lebanese national feeling may be resistant to Syrian interference or to ‘Greater Syrian’ sentiment but its most recent concern has been the fact of Israeli incursion. In the real world, Syria is a political but not such a military threat as Israel and the Army does not deal in 'politics'.

Hezbollah's Calculations

Hezbollah was thus an effective barrier to Israeli occupation, so the idea that the weakening of Hezbollah is in the Lebanese national interest may be self-evident to the Sunni elite and its Western allies but it is far from self-evident to some nationalists, including some in the Army.

The Lebanization and de-Iranisation of Hezbollah is a common goal of all nationalists but the means adopted to do this may well differ. It could be an own goal if the country is handed over to a Maronite-Israeli-French colonial administration in all but name.

In the event, Hezbollah acted with the grim determination that makes it such a heroic organisation in the eyes of the so-called Arab street, especially in this sixtieth anniversary year of the Naqba [the Palestinian catastrophe].

Initially, it resisted provocation (following tactics similar to those of Al-Sadr in Iraq) but when it acted, it acted decisively.

The same calculations must apply amongst Hezbollah politicians as they do within the Mahdi Army – how far to extend a mode of defence to one of attack and what a response to a provocation might mean for Iran and Syria. The Hezbollah response was thus very finely tuned.

The widespread fear is that the US and Israel will look for a chance to do something military to boost McCain in the forthcoming US Election, especially as Obama now looks increasingly likely to push an almost obsessively power hungry Hilary Clinton into second place.

The sheer energy of the resistance of the 'machine' to Obama suggests that powerful forces really do not want Obama as President any more than they once did Bobby Kennedy.

Though assassination is probably passé, it is reasonable to see the US' power ‘to do things’ overseas as being linked to the management of the democratic process at home. This is not conspiracy theory, just how things work.

Government Motivations

But back to Lebanon. Whatever calculations were going on in Washington and Tel Aviv (or Paris and London), Lebanese politics possesses its own momentum.

Even the most pro-Western Lebanese are deeply unwilling to see the country become a wasteland just to assist regional Great Power chess moves against one another.

Did Siniora’s Government place pressure on Hezbollah not to declare war but only to imply the possibility of a Western-backed war and extract Hezbollah's compliance with the real concern of the Western camp – the election of General Michel Suleiman as President?

This interpretation makes sense. Despite the rhetoric and the 'invasion' of Western Beirut, all parties seem to be prepared to use violence but only tactically. 

They are, in fact, operating in a restrained way, employing the rules of a finely tuned political game that can look scary in print and could get out of hand - but which is also carefully calibrated to get tactical rather than strategic advantage.

Nevertheless, this crisis does have qualities that suggest that a degree of brinkmanship on both sides is taking things further than the system may bear and one new factor is the emergence of economic problems into the 'mix'.

The Labour Unions Emerge As Players

Lebanon saw a general strike this week. High inflation, general in the region, has resulted in workers demanding very high wage increases. Government action to increase the national minimum wage was regarded as insufficient by the General Labour Confederation.

The strike, which Hezbollah decided to back with its formidable manpower by sealing off the airport, added to political tensions. The Government's moves might even be regarded as a sectarian provocation expressly designed to pre-empt a non-sectarian class alliance.

We are seeing the potential for a new alliance, albeit in its very early stages, between Islamist welfarist ‘street’ networks and organized labour.

Following patterns elsewhere in the world, such an alliance (similar to that between socialists and labour unions in Europe during its own industrial-developmental phase) would be of enormous potential import.

However, labour unions remain suspicious of Islamist influence. Worker and Islamist (essentially petit-bourgeois and economically conservative) concerns are far from identical. Secular trades unionists may justifiably fear Sharia culture as much as trades unions rightly feared Bolshevism. 

But class interest will tend to appear in times of economic crisis and the entire Muslim world is finding that inflation is destabilising the social structure.

Neo-Socialism - Western Liberalism's Worst Nightmare

We may also be underestimating the ideological effect of such bilateral dialogue as that between Venezuela and Iran (affecting in turn militia like Hezbollah and the Mahdi Army and even Hamas).

Redistributionist quasi-militarised strategies operating against corporate and bourgeois interests can, by removing the historic deadweight of Marxism, link up with conservative populist appeals in support of both the identity as well as the economic needs of the poorest in society.

This neo-socialism is every Atlanticist liberal's worst nightmare - a genuinely popular merger of identity politics and redistributionism. Too easily positioned as 'fascism', it is nevertheless not liberal.

The food crisis and inflation thus represents an interesting political opportunity for the labour movement to get both ‘bourgeois’ elites (like the Siniora Government) and radical networks (like Hezbollah) to bid for its support.

We have to use the Marxist term 'bourgeois' because it expresses precisely what we are talking about - local business and higher level professional networks integrated with the international marketplace.

These networks have to find ways to reassert sectarianism lest their own supporters find class a more interesting binding force than identity. This alone might trigger a move against Hezbollah just to remind the Sunni working class that it should not sup with the devil.

Lebanon and Egypt Compared

Of course, bourgeois elites are bourgeois because they believe in fiscal rectitude and Islamists, like Bolsheviks, have no long term interest in truly free trades unions. So the politics of all this are extremely volatile.

The three main players (Sunni middle classes, organised working class and Shia community) collaborate and compete with a fourth player, the military commitment to state security, and with a fifth, persistent foreign influence (notably Western soft power but also Syria) added to this frothy mix.

That this is not a problem just for Lebanon becomes clear when we look at Egypt. Just as Egypt has partially responded to union demands so the Lebanese tried unsuccessfully to do the same.

The Lebanese unions wanted a tripling in the minimum wage to over $600pm but the Government only offered $333 (still an increase from $200) – so militancy seems to have some determined political aspect underpinning it. It is about economics but not just about economics.

A general strike against a weakened state that is no position to ‘fire into the crowd’ and disperse demonstrators provides an opportunity for political recalibration as it might do in any number of other regional states where Islamists are struggling against more powerful state mechanisms.

Egypt should be the West’s greater concern because the situation had become so serious that the Government bought off the State apparat with inflationary salary increases that are likely to increase rather than diminish the anger of those outside the system.

The Egyptians increased fuel and tobacco prices and vehicle licence fees to pay for public sector pay rises. They are claiming (not very plausibly) that recent increases in public pay will only result in a 0.5% inflation increase.

This indicates the necessary commitment to ‘fiscal rectitude’ but it will also fuel inflation and partially redistribute the pain from public sector workers (presumably the apparat on which the regime depends for survival) to the struggling and smaller end of the private sector.

The difference between Lebanon and Egypt is the difference between a weak state and a strong state - strong 'bourgeois' states offer few opportunities for working class and 'petit bourgeois' (aka Islamist) revolt.

The threatened day of action in Egypt prior to these Government fixes over pay fizzled out quite quickly.

It was one of those Facebook non-events that we have now come to expect – like protests against Burma or Tibet, media-friendly but ultimately meaningless because they are not backed up by adequate physical organization on the ground.

But the principle stands that the Muslim Brotherhood and labour unions who have been getting angry for different reasons inside Egypt might be bound together by a specific anger over inflation in staple products as things get worse. 

Hence, the current geo-political panic over inflation. 'It's the politics, stupid'.

Back to Lebanon

As we write, having captured West Beirut, Hezbollah is challenging the State to remove its roadblocks to the airport. It promises a campaign of civil disobedience if this week’s decisions are not reversed.

The airport represents the economic lifeblood of the wealthy business elite of the country while the independent telecommunications network of Hezbollah is a key strategic asset in any resistance to another incursion by Israel.

Hezbollah rightly suspect Western pressure on Siniora to ‘deal with’ strategic infrastructures that advantage Hezbollah in its resistance strategies. Capturing telecomms and re-capturing the airport is analogous to Al-Maliki's investment in capturing the ports.

However, the actual rather than the potential extent of the crisis could be exaggerated.

It is not in the union interest to destabilize the country but merely to demand a greater share of the increasing prosperity amongst the middle classes (despite political instability) at a time of rapid inflation. Hezbollah remains fundamentally defensive at this stage.

Like the Mahdi Army, Hezbollah is under attack rather than being the aggressor. We would do well to remember this. Lebanon may be lurching in small escalations to some sort of definitive crisis in which the West is, sadly, playing a provocative role.

To Washington, Paris, London and Tel Aviv, Lebanon is merely a front in the war against Iranian influence. Civil war is not yet (just) on the cards but the situation is not a comfortable one for those few who care about civilian lives in a small country on the West's Eastern frontier.

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