Soldiers stand guard at the site of a car bomb attack that hit a Hezbollah convoy near a Syrian border crossing on July 16, 2013. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Hezbollah’s continuing support for the Assad regime in Syria is provoking a fierce backlash back home in Lebanon and, with a pair of attacks directly and indirectly targeting the organization in as many days, it appears that the simmering resentment has escalated to a full-fledged campaign of violence against the Shiite group and its supporters.
On Wednesday, a prominent pro-Assad figure was assassinated by gunmen in southern Lebanon, just a day after a convoy believed to be carrying Hezbollah members was bombed near the Syrian border. Mohammed Darrar Jammo, a well-known political analyst and outspoken Assad supporter, was killed in a Shiite coastal town which had been largely shielded from sectarian clashes. Like Bekaa, where the Tuesday convoy bombing took place, Sarafand is a Hezbollah stronghold. These attacks, along with a July 9 bombing in another Hezbollah-dominated area in southern Beirut, represent increasing pressure on the militant organization and an uncomfortable encroachment onto its home turf.
The group’s vulnerability is showing. Its response to the Jammo assassination revealed an eagerness to dissociate recent violence from its campaign in Syria and, instead, to deflect it onto “terrorists” who “threaten safety and stability in Lebanon and the region.” Yes, they are not wrong to allude to growing Sunni extremist violence within Lebanon. But if the group’s aim is convincing deflection, they’ve missed the mark here.
Also on Tuesday, President Michel Suleiman called for all political factions to abide by the Baabda Declaration, a 2012 national agreement to keep Lebanon out of regional crises. The accusatory tone behind Suleiman’s words may not have been reserved for Hezbollah exclusively but there is no denying that the group was the primary target of his words: “We agreed in the Baabda Declaration on disassociating Lebanon from regional events, and preventing the transfer of weapons through the country to Syria . . . Each [faction] must consider the dangers of their actions before it is too late.”
As much as Hezbollah may be feeling the heat right now, any change in the current situation does not appear to be forthcoming in the near term — especially as the Lebanese government itself remains in disarray. Targeted violence, if anything, appears to have hardened the resolve of the organization while only fueling more intense sectarianism. Invocations of Baabda and pleas for national unity from Lebanese officials lack potency without the strength of a cohesive political response from the government. Given the nature of Lebanese politics that may be a tall order indeed, with no indication that the government will be getting its act together any time soon. Expect this political stalemate to draw out as sectarianism intensifies with Baabda left by the wayside.
