Hezbollah is not, however, the most powerful military force in Lebanon. The Lebanese army consists of 20 mechanized, airborne, and commando brigades and regiments, equipped with Russian, French, and British equipment. All told, it can field some 70,000 soldiers. The Lebanese military also has a navy with 27 boats, mainly of British and French origin, and an air force that has five British fighters and about 40 helicopters of French, British, and American manufacture.⁹ This military is capable of independent operations within Lebanon. For example, in 2007, the Lebanese military dealt a series of crushing blows to al Qaeda-linked Fatah al-Islam near the Palestinian refugee camp, Nahr el-Bared.¹⁰

By comparison, Hezbollah?s full-time strength is only 1,000 guerilla fighters equipped with long-range rockets and antitank, antiship, and antiaircraft missiles. In emergencies, between 5,000 and 10,000 reserve fighters can be mobilized.¹¹ Hezbollah has no navy or air force. While Hezbollah was able to launch katyusha rockets into Israel until the last day of the 2006 war, there is reason to believe that it lost much of its military capability. Israeli and independent observers claim that as many as 500 to 600 Hezbollah fighters may have been killed.¹² Attesting even more to the weakness of the organization, as part of the peace accords, Hezbollah permitted the Lebanese military to enter the south of Lebanon, a move it had consistently opposed since the end of the Lebanese civil war.¹³

Nor is Hezbollah the most powerful political force in Lebanon. Following the June 2005 elections, the anti-Syrian coalition Tayyar al-Mustaqbal (Future Tide) gained control of the government with 72 parliamentary seats.¹⁴ This coalition was instrumental in the so-called Cedar Revolution of March 2005, which eventually forced the Syrian military to withdraw from Lebanon, ending 30 years of occupation. The protest the group organized was able to bring as many as a million people from across Lebanese society into the streets.¹⁵ Hezbollah?s counterprotests only mustered approximately 200,000 individuals.¹⁶

Probably the most compelling argument against Lebanese membership in the Shia Crescent is demographic. Only between 30 and 40 percent of the Lebanese population is Shia. Lebanon is 39 percent Christian; the remaining population consists of Sunnis, Alawi, Druze, and other minority sects. Ninety-five percent of the population is Arab, with many identifying themselves not as Arab but Phoenician.¹⁷ More importantly, the Shia population does not act as a single, monolithic block in Lebanese politics.

While the Iranian-backed Hezbollah is a powerful force in Lebanese society, it is not the dominant force. With the departure of Syria in 2005 combined with the manpower and materiel losses sustained during the conflict with Israel in 2006, the group?s power has noticeably receded. It is extremely doubtful that Iran will be able to exert anything approaching hegemonic control over Lebanon anytime in the near future.

Editorial

Some are condemning what Hizbullah did this week as a coup d'etat, while others are defending it as a counter-putsch. That debate will not end soon, but there is no doubting that Lebanon's political status quo has been radically altered in a very few days. It is too early to predict where this will lead the country, but whereas the seat of actual Lebanese power has long been in doubt, for now at least it has a clear address: that of Hizbullah's secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. He may continue to shun any official position, but barring an unforeseen turn of events, the leader of the Lebanese resistance has just acquired a hitherto unprecedented amount of national political responsibility.

Hizbullah's track record on previous occasions of ascendancy bodes well for this instance: After the resistance movement forced Israel to pull its occupation forces from most of the South in 2000, it granted far more lenient treatment to Lebanese who had collaborated with the enemy than most established armies ordinarily do. This time, though, Nasrallah has made himself responsible for agendas of incalculably greater breadth.

Due largely to the political squabbles that have paralyzed Lebanon since 2005, urgent matters have been left waiting. If Nasrallah's gambit this week was aimed at ending those squabbles rather than responding with just another tit-for-tat escalation, it is now his job to make possible the resolution of several quandaries. The economy is adrift, the vagueness of the national defense strategy that worked so well in the 1990s has become a liability, the existing electoral law is fatally flawed, and deep mistrust marks both political and sectarian boundaries. In addition, depending on how the consequences of this week's events play out, the Lebanese could find themselves besieged like the Palestinians after they elected Hamas in January 2006. Above all else, there is a need to engage in real dialogue, not the profitless trade of empty slogans.

Nasrallah's task now is to create an inclusive environment conducive to the answering of these and other challenges. He and his party cannot be expected to come up with all of the solutions, and nor should they want to: If they cannot draw other players - and not just their closest allies - into the process, Nasrallah runs the risk of being cast as a dictator by default.

Hizbullah and its partners have frequently argued that their counterparts in the March 14 Forces coalition were not interested in true partnership, only in dictating terms. Now Nasrallah has to prove that his side is ready, willing and able to live up to its own expectations, and speed is of the essence: After 15 years of civil war, 15 of diluted sovereignty, and three of limbo, the Lebanese deserve at last to have a level of politics commensurate with their talents and energies. If Nasrallah is the man who makes this happen, history will judge his actions to have been a revolution, not a coup, and a long-overdue one at that.

May 12, 2008