How Hezbollah turned Lebanon into a mafia state

Lokman Slim – intellectual, writer and Hezbollah critic – slid his frame against the front of the black Toyota rental car and pointed it in the direction of home.

It was February 2021 and Slim was visiting a childhood friend in his ancestral village in southern Lebanon.

He was well aware that every journey he undertook was fraught with danger. More than a dozen other prominent critics of Hezbollah and its allies in the Syrian government had been killed violently over the past 16 years.

To make matters worse, Slim was a Shia Muslim, albeit a secular, liberal Muslim. For a Shia movement like Hezbollah, receiving criticism from Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim, Christian or Druze communities was one thing. If a fellow Shia openly opposed the group, it was pure treason.

In the previous months the threats had worsened. Posters were taped to the door of his house calling him a traitor. Hezbollah supporters gathered in his garden to issue catcalls.

American diplomats had quietly urged him to leave the country and even offered him a green card. Slim declined, instead issuing a statement saying that if he were to die, Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who would eventually be killed in an Israeli airstrike late last month, should be held responsible.

Slim reached just a few hundred yards from his friend’s house. According to a private forensic investigation paid for by his family, he suffered a gunshot wound to the back before being dragged from the car, forced to kneel and shot five times in the head.

Hezbollah denied involvement in the killing but celebrated Slim’s death. “Losing some people is actually a victory,” Nasrallah’s son Jawad tweeted shortly after the killing was announced, with the hashtag “#NoRegrets.”

As is always the case after an assassination attempt in Lebanon, police claimed to be baffled. She initially suggested that Slim may have committed suicide before closing the case within three months and declaring it unsolvable.

Hezbollah, which is both a political party and an armed group, does not directly hold office in Lebanon but has such a stranglehold on the state that few would ever dare openly challenge it.

Despite polls showing that only 30 percent of the Lebanese population trust the movement – ​​a figure that drops to 9 percent for Sunnis and 6 percent for Christians – the price for open opposition is simply too high to pay.

There are those in Lebanon who will quietly join the assessments of foreign think tanks and human rights groups, which have accused Hezbollah of state plunder, drug trafficking, organized crime and the murder of critics. But because the movement categorically denies all these accusations, they do so in whispers.

Hezbollah did not always exert such a terrifying grip on society.

The country’s power can be traced back to a peace deal that ended Lebanon’s brutal civil war in 1990 and disarmed the militias responsible for the massacre.

According to a questionable interpretation of the agreement, Hezbollah was allowed to keep its weapons to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

It is an exception that has haunted Lebanon ever since.

Hezbollah’s status was strengthened after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, earning the group respect and gratitude from many.

Meanwhile, the movement had increasingly positioned itself as a champion of the Shia minority, gaining a foothold that allowed it to gain broader political influence.

“Hezbollah is strong because it was able to convince a Lebanese sect that they are their savior and stop them from becoming the marginalized community they once were,” said Ibrahim Mneimneh, a Sunni lawmaker.

By forging alliances with other Shia movements and with Michel Aoun, the self-proclaimed political leader of the Lebanese Christians, Hezbollah quickly gained the power to veto government decisions it did not like.

Indeed, it has often been able to dictate which candidates should fill the posts of prime minister and president, which under Lebanon’s denominational system are held by a Sunni and a Christian respectively.

Hezbollah hides behind parliamentary allies and can largely exercise political power without accountability.

It has also created a parallel state that has hollowed out Lebanon’s weak institutions, replaced senior officials with its own loyalists and prepared a takeover of its security, customs and border apparatus, analysts say.

This has not only allowed for the flow of weapons and explosives, first from Syria and then from Iran, it has also allowed the group to expand its revenue-generating capabilities in the dark economy.

An investigation published last year by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting project alleged that Hezbollah and the Syrian army had facilitated the cross-border smuggling of captagon, a powerful recreational drug that is having a devastating impact in the Middle East.

According to the British government, the Syrian captagon trade generates three times as much revenue as the Mexican drug cartels. Hezbollah has denied playing any role in the production or smuggling of narcotics.

Be that as it may, the group has never been short of the cash it needs to fund a generous welfare program that bolsters its support among Shia Muslims — though it also draws income from lucrative state contracts that it ensures are awarded to companies affiliated with Hezbollah.

Acts of violence

Attempts to limit the country’s financial power have long failed. Shortly after Blom, a Lebanese bank, closed accounts linked to Hezbollah in 2016, a bomb destroyed its headquarters. Once again Hezbollah denied involvement.

Acts of violence linked to the group have undoubtedly helped alienate the movement from non-Shia, with Sunni Muslims particularly angered by the 2005 bomb that killed Rafik Hariri, the respected former Sunni prime minister – which many blamed on Hezbollah and its ally, the Assad regime in Syria.

UN prosecutors charged Mustafa Badreddine, the head of Hezbollah’s external operations, with the killing, but charges against him at a special tribunal in the Netherlands were dropped after he was killed in a bomb attack in Damascus in 2016.

Two years later, Hezbollah further infuriated Sunni opinion by naming a street in Beirut after Badreddine – a decision that Saad Hariri, former prime minister of Lebanon, aptly described as “regrettable”.

Allies said Mr Hariri did not want to antagonize Hezbollah by going further, and that he had recognized the need to “sacrifice justice for stability”.

As its popularity declines, Hezbollah has continued to strengthen its position through violent demonstrations, including confrontations on the streets.

In 2008, the gunmen took control of Sunni areas in Beirut to prevent a government attempt to cut off the internal communications network, leading to clashes that left 160 people dead.

Recovery of popularity

Three years ago, the fighters were again involved in deadly clashes with rival militias after demonstrators took to the streets to accuse Hezbollah of blocking a judicial investigation into the 2020 Beirut port explosion that killed 220 people and large parts of the city were in ruins.

Public appreciation for Hezbollah further declined when the movement began firing rockets into Israel last year in solidarity with Hamas, something most strongly opposed.

Ironically, however, several MPs have told The Telegraph that Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory over the past three weeks threaten to restore the movement’s popularity.

“We were strongly against Hezbollah involving Lebanon in this conflict,” said Jimmy Jabbour, a Christian lawmaker.

“But now that Israel is striking Hezbollah, hitting civilians and bombing buildings where children live, we must agree that Hezbollah has the right to defend itself and Lebanon against war crimes.”

But when the dust eventually settles, there may be a chance to defeat Hezbollah and reshape Lebanon’s political landscape, said Marc Daou, a progressive Druze lawmaker.

“Hezbollah’s image of infallibility has been shattered in recent days,” he said. “The steadfast support of regional mainstays in Syria and Iran is in question.

“Everyone doubts Hezbollah’s ability to control this war. No one believes anymore that it is capable of effectively fighting Israel. As a result, Hezbollah will have to find a political solution together with its opponents. It will have to learn the language of compromise.”