As’ad Abu Khalil gives a thumbnail sketch of Hizbullah’s new “Political Document” from a leftist perspective.
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abunoor
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johnpi
A reporter at Huffpo has interviewed the foreign relations ministers of Hamas and Hezbollah. What’s striking in the introduction is that again and again these groups are defined by their social welfare programs:
Hamas and Hezbollah are both seasoned denizens of the US State Department’s List of Terrorist Organizations, a designation that seems odd when one considers that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese would fall through the cracks without the vital social services — healthcare, education, employment, infrastructure development — these two groups provide their indigenous populations. Ask a secular Palestinian or Lebanese civilian which of their political parties they trust most, and even the most begrudging among them may name Hamas or Hezbollah as the “cleanest” of their politicians.
And this influence continues regionally. Polls throughout the Middle East consistently point to Hezbollah’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah as the most popular leader in the Arab world. Hamas’ Khaled Meshaal is never far behind — a far cry from his main political opponent, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, whose US-supported Fatah party is viewed as corrupt and incompetent, sometimes even by its own supporters. Despite US and Israeli efforts to isolate these groups by swathing them in the dreaded “terrorist” label and all that implies post 9-11, even pro-US Arab leaders are careful not to malign these groups. Popularity rubs off, so to speak.
I’ve previously contrasted these organizations with the Taliban, which are described much differently.
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johnpi
Reading Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid’s “Taliban” the much-praised book about the ’student movement’ that was published just prior to Sept. 11th.
An observation: It’s interesting to note how different the Taliban are as an Islamic movement in control of a population from other Islamic movements with similar responsibilities. Hizbollah and Hamas essentially made their names and established their ’street credibilty’ through focus on social welfare and improving a population’s well-being.
Hamas funds schools, orphanages, mosques, healthcare clinics, soup kitchens, and sports leagues. “Approximately 90 percent of its work is in social, welfare, cultural, and educational activities,” writes the Israeli scholar Reuven Paz. The Palestinian Authority often fails to provide such services, and Hamas’s efforts in this area—as well as a reputation for honesty, in contrast to the many Fatah officials accused of corruption—help to explain the broad popularity it summoned to defeat Fatah in the PA’s recent elections.
The Taliban, in contrast, were distinct for their extraordinary lack of interest in the social welfare of the populations it came to control. Here’s Rashid’s description of events after the Taliban kicked the NGOs out of Kabul in the summer of 1998:
With more than half of Kabul’s 1.2 million people benefiting in some way from NGO handouts, women and children were immediate victims when aid was cut off. Food distribution, health care and and the city’s fragile water distribution network were all seriously affected. As people waved empty kettles and buckets at passing Taliban jeeps, their reply to the population was characteristic of their lack of social concern. “We Muslims believe God the Almighty will feed everybody one way or another.”
Since the Taliban had dubbed Mullah Omar Amir of all Muslims, not just Afghans – demonstrating transnationalist aspirations – I guess they felt they could use the ‘royal we.’ Tagging this post ‘Muslim-on-Muslim violence’ since the Kabul victims of Taliban indifference were probably all Muslims.
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Kawthar
Today, the Egyptian newspaper “Al Shorouk” reported that four Iranian Revolutionary Guards were arrested, and that they had allegedly entered the country with Iraqi Shia ID cards.
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thabet
