The responses to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon illustrate the limits of international opinion on a determined state with backing from major powers, as well as the limits of military might when faced with a determined opposition, even if the resistance is outnumbered and outgunned.
While these theoretical issues are of great interest to students of political science, the Muslim world in particular has to absorb certain lessons from this crisis, lessons which have been derivable in the past, but which are now being rammed home with even greater force.
International opinion is just words, in the last analysis. However, in the last couple of centuries, the leaders of the international system, which consisted of the European powers and the USA, have made a commendable effort to place checks on excessive behaviour by other states. Aggression, which used to be an accepted mode of behaviour by states, went out of fashion to the extent that even Hitlerine Germany had to create a fiction of a Polish attack before launching World War II. It is a symptom of this trend that all the world’s War Ministers (which actually meant Army Ministers) turned into Defence Ministers.
So Israel’s second naked aggression against Lebanon in the last quarter of a century has been described as an act of self-defence. This is a little more tenable since the US conquests of Afghanistan and Iraq, where there was little self-defence involved. In the first case, it was punitive action, and in the second it was simply dislike for the regime.
Israel has relived this particular configuration, because whereas its attack on Hamas-ruled Palestine was because it detested the regime, its attack on Lebanon was punishment for its government’s inability or refusal to rein in Hezbollah. And while the USA might have won a certain amount of sympathy for attacking authoritarian regimes, Israel has hit the only two outposts of democracy in the Arab world.
Israel’s attack on Lebanon led to some squawking by other countries, but it managed to obtain a free hand. The USA and other Western powers have not been condemnatory, as expected, but the interesting part is that this time around they have not even been critical. There is no pretence at fairness; they are on Israel’s side.
So who are they against? Why would the USA and other Western powers be so enthusiastic about the Israeli pounding of two democracies? Hamas is perhaps easier to understand. Western powers have never accepted the results of apparently democratic elections unless there was a certain degree of ideological conformity. Salvador Allende was as unacceptable in 1973 as the Sandinistas in 1979, and after the fall of the USSR, as the FIS in Algeria, or Hamas in 2006.
Those who believe that Western democracy is not just compatible with, but completely congruent with, Islam, need to ponder why this is the case. It should never be forgotten that democracy is not just a method of transfer of power, but the political manifestation of capitalism, and constitutes part of an entire package. It is feasible to extract methods from democracy to ensure participatory government in some other system, such as Islam or socialism, but democracy is not just about elections and legitimacy through a popular mandate.
Is Lebanon a primarily Muslim issue? While it is indeed a humanitarian tragedy of huge proportions, with Israeli forces once again proving that they will give no quarter to women and children, Muslims are generally viewing it as an attack on ‘themselves.’ On the other hand, their governments are viewing it as an attack on a friendly country, but are distancing themselves from the whole episode.
Pakistan’s reaction is typical. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz thinks he has done his national and international duty by telephoning his Lebanese counterpart, assuring him of his deepest sympathies, and promising more relief goods. Fawad Siniora probably would have preferred anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft missiles and a couple of divisions of mechanized infantry thrown in, but all he is getting is sympathy and relief goods, as if his country was hit by an earthquake, as if his affliction has come from an act of God, not from men.
Siniora is caught in a nutcracker. He might wish to disarm the Hezbollah militia, but it is a political actor. The only force which could keep it in check, the Syrian occupying forces, has been thrown out by US intervention, and now a small Lebanese army is supposed to do what the powerful Israeli army cannot. And since the Israeli army is failing to achieve its military objectives, Lebanon is being punished. This is much like the USA’s –do-more’ tactics with Pakistan over Afghanistan, where its own military’s professional failures are being covered up by blaming Pakistan for not doing enough.
Israel, the USA and India are all united by a wish to see other Muslims deal with their Muslim problems. Pakistan is involved in two of these problems, in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
Condemnatory resolutions and sympathetic noises are not helping the Lebanese, any more than they helped the Palestinians, the Kashmiris, the Chechens, the Afghans and the Iraqis, or even the many Muslim victims of murder and massacre committed by other Muslims. The nearest to a practical solution came from Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who called on the Muslim governments to form a single military force to expel the Israelis from Lebanon. There is a certain sense in this. The 50-odd members of the OIC have more than four million men under arms, apart from something like 4000 military aircraft, over 20,000 tanks and heavens knows how many artillery pieces. A lot of this equipment is in horrible shape, but it is better than nothing.
However, the problem is that there are more than 50 governments, and they will never act in unison. There we come to a concept which our own President Pervez Musharraf has popularized in another context: unity of command. If there was a single government commanding these forces, then a rather different situation would prevail.
Muslims, after a millennium of thinking of each other as essentially the same, had nationalism imposed on them by the colonial experience. The paradox is that while they have not developed vibrant nationalisms of their own, as the originators did, they have certainly developed a feeling of hostility towards other Muslim nationalities. We bemoan the failure to develop a true Pakistani nationalism, at the same time as we bemoan the Arab and Palestinian failure to do anything for us. Yet these same Arabs have stopped fighting for their rights in the name of nationalism alone, as they did until 1982. Now the fighting is done in the name of Islam as well, and this automatically creates a vested interest throughout the Islamic world. Kashmir. Afghanistan. Iraq. Chechnya. All have had ‘foreigners’ laying down their lives not in the name of international brotherhood, but Islam.
Until Muslims themselves understand the phenomena that are at work in this readiness to sacrifice for ‘others’ who are actually ‘ours’, there is little chance of a resolution. There will continue to be bloodshed, humiliation and suffering. We come back to the need for unity of command. How is this to be achieved? That is, again to quote Musharraf, ‘just tactics.’ Once we agree on the strategy, that will be easier than anyone could think.

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This is the sign of 1 who loves GOD that his chief care z goodness n devotion n his words r mostly in praise n glorification of GOD.