Creating homes --- the Hezbollah model

By Fester

Time Magazine recongizes that the delegitimatization of the state and the disintegration of state based Sloyalties due to failures and broken promises strengthen an alternative social movement that is hostile to the designs of the United States and a direct challenge to the Maliki government:

Sadr's political power appears to be growing even as the crisis wears on. A new report by Refugees International says the Mahdi Army ranks are swelling with new recruits drawn from internally displaced people who've gotten aid from the militia. "Displaced men have joined armed groups," said the report, which put the number of internally displaced people in Iraq at 2.7 million. "As a result of the vacuum created by the failure of both the Iraqi government and the international community to act in a timely and adequate manner, non-state actors play a major role in providing assistance to vulnerable Iraqis. Militias of all denominations are improving their local base of support by providing social services in the neighborhoods and towns they control. Through a 'Hizballah-like' scheme, the Shi'ite Sadrist movement has established itself as the main service provider in the country."

Sadr's movement is about creating new homes and restructuring loyalties away from a nation-state concept and towards the movement itself as the current is capable of providing as many public goods as the weakened nominal state.  This is the same basic model that Hezbollah and Hamas have developped, with the Hezebollah model being the best-practice example of a non-state force exploiting and contributing to the hollowing out of a weak state's power.  Once this has been achieved through action or inaction, the non-state entity receives the group loyalties of its participants because the non-state entity delivers on the needs of its supporters.  This is fairly similar to the US COIN manual's prescription of increasing an allied nation state's legitimacy but with the advantage of the non-state actor having a greater sphere of action and a greater margin of error and understanding as they have the advantage of comparative weakness... they are just the guys down the street and not the government. 

Sadr's movement started as the home of the poor Shi'ite rural immigrants to the large urban slums but if it is able to expand the size of the home it provides to displaced individuals who are not typical pre-war Sadrist supporters but instead former opponents or agonists of the Sadrist current, his bloc will expland in size and power and further weaken the state affiliated parties. 

Comments

[1MaNLan]

Hezbollah and the Sadr current are similar in their provision of social services to the communities that they each emerge from. Each exists within a fragmented/failed state envioronment. Each benefits from the "cover" that the state unintentionally provides while directly competing with the state for the power to command the most loyalty from the population.

On the other hand, Sadr's goal seems to be for his party to govern the country by way of elections. He means to outcompete the present parties in power on their own terms, to take over the governance of that same failed state..even if this means giving up the "cover" along the way.

If Sadr succeeds, then it seems to me that the equation changes. His party must then succeed at governance. It must continue to provide reliable services and security on a wide scale, as well as rebuild the country, keep the oil control in Iraqi hands, heal internal divisions (to the extent possible, at this point) and kick the Americans out. Tall order, to say the least.

If he is not successful,then his government will be fated to look no different, and be regarded no differently by the populace, as the present one. Not only that, but a failed Sadr government would inadvertantly provide cover for the next "competitor" movement that springs up in to take its former place.

Hezbollah certainly seems to want to avoid taking this sort of path. Its circumstances are, after all, very different. It occurs to me that, if Hezbollah's essential goal is to keep Israel out of Lebanon, then it cannot become the state (beyond being one presence in a larger government) for strategic reasons (Israel would dominate it in a classic, state on state conflict). Hezbollah appears stuck...it must remain a force within the structure of the state, at least for now.