The Washington Wash: US officials and Hezbollah’s political front men
Anthony Elghossain/Now Lebanon/February 24/16
While America hunts down Hezbollah’s money launderers worldwide, it hosts the Party’s political launderers in D.C.
A litany of Lebanese politicians and officials have just landed in Washington to discuss sanctions against Hezbollah, among other issues. And Lebanese Minister of Finance Ali Hassan Khalil will probably be on his way soon. These visits—and the manner in which American officials will receive certain Lebanese leaders in Washington—will only reinforce a deep, dangerous, and destructive pattern: with American and international complicity, many Lebanese politicians launder Hezbollah’s politics like businessmen and bankers launder its money.
With that in mind, American lawmakers and officials must minimize their dealings with the Party of God’s political front men—that is, if they really intend to undercut Hezbollah, support Lebanese sovereignty, and promote stability in the Levant over time.
For a so-called Party of God, Hezbollah’s been having a tough time with earthly concerns—and the long arm of the law. In the past two months alone, the U.S. Congress has passed the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act to tighten sanctions against Hezbollah and Hezbollah-affiliated entities in finance, media, and trade; the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has disrupted a drug-trafficking and money-laundering operation involving Hezbollah’s External Security Organization Business Affairs Component and Colombian cartels like La Oficina de Envigado; and the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has designated—and therefore sanctioned—three Lebanese men and two Lebanon-based corporations as money launderers affiliated with Hezbollah.
Against that backdrop, Khalil announced a few weeks ago that he’d visit Washington to “tackle sanctions against Hezbollah.” And why not? After all, he’s the minister of finance. Well, because he—like some in the current delegation of Lebanese lawmakers and officials—is a political front man for the Party of God.
Khalil is a member of the Amal Movement, a nominally secular political party that draws most of its support from the same Lebanese Shiite communities that support Hezbollah. Established in 1975 by the “vanished imam” Musa al-Sadr, Amal was Hezbollah’s precursor in many respects: it displaced traditional Lebanese Shiite elite, galvanized its supporters politically and militarily, and empowered Lebanese Shiites socially and economically. In the 1980s, however, Amal and Hezbollah—the former backed by the Syrian regime, the latter by Iran—competed for influence within their community. Indeed, in intermittent rounds of fighting from 1985 to 1988, they fought some of the most brutal battles of the long-running Lebanese civil war.
But now Amal has become a façade for—and instrument of—Hezbollah. Under Lebanese Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, who’s led the party since 1980 and who at one point accused Hezbollah of killing more Amal leaders than Israel had, Amal has increasingly served as an intermediary for the Party of God in Lebanon and on the international stage.
In Lebanon’s current crisis, for instance, Berri has basically instructed his party’s parliamentarians to boycott election sessions—thereby fronting for Hezbollah, which at this stage prefers a presidential vacuum to any president. In 2007 and 2008, blatantly disregarding express constitutional provisions to the contrary, Berri shut down parliament to obstruct the election of a Lebanese president. And from 2005 to 2009, Berri and Amal boycotted cabinet sessions and shut down parliament to help Hezbollah and the Syrian regime block the establishment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, a U.N. tribunal with a mandate to bring to justice those who assassinated former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri in 2005.
On the international stage, Amal serves as a convenient conduit for government officials, diplomats, and non-governmental organizations—including Americans and groups funded by, or otherwise connected to, the United States—that work with, but need a buffer for, Hezbollah. The Party of God has been subject to U.S. sanctions since the mid-1990s and has been a U.S.-designated “foreign terrorist organization” since 1997, so many public and private entities trying to do business—or do good—in Lebanon have participated in this charade in one way or another. (Now, Hezbollah trots out—and Americans and others deal with—all sorts of mouthpieces, political props, or stooges. The point is that Amal is among them—by choice, because it does not have a choice, or perhaps because the world hasn’t forced them to make a choice.)
How perverse; how counterproductive.
With one hand, American and other Western officials slap sanctions on the Party of God; with the other hand, they embrace its front men on issues great and small. By creating an incentive structure that encourages Amal and others to continue operating as front men and middle men for Hezbollah, these officials enable Hezbollah to marginalize would-be moderates across Lebanon—including those in the Lebanese Shiite community and, incidentally, Amal itself.
Of course, American and Lebanese officials have to handle some broader business and must continue their dialogue in an existing environment shaped by Hezbollah’s guns and everyone’s money. Lebanese bankers need access to a global financial system that essentially runs all transactions denominated in U.S. dollars through New York, but they—the people that run “financial institutions” subject to sanctions—live in Beirut, where Hezbollah uses violence and the threat of violence to protect its political, commercial, and strategic interests. American officials, meanwhile, are trying to—and must continue trying to—adopt and enforce Hezbollah-related sanctions while minimizing harm to Beirut’s banks and commercial enterprises in Lebanon and throughout Lebanese diaspora.
But officials in Washington and elsewhere need not—and thus should not—engage with Hezbollah’s platoon of political front men: politicians that help Hezbollah circumvent, undermine, and infiltrate the Lebanese state while marginalizing moderates and would-be American allies in Beirut and beyond. Others are technically qualified and institutionally empowered to represent Lebanon as it cooperates with American and international efforts to combat money laundering and terrorist financing: for instance, Lebanese Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh. Moreover, the Lebanese central bank and Lebanese banks—acting individually and through the Association of Banks in Lebanon—have secured legal representatives and lobbyists to represent them in U.S. courts, Washington, and elsewhere. (In the past, for instance, they’ve worked with American legislators and officials on specific pieces of legislation to tailor sanctions appropriately.)
Let Hezbollah and its shysters speak for themselves. Recognize that others speak, or can speak, for Lebanon.
**Based in Beirut and London, Anthony Elghossain is a legal advisor to non-governmental organizations and a writer for NOW News. He tweets @aelghossain