The ruling Baath Party in Syria and Hezbollah (“the Party of God”), which holds sway in Lebanon, have proven that they were made of the same ideological stuff, despite the apparent difference in form between the two in terms of doctrine. Indeed, the former is a nationalist and supposedly “secular” party, while the latter is religious and committed to the principle of the Iranian Velayat-e-Faqih (“Guardianship of the Jurist”). Yet they are similar in that they each defend the influence of a sect, and in that they both use the same approach to determine their image and their relationship with the political and social constituents that surround them, stressing their own internal “purity” and laying the blame for any problem they face on foreign conspirators who never tire of conspiring. In this manner, the Baathist regime in Damascus continues to accuse others, most prominently the European Union in particular and the West in general, of seeking to “sow strife and chaos” in Syria, because of their stances against the repression of protesters that is taking place and their support for movements calling for change. And yesterday, Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem added the Al-Qaeda organization to the list of those “conspiring” against his country, in a strange mix of contradictions and an insistence on refusing to recognize the existence of a peaceful and pluralistic Syrian opposition. Concerning Hezbollah, the latest leaks, indicating that a group of its own members, some of them in leadership positions, were revealed to have been dealing with Israel, may be mere media fabrications, as one Lebanese political party moved to say, aimed at preparing for the indictment over the Hariri assassination being issued and at any accusation that might be leveled at Hezbollah being pinned on Israel itself. Yet those leaks, which were not denied by Hezbollah, represent at the same time a blatant turnaround from the assertion reiterated many times by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah that his party was impossible to breach, while accusing those opposed to Syria's influence in Lebanon of turning Israel into a “friend” when making an enemy of Damascus, describing them as an “environment that embraces” foreign agents, and pointing in one of his press conferences to the fact that even when his own son joined the Resistance, he was forced to answer fifty pages of questions and was not helped by the fact that he was the son of the Secretary-General “because the party does not tolerate any suspicion”. And although this is not the first time foreign agents have been caught within Hezbollah's organizational structure, as information has circulated in the past of other spies being arrested, this time it confirms the presence of weaknesses which are only natural within any organization, and which Hezbollah's leadership had always tried to conceal by stressing the image of iron-fisted discipline and terrifying displays of strength that remove their human features from party members and make them closer to “robots” that are unaffected, unafraid and unbending, so as to be feared by the party's civilian and military “enemies” alike. The black outfits worn by fighters also enter into this theatrical production to increase their terrifying aspect. It is that same principle that the Baath Party adopts in putting itself forward by raising slogans such as “pride”, “dignity”, “honor” and other synonyms that come very close to Fascism, as they make it seem as if those who oppose its rule do not have those attributes, which are “restricted” to Baath Party members. This type of behavior is confirmed by the security aspect that dominates membership in the party, where all members undergo military training which has today been revealed to be the breeding ground for the “Shabbiha” (state-sponsored thugs). Regimes of tyranny and terror are no longer able to go on in the age of globalization and universal openness, no matter how skillful they might be at the art of repression and harassment, and no political party that turns to the absolute power of weapons to engage in dialogue with those who oppose it will be able to rule a country, no matter how much it hides behind slogans and “designations” only it finds acceptable, and none of the two will find any use in exchanging “expertise” in this respect.
