The no-win zone: an after-action report from Lebanon.

• Author: Byman, Daniel

LEBANON HELD the attention of the world for weeks after a successful Hizballah kidnapping operation on July 12, 2006, led Israel to pummel the country in a sustained air campaign and a limited ground offensive. Almost all observers agreed the clash had enormous implications--former House Speaker Newt Gingrich even claimed the conflict was "World War HI." But unlike other wars, the winners and losers were not clear when the dust settled.

Pundits were quick to proclaim Hizballah the winner, but Hizballah's leader Hassan Nasrallah openly admitted that the raid was a strategic mistake. Other analysts point to Israel's degradation of Hizballah's long-range missile capabilities, but Israelis take small comfort in this, knowing their own performance was flawed both militarily and politically. Lebanon itself suffered horribly, and though its fledgling democratic government survived and became a major player in the diplomacy that led to the ending of the conflict, militarily it was forced to stand by helplessly during the crisis.

Nor do other parties come off looking good. The United States emerged looking both cruel and ineffective in Muslim eyes. European states engaged in typical hand-waving during the war and in even more typical bickering over who would do what in a post-clash peacekeeping operation, even though this at best looks like a fig leaf. Iran and Syria, Hizballah's patrons, did better, but even they may eventually find the results a mixed blessing.

BEFORE WE can assess the results of the war, it is important to be clear on several points. Reports that Iran prodded Hizballah to attack to divert attention from the Iranian nuclear program seem to be false: The dispute over the Iranian program has been going on for years with no end in sight, and Hizballah had tried other operations in the past as well.

Similarly, the claim that this conflict was a proxy war initiated by Iran to test whether a foe like the United States (using Israel as the stand-in) could be defeated by an opponent that would fight hard and be willing to take casualties ignores the fact that far more important in Tehran's calculations are the successes that various fighters in Iraq have had against the United States. Iran did not need to launch a war in Lebanon for a reminder that Washington is vulnerable to terrorists and guerrillas.

Finally, there should be no mistake that Hizballah suffered serious losses. Though exact figures are hard to come by, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claim to have killed about 500 of Hizballah's most trained fighters. Many of those who remain were at least pushed--more or less--out of the area south of the Litani, at least temporarily. Air strikes and infantry sweeps probably eliminated about half of the longer-range rockets that were not expended, as well as a large number of launchers. Hizballah's elaborate infrastructure in south Lebanon was disrupted, and many of its facilities in the Beirut suburbs were razed. By the time Hizballah was pushing for a cease-fire, which winners do not normally do, its fighters were trapped in a box between the Israeli border, a blockaded coast, blown bridges and roads leading north, and a large IDF force in Marjayoun, poised to march up the Beka to the east. Both Hassan Nasrallah and Mahmoud Koumati, the second in command of Hizballah's political arm, have told interviewers that Hizballah was completely surprised by the ferocity of Israel's response to the raid. Nasrallah, in a rare confessional moment, claimed that if he had known the Israelis were going to react so violently, he would not have ordered the kidnapping.

ALTHOUGH THERE is a dispute over whether Hizballah or Israel came out ahead, it is clear that Lebanon--both its people and its government--lost. The Lebanese government suffered the ultimate indignity for any regime: It was ignored. Once again it is clear to all factions in Lebanon that their government cannot protect them from foreign threats or strong domestic groups like Hizballah. In the early 1970s, the impotence of the Lebanese government in the face of Israeli-Palestinian clashes in Lebanon was a major precipitant of the Lebanese civil war. Convinced (correctly) that their government could not protect them, all of Lebanon's communal factions began to arm and organize to defend themselves, a spiral that led to civil war. We may see a return to this logic in postwar Lebanon.

The war also hurt the "March 14" alliance of anti-Syrian leaders who after the "Cedar Revolution" have schemed against Damascus and its Lebanese allies like Hizballah in order to re-establish the independence of the state. This position was always uneasy. The anti-Syrian foes were divided amongst themselves, and they recognized that they could not govern Lebanon without incorporating proSyrian factions, particularly Hizballah, into the government. One of Hizballah's successes is that it painted the anti-Syrian voices as pro-Israeli; the charges of Hizballah's critics that Hizballah precipitated the war and that it did so at Syria's behest were quickly drowned out by cries of anger as the war went on. Pro-Syrian politicians, long on the defensive, are now emboldened.

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