If the relationship between Hezbollah and the clans of the Bekaa has not already effectively come to an end, it is certainly entering a different phase \u2014 and may now be permanently changing in nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first reason lies in the fundamental difference between Hezbollah\u2019s relationship with its southern constituency and its relationship with the tribal and clan-based communities of the Bekaa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the South, much of the loyalty was built around ideology, resistance, religious discourse, and Israel\u2019s presence along the border as a source of threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Bekaa, the dynamic was more transactional. To understand the nature of that relationship, we have to look at how it evolved through several key turning points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the early 1980s, Hezbollah established itself in the Bekaa.<\/strong> The region became one of the party\u2019s original strongholds, but the clans remained powerful, autonomous, and resistant to being fully absorbed into party structures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the 1990s<\/strong>, Hezbollah gradually learned that it could not simply subjugate the clans. Instead, it developed a pragmatic coexistence based on mutual interests, political protection, mediation, services, and access to influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then came the \u201cRevolution of the Hungry\u201d in 1997<\/strong>. Sobhi Tufaili, one of Hezbollah\u2019s founders and a former secretary-general who had by then broken with the party, mobilized against poverty, unemployment, and chronic state neglect in the Bekaa. His movement exposed the limits of Hezbollah\u2019s ideological appeal in a region where material grievances remained central. It threatened not only the state but Hezbollah itself, as Tufaili retained significant support within the party\u2019s original Shiite heartland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In January 1998<\/strong>, that challenge turned violent. Tufaili\u2019s supporters clashed with the Lebanese Army after occupying a Hezbollah-controlled religious school in the Bekaa, leaving former MP Khodr Tlais and soldiers dead. The episode demonstrated how far Hezbollah still was from exercising uncontested authority over its own original stronghold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000<\/strong>, and Hezbollah\u2019s claimed role in the liberation of the South, restored and significantly strengthened its standing in the Bekaa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then came the Sunni-Shia polarization of 2005<\/strong>, following the assassination of Rafik Hariri, Syria\u2019s withdrawal from Lebanon, and the political crisis that followed. Sectarian alignments hardened. Hezbollah increasingly came to represent not only a political ally, but also a form of communal protection for many Shiite communities in the Bekaa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another confrontation with Israel in July 2006<\/strong> produced another major rallying effect around Hezbollah and deepened political identification with the party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By 2011<\/strong>, Hezbollah\u2019s intervention in the Syrian war tied the party even more closely to clan interests along the border. Hezbollah offered protection and cross-border influence; the clans provided local networks, manpower, territorial knowledge, and political support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From then on, smuggling, trade, and family ties across the Syrian border increasingly operated within a political-security environment dominated by Hezbollah. The party provided political and security protection, influence, favorable treatment, and mediation in inter-clan disputes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In turn, the clans offered Hezbollah political allegiance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that alliance came with a cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hezbollah\u2019s dominance helped lock parts of the Bekaa into a parallel political and economic ecosystem increasingly dependent on the party, the border economy, and the Assad regime in Syria. Alignment with Hezbollah also deepened the divide between some Shiite clans and their Sunni counterparts across the border, particularly after Hezbollah intervened militarily against the Syrian uprising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bekaa remained culturally and economically isolated from much of the rest of Lebanon, while parts of its local economy became increasingly dependent on networks connected to Hezbollah and Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The clans also became natural adversaries of the new Syrian authorities because of their alignment with Hezbollah and their support for its intervention against the Syrian revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was the status quo that helped consolidate Hezbollah\u2019s influence over the Bekaa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Until the Assad regime fell in December 2024<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The collapse of Bashar al-Assad\u2019s regime dealt perhaps the most significant blow to this arrangement. With the old Syrian security architecture gone, tighter border controls, stronger Lebanese state activity, financial pressure on Hezbollah, and reduced patronage capacity, many of the practical benefits that sustained the relationship have begun to erode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is also little doubt that Hezbollah is no longer capable of providing what it once did. In fact, its value proposition to the clans may now be turning into a net negative \u2014 particularly as the possibility of Syrian military action in the Bekaa against Hezbollah enters the regional security conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Financial pressure, war, and sanctions have weakened Hezbollah\u2019s ability to sustain networks of patronage and loyalty, while its capacity to protect cross-border criminal networks from both the Syrian authorities and the Lebanese state has diminished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, the Lebanese state is reasserting its presence in the Bekaa. The army is carrying out large-scale raids against drug-manufacturing facilities and smuggling networks, while Hezbollah appears increasingly unable to shield clan figures from accountability. The raid targeting and arresting Nouh Zaiter is one example of that shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another recent incident exposed just how much Hezbollah\u2019s political value proposition in the Bekaa may have declined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For years, Hezbollah used the promise of general amnesty to secure support in the Bekaa. But when the law was finally passed without Hezbollah MPs voting for it<\/strong>, it raised a simple question among its constituents: if this long-awaited demand was achieved without Hezbollah, what is the party still delivering?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But beyond all of this, the nature of the clans themselves has changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Extended families are no longer monolithic blocs that automatically follow a single patriarch, as was more often the case in the 1990s. Within the same clan, there are now different political views, competing interests, and younger generations that do not necessarily consider the position of the family elder binding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hezbollah can therefore no longer secure the loyalty of an entire clan by satisfying one influential figure. It must contend with dozens of different voices, interests, and calculations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And this is where the central paradox emerges:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hezbollah is an ideological party, but the clan is not an ideological constituency.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ideology may preserve loyalty within a community that feels permanently threatened. In a clan-based environment, however, once the material benefit begins to disappear, so too does the assumption that loyalty should continue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We may therefore never see an explicit rupture announced overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, we may witness something potentially more dangerous for Hezbollah: the relationship gradually eroding from within.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the tribal and clan-based communities of the Bekaa, economic interests and family loyalties often come before party allegiance. If these communities begin to see a state capable of providing security, services, protection, and access without demanding political loyalty in return, voters may gradually discover that what they once believed could only be obtained through Hezbollah can, in fact, be provided by the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hezbollah spent decades making itself indispensable to the Bekaa clans without ever fully transforming them into an ideological constituency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, many of the political, economic, security, and cross-border structures that made it indispensable are weakening at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that is how this relationship may ultimately end \u2014 not with a declaration or a dramatic rupture, but when Hezbollah ceases to represent added value for the clans and instead becomes a burden.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If the relationship between Hezbollah and the clans of the Bekaa has not already effectively come to an end, it is certainly entering a different phase \u2014 and may now be permanently changing in nature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[44,121,45,46,47],"class_list":["post-1292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-snap-analysis-en","tag-beirut-en","tag-bekaa","tag-hezbollah-en","tag-israel-en","tag-lebanon-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/polybloglb.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/polybloglb.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/polybloglb.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polybloglb.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polybloglb.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/polybloglb.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1297,"href":"https:\/\/polybloglb.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions\/1297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polybloglb.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/polybloglb.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polybloglb.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polybloglb.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}