Anthropology News • October 2006

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Related to its series on anthropology and human rights, AN invited comment from anthropologists on their role in the Middle East. Committee for Human Rights members have provided a productive framework for discussion below, followed by a contribution from Lara Deeb commenting on the public value of anthropology in combating ignorance about groups like “Hizbullah,” and notes from the fi eld from Tamar Katriel, who teaches at the University of Haifa.

A N T H R O P O L O G I S T S A N D T H E M I D D L E E A S T

I N F O C U S

here refers only to armed fight-ers, meaning that the technologi-cally-advanced Israeli military was either consistently mistaken in its efforts to target armed combatants, or it was targeting something else. The latter is the conclusion drawn by the AI report, noting Israel’s “deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure.”

“Hizbullah Strongholds” Are Civilian CommunitiesAnother problem with the Israeli claims is the assumption that Hizbullah is separable from civil-ian life in the fi rst place. Since its origins as a revolutionary Islam-inspired militia fi ghting the 1982 Israeli invasion, Hizbullah has de-veloped into a legitimate political party with 14 parliamentary seats and a cabinet post. (On Hizbullah, see my primer at www.merip.org and Augustus Richard Norton’s publications). Hizbullah also runs one of the most effi cient and pro-fessional social welfare networks in Lebanon, which began recon-struction work the day the cease-fi re went into effect.

“Hizbullah strongholds” are plac-es where people live and work. I have done field research since the late 1990s in one such area, the southern suburbs of Beirut, referred to as “al-Dahiyya” (“the suburb”). This “Hizbullah stronghold” is in fact a vibrant conglomeration of urban neighborhoods where resi-dents have varying political perspec-tives, religious beliefs and identities, and lifestyles. Elaborate homes exist alongside run-down buildings, as do shops selling European fash-ions alongside those selling Islamic dress, all interspersed with Internet cafés, vegetable stands, salons, char-ity organization offices and corner markets. One of the buildings in the now entirely destroyed “Hizbullah security zone” contained the party’s media relations office, where report-ers and researchers such as myself were granted interviews. That office was on the second floor of a block that included apartments, stores selling everything from spices to

August documented US advance collusion with the plan, also evi-dent in the stalling of a cease-fi re and the rush-shipment of cluster bombs to Israel after the attack began.

The Dubious Goal of “Removal”This goal of “removing” Hizbullah, fi rst from Lebanon, then—as Israeli hopes that the populace would fracture and turn against Hizbullah were shattered—from the south of the country, is dangerously akin to depopulation. It resulted in the deaths of at least 1,300 Lebanese, mainly civilians. Thousands were wounded, and nearly a million displaced from their homes—one-quarter of Lebanon’s population. In several cases, civilians warned by Israeli leafl ets or automated tele-

phone messages to leave their vil-lages were killed as their vehicles were targeted shortly thereafter. En-tire villages in the south have been fl attened, as have whole neighbor-hoods in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Estimates of infrastructural damage range from $3–8 billion, and humanitarian and environ-mental crises loom, not least due to unexploded “bomblets” from US manufactured cluster munitions that blanket areas of the south.

Reports issued in August by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch counter Israeli claims that Hizbullah was hiding among civilians, calling that assertion “simply not credible,” as stated by AI, based on investigations and analysis of attack patterns and sites that found no evidence of Hizbullah’s presence. “Hizbullah”

LARA DEEB

UC IRVINE

T his summer Israeli warplanes battered so-called “Hizbullah strongholds,” unleash-

ing an aerial assault on Lebanon on a scale unseen since the 1982 Is-raeli invasion of the country. Sup-posedly begun to free two soldiers captured by Hizbullah, this attack was so antithetical to the “rules of the game” that have governed the Lebanon-Israel confl ict since 1996 that it cast immediate doubt on this purported goal. Indeed, Isra-el’s original rhetoric gave way to a new goal: Hizbullah’s “removal.” Soon after, it emerged that this offensive had been planned for at least a year. Seymour Hersh’s well-circulated New Yorker article in

By Kamran Ali and Susan Slyomovics (AAA Committee for Human Rights)

The focus of anthropology is more often than not on individuals and groups rather than states, while international legal norms, geopolitical concerns and actors usually dictate the study of key human rights issues. The study of nationalisms, state actors, large scale migrations, refugee populations, wars, conflict and sectarian strife within the framework of global and local relationships has, however, shaped anthropology’s more recent attention to studying communities and people at risk in different parts of the globe.

Within this broader context, what insights do anthropology and anthropologists bring to the larger transnational and international conflicts of the Middle East? With anthropology’s long standing claims of cultural and heritage preservation, our solidarity with varied cultures and people on the ground, how do anthropologists engage with issues of national self-determi-nation, peaceful co-existence, religious and cultural difference, human rights and the conduct of war, including the social and economic impact on the common person in the region? What methodological, thematic, comparative and theoretical input can anthropologists offer to understand the ongoing tensions in the region outside dominant paradigms of “terrorism” and frameworks that pit Islam against the West?

For American anthropologists, given the increasing inclination by the US and its allies to use force in the Middle East (Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, potential threat to Iran), what does it mean to conduct research in the region during war and conflict? Similarly, with deteriorating personal security in some places and escalating popular mistrust of Western researchers in the entire region, would it be possible to conduct future investigations (cultural, archeological, linguistic) in the area? How would the possibility of diminished research affect our long-term understanding of Middle Eastern and Muslim societies in general? And what about anthropologists and human rights workers from the region, many American-trained and educated, whether living in the West or in their home areas?

Historically, how were social scientists from the West implicated in colonialist or neo-colonialist ethnographic research projects in the Middle East and what are the ways in which anthropology’s complicated past continues to shape our current research questions and choice of terrain? Or, can we provide, due to our long term engagement as scholars of the region and its people, other perspectives and also be a conduit for voices and viewpoints from the area that are not often heard in our own media?

Inviting Dialogue on Anthropologists' Roles in the Middle East

“Hizbullah Strongholds” and Civilian Life