Article(print) World Affairs Online2005

Know thy enemy: Hizbullah, "terrorism" and the politics of perception

In: Third world quarterly, Volume 26, Issue 1, p. 173-198

Harb, Mona; Leenders, Reinoud

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Abstract

The labelling career of the Lebanese armed group and political party Hizbullah is an interesting case with which to investigate the epistemological consequences of the politics of naming. Having found itself since its inception in the mid-1980s on the receiving end of mainly US and Israeli policy makers' and analysts' scorn for being an archetypical terrorist organisation, Hizbullah has been surprisingly successful in achieving its stated aims and in enduring the verbal and military onslaught against it. Although it is not the intention here to reduce explanations for Hizbullah's durability to discursive politics, this article suggests that both the labelling of Hizbullah as terrorist and, conversely, its identification as a "lebanonised" political force that is about to make its conversion into an unarmed political party are misleading and incapable of grasping this organisation's complexities. (InWent/GIGA)

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