In the activist, policy, and academic worlds, there’s a significant amount of attention paid to the demise of the welfare state or even welfare protections. This is usually tied into neoliberal policies and capitalist/free market economics. The general fear, or analysis, is summed up in the familiar “race to the bottom” phrase-cum-cliche.

The above-mentioned worlds often focus on how to reverse this race, turning it into a climb up the ladder of benefits. If I could remember better, I would even be able to specifically cite interesting academic and theoretical works on how federal systems foster the possibility for this climb–most of which focuses on the benefits of economies of scale and how, in some cases, companies may want increased regulation to make production more efficient (Note: See the slippage/connection between regulation and welfare programs?).

Jump, as we all do–either by force or our own volition–to terrorism. Much of the rhetoric surrounding terrorism is that it breeds in failed states. My interpretation is that terrorism only resides in failed states, but breeds in areas where the social infrastructure is controlled or strongly influenced by a terrorist-related organization (e.g., a group itself or socio-cultural organization with similar ideological positions as terrorist groups or movements) and where that infrastructure’s benefits are significant.

An example of this is Hezbollah, which provides abundant welfare protections and benefits–some of which are needed (e.g., food, clothing, shelter) and others that are desired (e.g., education, jobs, training). These benefits create not only a favorable attitude toward Hizbollah, but also (1) loyalty and (2) the machinery to ensure favorable messages (i.e., they control the means of cultural reproduction).

In a recent The New York Times article (text available after the jump), one learns that hours after the cease fire went into effect, Hezbollah was clearing roads from dubris making returns, aid delivery, and medical care possible. A day or so later, Hizballah is already promising $10,000 for families whose homes were damaged by Israel. The money is to cover one year’s worth of rent, clothing, and furniture.

Thus, Hezbollah’s provisioning of basic necessities (both in terms of the individual, as in clothing, and in society, clearning and fixing infrastructure) is the (re)building of an effective (vis-a-vis citizen support) welfare state.

The lesson here is that providing benefits/protections, both in the domestic and world arenas, could be an important counterterrorism (i.e., pro-US) move. Recognizing this could have significant impact in the longer-term on both the war on terror and general attitudes toward the US/West. Oh, it’s also the right thing to do.

The New York Times

August 16, 2006
The Overview
Hezbollah Leads Work to Rebuild, Gaining Stature
By JOHN KIFNER

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 15 — As stunned Lebanese returned Tuesday over broken roads to shattered apartments in the south, it increasingly seemed that the beneficiary of the destruction was most likely to be Hezbollah.

A major reason — in addition to its hard-won reputation as the only Arab force that fought Israel to a standstill — is that it is already dominating the efforts to rebuild with a torrent of money from oil-rich Iran.

Nehme Y. Tohme, a member of Parliament from the anti-Syrian reform bloc and the country’s minister for the displaced, said he had been told by Hezbollah officials that when the shooting stopped, Iran would provide Hezbollah with an “unlimited budget” for reconstruction.

In his victory speech on Monday night, Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, offered money for “decent and suitable furniture” and a year’s rent on a house to any Lebanese who lost his home in the month-long war.

“Completing the victory,” he said, “can come with reconstruction.”

On Tuesday, Israel began to pull many of its reserve troops out of southern Lebanon, and its military chief of staff said all of the soldiers could be back across the border within 10 days. Lebanese soldiers are expected to begin moving in a couple of days, supported by the first of 15,000 foreign troops.

While the Israelis began their withdrawal, hundreds of Hezbollah members spread over dozens of villages across southern Lebanon began cleaning, organizing and surveying damage. Men on bulldozers were busy cutting lanes through giant piles of rubble. Roads blocked with the remnants of buildings are now, just a day after a cease-fire began, fully passable.

In Sreifa, a Hezbollah official said the group would offer an initial $10,000 to residents to help pay for the year of rent, to buy new furniture and to help feed families.

In Taibe, a town of fighting so heavy that large chunks were missing from walls and buildings where they had been sprayed with bullets, the Audi family stood with two Hezbollah volunteers, looking woefully at their windowless, bullet- and shrapnel-torn house.

In Bint Jbail, Hezbollah ambulances — large, new cars with flashing lights on the top — ferried bodies of fighters to graves out of mountains of rubble.

Hezbollah’s reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network — as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well — was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage.

“Hezbollah’s strength,” said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese American University here, who has written extensively about the organization, in large part derives from “the gross vacuum left by the state.”

Hezbollah was not, she said, a state within a state, but rather “a state within a nonstate, actually.”

Sheik Nasrallah said in his speech that “the brothers in the towns and villages will turn to those whose homes are badly damaged and help rebuild them.

“Today is the day to keep up our promises,” he said. “All our brothers will be in your service starting tomorrow.”

Some southern towns were so damaged that on Tuesday residents had not yet begun to return. A fighter for the Amal movement, another Shiite militia group, said he had been told that Hezbollah members would begin to catalog damages in his town, Kafr Kila, on the Israeli border.

Hezbollah men also traveled door to door checking on residents and asking them what help they needed.

Although Hezbollah is a Shiite organization, Sheik Nasrallah’s message resounded even with a Sunni Muslim, Ghaleb Jazi, 40, who works at the oil storage plant at Jiyeh, 15 miles south of Beirut. It was bombed by the Israelis and spewed pollution northward into the Mediterranean.

“The government may do some work on bridges and roads, but when it comes to rebuilding houses, Hezbollah will have a big role to play,” he said. “Nasrallah said yesterday he would rebuild, and he will come through.”

Sheik Nasrallah’s speech was interpreted by some as a kind of watershed in Lebanese politics, establishing his group on an equal footing with the official government.

“It was a coup d’état,” said Jad al-Akjaoui, a political analyst aligned with the democratic reform bloc. He was among the organizers of the anti-Syrian demonstrations after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri two years ago that led to international pressure to rid Lebanon of 15 years of Syrian control.

Rami G. Khouri, a columnist for The Daily Star in Beirut, wrote that Sheik Nasrallah “seemed to take on the veneer of a national leader rather than the head of one group in Lebanon’s rich mosaic of political parties.”

“In tone and content, his remarks seemed more like those of a president or a prime minister should be making while addressing the nation after a terrible month of destruction and human suffering,” Mr. Khouri wrote. “His prominence is one of the important political repercussions of this war.”

Defense Minister Elias Murr said Tuesday that the government would not seek to disarm Hezbollah.

“The army is not going to the south to strip the Hezbollah of its weapons and do the work that Israel did not,” he said, showing just how difficult reining in the militia will most likely be in the coming weeks and months. He added that “the resistance,” meaning Hezbollah, had been cooperating with the government and there was no need to confront it.

Sheik Nasrallah sounded much like a governor responding to a disaster when he said, “So far, the initial count available to us on completely demolished houses exceeds 15,000 residential units.

“We cannot of course wait for the government and its heavy vehicles and machinery because they could be a while,” he said. He also cautioned, “No one should raise prices due to a surge in demand.”

Support for Hezbollah was likely to become stronger, Professor Saad-Ghorayeb said, because of the weakness of the central government.

“Hezbollah has two pillars of support,” she said, “the resistance and the social services. What this war has illustrated is that it is best at both.

Referring to Shiek Nasrallah, she said: “He tells the people, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to protect you. And we’re going to reconstruct. This has happened before. We will deliver.’ ”

Hassan M. Fattah contributed reporting from Sreifa, Lebanon, for this article, Sabrina Tavernise from Taibe and Robert F. Worth from Jiyeh.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company