Though different in method, the Arab world's contemporary rebels share common ground with legends of the past, writes Abdel-Moneim Said* Hassan Nasrallah impressed me greatly the one and only time I met him, in February 2000. He represented a new brand of Arab revolutionary, a definite change from the long and tedious run of pan-Arabists and Nasserists. At the time, I was a member of an Al-Ahram journalists' delegation on a tour of various Middle Eastern countries. We had let it be known that during our Lebanese stop we would like to meet the Hizbullah leader and, according to Talal Suleiman, editor-in-chief of As-Safir, the desire was mutual. That interview, which appeared in the press soon afterwards, has remained permanently etched in my memory and has mingled with and helped shape my thoughts and impressions from reading and watching the many interviews and television appearances Nasrallah has had since then, especially following the eruption of the current Lebanese crisis. In general, Arab politicians fall into one of two categories. The first is made up of those who accept the local, regional or international rules of the game and existing balances of power. They see themselves as players whose task it is to further the interests of their people and themselves in accordance with established norms. In general, they are averse to the use of arms and have little faith in the masses. They also hate surprises. The other category consists of revolutionary leaders. Whether sincere in their beliefs or not, they reject the rules of the game and the given balances of power and do their utmost to sabotage these and turn them upside-down. They place great faith in military action and the role of the masses in shaping history, and they believe that the shocks and jolts of revolution provide the jump-starts that drive history forward by qualitative leaps and bounds. The Arab world has known three generations of revolutionary leaders over the past century. During the early 20th century, there appeared the first luminaries, such as Saad Zaghloul, Alal Al-Fasi, Habib Bourguiba, Shukry Al-Kuwatli, Abdel-Aziz Al-Saud. These are the leaders who steered the great popular uprisings that propelled their countries to independence and sovereign statehood, after having overridden those politicians who not only bowed to the rules of the game but who saw revolution as an aberration from the natural course of evolution through which a nation had to pass in order to progress. To those familiar with Egyptian history the contrast between Saad Zaghloul and Mustafa Al-Nahhas, on the one hand, and Adli Yakin and Ismail Sidqi epitomises the division between the two types of leaderships. Still, the dividing line did not form an impenetrable barrier. That one person could cite the rallying cry, "Saad's revolutionary leadership under occupation is preferable to Yakin's kowtowing under independence," and another could cite this as evidence that the people were not yet mature enough for independence suggested a certain fuzziness in the dividing line. In all events, with the emergence of the state and its governing institutions, the revolutionary and the statesman could respectfully acknowledge the importance of the role played by each, The second generation stormed onto the stage on horseback or on the backs of tanks following the 20th century's midway point. This was the era of officers' coups and armed rebellions, of vocabulary borrowed from the Bolshevik, Maoist, Cuban and Vietnamese lexicons, of impassioned oratory and rhetorical bombast. Perhaps Gamal Abdel Nasser was the quintessential revolutionary of the era and the most famous. But he was also the harbinger of many to come: Abdel Salam Aref, Hafez Al-Assad, Saddam Hussein, Abdallah Al-Salal, Michel Aflaq, Yasser Arafat, Ben Bella, Hawari Boumediene and, last but not least, Muammar Gaddafi, who attempted to internationalise his brand of national revolution. In general, if the first generation of Arab revolutionaries was national in their horizon, the second was supranational, blending a call for pan-Arab unity with the campaign to liberate Palestine. In a sense, the second generation's revolution was a rebellion against the previous generation, which it held responsible for the loss of Palestine and the fragmentation of the Arab nation. With the last quarter of the 20th century, the second generation began to die out, either by natural causes or by other coups for the most part succeeded by "realist" leaderships who essentially held that revolution, such as that which had created the circumstances that led to their rise to power, was not the wisest policy. Still, the door remained open to a new generation of revolutionaries who began to appear in the 1990s, brandishing the banners of Islam and the Muslim nation extending from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Foremost among these was Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. However, he stood in a long line that included Khaled Meshal, Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Essam Aryan and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These figures varied considerably in the horizons of their revolutionary visions, from the domestic, to the regional to the global. They also adopted markedly different means -- from participating in elections, protest demonstrations and mass movements to popular liberation wars, guerrilla warfare and even terrorism -- in order to achieve their ultimate aims. But as seemingly diverse as they appear in means and method, they unite in their belief that Islam is the prime impetus of their revolution. I will never forget the answer Nasrallah gave me when, six years ago, I asked him why he had included the name of God as part of the name of his political party, Hizbullah. Surely, I thought, it is inappropriate to drag the name of God, the Triumphant and Victorious, into an electoral competition in which the party that associates itself with His name stands a chance of losing. Nasrallah responded that the aim of the members of his party was "to die" (the use of the term martyrdom came at a later stage) and that neither Lebanon nor the Arab nation was sufficient cause to make this supreme sacrifice, which only the service of God could command. Another factor that the third generation has in common is their belief in the Iranian revolution as the cornerstone of the contemporary Islamic revolution. Despite the Shia character of Iran's Islamic revolutionary regime, Osama Bin Laden had no objection to letting Iran fill the second rank of Al-Qaeda leaders. Nor did Khaled Meshal have a problem with befriending Hassan Nasrallah in Tehran. The three generations of revolutionaries differ in many matters, most of which determined by the varying conditions and requirements of their times and circumstances. However, they have one major characteristic in common: they all throw down the gauntlet to the West, be it the West of direct colonialism, the West of indirect hegemony or the West at the centre of rampant globalisation. In a sense, their confrontation, unlike that of other revolutionary leaders of the world, always tended to bear a stamp of the clash over the rights of existence, as opposed to the boundaries of vying claims and interests. In all cases, the cause -- be it nationalist, pan-Arab or Islamist -- entirely overshadowed the brass tacks of building the state and its autonomous sources of strength. Herein, perhaps, resides the Achilles heel of all Arab revolutionary movements and their revolutionary leaders. In all events, their revolutions are carried on fragile backs, short on education, imagination and economic and military ability. Little wonder, then, that catchwords, slogans and other revolutionary rhetorical garrulity, across the pages of the national press, the airwaves of Nasserist Arab broadcasts and the screens of Al-Jazeera and Lebanon's Al-Manar, formed the arenas of their revolutions and their most salient trait. Hassan Nasrallah may be one of the calmest and least verbose of them all, but he differs little in essence, both in motive and impact. * The writer is director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
