War, Resistance, and “Combatant Identity:” Hezbollah’s Political Identity and the Legacy of Conflict

A key issue in analyzing how armed conflict shapes postwar politics pertains to the question of how rebel groups frame their wartime “combatant identity” in the context of their postwar political activism. As armed political organizations active in the midst of conflict, rebel groups’ identities often encompass a “combatant identity” and and what Canetti et al. have described as an “ethos of conflict,” centered on the legitimacy of the use of force, the rightfulness of the rebels’ goals and the defensive nature of their struggle, along with a narrative of victimization and patriotism. How does this identity crystallized in wartime shape political behavior in the aftermath of hostilities or after a political settlement has been reached? How is this combatant identity embedded, reframed and adapted to fit into a broader postwar political narrative? The article explores this question by analyzing the case of Hezbollah’s political and militant identity in the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war; underlying the group’s political, military and social orientation and contextualizing it as operating in a liminal, no-war, no-peace context defined by both the end of the internal civil war and the continuation of the open conflict with Israel. Hezbollah offers an interesting case to examine the resilience of the combatant framework during and in the aftermath of conflict. The article traces the evolution of Hezbollah’s combatant identity from the Lebanese civil war, through its post-agreement political transition, until the group’s involvement in the Syrian conflict. In doing so, it underlines how the group’s combatant identity remained resilient while also being fungible, allowing Hezbollah to preserve core ideological beliefs while shifting its discourse based on political expediency.