‘We agree on liberation of land and nation’

Following are excerpts from an interview by Workers World with Dr. Mufid Kuteish, member of the Political Bureau and head of the Department of International Relations for the Lebanese Communist Party, given during a fact-finding delegation to Lebanon on Sept. 12.

The Bush administration is in a hurry to remove Hezbollah’s armaments. Six months ago Condoleezza Rice came to Lebanon and advertised that the patience of the U.S. has run out, and that America will effectuate this its own way. So it was clear to all of us, including Hezbollah, that Israel would do this war.

They imagined that Israel in a week or two would completely finish Hezbollah. The opposite happened; therefore, the opinion of people in Lebanon and the entire world began to change.

As a communist party, we see Hezbollah as a very important national resistance. It is trying to liberate the occupied land, liberate the Lebanese political prisoners in Israel, and defend Lebanese borders, because the Lebanese government is completely unable to take care of these matters.

We as a party from the very beginning aided Hezbollah in their resistance. From the beginning of the war we declared a mobilization in the party in support of Hezbollah, and we took the responsibility of political action to explain to the parties and to the people outside the truth of the matter inside Lebanon. Our comrades aided in the defense of areas in the South, and we lost 10 martyrs and four close friends. Internally we conducted aid operations to the refugees and we took the responsibility of operating inside Lebanon politically to preserve Lebanese unity in the face of the enemy.

There is much talk about Hezbollah’s armaments—is it realistic that there remains an armed party in Lebanon? At present the answer is very simple. There ought to be a nation that all participate in, and that takes responsibility for defending the country. That’s what Hezbollah says, and that’s what we say, and that’s what all thinking people say in this country. But the fact is that this nation does not exist. The only solution is that we build this nation, that we change the politics that we have at present—the sect-oriented regime in Lebanon.

There was a project of Arab national liberation but it failed. These movements met a huge attack from the imperialists. The Marxists have had to confront a great tragedy with the loss of the Soviet Union. As a result, in this area the religious parties have taken power, and took on the same attitudes.

Hezbollah has taken on the liberation of the land and the nation. Even though we as a party had a confrontation with Hezbollah in the 1980s, Hezbollah has developed its methods in a way that has been very clear and speaks our language. Therefore we and Hezbollah are in total agreement about things in this period of time. That doesn’t mean that our disagreements have ended, and therefore we work hard to bring close to us and empower the positive side of Hezbollah.

We had warned that if Hezbollah did not win, there would be a great tragedy in the land, because if Hezbollah were defeated then the attitude and reality of resistance would have been defeated.