Lebanon 2006: Proxy war returns?

On the 12th July 2006, Hezbollah fighters based in Lebanon attacked two Israeli military vehicles patrolling the Israeli Lebanon border, killing three and capturing two. The resulting conflict killed in excess of 1000 civilians, turning southern Lebanon into one large pile of rubble and reigniting the political turbulence that many hoped had left with the Syrians. Both the US and UK were criticised during and after the conflict for not demanding that Israel pursue a ceasefire, and indeed for supplying Israel with the means to continue. Israel itself was condemned for tactics which were seen as unnecessarily dangerous for civilians (including the widespread use of cluster munitions in heavily populated areas). A full analysis of the ethical or unethical actions of the involved parties could (and most probably will) fill several books. What is of interest and concern to me, for the purposes of this post, is that this conflict may have been the first true proxy war since the fall of the Berlin wall.

During and after the conflict, Israel and its Western allies went to great lengths to expose the links between their regional enemies Iran and Syria, and their immediate enemy Hezbollah. Rockets fired by Hezbollah from Southern Lebanon into Israel (some reaching as far south as Haifa) were repeatedly identified as supplied by their regional foes. Hezbollah, for their part, condemned Israel's western backers in 'crimes' against the civilians of Southern Lebanon. Interestingly, the US and UK did not seek to distance themselves from the actions of Israel, and Iran and Syria did not make much effort to deny links between themselves and Hezbollah. Both the US-UK and Iran-Syria seemed essentially happy to be associated with the fight for Southern Lebanon, effectively making the conflict as much a proxy war as Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan (after the Soviet invasion) and the countless wars in Africa and South America which engaged the Cold War powers.

Proxy war, for me, is an activity of particular moral cowardice. For a government to be committed to a conflict to the extent that they believe that it is worth the deaths of not only combatants, but innocent civilians, but to not actually commit the lives of any of its own citizens is grotesquely immoral. Also, for a government, as with the UK government, to refuse to join widespread condemnation of the actions of an ally, whilst also stopping short of openly defending that allies actions, adds another layer of cowardice. Too often governments (both democratic and autocratic, liberal and oppressive) consider conflicts in distant lands in terms of political manoeuvring and realist strategising, all too easily forgetting that under all widely excepted ethical and moral codes (religious or otherwise) lives of all civilians sit on an equal plane. Proxy war allows decision makers to forget that a child in the Middle East feels fear and pain in just the same way as one in the West. The return of proxy war should be opposed by all humans of conscience, for any repeat will shame us all.