The disappearance of Musa al-Sadr's vision

On the anniversary of Imam Musa al-Sadr’s disappearance, it is not enough merely to remember the man who vanished in Libya in 1978. Nearly half a century later, the question is no longer confined to his fate, but extends to the fate of the project he built for Lebanon's Shiites, the South, and Lebanon itself.

His disappearance did not only remove Musa al-Sadr as an individual; over time, it also eclipsed the very concept of resistance that he sought to establish: a resistance born from the Lebanese people's need to defend their land when the state is unable to do so, whose ultimate purpose is to return both the land and the sovereign decision-making authority to the state, not to become a parallel state itself or part of a strategy that transcends Lebanon.

The profound historical irony lies in the fact that Musa al-Sadr, Iranian-born, devoted his political career to “Lebanonizing” the Shiite community and integrating it into the Lebanese state, whereas the trajectory that emerged after the Iranian Islamic Revolution moved in precisely the opposite direction. A major Lebanese military force has since become an integral component of an Iranian network of influence and deterrence stretching from Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq to Yemen.

Musa al-Sadr: Arms as an exception, not a substitute for the state

When al-Sadr founded the Lebanese Resistance Regiments (Afwaj al-Muqawama al-Lubnaniyya – Amal) in 1975, he did not intend to establish a permanent ideological army alongside the Lebanese Armed Forces. He did so because southern Lebanon was exposed and vulnerable. In his thinking, arms were never meant to precede the state; they were an exceptional measure imposed by the state's absence.

He expressed this clearly when he affirmed that the Lebanese Resistance Regiments bore arms against the enemy, not against fellow citizens, that their battlefield was the border, not the cities, and that their sole objective was the homeland. In June 1978, he further declared: "A just state, not weapons, is the solution."

This distinction represents the fundamental philosophical divide between two concepts of resistance. For al-Sadr, resistance was a temporary means of defending the homeland and restoring the state. Once resistance becomes an independent political ideology, however, the continued existence of arms becomes an end in itself, requiring a new function to justify their retention once the previous mission has ended.

This explains al-Sadr's position toward the Palestinian resistance. He was never an opponent of Palestine, but he recognized early on that the justice of the Palestinian cause did not grant its advocates the right to appropriate Lebanese sovereignty. He therefore stated that it was not in the Palestinian resistance's interest to replace the Lebanese authorities and called upon the Lebanese Army to assume its responsibilities in the South.

His reasoning was unequivocal: Palestine is a just cause, but southern Lebanon is neither an alternative homeland nor an open arena from which others may decide when Lebanon goes to war and when it negotiates.

In this sense, al-Sadr sought to end the right of others to control the fate of southern Lebanon. He understood that the gravest danger facing the South was for it to become merely a geographical space used by a non-Lebanese power in pursuit of broader strategic calculations, forcing its inhabitants to bear the cost of wars they did not choose while the Lebanese state remained a spectator on its own borders.

From the unity of the battle to the unity of the fronts

Following al-Sadr's disappearance, the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, a different ideological model emerged with Hezbollah. The divergence from al-Sadr's project did not lie in resisting Israel itself, but in the source of the resistance's legitimacy and the limits of its political function.

Hezbollah was established through an organic relationship with the Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), while the doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih became a foundational element of its ideological structure. Consequently, resistance evolved into part of a vision extending far beyond the borders of the Lebanese state.

Over time, this relationship ceased to be merely one of financial and military support. It became embodied in the concepts of the "Axis of Resistance" and the "Unity of the Fronts." This was reflected first in Hezbollah's military intervention in Syria, and later in additional dimensions of its regional role in Yemen, where it became involved in training and military assistance.

If the criterion is the defense of Lebanese territory, then no Yemeni mission can logically be derived from that principle. If, however, the criterion is membership in a single regional axis, then Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon become interconnected theaters within one overarching conflict, and the very nature of resistance itself is transformed.

How Hezbollah marginalized Musa al-Sadr’s project

The so-called "Support Front" war following 7 October 2023 revealed this transformation in its clearest form.

The opening of the southern front was not triggered by a new Israeli occupation of Lebanese territory, nor by a decision of the Lebanese government. Rather, it resulted from a war that began in Gaza, after which Hezbollah independently decided to involve southern Lebanon in its equation.

Here, one returns to Imam Musa al-Sadr's experience. The man who, during the 1970s, challenged the Palestine Liberation Organization's claim to determine when southern Lebanon should become a battlefield would, decades later, have found the very same principle returning in a more organized and heavily armed form: the fate of southern Lebanon becoming tied to decisions made on another front.

The difference is merely one of slogans. Yesterday it was the "unity of the Palestinian battle"; today it is the "unity of the fronts." Yet the underlying issue of sovereignty remains unchanged.

The implications of this trajectory became even clearer in 2026 through Iran's "support."

Here emerges the true cost of the transition from al-Sadr's project to the Axis project: arguably the worst outcome a resistance movement could reach, a South once again occupied, hundreds of thousands displaced, and the country devastated.

The deeper cost, however, has been borne by Lebanon's Shiite community itself. Musa al-Sadr sought to move the Shiites from the margins of the state to its center, to transform deprivation into a demand for equal citizenship, and to make southern Lebanon a cause shared by all Lebanese.

Instead, the Axis has overturned Imam al-Sadr's vision. Rather than making Shiite strength a gateway to greater partnership within the state, their distinct military status has become a source of political isolation, linking the future of their regions to the destiny of a regional project over whose strategic balances and political settlements they exercise no control.

Where has Musa al-Sadr’s legacy gone?

The equation that "weapons protect the community" therefore becomes an entirely different question:

What if it is the community that continually pays the price for protecting the weapons and their regional function?

A destroyed home in southern Lebanon cannot be rebuilt through triumphant rhetoric. Abandoned land cannot be protected by an excess of military power if its inhabitants are no longer able to live there. A society that loses its economy and its Arab and international relationships must ultimately ask what military strength truly means if its recurring outcome is ever greater isolation.

The real intellectual disagreement, therefore, is not between those who support resistance against Israel and those who oppose it.

Rather, it is between a resistance whose ultimate reference is the homeland, and a resistance that treats the homeland as merely one of its operational arenas.

The first continually asks: What does Lebanon need?

The second asks: What does the Axis need?

In Musa al-Sadr's philosophy, the southerner was to bear arms so as not to lose either his land or his Lebanon. In the philosophy of the "Unity of the Fronts," however, the land, the people of the South, and Lebanon itself have become instruments serving the project of the Iranian clerical regime.

This is the deeper meaning of Musa al-Sadr's disappearance twice.

The first time, the man disappeared in Libya.

The second time, Hezbollah delivered the knockout blow to his ideas: that southern Lebanon should belong to Lebanon, not serve as a platform for others; that the Shiites should be a force within the state, not above it; that Palestine should remain a cause embraced by the Lebanese through their own patriotism rather than replacing it; and that resistance should remain tied to the reason for its existence—not to the interests of a permanent regional order.

To reclaim Musa al-Sadr today is not to display his portrait above an arsenal of missiles, nor to invoke his words in order to justify choices that the essence of his political thought may well have been designed to prevent.

His true legacy begins by reviving the question he asked half a century ago:

Who owns the decision over southern Lebanon?

His answer was unequivocal:

Lebanon, its state, and its people.

Therein lies the cause Musa al-Sadr left behind, and perhaps the essence of his entire political legacy: Lebanon is not a footnote to a cause greater than itself; the South is not a military mailbox; the Shiites are not a reserve army for any foreign state; and a resistance that does not ultimately return authority to the state risks ending by usurping the state itself.

Imam Musa al-Sadr disappeared once in Libya.

Hezbollah has made him disappear a thousand times over.

And today, perhaps more than ever, Lebanon is in need of Imam Sayyed Musa al-Sadr.