REMEMBER the South Lebanese Army? It was widely dismissed as a bunch of Christian stooges. Hezbollah? Well, they are authentic indigenous freedom fighters who kicked out the imperialistic Zionists and run brilliant clinics and schools for the disempowered Shia of Lebanon. Or at least that’s the impression you might derive from such indulgent portrayals as Jonathan Dimbleby’s New World War, let alone Robert Fisk’s articles.

So what are these authentic indigenous freedom fighters doing holding a demonstration to thank big brother Syria, which has occupied Lebanon for nearly 30 years? Moreover, why are theocrats piping up for a secular regime whose ideology derives from European Fascism?

Part of the answer is some of the top ranks of Hezbollah aren’t quite so authentic and indigenous as many think. It has not been lost on many Lebanese that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, only called for the demonstrations after Bashar Assad, the Syrian President, made his keynote address on Saturday which contained ominous codewords that portend a return to civil strife. He made particular reference to the events of May 17, 1983, an allusion to the peace which Lebanon signed with Israel and which his late father thwarted by physical force.

Nasrallah’s address at Tuesday’s rally was even more revealing. He defiantly declared that Lebanon is no Ukraine or Georgia — where the US encouraged “people power” that led to regime change. This declaration surely ranks with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s denunciation of democracy as a Western heresy that places man above God.

Hezbollah still has a store of capital for its role in looking after the most disadvantaged of Lebanese society. But its dual-hatted strategy is under stress. For so long as the South was under Israeli rule, there was no contradiction between its nationalist role and its wider Islamist aspirations. Now that the Zionists are gone, on whose behalf are they still fighting?

That is why so many younger, apolitical Shia — including many women in jeans — attended the anti-Syrian demonstration. Unlike Tuesday’s rally, no one needed to be press-ganged into attending. Hezbollah’s cult of death and martyrdom hasn’t quite as many takers as it once did. Or as the pre-war French might have said, “mourir pour Damascus?”