FOR TEN days, Israel’s F16 warplanes have pounded Hezbollah with hundreds of tonnes of bombs, yet the guerrilla group shows few signs of cracking.
That will boost Hezbollah’s reputation as one of the most sophisticated and disciplined guerrilla forces in the world. It will add to its mystique in Arab and Muslim countries, where its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, is emerging as a powerfully charismatic figurehead, widely seen as the lone champion who will stand up to Israel.
Sheikh Nasrallah is clearly relishing his new fame. Last night, less than 24 hours after jets pounded his command bunker in south Beirut, he appeared on al-Jazeera television, mocking Israel and promising “more surprises” soon. “The leadership of Hezbollah has not been touched,” he declared, adding that most of the group’s missiles remained safely out of the reach of Israeli bombers.
When Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers last week, it turned southern Lebanon into a warzone, and grabbed the world’s attention.
The course of this conflict depends on whether Sheikh Nasrallah, in the most ambitious move of his 14 years as the group’s commander, has miscalculated the response by Israel, Lebanon and the rest of the world, and whether he will back down on his aim of turning Lebanon into a Shia state.
Hezbollah has had six years to prepare for this conflict since Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon. There is every sign that it has used them well. This week Israeli soldiers uncovered a Hezbollah compound hidden in a forest near the border, complete with bunkers and rocket launchers, apparently prepared in order to strike at the Miron air force base and the towns of Safed and Maalot. “They are not improvising,” an Israeli government analyst said. “What they are doing now is pretty well planned.”
The complexity of Hezbollah’s planning stretches back to its early years. The group began to coalesce within days of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, when Iran sent revolutionary guards to the Syrian-Lebanese border to begin planning a resistance.
Iranian clerics went into the scruffy Shia villages of the Bekaa Valley to preach the new doctrine of the wilayet al-faqih, or “rule of the jurisprudent”, which had taken hold in Iran after the 1979 revolution. From this toehold, Hezbollah spread its ideas and methods to other Shia areas in the south and in southern Beirut.
Hezbollah formally announced its existence in February 1984, declaring its goals in an “open letter”. It called for the destruction of Israel, the liberation of Jerusalem, and the establishment of an Islamic state in Lebanon.
In the next six years, Hezbollah’s brand of militant Shia Islam gradually spread south to the edge of Israel’s occupation zone. Its fighters began to run the resistance. Throughout this rise, Hezbollah was inspired and helped by Iran and its long-standing ally Syria. The guerrilla group could be considered to be Iran’s greatest success in exporting the Islamic revolution.
With the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1990, Hezbollah was forced to make a fundamental choice: to abide by its uncompromising goals, or to work within the new political system. The pragmatists triumphed, and Hezbollah fielded candidates for the first time in the 1992 parliamentary elections, securing influence in parliament and pushing pro-Western countries into shocked acknowledgement of its appeal.
In 1992, Israel assassinated Sheikh Abbas Mussawi, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, in a helicopter attack. Sheikh Nasrallah, his protégé, then 32, took over the next day.
Sheikh Nasrallah transformed Hezbollah. He turned its military wing into a highly trained force that learnt how to avoid Israeli surveillance by riding around southern Lebanon on mountain bikes, armed with rocket-propelled grenades.
In politics the group’s parliamentary bloc made its mark by opposing the spending policies of Rafik Hariri, then the country’s Prime Minister, who was leading the postwar reconstruction. It knitted together a social welfare net to lock in the support of the Shia underclass.
Sheikh Nasrallah struck up a firm alliance with Syria throughout the 1990s, when it was the dominant power in Lebanon. He restructured the relationship with Tehran, from one where Iran exercised logistical control over the guerrillas to a more collaborative basis, according to which Hezbollah could establish its own Lebanese identity.
When Israel abandoned its occupation zone in May 2000, Hezbollah claimed the move as its triumph, portraying the withdrawal as the first time that Israel had been forced to yield occupied territory by Arab force. Hezbollah’s prestige soared in the Muslim world. Palestinians emulated its “model of resistance” in the intifada four months later.
Hezbollah now has between 500 and 600 experienced fighters, ranging in age from their late twenties to mid-thirties. It can also call on thousands of others who have had elementary combat training, and who may have fought Israeli forces in southern Lebanon in the 1990s. An Israeli government analyst put its strength at “roughly 10,000 fighters”.
Up until a week ago, its permanent force constantly manned 40-odd observation posts along the border. Iran and Syria have helped it to amass arms reckoned to include about 13,000 rockets before this conflict.
Hezbollah’s image is that of a band of zealots in camouflage and balaclavas. But to many locals its fighters are ordinary Shia Lebanese. Sheikh Nasrallah, who is considered a powerful orator in the Arab world, peppers his speeches with jokes, ridicule and selfcriticism, which his audiences adore.
In making last week’s bold move Hezbollah will have drawn heavily on encouragement from Iran, British officials believe. In contrast, Syria’s influence on Hezbollah diminished when it pulled out of Lebanon last year.
There are many reasons why Sheikh Nasrallah might have chosen this moment to attack. Hezbollah’s confidence has been boosted by the electoral success of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, which has mimicked its “bullet and ballot” strategy. Iran’s own soaring ambitions have been fuelled by the predicament of the United States in Iraq. Sheikh Nasrallah might also have thought that Israel was weakened by the loss of Ariel Sharon, the former Prime Minister, general and political colossus who lies comatose in a Tel Aviv clinic after a stroke in January.
Has Sheikh Nasrallah miscalculated? Many assume that in seizing Israeli soldiers he hoped to win the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israel, as Hezbollah had done before. Instead, he has provoked a huge Israeli bombardment, with the tacit support of the United States.
But Israel may have also have made a misjudgment. It does not want to withdraw without success, but more fighting will kill more civilians, radicalise more Lebanese and test Israelis’ nerves and the patience of its allies.
As Beverley Milton- Edwards, author of Islam and Violence in the Modern Era, put it: “Hezbollah are not puppets of Iran or Syria. That really underestimates them. If only it were that simple, you would be able to get rid of them.”
SHEIKH HASSAN NASRALLAH
Hezbollah now has 14 seats out of 128 in Lebanese parliament, two representatives in cabinet posts. Can call up 500-600 full-time fighters, plus thousands of recuits who fought Israel in the 1990s
