Ghaith Abdul-Ahad: Hezbollah Fighters are Preparing for the Next War

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Muhammad looks like someone who has stepped out of a Calvin Klein underwear ad. He has spiky hair styled with gel, and long eyelashes shadow his eyes. He is wearing tight jeans and trendy trainers. A silver medallion of the two-headed sword of Imam Ali hangs on a chain around his neck and in his hand is an ultra-slim mobile phone. But Mohammed does not work in advertising; he is a devoted Shiite, an active member of Hezbollah – the Party of God – and a leader of the Hezbollah-run student union in his university. He is part of what the US government and Israel describe as a terrorist organisation. He calls it the Resistance. “We are the heroes of resistance against the forces of oppression,” Mohammed says. “If we collapse, everything that the Shiites have achieved in the past three decades will disappear.”

Hezbollah, and its leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, were still enjoying the fruits of their self- proclaimed victory in 2000 – Israel’s withdrawal from south Lebanon – when the war erupted again in the summer of 2006. In July last year, Hezbollah fighters kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Israel responded by bombing the south of Lebanon and Beirut’s southern district. Hezbollah retaliated by firing Katyusha rockets at Israeli cities and villages. When Israel, despite the destruction inflicted on Lebanon’s civilian population, failed to achieve its goals – retrieving the soldiers and destroying the military capabilities of Hezbollah – Hezbollah’s popularity skyrocketed among Arabs in general and the Shiite in particular.

Brand new yellow flags of the party were raised over the rubble of destroyed buildings. Posters of Sayed Hassan Nasrallah and his fighters sprung up on billboards all over southern Beirut. Pictures of the Sayed were also printed on T-shirts, lighters, CDs and all kinds of merchandise. He gave the war its brand name, “The Divine Victory”, a translation of his own name, Nassr-allah. Mohammed is one of the new generation of the party, bright, sophisticated and very conscious of the geopolitics of the region. They are far removed from the traditional image of menacing, bearded, Kalashnikov-toting fighters.

But if the outward appearance has changed, the core of what makes a Hezbollah is still intact – that is, a combination of Shiite belief, founded on the mythology of Karbala and the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, coupled with bonds of family and tradition that are shrouded in secrecy and make Hezbollah one of the most difficult organisations in the world to penetrate. “You don’t join the party – you are born in the party,” Mohammed tells me. From the time you are a small boy, he says, the party watches you; they monitor your behaviour to see if you are committed – if you pray, if you commemorate Ashura, if you fast. “When they are sure you are committed and that you don’t drink and don’t have problems in your neighbourhood, a party officer approaches you.”

A life of religious studies and indoctrinations follows. “After preparing you for months, or even years, you enter the ‘junoud’, or soldiers class. They don’t teach you how to become a soldier, but you are taught everything about Shiite traditions and beliefs.” Not until a novice member has finished all these preparatory courses is he sent to do military training. “They ask you to do banal things just to see if you will follow orders or not,” another young fighter tells me. “They send you walking from Beirut to another town – they want to see how obedient you are.” The next stage can last two or three years. “It can take up to nine years of religious and military training before a fighter is born,” says a party official in the Beqaa valley.

I met Mohammed for the first time a few weeks after the end of the war. His family flat in Dhiyah, Beirut’s southern suburb and Hezbollah’s stronghold, had been destroyed. The party assigned him to an aid group, and he and his friends were providing services and shelter to the tens of thousands of refugees. The war had reduced this Hezbollah bastion to a pile of rubble. What was once a neighbourhood of busy residential and shopping streets, jammed with shoppers, taxis and kebab-sellers, was transformed into a huge wasteland of craters and debris. Barely a building was left standing. I saw a woman shrouded in a black chador climbing over a mound of debris where her home stood until few weeks before.

She had just salvaged a pair of black shoes and was calling on her husband to help her twist a big metal bar so she could pull a green jacket from underneath. I asked if her home was here. She said, “Yes” – and so were her sister’s and her brother’s. The whole extended family lived in one apartment block that was destroyed in the first week of the war. She looked at the jacket still stuck in the rubble. “All of this is a sacrifice to the Sayed,” she said. Behind her, huge red signs with white lettering were stuck on the rubble declaring “The Divine Victory”. But Mohammed tells me that the party’s success is based not only on the charisma of its leader and the bravery of its fighters, but on the lifeline it provides – in healthcare, education and rebuilding.

“We have to provide services to our people. Even if you swear by the Quran that it was Israel that dropped the bombs, the people will turn against us if we don’t provide them with services and start the reconstruction soon.” As the war ended, Hezbollah’s members were sent out in yellow baseball caps to register every destroyed building, home and shop in the south of Lebanon and in Beirut. Within weeks a payment of $12,000 to cover rent and furniture was given to each family that had lost a house in the war. On the other side of Dahiyah I meet Jameel, a short, stocky fighter with a ginger beard and a big smile that shows a row of missing and mangled teeth.

Jameel belongs to the older generation of Hezbollah fighters, a veteran of three decades of Lebanon’s wars with itself and its neighbours. Jameel has fought against the Israelis, the Palestinians, the other Shiite militias and almost everyone else. He is sitting with fellow fighters in the front yard of his very small, dilapidated house. Between them is a tray with a pot of sweet tea, small glasses and a bag filled with ammunition. The war may be over but, in their view, another round is coming for sure, and there is no time to waste. They were buying and trading weapons. “There is nothing like the Kalashnikov,” says one fighter dressed in khaki trousers as he inspects Jameel’s specially modified Kalashnikov. “I wouldn’t swap it for three M16s.”

“If you are fighting in streets and between buildings, go for a Kalashnikov, but in the open field an M16 will be good,” says another fighter. They talk about the war, about surviving aerial bombardment, about the idiots who took pot shots at the Israeli drones and exposed their positions, about the difference between Russian- and Chinese- made Kalashnikovs. They enjoyed the war, they are sure it will continue. After his guests leave, Jameel tells me what the war and the party mean to him. “The most important thing for us in Hezbollah is belief – the belief in martyrdom – and then the secrecy and discipline. That’s what makes Hezbollah different from the others. Look at the Palestinians – they have been fighting Israel for 60 years, but they are exposed. For us, no stranger can enter our party.”

Jameel was a full-time fighter for the party; he received a monthly salary and had no other job. Hezbollah pays its fighters $500 a month, but they and their family share in the party’s social provisions. “After faith comes training, continuous training. I don’t care if I am getting the best food, but I know I am getting the best weapons. I really love war,” he says. “I hate this peacetime. It makes you relax, and in our struggle you cannot relax. I miss the war.” A few days earlier, a fighter in the Beqaa valley had asked me what I think is the ultimate goal for Hezbollah. Fighting Israel maybe, I suggested. “No,” he said, “we fight Israel and America because they are the forces of oppression. If, in 20 years’ time, China becomes the oppressor, we will fight the Chinese. But we have to prepare for the arrival of Mahdi – the Mahdi will not come into a Sunni country. We need to prepare, we have to liberate Jerusalem for the army of the 20 millions and create the grand Shiite state.”

The ceasefire in August put Hezbollah in a paradoxical position. Its “Divine Victory” has given it great kudos in the streets, but it has left the country’s infrastructure destroyed and thousands of its own Shiite supporters displaced. It has also exposed the fragility of the Lebanese political system. Soon after the war, Hezbollah accused the government of collaborating with Israel and America against it during the war. Hezbollah and its allies mobilised hundreds of thousands of mainly Shiite Lebanese and occupied the commercial centre of Beirut, demanding that the government resign. The government called in the riot police and bunkered down behind layers of razor wire, and appealed to the Sunni Arab powers to support it against an “Iranian-backed” coup.

Sunni anxiety about a rising Shiite Iran is already at an all-time high, especially in the light of US allegations that Iran and Hezbollah are training Shiite militias in Iraq in their war against the Sunnis. Three months later, the tents are still there in downtown Beirut. Bored and tired Hezbollah members take shifts at the camp. Beyond the Hezbollah checkpoints, the camp has its own life: shops selling food and cigarettes have sprung up, public toilets and showers have been built. At night, groups of men smoke the water pipe; others play football or dance in a circle to the sounds of the Lebanese debka.

“Before, they used to tell us go to the south and sleep on the border and watch Israel. Now, we sleep in tents in downtown Beirut,” one told me. I met Mohammed again, a few days after some street riots between Shiite Hezbollah and Sunni youths – the conflict had already become sectarian. “Before the Iranian revolution and the victories of Hezbollah, we, the Shiite, were nothing, we were servants for the rich,” he told me. “That day will never come back.” – Guardian

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad: Hezbollah Fighters are Preparing for the Next War

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