Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East (27 page)

Hezbollah experienced its first split over the 1992 elections. Sheikh Sobhi Tufayli—the movement’s fiery first secretary-general, who was controversial even within Hezbollah—had bolted. He went off and later formed the rival Revolution of the Hungry.

During the eight years of its second phase, Hezbollah also began to transform its strongholds in the
dahiya
and southern Lebanon. It built a major hospital, complete with the latest CAT scan and MRI technology, as well as several clinics, schools, discount pharmacies, groceries, and an orphanage. It built reservoirs in districts where water lines had collapsed or wells had failed; tanker trucks circulated weekly to keep them filled. It started a garbage service for the
dahiya,
where debris once simply piled up. It ran a reconstruction program for homes damaged during Israel’s 1982 invasion. It supplied school fees and college scholarships. It paid for emergency operations and health insurance stipends. It set up loan funds for small businesses. It ran farms, factories, and cooperatives. It eventually became one of Lebanon’s largest employers.

In most Shiite strongholds, Hezbollah outperformed the state. Unlike many government agencies, it had a reputation for being frugal, uncorrupt, and organized. Members even bragged that the movement was so disciplined that the Hezbollah soccer team almost never chalked up penalties—in a country where games are notoriously rowdy.
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Iran propped up Hezbollah, providing most of its initial funds—at least ten million dollars each month in arms, humanitarian goods, and cash, according to many estimates. “Iran stands by Lebanon on all the major issues, the government, the people, the army, the resistance,” Nasrallah told me, although he would not talk specific sums.

“There are institutions, foundations in Iran that present aid of a social nature, and we run the branches in Lebanon, such as the foundations that take interest in the families of martyrs, and the refugee aid foundations, such as for the needy,” he said. “Iran presents aid and grants at a good level for farmers and for the projects that the farmers do.”

In the 1990s, Hezbollah also increasingly raised its own funds, reportedly off both legal and illicit activities. Shiites are supposed to pay
khums,
an Islamic tax equal to one-fifth of their annual income, to their religious leaders for charitable causes. The Shiite Diaspora from Africa to Australia and both the Americas supplied remittances too. At home, “charity boxes” wrapped in bright yellow Hezbollah flags were strategically placed in shops, public facilities, and even at traffic stops.
²⁵
Hezbollah’s financial operations were run through the Bayt al-Mal, or House of Money, which in the Arab world was historically the caliph’s royal treasury or a financial institution for distributing taxes for public works. In 2006, the United States charged that the House of Money in Lebanon served as the bank, creditor, and investment arm of Hezbollah. Washington charged that it was under Nasrallah’s direct control, headed by one of his advisers, and used to fund Hezbollah’s services and companies.
²⁶

Hezbollah supporters were also widely reported to be contributing cash off their own criminal activities, such as smuggling—diamonds in Africa, drugs and pirated compact disks in Latin America. Some Lebanese businesses abroad were also reportedly “taxed” by Hezbollah agents to help pay for its charity operations and public services.
²⁷
Fundraising was run by the Islamic Resistance Support Organization, the United States charged.

Its new public services were an enormous boost to the Shiite movement’s local legitimacy. As its focus shifted, so did its language. By 1998, a new “statement of purpose” contrasted with Hezbollah’s inaugural proclamation in 1985.

During its second phase in the 1990s, Hezbollah’s tone about the outside world changed as well. Nasrallah’s new gripe was that the United States provided only paltry foreign aid to Lebanon.

“It is both ridiculous and ironic for the U.S. ambassador to donate $10,000 to a humanitarian institution or to come to the Bekaa Valley to distribute cows to farmers when the United States is giving Israel three billion dollars annually,” he groused at a 1997 rally in the Bekaa Valley.
²⁸

The atmospherics in Hezbollah’s realm changed too. Baalbek was still a stronghold. Posters of Hezbollah martyrs were still plastered on public sites. But the military presence became less conspicuous. In 1997, the Baalbek Festival resumed after a twenty-two-year break. World-renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich played Dvo
ák under the floodlit Corinthian columns of the world’s largest remaining Roman ruins. Sting, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
Cats
, and Michael Flatley’s
Lord of the Dance
were highlighted in subsequent years.

Hezbollah’s shifts should not be mistaken for moderation. As for all Islamist groups in the Middle East, change has always been about survival of both cause and constituents, about reassessing and revising strategy in response to events around them. Hezbollah adapted because it had to.

The end of Lebanon’s fifteen-year civil war altered the environment. When wartime Lebanon had no system, it had not mattered that Hezbollah operated outside the state. When a system emerged in peacetime, however, Hezbollah needed to be part of it to convince others of its special role. All militias were supposed to dismantle, according to terms of the final cease-fire. Hezbollah engaged in Lebanese politics in part to win approval to keep its weapons—on grounds that it was the only force capable of challenging Israel’s ongoing occupation. The Party of God’s participation in politics was also part of a joint strategy with Syria and Iran.

And on Israel, Hezbollah’s raison d’être, Nasrallah’s rhetoric remained venomous.

In 1998, Ashura commemorations of Hussein’s martyrdom coincided with Israel’s fiftieth anniversary. Nasrallah used the occasion to lambaste Israelis as “the descendants of apes and pigs.

“A few million vagabonds from all over the world, brought together by their Talmud and Jewish fanaticism, are celebrating their victory over the nation of 1.4 billion Muslims,” he said, in a speech broadcast on television. “It is a tragic, painful, and bitter thing that a small number of people gather in Palestine, dancing and holding celebrations in the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy city [of Jerusalem] to celebrate their great victory over the nation of Mohammed.”
²⁹

Hezbollah launched a small media empire in the 1990s to propagate its vitriolic message. Its new magazine was entitled
The Fist of God.
Its radio station was called God’s Light. Its modern television station was named al Manar, the Beacon. Most of its programming—news, game shows, kids programs, and docudramas—carried biting and sometimes bizarre propaganda against Israel and the United States.

Hezbollah TV recruited suicide bombers, aired footage of their attacks, and then ran their pretaped last testaments. Programs appealed to mothers to surrender their sons “knowing that their blood will mix with the soil.” Martial music, Koranic verses, and flag-burnings were staples. Airtime between programs was filled with gruesome graphics. One set of pictures purported to show Jews killing Christian children to use their blood for Passover bread. The Statue of Liberty was re-created as an angry ghoul, her face a skull, a dagger rather than a torch in her hand, her gown dripping with blood.
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By 2000, Hezbollah TV was beaming worldwide by satellite. Its audience expanded to an estimated ten million viewers daily. It soon ranked as one of the five most popular stations in the Middle East. Besides Arabic, it aired programs in English and French—and Hebrew.

Hezbollah’s military attacks against Israeli troops in Lebanon also intensified between 1992 and 2000. The battlefield widened; Hezbollah’s strategy diversified.

To suicide bombings and guerrilla attacks, the Shiite guerrillas added conventional tactics, including the famed Katyusha rocket. Katyusha is a Russian name equivalent to “Katie.” Russian troops named the inaccurate and inexpensive rocket during World War II after a song about young Katyusha pining for her beloved at war. Katyushas are fired individually or in multiple launchers, sometimes on the backs of trucks that can be quickly driven to another location. With deadly impact, the short-range rockets were also widely used in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In the 1990s, Iranian cargo flights flew thousands of short-range Katyushas into Damascus to be trucked into Lebanon.
³¹

In 1993, Hezbollah fired the first Katyusha into northern Israel, broadening the arena of conflict after weeks of tension and provocations by both sides along the border. The fighting became so intense across the border that the United States twice intervened to broker cease-fires, in 1993 and 1996.
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Hundreds also died in clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli troops in the rocky hills and fields of southern Lebanon in the 1990s. Among the Lebanese casualties in a 1997 clash was Nasrallah’s eighteen-year-old son Hadi. Israel kept his body, as Hezbollah kept the bodies of Israeli troops, to be used in prisoner swaps. Nasrallah’s reaction to news of his oldest son’s death was still noted a decade later by Lebanese from all sects and Arabs of many nations. At a Hezbollah rally that evening in the
dahiya,
he paused only briefly from his speech to mention it.

“We in the leadership of Hezbollah do not spare our children and save them for the future,” Nasrallah told a large crowd. “We pride ourselves when our sons reach the front line, and we stand heads held high when they fall as martyrs.”

Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, a British-educated Kurd and a Sunni whose children were raised in America, brought it up out of the blue in a conversation in 2006. “This impressed me deeply,” Salih told me, shaking his head. “It was a lesson to us all. Nasrallah keeps his word. This is why he has such impact.”

The arena for resistance also moved beyond the Middle East for the first time. Hezbollah and Iran were linked to two bombings in Argentina: In 1992, an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires killed twenty-nine. The strike followed Israel’s assassination of Nasrallah’s predecessor; the two events were widely linked. In 1994, a second bombing at an Israeli cultural center killed eighty-five. The cultural center’s library was largely destroyed, including records that had been preserved through the Holocaust.

Hezbollah denied responsibility for the bombings outside Lebanon just as absolutely as the Argentine government held it responsible. After a twelve-year investigation, Argentine prosecutors ordered the arrest of former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as well as the former Iranian foreign ministers and intelligence chiefs, two Revolutionary Guard commanders, two Iranian diplomats and a former Hezbollah security chief.

At a press conference, the Argentine prosecutors said they suspected Hezbollah launched attacks outside Lebanon only “under orders directly emanating from the regime in Tehran.”
³³

The second phase ended in 2000, when Hezbollah’s relentless campaign of attacks wore the Israelis down. The costs to Israel of occupying Lebanon heavily outweighed the benefits. The war was increasingly unpopular at home. More than 900 Israeli troops had been killed, proportionately the equivalent of 42,000 Americans—not far off what the United States had lost in Vietnam.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a former army chief of staff, won election on a peace platform to pull out of Lebanon. When he took office, he followed through on his pledge. On May 23, 2000, the last Israeli tank rumbled across the dusty border. The famed Fatima Gate on the security fence was locked.

“This tragedy is over,” Barak pronounced.

Hezbollah’s armed wing at the time was estimated at only between 500 and 1,000 full-time troops, with up to five times as many “weekend warriors” who could be called away from their day jobs to fight. Yet a small militia had managed to accomplish what tens of thousands of soldiers in the mightier and better armed militaries of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan had failed to do for a half century: make Israel abandon Arab land with neither a formal agreement nor an informal understanding to end hostilities—or to guarantee future security. Israel left with virtually nothing to show for a costly occupation that spanned a generation.