[Marxism] Hizbullah regroups

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0414/p07s03-wome.html

Hizbullah militants regroup amid war jitters
The Lebanese Shiite group is recruiting Sunnis, training in Iran for a 
possible second war with Israel.
By Nicholas Blanford | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the April 14, 2008 edition

Kfar Shuba, Lebanon - In south Lebanon, where the 2006 summertime war 
between Israel and militant Shiite Hizbullah was played out, villages 
are abuzz with talk of another devastating conflict between the two 
archfoes.

Over the past few weeks, military activity on both sides of the border 
has contributed to war jitters as both Israel and Hizbullah are 
seemingly poised to strike.

The Israeli military just wrapped up a nationwide war drill it dubbed 
"Turning Point 2," and Hizbullah appears to have devised new battle 
plans that include cross-border raids into Israel and has mounted a 
sweeping recruitment and training drive, even marshaling non-Shiites and 
former Israeli-allied militiamen into new reservist units.

"The holy fighters are completely focused on the next war, even ignoring 
families and friends. They are just waiting for the next war," says 
Jawad, a Hizbullah fighter.

Still, many diplomats and analysts in Beirut say that neither side has 
an interest in coming to blows again, despite the buildup.

"The elements of conflict are still there, and it is possible that 
something small can get out of hand with neither side wanting it," says 
Timur Goksel, a university lecturer in Beirut and veteran observer of 
the Hizbullah-Israeli conflict. But, he adds, the heightened activity is 
"mainly posturing."

Hizbullah continues to recruit and train new combatants at a furious 
pace. Indeed, it has noticeably increased in the past two months, ever 
since the assassination in Damascus of Imad Mughnieh, Hizbullah's top 
military commander, sparked fears of a fresh war.

Many recruits are sent to Iran for 45-day advanced training sessions, 
according to Hizbullah fighters. Jawad says he recently returned from 
Iran, his second trip in a year, where he was taught how to fire 
antitank missiles.

"There's a lot of training," he says. "The holy fighters are leaving 
universities, shops, places of work to go and train."

New tactics are being taught, including how to "seize and hold" 
positions, a requirement that Hizbullah's guerrilla fighters – 
traditionally schooled in hit-and-run methods – never needed before. One 
local commander in south Lebanon said that Hizbullah had fought a 
defensive war in 2006.

"Next time, we will be on the offensive and it will be a totally 
different kind of war," he says.

Jawad says that the next war will be "fought more in Israel than in 
Lebanon," one comment of many from various fighters that suggest 
Hizbullah is planning commando raids into northern Israel.

Hizbullah admits that its rocket arsenal has increased since 2006 and it 
has the ability to strike anywhere inside Israel.

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the party's leader, in February said that 
Hizbullah had evolved into an "unparalleled new school" that is part 
guerrilla force and part conventional army.

A European diplomat in Beirut, who has been watching Hizbullah's 
preparations, likened attacking the organization to "punching a sponge" 
– it absorbs the blow then bounces back – and questioned whether Israel 
still fully appreciates what it is up against.

Hizbullah's military buildup is not confined to Shiite Lebanese. Sunnis, 
Christians, and Druze also are being recruited into reservist units 
called "Saraya," or battalions.

Building ties to Sunnis serves for Hizbullah the double purpose of 
expanding support while also helping improve Shiite-Sunni relations, 
strained due to political divisions in Lebanon.

In the southern coastal town of Sidon, a Sunni Islamist militant group 
called the Fajr Forces, which fought invading Israeli troops in the 
early 1980s, has been resurrected as a Hizbullah ally.

Sheikh Afif Naboulsi, a prominent Hizbullah cleric, last month was 
quoted as saying that next time "the Israelis will find resistance 
fighters from all sects and denominations."

Hizbullah has been particularly active, according to residents, in the 
eastern pocket of the zone patrolled by the United Nations Interim Force 
in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The area is the mainly Sunni Arqoub district and 
faces the Shebaa Farms, an Israeli-occupied mountainside running along 
Lebanon's border with the Golan Heights.

Having lost ground here to political rivals after the 2006 war, 
Hizbullah is now seeking to regain its influence through funding a new 
group called the Arab Resistance Front, a reservist force for local 
Sunnis. Even former members of the now disbanded Israeli-allied South 
Lebanon Army militia have joined the new group, according to local 
residents.

"Hizbullah will not turn down anyone who wants to join the resistance," 
says Izzat Qadri, the Sunni mayor of Kfar Shuba and an ally of Hizbullah.

Despite the frequent recruiting in the border zone, officials with 
UNIFIL say there is no evidence Hizbullah has reactivated its bunkers 
and rocket-firing positions that the militants abandoned at the end of 
the 2006 war.

Hizbullah fighters presently are deployed along a new front line above 
the Litani River, north of the area patrolled by UNIFIL. In the past 18 
months, Hizbullah has purchased land from local Druze and Christians, 
constructed an entire Shiite-populated village, and turned the mountains 
and valleys of the area into sealed-off military zones.

"There are armed and uniformed Hizbullah men crawling all over the 
hills. We often hear gunfire and explosions from their training," says 
one local resident.




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