(Der Spiegel-Germany) Ulrike Putz - EU foreign ministers agreed on Monday to put the military wing of Lebanese militant group Hizbullah on the bloc's list of terrorist groups. But sanctions will have little impact on the "Party of God." Along the highway between the airport and city center, visitors to Lebanon see portraits of a plump man with a black turban and glasses hanging on buildings, billboards and street lamps. Visitors often wonder if this is Lebanon's president, but Hassan Nasrallah holds no political post. "Hizbullah is a single large organization, we have no wings that are separate from one another," spokesman Ibrahim Mussawi told Spiegel Online. "What's being said in Brussels doesn't exist for us." "Political and social work, in addition to jihad, are operated by the same leadership," reads an explanation from Hizbullah in response to a question about the division of labor within the party. In this way, the group has skillfully leveraged its way out of feeling the EU sanctions, because the 28-member bloc agreed to apply punitive measures solely to Hizbullah troops. The fact that outsiders are unable to discern where Hizbullah's civilian wing ends and the militant one begins is likely to mean that the organization will escape the EU's measures unscathed, say Western diplomats in Beirut. The decision in Brussels was purely symbolic.
2013-07-24 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive