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Lebanon Grapples with Hizbullah's

(Los Angeles Times) Nabih Bulos - In its myth-making and propaganda, Hizbullah portrays the war with Israel as a victory, a greater triumph than the last major engagement between the two sides in 2006. But the militant group now has to contend with an aftermath that for many Lebanese, including some Hizbullah partisans, looks very much like defeat. Thousands of its fighters and supporters are dead, the upper echelons of its leadership decimated. Wide swaths of pro-Hizbullah areas are all but flattened; almost 100,000 people remain displaced and Israeli forces still occupy parts of Lebanon. Hizbullah had vowed its arsenal of long-range missiles would level Israeli cities the instant Lebanese cities were targeted. But that never happened. Hizbullah leadership had no sense of how deeply Israeli intelligence had penetrated its ranks, booby-trapping the group's pagers and walkie-talkies and picking off its senior commanders, including its secretary-general of 32 years, Hassan Nasrallah. While despite being at its weakest in years, Hizbullah retains a loyal following. Yet not everyone in southern Lebanon agrees. Not a single structure in the hamlet of Bustan survived Israel's offensive, including the house Ahmad Al-Ahmad, 43, built with money he earned working for more than two decades in Berlin. The promised compensation from Hizbullah had yet to materialize. He said he would return to Berlin to work, but wouldn't rebuild so long as Hizbullah remained dominant in southern Lebanon. Ali, 49, a merchant in Tyre, said, "People talk about victory. What victory? All this destruction and death? What was this for? Hizbullah must pay to fix this. And if they don't, we're going to kick them out." Few Lebanese believe the group has the funds to compensate for the damage. Many Lebanese feel anger toward Hizbullah for dragging the country into an ill-conceived war, said Michael Young, senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. "There's a great deal of mistrust of Hizbullah."
2025-03-11 00:00:00
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