Hizbullah builds new line of defense
Shiite militants are rearming and supporters are amassing real estate along the UN buffer.
from the February 26, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
On a brush-covered hillside overlooking the Litani River, two Hizbullah fighters wearing camouflage uniforms and carrying rifles and walkie-talkies emerged from the bushes beside a stone track. They take the name of a visiting reporter and politely – but firmly – say that no entry is permitted into the area.
Less than a mile to the west, another Hizbullah position is guarded by an armed and uniformed fighter sitting in a small hut with a landline telephone.
According to one veteran Hizbullah fighter, during the war, long-range rockets were launched at Israel, around 10 miles to the south, from underground firing positions in this same area.
Lebanese troops man checkpoints along the main roads here, but are not interfering with Hizbullah's activities. With Hizbullah refusing to disarm and the Lebanese government and Army incapable of dismantling it by force, the fate of the group's arms remains an intractable political dilemma.
Hizbullah does not deny that it is replenishing its war-depleted stocks. Three weeks ago, a truck filled with rockets and mortars destined for Hizbullah was discovered by Lebanese customs police. Hizbullah asked that the weapons be returned, but the Lebanese minister of defense refused, saying they would be handed over to the Lebanese Army.
In a speech on Feb. 16, Hizbullah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah admitted that the group was "transporting weapons to the front [in the south]."
"We have weapons of all kinds and quantities, as many as you want. We don't fight our enemy with swords made of wood," he said.
Still, the extent of the military buildup in these "security pockets" north of the Litani is unclear given the ingenuity of Hizbullah's engineers and the strict secrecy under which the group operates. Before the war last summer, Hizbullah spent six years secretly building bunkers, tunnels, and firing positions along the border with Israel.
In one case, a bunker complex 100 feet underground covering an area of almost a square mile was built within 300 yards of a UNIFIL observation post and an Israeli army position on the border, but its existence remained hidden until after the war.
"They let us see certain things like their observation posts along the border fence, but all the time they were building an underground city in the south that we never knew existed," says Timur Goksel, who retired as UNIFIL's senior adviser in 2003.
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