What is Hezbollah?

Where the militant group comes from and why they aren't going to go away.

At the moment, on the Israel-Lebanon border there are clashes taking place between Israel and Hezbollah, and it looks like serious fighting might break out on another front besides Gaza. To explain what Hezbollah is and where they came from, we need to unravel a bit of Lebanon’s history and talk about the disintegration of a country whose capital Beirut was once called the Paris of the Middle East. 

Lebanon is a mountainous country located north of Israel, nestled up against the Mediterranean and Syria. The rugged terrain is important to its history. Throughout the world, from Wales to the central highlands of Vietnam, you’ll find “mountain folk” who often speak a different language and have a different culture from the people who live in the lowlands, usually because back in time immemorial some invader or empire chased those people off the plains but didn’t bother going up in the mountains after them, leaving them as an isolated minority group. That’s the case in Lebanon, which is the most religiously diverse country in the Middle East. It has Sunni & Shiite Muslims, Christians, and Druze (an esoteric sect that mixes Greek philosophy with Islam). There were once Jews as well, but they’ve all migrated to Israel. Now something you may already know about the history of the modern Middle East is that bad things tend to happen when different religions live in close quarters. Lebanon is not an exception. 

But first, back to the First World War (it always goes back to the First World War with me. I could talk about WW1 all day). As discussed previously, Lebanon, like Palestine, was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which was defeated in 1918 by the Allies. While the fighting was going on, a group of elaborately-mustachioed French & British diplomats met in London to carve up the Ottoman Empire. Despite promises that had been made to Arabs rebelling against the Turks to give them a unified pan-Arab state after the war (once again, see Lawrence of Arabia, it’s a pretty good movie. Obi-Wan Kenobi plays the Arab leader), the Europeans divided the Middle East into a British zone: Palestine, Jordan, & Iraq, and a French zone: Lebanon & Syria. Keep in mind that the nations we know by those names today didn’t exist prior to 1918, these areas had been Ottoman provinces for 400 years. There wasn’t any local sense of Lebanese or Syrian or Iraqi nationhood until the Brits & the French took out the crayons and drew some arbitrary lines on the map and installed some local nabob as the king or president of whatever they’d just created. Because of how the borders were drawn up, Lebanon had a Christian majority, unique among the countries of the region. Some locals resented the Allies going back on their promises about creating a (majority Muslim) pan-Arab state, but Lebanon functioned reasonably well and gained independence from France after the Second World War. 

British-French 1916 agreement on dividing the former Ottoman Middle East. French zone is Blue/A, British zone is Pink/B. Britain later also took control of Palestine (Yellow) and Mosul (northern Iraq). 

To manage the diverse set of religions in the country, the elites of Lebanon set up a system of power sharing back in the French days. The President of Lebanon would always be a Christian, the Prime Minister would always be a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of Parliament would always be Shia. Other posts and quotas were split up between the various groups so no one felt left out. This division was based on the census of 1932, and since then, Lebanon has never held another census. The birth rate among Lebanese Muslims is higher than that of Christians, and they are almost certainly the majority now, so any up-to-date count would force a redistribution of power, which would cause…problems, as we’ll get to in a minute. 

The balance of power in Lebanon was tense, but other than a political crisis in 1958 they were pretty prosperous in the post-WW2 era. Beirut was a tourism hub for movie stars and other famous people, there were ski resorts up in the mountains, it was a banking center for the region, and things seemed to be going nicely for this diverse country. Plus they spoke French, so that’s a couple of extra glamor points right there. However, the next door Palestinian-Israeli conflict forced a lot of Palestinians from their homes, and hundreds of thousands of those refugees moved into Lebanon, including the PLO when they were still in their militant phase. The PLO used Lebanon as a base for attacks on Israel, which led Israel to invade, which then sparked a hugely destructive civil war between all factions starting in 1975. This was basically a no-holds-barred battle royale fight to the death between every religious group in Lebanon, plus the PLO, Syria, and Israel as well, with everybody fighting everybody at the same time. There was a lot of ethnic cleansing going on and large-scale massacres were committed by all the various parties, no one came out of that conflict with clean hands. 

Paris of the Middle East no longer: Lebanon, 1985

During the civil war, a group called Hezbollah (“Party of God”) was founded by the Lebanese Shiites, with funding and training from Iran. Now if you don’t remember from history class, Sunnis and Shiites are the two main branches of Islam. Sunnis believe that after the lifetime of Muhammad, the leadership of Islam passed to a series of leaders called Caliphs, not necessarily blood-related, who formed the first Arab empires, with the office passing to the Ottoman Sultans later on. Shiites believe that leadership passed through the bloodline of Muhammad’s daughter Fatima to a series of leaders called Imams. The theological differences between the two are far less than those between Catholicism and Protestantism, and besides, there hasn’t been a Caliph since 1924 or an Imam since [*checks notes*]...874…[wait, you’re sure it’s not…, no, it’s not 1874? It is 874…And we’re certain on that? Ok, 874]. (Shiites believe the last Imam is still alive somewhere and will come back on the Day of Judgement), but the differences have become rather culturally ingrained over the centuries and those differences have led to no shortage of bloodshed. Since the Iranian revolution brought Shia hardliners to power in 1979, Iran has funded Shia militia groups to spread the good word of Islamic revolution in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria: Hezbollah was one of those. 

Hezbollah was created to fight the Israelis who had invaded and occupied southern Lebanon during the civil war. Israel had gone into Lebanon chasing after the PLO, but Hezbollah emerged as another potent force they had to fight at the same time. Hezbollah gained international notoriety in 1983 when they bombed the barracks of a US-led peacekeeping force in Beirut, killing 200+ American soldiers. As well as conventional battles, Hezbollah engaged in terrorist attacks against Israeli & Western targets. The civil war ended in 1990, but no one really “won” because no faction was large enough to crush the others, things went back to the same old power-sharing formula, but in the aftermath Hezbollah emerged as one of the most powerful forces in Lebanon. It was energized by the continued fighting in the south against Israel, who occupied that part of the country until 2000 for no good reason. While keeping its armed wing, Hezbollah also transformed itself into a political party, and it now holds seats in the Lebanese parliament. Its ideology is inspired by the Iranian theocratic regime and it still receives the bulk of its money and training from Iran, who funds Hezbollah to the tune of $700M per year. As an organization created to fight Israel, Hezbollah justifies its hold on power by conjuring up the ever-present menace of Israeli attacks among people in southern Lebanon. And to be clear, these aren’t pure-hearted freedom fighters: like a lot of other Islamic militant organizations, Hezbollah’s leadership has made numerous violently anti-semitic statements, they’ve targeted Israeli civilians and non-Israeli Jews elsewhere, and they pretty much need to stir up a perpetual conflict with Israel to justify their continued hold on power.

So Israel pulled out in 2000, and afterward Hezbollah took over much of southern Lebanon. The country of Lebanon has not had much of a functioning state since the civil war ended. Hezbollah has a larger army than the government does, and any attempt by the government to take control of the Hezbollah areas in the south would probably start another civil war. The central government was basically a puppet of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria (an ally of Hezbollah) from 1990-2005, and the country has been in a major economic crisis since 2019. Lately there hasn’t been enough money to keep electricity supplied 24 hours a day, the currency is worthless, and a majority of the population lives in poverty. All this in a country that was relatively rich and considered somewhat glamorous in the 1960s. Thirty years after the civil war the tensions between the different sects haven’t been fully resolved, and any move by one side is viewed with suspicion by the others. Hence, no census in 90 years. Since the state doesn’t function, Hezbollah runs most of the municipal services in the areas of Lebanon it controls, giving it a sort of state-within-a-state quality and building loyalty among residents by providing the types of public services that the central government can’t. Since there’s a large Lebanese diaspora spread around the world, Hezbollah is also involved in organized crime and drug trafficking in Latin America. All the while, they’ve also continued to launch terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East and as far away as Argentina, and are branded as a terrorist organization by the US and the UK. But you’ll have to admit: this is very different from our normal idea of what a terrorist organization looks like; Hezbollah has seats in parliament, it runs municipal trash collection, and it outguns the central government.

In 2006 a war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah again when Hezbollah crossed into Israel and captured some Israeli soldiers. Israel invaded southern Lebanon trying to destroy Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, but the conflict was inconclusive and Israel didn’t achieve its goals. If anything it bolstered support for Hezbollah by rallying people to the old anti-Israel cause. Southern Lebanon is at a high elevation, making it easy to launch rockets into Israel from there. As such, missiles are the main weapons in Hezbollah’s arsenal: they can threaten to launch a barrage at Israeli cities at any time. Hamas also has their own rocket arsenal, but those are homemade from scrap metal and might kill you if you’re unlucky; Hezbollah has Scud ballistic missiles, Russian T-72 tanks, mobile rocket launcher platforms, and other advanced military-grade weaponry supplied by Iran and Syria. They’re better armed than most countries. So compared to Hamas who we talked about before, Hezbollah is much more well-equipped, better-trained, and better-funded, they are more like a full-fledged army (outside the control of the Lebanese state) than a simple terrorist group. Another interesting factor is that they aren’t genocidal towards Lebanon’s other religions like ISIS. Hezbollah is aware of the diversity of Lebanon and doesn’t seek to alienate the other religions by massacring them or trying to impose any religious restrictions in the areas it controls. As a result, polls after the 2006 war showed a majority of Lebanese Christians approved of Hezbollah’s actions. For lack of a strong unifying central government, Hezbollah has become the default standard bearer for defending the nation in times of war. This support among the non-Shias ebbs and flows depending on political events, but it's a notable difference from other Islamic fundamentalist groups. No religious minority in Iraq or Syria would ever approve of ISIS. 

Hezbollah fighters with mobile rocket launchers, 2023

Like the sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, who is good and who is bad depends on your point of view. Without a proper functioning state to protect them, the Shia Lebanese view Hezbollah as their only defenders against another Israeli incursion into their homeland. Israel views them as a perpetual threat with a massive stockpile of missiles looming on their northern border. The other factions in Lebanon are politely wary, since Hezbollah is heavily-armed and has more sway over how the country operates than the elected government. And Western countries view them as an Iranian puppet and a terrorist group. But whatever happens in the near-term, there aren’t any prospects of Hezbollah going away soon. That would require (a) a functional, pluralistic government in Lebanon that makes all factions feel secure, (b) the collapse of the Iranian regime to cut off Hezbollah’s funding, and (c) a strong enough Lebanese government that could wrest control of the south from Hezbollah and demilitarize the border with Israel. None of those seems like a realistic prospect, and you’d probably need all 3 to happen in order to disband Hezbollah. The 2006 Israeli invasion didn’t destroy them, and another invasion wouldn’t do the trick either.

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