troung

Hezbollah leads way in rebuilding Lebanon

THE GUARDIAN , BEIRUT
Friday, Aug 18, 2006,Page 6

As refugees flood back to their war-ravaged villages, Hezbollah has flung itself to the front of the burgeoning reconstruction effort in southern Lebanon, funded with a deluge of petro-dollars from neighboring Iran.

"We want to bring south Lebanon back to life and rebuild it better than it was before the war," said Nabil Kaouk, Hezbollah's top official in southern Lebanon, standing before the group's flattened headquarters building in Tyre.

In nearby villages, his supporters were already hard at work. Hezbollah activists in T-shirts and green caps cleared rubble-strewn roads and piles of rotting refuse and ferried the dead and wounded through the scrub-covered hills in shiny modern ambulances.

But the most extravagant element of Hezbollah's plan is to provide a year's rent and a set of new furniture for every family whose house has been destroyed. The promise was made by Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, within hours of Monday's ceasefire.

The housing scheme will benefit 15,000 families, Nasrallah said, and will cost up to US$150 million, according to one estimate. Funding will come from oil-rich Iran, which until now has mostly supplied Hezbollah with thousands of missiles used against Israel.

On Wednesday in Beirut, hun-dreds of refugees shuffled through a registration center where officials noted their losses and made promises of help. The cash will be spent in towns such as Bint Jbail, near the southern border, where entire neighborhoods have been razed.

"There is no central government presence here. Hezbollah is doing everything," said local official Hamed Harab, standing outside the bomb-pocked town hospital.

Behind him stood a group of trim young men in dark t-shirts who refused to have their photographs taken. They watched a stream of overloaded cars carrying residents home.

"The people want things to move quickly. They know that we can deliver," he said.

This multimillion dollar aid drive marks a new phase in Hezbollah's struggle. The militant group has already won admiration across the Arab world for its fierce resistance to Israeli attack.

Now it is fighting to retain the support of Lebanon's Shia Muslims, who constitute about one-third of the population, and to maintain the "state within a state" that allowed the militant group to develop the military arsenal and network of village bunkers that thwarted the Israeli invasion.

The success of this strategy is evident from the proclamations of undying loyalty, even from families who have lost everything.

"When Sayed Hassan [Nasrallah] speaks, we listen," said Amar Balhas outside the remains of his house. "If he asks, I will give my life for Hezbollah."

But other residents are shocked by the destruction that Hezbollah's belligerence has wrought on their already impoverished lives.

"I will be sleeping in the streets tonight," said Nohead Hamoud, 46, on Wednesday after arriving in Bent Jbail to find a pile of broken bricks and furniture where her home once stood.

She cringed in fear as an Israeli fighter jet roared overhead.

Asked her opinion of Hezbollah's popularity, she replied, tersely: "That is a question I cannot answer."

Some fear the housing scheme will further weaken the influence of the central government in Hezbollah strongholds, deepening rifts between Lebanon's rival religious confessions.

Some Christian and Druze leaders resent Hezbollah's autonomy and have called for it to disarm.

That tension is one of several problems facing the 30,000-strong peacekeeping force in the process of deployment. Of this pool, foreign countries are due to contribute a total of 13,000 troops.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/worl.../18/2003323671

__________________
To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

troung

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5264450.stm

Hezbollah members in the suburbs have been handing out $12,000 (£6,300) to people who lost their homes in the bombings, some residents said.
Residents who earlier signed for aid were handed stacks of bills from suitcases. Hezbollah has not said where the money came from but has pledged to help Lebanon's reconstruction.

One recipient of $12,000, Ayman Jaber, told Reuters: "People already had faith in Hezbollah, this will strengthen their faith."

But at his presidential retreat in Camp David, Mr Bush again condemned Hezbollah of "force of instability".
"Sometimes it takes people awhile to come to the sober realisation of what forces create stability and what don't," he said.

Anon

Please change the name of this thread to "Iran leads the way in rebuilding Lebanon."

'Credit' should be given where it's 'due'.

smilingassassin

Hehe, I like that suggestion.

I heard a figure thrown out in reguards to money sent from Iran to Hezbollah post conflict, something like 600 million...

Bluesman

Money well spent, too, as it will likely get Hez so deeply entrenched that no matter what deals are struck between whom, they will NEVER let go of Lebanon's neck now, and another nascent democracy will have been killed in its crib.

This cease-fire agreement was laughable when it was struck, and it's getting funnier with each passing day. It was completely unworkable on paper, with bad faith demonstrated by everybody but our feckless President (can you believe he let the French screw us AGAIN? ).

Did y'all see the Frog 'reinforcements' landing yesterday? It was the most risible thing you've EVER seen: two rubber dinghies, each filled to overflowing by the elite watch-winder platoon that Monsieur Crapaud has obligingly let get a tan in southern Lebanon, while not doing a dam' thang about the Hez weapons and behavior that started the whole mess.

This is the thin end of the massive wedge of TWO HUNDRED tactical chefs, special service hairdressers and combat concierges led by the battle-hardened somaliers of the elite Blanc Bannere Regiment that is to 'enforce' the terms of the cease-fire, and by 'enforce, we really mean whine at Israel every time they play music too loud in barracks, while rioting the night away with their 'amis, zese fine fellows from ze Islam.'

What a sad joke.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

smilingassassin

I agree, maybe we should start working at undermining the French possition on the next world issue.

200 troops rather than an expected 2,000 troops. What a scam....