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Thursday 4 December 2008

Hezbollah’s media offensive

All Hezbollah lacks is a group on Facebook

A tour of Beirut with the militia’s PR division

Widely believed to have the slickest PR operation of any similarly sized organisation in the Middle East, the group is headed by Hassan Nasrallah. He is regarded as a rhetorical giant in some quarters. Take his words broadcast last 14 July: ‘Now in the middle of the sea facing Beirut, the Israeli warship that attacked our infrastructure and civilians . . . Look at it burning!’ Today every student in Beirut can repeat this verbatim with the same misty-eyed pride we Brits reserve for ‘We shall fight them on the beaches.’ It’s hard to quantify the immense impact this announcement had on Lebanese morale.

Today, however, Nasrallah is invisible, hoping to avoid the fate of his predecessors — namely, assassination by Israeli agents. But that does not mean that Hezbollah has adopted a low profile, far less gone into hiding. On the contrary. Nasrallah’s favoured deputies are busy making foreign journalists very welcome. All you have to do is ask if you want to tour the bombed villages in the UN-patrolled south, and meetings with high-ranking members are readily arranged.

Yet Lebanon itself lies beneath a sheet of heavy paranoia. The gaps in the centre of Beirut made by Israel’s air assault are unofficially patrolled. An outsider who lingers beside the craters will be briskly told to get lost by irritable-looking men.

I tour the southern part of the city as a guest of Hezbollah’s media arm, al-Manar. In the badly damaged suburb of Haret Hreik it’s necessary for my guide to repeat ‘Hezbollah’ several times before the guards let us pass. Wherever construction is taking place (cranes are almost as common as chickpeas) the accompanying scaffolding is swathed in yellow or green banners. These thank Hezbollah in glowing terms for ‘investment’ in the city. Billboards featuring the kind of developments that would not look out of place in the Docklands feature projects seemingly underway, paid for by Hezbollah Inc.

The ‘Party of God’ was remorselessly inventive and effective during the war. Not content with disabling a warship live on TV, Nasrallah personally guaranteed $12,000 for every family made homeless by the bombing. To do this a company was quickly set up to manage cash flooding in from Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and, yes, Iran too. Within 12 months Lebanon has no homebred refugees, despite hundreds of thousands displaced between 12 July and 14 August last year. Hezbollah inc is filling the funding gap left by a government accused of failing to distribute several billion dollars received from foreign governments and aid agencies. Sally, a student of journalism working part-time for al-Manar, confirms her parents have received the 12k. They now have ‘a nicer home with better furniture’. As a vote-winner, this obviously carries a good deal more weight than, say, a good conference speech.

More articles from: Lauren Booth | this section

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