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Hezbollah’s media offensive

All Hezbollah lacks is a group on Facebook

Lauren Booth

Wednesday, 31st October 2007

A tour of Beirut with the militia’s PR division

For all its practical chutzpah on the ground, Hezbollah faces huge problems in its attempt to communicate directly with people outside the Middle East. Sheikh Nabil Kawok is Hezbollah’s leader in the south. He is the man whose mujahedin delivered Nasrallah his ‘divine victory’. I meet the cleric in a large room with an interior from Arab Statesmen R Us. The walls are adorned with gilt-framed photos of Khomeini and Nasrallah. To students in Beirut, Nabil is Jude Law to his leader’s Brad Pitt. The young women who take me have their hair hidden in scarves, and blush at the mere mention of his name. It is an exciting time. The night before, car horns across Beirut proclaimed the return of several corpses and one prisoner captured by Israel, Naseem Niser, in an ‘exchange’. Nabil, a tall man in a floor-length grey coat, a brown cape and turban, sips black tea, smiling indulgently when I ask how this is possible if Israel does not deal with ‘terrorists’. ‘What I can tell you is a Lebanese farmer from the south with no links to our party has come home. I was involved. He was sitting where you are, just three hours ago. He was taken by Israel because he had a long beard — which obviously means you are Hezbollah.’ He strokes his own growth which is more Richard Branson than Osama bin Laden. The room erupts in laughter. The rest of his answers are less opaque. Hezbollah reps realise they are not believed in the West, so in interviews they often back up what they have to say by quoting directly from the Jerusalem Post or Haaretz. Much of what else the pleasant sheikh has to say is so deeply hidden beneath references to Mary, Moses and Ibrahim that his answers remain frustratingly bereft of a good soundbite. In PR terms this is a stunning own goal. After an hour, I am comfortable enough to wonder aloud if he would ever ‘drop the Islam stuff for Western journalists’? He flicks hazel eyes my way, chuckling. ‘Maybe.’

There’s another stumbling block in Hezbollah’s campaign to win the information war. They have absolutely no idea of the potential power of new media. None.

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