Earlier this year, I travelled from Beirut, where I live, to Kfar Kila – a town in southern Lebanon on the border with Israel. This is the heartland of Lebanon’s Shia Muslim community and of Hezbollah, the militia and political movement whose name means Party of God.
Once a quiet community of around 15,000 people, Kfar Kila was known for its two or three-storey homes and small buildings, stretching through a valley. But after the recent war between Hezbollah and Israel, almost no buildings were left standing. On top of the piles of broken concrete and twisted metal, the group’s bright yellow flag still flew – a sign that, despite all the destruction, Hezbollah was still there.
Yet the conflict had been catastrophic for Hezbollah. I had gone to Kfar Kila while working on a documentary for BBC Radio 4 to ask supporters what they wanted from the group that had become a shadow of its former self. Its leadership has been decimated, many of its communities lie in ruins and there is growing pressure – from both inside and outside Lebanon – for it to disarm. Would Hezbollah change?
A home destroyed
One of the people I met was 37-year-old Alia, who was visiting with her husband and three daughters. Their home had been flattened, and she was only able to recognize it because of a tree in what used to be the front garden.
‘There’s nothing to recover,’ she told me. Hezbollah had given the family money to cover a year’s rent, and to buy clothes and furniture, she said. But their business had also been destroyed, and she was frustrated that they were unlikely to receive any compensation for it from the group.
There were similar stories all around, and the fact that Hezbollah supporters were expressing such views – almost unthinkable not so long ago – was telling. The cost of rebuilding Lebanon is estimated at $11 billion (£8.3 billion), according to the World Bank and the country’s international allies say there will be no assistance if the government, itself struggling with years of financial crisis, doesn’t disarm Hezbollah.
On the way to Kfar Kila, I drove through villages where work hadn’t even started on clearing the rubble. ‘It may take years to clean everything up before we can think about reconstruction,’ one man told me.
Whispers of division
Hezbollah was formed in the 1980s in response to Israel’s occupation of Lebanon during the civil war. With financial and military support from Iran, Hezbollah built a force considered more formidable than the Lebanese national military, armed with sophisticated missiles and thousands of battle-hardened fighters. Britain, the United States and others consider it a terrorist organization.
Politically, Hezbollah has long been part of a strong parliamentary bloc and virtually no major decision has been made in Lebanon without its approval. It also runs social services – including schools and hospitals – often filling the vacuum left by an absent state. To visit Kfar Kila as a journalist, for example, I had to seek Hezbollah’s permission.
The latest conflict erupted more than 18 months ago, when Hezbollah opened a second front against Israel following the Hamas attacks of October 7. Violence escalated dramatically last September with the Israeli military’s air strikes and ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Across the country, some 4,000 people were killed, including Hezbollah’s long-time chief Hassan Nasrallah. Almost 18,000 people were wounded. In November, Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire that was essentially a surrender.
The group has been weakened not only militarily. In January, after a two-year stalemate, Lebanon’s parliament elected a new president, former army chief Joseph Aoun. Supported by the West, Aoun has vowed to disarm Hezbollah, and implement what he describes as a ‘state monopoly on arms’.
The process, however, is unlikely to be smooth. There have been whispers of divisions among Hezbollah’s leaders, with hardliners apparently opposing disarmament. Aoun is pushing for dialogue, aware that the use of force against the group could reignite violence, a worrying prospect in a country where many remember the devastation of the civil war.
Axis of resistance
Hezbollah’s fate, however, may lie with Iran. Hezbollah used to be the main player in what Iran calls the ‘axis of resistance’ – a ring of fire around Israel made up of other Iranian-backed groups that have also been severely damaged. It is unclear what Tehran will do next.