HezbollahLand: The Middle East Writ Large

We wind our way up, and up, and up, along a narrow road through stark and beautiful moutains in the hinterlands of South Lebanon, within Katyusha range of the Israeli border.

Brown signs mark the way. “Tourism Landmark of the Resistance.”

Our destination? Mleeta, AKA HezbollahLand.

Which is, even in this beautiful, strange, disturbing country, one of the most peculiar and powerful places I’ve been.

Even though I know this area is safe, I grew up in the 80s, when Hezbollah – and, for that matter, the PLO – held similar bogeyman status in the West to that Al Qaida has now (and, for the record, Saddam Hussein was the good guy).

So it feels intimidating. Or, rather transgressive.

More transgressive than unsafe or risky.

Just as in twenty years time, when one heads into the Al Qaida strongholds of the Middle East, when a new bogeyman has come along and Al Qaida is, like Hezbollah, an extremist fixture rather than the Great Satan, that will feel transgressive and a little scary.

Winding through the starkly beautiful landscape, we acquire a child hitcher. He wants to go to HezbollahLand, too.

Whatevs.

I’ve been avoiding giving lifts to adult men in Lebanon, even when I’ve asked for directions and they’ve volunteered to hop in the car and show me the way (so, clearly not carjackers, or they’d be in the vehicle with a gun in my head before I batted an eyelid).

This is because, while my gut has, on every occasion, said, “Nice guy, wants a lift, keen to help,” my head has said, “Woman plus child in car plus strange man = not good.”

In fact, when the kid’s dad asks me in Arabic to take his kid, I pretend not to understand.

Then he tries again in French, and I’m shafted.

And off we squeal, up this winding mountain road that has made my ears pop five or six times already, agonisingly slowly round perilous corners (perilous sometimes because only partially shielded, often because of folk overtaking on blind bends), and up, up, up into the sky towards HezbollahLand.

Where we pull into a huge, theme-park style car park, perched, like the rest of the site, on the top of a mountain with views over mountain upon mountain upon mountain, surrounded by angular, modernist edifices that, but for their shoddy construction – sorry, Hezbollah! – would not seem out of place in Paris or Bilbao.

And… it’s another wow moment.

There’s a giant modernist circle full of zen gardens of rocks and crumpled tanks and gun turrets, and howitzers.

Stark, beautiful, slightly kitschy, brutalist, fascistic and – particularly with the flower gardens planted around it – incredibly Lebanese.

“Wow!” says Z.

“Will you look at that?” I say.

“Hom, hom!” says the kid (who is in fifth grade). “Très jolie!”

Oh b*gger, I think.

We’ve not just got ourselves an incompetent guide – our first in Lebanon.

BUT I’ve driven him here, and I’m guessing I’m dropping him home, and I’m 99% certain he’s going to want bakhsheesh.

We really are back in the Middle East.

“Oui,” I say, amazed that I’ve found a Lebanese who speaks worse French than I do, even if he IS only ten. “Oui, c’est très jolie.”

And then I see the helmets…

Now, Lebanese history, in particular the last few decades, does not lend itself to easy summary. Although Lebanon has had its own identity since the time of the pyramids, under French occupation Lebanon and Syria were one – and there are plenty of forces within Syria that believe this should hold today.

Lebanon has always been diverse: its 18 different sects have long histories here. And, as one of the more densely populated countries in the world, the sects all rub up against each other and major on that kind of internecine hatred that only very similar religions seem to muster.

In an attempt to keep a lid on the sectarianism, the government was set up so that members of specific sects held specific positions. It didn’t work. In the mid-70s it exploded into a savage civil war.

A few years later, around the time of the Iranian Revolution – the time when another of the Middle East’s most fabulously laid back capitals subsided into a welter of internecine strife and hyper-religiosity – the ayatollahs set up and backed a Shia militant organisation.

Its name? Hezbollah, AKA “the party of god”.

By 1982, Israel was in Lebanon, and at war. The US supplied arms to Israel, Russia to Syria. In Lebanon, Israel supplied and funded the South Lebanese Army; Syria supplied and funded Hezbollah.

The war ground on for over two decades, then erupted again in 2006 for a period of a month.

Now, Hezbollah run a chunk of Lebanon, providing everything from hospitals to telecoms for the Shia.

And, but for one spectacular episode a couple of years ago when Hezbollah effectively invaded Beirut – the Lebanese government had asked them to give up their phone lines and go on the national grid – they stay within their territory.

But as they have more weapons, more money and a stronger military than the Lebanese state, if they feel like it – and many Lebanese are worried about this at the moment – they could do the same thing any time again.

Anywise… Back to the helmets.

Now, everything on display in this section of Mleeta was, pretty much, captured from the Israelis.

And, y’know, we’ve seen a lot of f*cked up tanks. That doesn’t shock me.

The howitzers with roses growing round them? That doesn’t shock me.

The Lebanese do this. They put flowers everywhere, particularly on the ugly stuff like razor wire.

But the big piece of camouflage netting full of helmets and boots.

THAT’s a gutpunch.

“Z,” I say. “Where do you think the helmets and boots came from?”

“Dead Israelis,” he says.

“Yep,” I say. “Every helmet in there protected some mother’s son.”

It strikes me really hard, the helmet-taking.

It’s like trophy-taking. Not too many years ago, they’d have had heads and hands there.

Did I mention that one of Hezbollah’s aims is to eliminate the “Jewish state”?

Yep. Still, today.

As Z says, “Well, they might as well give up on that one while America’s around. When China’s the superpower, they might have a chance.”

Now, chuck a stone over your shoulder in any Middle Eastern city and talk honestly with almost anyone – Christian or Muslim — and they’ll say, “There won’t be peace in the region until the Israelis have gone.”

In which they are probably right.

But I find the general optimism that everything will be flowers and roses and little fluffy kittens should that occur quite utterly bizarre.

Frankly, it’s all very well blaming “the Jews”. Which Hezbollah does, often.

But in Libya, Syria and, at the moment, parts of northern Lebanon, it is different sects of Islam that are fighting each other like the proverbial cats in sacks.

And that is not Israel’s fault. That is internal, intra-Muslim strife fuelled by regional powerbrokers, all of them Islamic, jostling for position.

Which is not to say that Israel’s helping. I love Israel. I have Israeli friends.

But, from an Arab perspective, the Israelites flourished in the Middle East and disappeared from the Middle East just like the Nabateans, the Edomites, the Canaanites – a long, long time ago, and who gives a monkey’s if they kept their culture, their religion and their language, and want their holy places back?

“Hom! Hom! Trés jolie!” says the kid, beckoning us onwards into a tunnel of camouflage netting that winds through a grove of olives and acacias.

We wander past tableau after tableau of Hezbollah fighters in action — lord knows, the Lebanese love their mannequins.

Sniper positions. Machine gun nests. Rocket units. Medical units. And, of course, “Martyrdom Choosers”.

“What do you think that means, Z?” I ask, reading off the trilingual label. “’Martyrdom choosers?’”

“Kamikaze,” he says.

“Or?” I say.

“I’m not going to say that here and I don’t think you should either.”

Quite. But, here it is, a Hezbollah suicide squad, in all its glory, mocked up on the hilltop amid the trees.

Now, martyrdom is prized in the Middle East. The family of a martyr can expect to revel in glory for the rest of their days, and woe betide anyone who removes graffiti commemorating a martyr. It is almost better to be a dead hero than a live one in these parts.

And, lo, we pass a site where a fighter passed from warrior to martyr. The kid makes me repeat after him what I think is a prayer for the dead, Islam’s answer to the Kaddish.

I do it. I feel uncomfortable with it, but I do it.

We descend into a bunker, buried deep into the rock, and effectively invisible. A radio is blasting speeches by Hezbollah Secretary General Abbas Al-Musawi, also a martyr, since he was assassinated by Israel in 1992.

“Abbas,” says the kid. “Abbas. Secretaire Abbas! Hom! Hom! Abbas Al-Musawi! Abbas!”

This man, this religio-political operator-cum-general, is his Churchill, his war hero – yet also his martyr, his spiritual leader, close to a saint. Lest we forget, Hezbollah is the party of god, and the kid will not get tired of listening to the voice of god’s emissary.

Every corner of this bunker, with its electric lighting and its prayer rooms seems to have been used at one time or another by the great man.

The kid mimes again what weapons are used for. Z, who wants to read, absorb and reflect, and knows one end of a rocket from another, THANK YOU VERY MUCH, is silently livid.

Not that you’d be able to tell.

We come to an open grave. It’s a spot sacred to another martyr. He was blinded, during the fighting, but before that had experienced a spiritual awakening.

Or, as a Western shrink might perhaps say, “Was evincing signs of severe post-traumatic stress disorder, in the form of morbid depression and religious mania. Desperately needed time out of combat.”

But we’re in HezbollahLand. He wasn’t going crazy. He was drawing closer to god.

This comrade’s actions are beyond heroic. Before he was blinded, he dug himself a grave in the hilltop, to which he would go alone to pray and contemplate many times during the day.

After his blinding, he returned here and, without assistance, despite the savagely steep rocky hillside, made his way here to his grave – yea, lo!, even though he had not eyes to see.

And he passed, silently, to a mystic union with his god, the god of his party of god, Hezbollah.

Z and I read the text. The kid babbles away at us in Arabic with the odd word of French. I reply in French with the odd word of Arabic.

Z and I exchange glances. This is, again, not something we discuss here.

More bunkers, more weaponry, howitzers blooming among manicured gardens like alien flowers, complete with signs in the earth before them.

At 60,000 square metres, the scale of the site is awe-inspiring. If numbing.

Each time we see a weapon, the kid says, “Hom, hom!”, makes shooting noises and babbles in Arabic about killing Israelis, boom, boom, boom!

We ascend to a square where the victory speech of Hasan Nasrallah, the current secretary-general (you can buy Nasrallah themed gifts at the gift shop, should you fancy being refused admission to Israel at the border) blasts out, accompanied by a translation of the highlights.

We read and listen, while the kid babbles about Nasrallah.

The kid taps me for money. I pretend not to understand his Arabic. Then he pulls together some French and I give him 1000 Lebanese to buy himself a Coke, largely because I’m hoping we’ll get rid of him that way.

And then we ascend to a circle at the top of the hill, where there’s a monument, with yet more bombastic text, at which Z stares in horror for several minutes before we make a break for it.

We drop the kid back at the turnoff for his house and feel, finally, free to speak.

“Well, Mum,” says Z, words flooding out all of a sudden. “I think that was DISGUSTING. I think it’s the most disgusting, horrible place I’ve been to. That kid is TOTALLY brainwashed. He’s got ABSOLUTELY no idea. That’s all the site is, brainwashing, to make him believe that Hezbollah are the saviours of all humanity.”

“Did it say that?” I ask, vaguely, negotiating a particularly hair-raising hairpin bend. “I know they were banging on about being saviours of Lebanon.”

“YES, Mum,” he says. “That’s EXACTLY what they said. They banged on about being saviours of ALL HUMANITY, about fighting for THE WORLD. Which means, if you think about it, that they’re presenting the Israelis, and, more to the point, the Jews, as subhuman, as enemies of the WHOLE WORLD. Just like the Nazis did.”

“Yeah,” I say. I hadn’t picked up on that. But he’s spot on. “I guess you’re right.”

“I feel sorry for the kid,” Z says. “He’s never going to get another perspective on things. Are Hezbollah holocaust deniers?”

“I don’t know,” I say. We’ve chatted to a number of Islamists of various shapes and sizes in Egypt, yet views that struck me as quite extreme in Egypt seem, well, fairly zen out here in Hezbollah land. “But they’re backed by Iran, so they probably do deny the holocaust. And, quite possibly, they’re into the Protocols of Zion as well.”

“What are the Protocols of Zion?” he asks.

“A bit like the blood libel in the Middle Ages,” I say. “A fake document about a global Jewish conspiracy.”

Z nods. After Hezbollahland, he’s hard to shock.

I stop in a small town to ask directions. The signs to the “Tourist Landmark of the Resistance” work all very well going out, but there are no signs indicating the route back to the highway to Tyre and, despite more than two years’ travelling, I still have absolutely zero sense of direction.

Further, I need to be on the highway fastish, because it’s getting late. Lebanese traffic is challenging enough without contending with maniacs driving lightless after dark, or the risk of ending up at the Syrian or Israeli border after taking a wrong turn in the mountains.

I’m also pretty sure that this is one of the parts of Lebanon the FCO advises against visiting, which means our travel insurance won’t cover us if some prick drives our little car off a mountain.

“I’m going towards the autoroute,” says the kid I ask, in French. “Is there a space in the car? I can direct you.”

Sod it, I think. He’s 19, tops, with his school backpack over his shoulder. He’s a nice kid.

And, bizarrely, I feel safe in Lebanon.

Or, rather, I feel safe among the Lebanese. And safe in the right bits of Lebanon.

“Sure,” I say, sweeping salt and vinegar crisp packets and water bottles off the shotgun seat and onto the floor. “Hop in.”

And off we head. Towards the highway. Through town after town packed with Hezbollah posters and into the growing dark.