Bit by bit, Hezbollah built a fierce arsenal
By Steven Erlanger and Richard A. Oppel Jr. The New York Times
Published: August 6, 2006
JERUSALEM On Dec. 26, 2003, a huge earthquake leveled most of Bam, in southeastern Iran, killing 35,000 people. Transport planes carrying aid poured in from everywhere, including Syria.
According to Israeli military intelligence, the planes returned to Syria carrying sophisticated weapons, including long-range Zelzal missiles, which the Syrians then passed on to Hezbollah, the Shiite militia group in southern Lebanon that Iran created and sponsors.
As the Israeli Army struggles for a fourth week to defeat Hezbollah before a cease-fire, the shipments are just one indication of how - with the help of its sponsors, Iran and Syria - the militia has sharply improved its arsenal and strategies in the six years since Israel abruptly ended its occupation of southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah is a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state, and its fighters "are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians," said a soldier who had just returned from Lebanon.
"They are trained and highly qualified," he said. "All of us were kind of surprised."
Much attention has been focused on Hezbollah's astonishing stockpile of Syrian- and Iranian-made missiles, some 3,000 of which have already rained down on Israeli cities. More than 45 Israelis have died from them - including 12 soldiers on Sunday, who were gathered at a kibbutz at Kfar Giladi, in northern Israel, when rockets packed with anti-personnel ball bearings exploded among them.
But Hezbollah's main sponsors, Iran and Syria, also used those six years to provide satellite communications and some of the world's best infantry weapons, including modern, Russian- made antitank weapons and Semtex explosives, as well as the training required to use them effectively against Israeli armor.
It is Hezbollah's skillful use of these weapons - in particular wire-guided and laser-guided antitank missiles, with double, phased explosive warheads and a range of up to three kilometers, or about two miles - that has caused most of the casualties to Israeli forces.
Hezbollah's Russian-made antitank missiles, designed to penetrate explosive tank armor, have damaged or destroyed Israeli vehicles, including its most modern tank, the Merkava, on about 20 percent of their hits, say Israeli tank commanders at the front.
Hezbollah has also used antitank missiles, including the less modern Sagger, to fire from a distance into houses in which Israeli troops are sheltering, with a first explosion cracking the typical cement-block wall and the second going off inside.
"They use them like artillery to hit houses," said Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, until recently the Israeli Army's director of intelligence analysis. "They can use them accurately up to even three kilometers, and they go through a wall like through the armor of a tank."
Hezbollah fighters use pre-dug tunnels to emerge quickly out of the ground, fire a shoulder-held antitank missile, and then disappear again, much the way Chechen rebels used the sewer system of Grozny to attack Russian armored columns.
"We know what they have and how they work," Kuperwasser said. "But we don't know where all the tunnels are. So they can achieve tactical surprise."
The antitank missiles are the "main fear" for Israeli troops, said David Ben- Nun, 24, an enlisted man in the Nahal brigade who just returned from a week in Lebanon. The troops do not linger long in any house because of hidden missile crews. "You can't even see them," he said.
With modern communications and a network of tunnels, storage rooms, barracks and booby traps laid under the hilly landscape, Hezbollah's training, tactics and modern weaponry explain, the Israelis say, why they are moving with caution.
Hezbollah's fighters are said by the Israelis to number between 2,000 and 4,000, a small army that is aided by a larger circle of part-timers who provide logistics, storage of weapons in houses and civilian buildings.
Hezbollah operates like a revolutionary force among civilians, making it hard to fight without occupying or bombing civilian areas. On orders, some fighters emerge to retrieve launchers, fire missiles and then melt away. Still, the numbers are small compared with the Israeli Army and represent roughly one Syrian division.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards have helped teach Hezbollah how to organize themselves like an army, with special units for intelligence, antitank warfare, explosives, engineering, communications and rocket-launching. They have taught Hezbollah how to aim rockets, make shaped "improvised explosive devices" - used to such devastating results against American armor in Iraq - and, the Israelis say, even how to fire the C-802, the ground-to-ship missile that Israel never knew Hezbollah possessed.
Iranian Air Force officers have made repeated trips to Lebanon to train Hezbollah to target and fire Iranian medium-range missiles, like the Fajr-3 and Fajr-5, according to intelligence officials in Washington. The Americans believe a small number of Iranian operatives remain in Beirut, but say there is no evidence that they are directing Hezbollah's attacks.
But Iran, so far, has not allowed Hezbollah to fire one of the Zelzal missiles, the Israelis say, though they do not rule out a launch just before a cease-fire.
The late Syrian president, Hafez al- Assad, was careful to restrict supplies to Hezbollah, but his son, Bashar, who took over in 2000 - the year Israel pulled out of Lebanon - has opened its warehouses.
Syria has given Hezbollah 220mm and 302mm missiles, both equipped with large, anti-personnel warheads. Syria has also provided Hezbollah its most sophisticated antitank weapons, sold to the Syrian Army by Russia.
Kuperwasser, the Israeli general, said that these included the Russian Metis and RPG-29. The RPG-29 has both an antitank round to defeat explosive, reactive armor and an anti-personnel round. The Metis is more modern yet, wire-guided with a longer range and a higher speed, and can fire up to four rounds a minute.
Some Israelis believe that Syria has provided Hezbollah the Russian-made Kornet, laser-guided, with a range of up to five kilometers, which Hezbollah may be holding back for Israel to move further into southern Lebanon and extend its supply lines.
Despite Israeli complaints to Moscow, "Russia just decided to close its eyes," a senior Israeli official said.
In its early years, Hezbollah specialized in suicide bombings and kidnappings. In 1983, it took responsibility for suicide attacks on the American Embassy in Beirut and a Marine Corps barracks. It became popular in the Shiite south and set up its mini-state there, as well as reserving to itself a section of southern Beirut.
Until 2003, Timur Goksel was senior political adviser to the Unifil, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which monitors the border. He says he knows Hezbollah well and speaks with admiration of their commitment and organization.
After fighting the Israelis for 18 years, "they're not afraid of the Israeli Army anymore," he said in a telephone interview from Beirut.
JERUSALEM On Dec. 26, 2003, a huge earthquake leveled most of Bam, in southeastern Iran, killing 35,000 people. Transport planes carrying aid poured in from everywhere, including Syria.
According to Israeli military intelligence, the planes returned to Syria carrying sophisticated weapons, including long-range Zelzal missiles, which the Syrians then passed on to Hezbollah, the Shiite militia group in southern Lebanon that Iran created and sponsors.
As the Israeli Army struggles for a fourth week to defeat Hezbollah before a cease-fire, the shipments are just one indication of how - with the help of its sponsors, Iran and Syria - the militia has sharply improved its arsenal and strategies in the six years since Israel abruptly ended its occupation of southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah is a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state, and its fighters "are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians," said a soldier who had just returned from Lebanon.
"They are trained and highly qualified," he said. "All of us were kind of surprised."
Much attention has been focused on Hezbollah's astonishing stockpile of Syrian- and Iranian-made missiles, some 3,000 of which have already rained down on Israeli cities. More than 45 Israelis have died from them - including 12 soldiers on Sunday, who were gathered at a kibbutz at Kfar Giladi, in northern Israel, when rockets packed with anti-personnel ball bearings exploded among them.
But Hezbollah's main sponsors, Iran and Syria, also used those six years to provide satellite communications and some of the world's best infantry weapons, including modern, Russian- made antitank weapons and Semtex explosives, as well as the training required to use them effectively against Israeli armor.
It is Hezbollah's skillful use of these weapons - in particular wire-guided and laser-guided antitank missiles, with double, phased explosive warheads and a range of up to three kilometers, or about two miles - that has caused most of the casualties to Israeli forces.
Hezbollah's Russian-made antitank missiles, designed to penetrate explosive tank armor, have damaged or destroyed Israeli vehicles, including its most modern tank, the Merkava, on about 20 percent of their hits, say Israeli tank commanders at the front.
Hezbollah has also used antitank missiles, including the less modern Sagger, to fire from a distance into houses in which Israeli troops are sheltering, with a first explosion cracking the typical cement-block wall and the second going off inside.
"They use them like artillery to hit houses," said Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, until recently the Israeli Army's director of intelligence analysis. "They can use them accurately up to even three kilometers, and they go through a wall like through the armor of a tank."
Hezbollah fighters use pre-dug tunnels to emerge quickly out of the ground, fire a shoulder-held antitank missile, and then disappear again, much the way Chechen rebels used the sewer system of Grozny to attack Russian armored columns.
"We know what they have and how they work," Kuperwasser said. "But we don't know where all the tunnels are. So they can achieve tactical surprise."
The antitank missiles are the "main fear" for Israeli troops, said David Ben- Nun, 24, an enlisted man in the Nahal brigade who just returned from a week in Lebanon. The troops do not linger long in any house because of hidden missile crews. "You can't even see them," he said.
With modern communications and a network of tunnels, storage rooms, barracks and booby traps laid under the hilly landscape, Hezbollah's training, tactics and modern weaponry explain, the Israelis say, why they are moving with caution.
Hezbollah's fighters are said by the Israelis to number between 2,000 and 4,000, a small army that is aided by a larger circle of part-timers who provide logistics, storage of weapons in houses and civilian buildings.
Hezbollah operates like a revolutionary force among civilians, making it hard to fight without occupying or bombing civilian areas. On orders, some fighters emerge to retrieve launchers, fire missiles and then melt away. Still, the numbers are small compared with the Israeli Army and represent roughly one Syrian division.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards have helped teach Hezbollah how to organize themselves like an army, with special units for intelligence, antitank warfare, explosives, engineering, communications and rocket-launching. They have taught Hezbollah how to aim rockets, make shaped "improvised explosive devices" - used to such devastating results against American armor in Iraq - and, the Israelis say, even how to fire the C-802, the ground-to-ship missile that Israel never knew Hezbollah possessed.
Iranian Air Force officers have made repeated trips to Lebanon to train Hezbollah to target and fire Iranian medium-range missiles, like the Fajr-3 and Fajr-5, according to intelligence officials in Washington. The Americans believe a small number of Iranian operatives remain in Beirut, but say there is no evidence that they are directing Hezbollah's attacks.
But Iran, so far, has not allowed Hezbollah to fire one of the Zelzal missiles, the Israelis say, though they do not rule out a launch just before a cease-fire.
The late Syrian president, Hafez al- Assad, was careful to restrict supplies to Hezbollah, but his son, Bashar, who took over in 2000 - the year Israel pulled out of Lebanon - has opened its warehouses.
Syria has given Hezbollah 220mm and 302mm missiles, both equipped with large, anti-personnel warheads. Syria has also provided Hezbollah its most sophisticated antitank weapons, sold to the Syrian Army by Russia.
Kuperwasser, the Israeli general, said that these included the Russian Metis and RPG-29. The RPG-29 has both an antitank round to defeat explosive, reactive armor and an anti-personnel round. The Metis is more modern yet, wire-guided with a longer range and a higher speed, and can fire up to four rounds a minute.
Some Israelis believe that Syria has provided Hezbollah the Russian-made Kornet, laser-guided, with a range of up to five kilometers, which Hezbollah may be holding back for Israel to move further into southern Lebanon and extend its supply lines.
Despite Israeli complaints to Moscow, "Russia just decided to close its eyes," a senior Israeli official said.
In its early years, Hezbollah specialized in suicide bombings and kidnappings. In 1983, it took responsibility for suicide attacks on the American Embassy in Beirut and a Marine Corps barracks. It became popular in the Shiite south and set up its mini-state there, as well as reserving to itself a section of southern Beirut.
Until 2003, Timur Goksel was senior political adviser to the Unifil, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which monitors the border. He says he knows Hezbollah well and speaks with admiration of their commitment and organization.
After fighting the Israelis for 18 years, "they're not afraid of the Israeli Army anymore," he said in a telephone interview from Beirut.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/06/news/hezbollah.php
I should state first that I am an avowed pacifist, one of those "give peace a chance" people. So I don't care for war or violence. However, that dosen't mean I'm blind to how these things begin. I really do not know how we'd behave as Canadians if our people were in the same boat, surrounded on all sides by hostile enemies. I mean, how would any of us feel if walking the streets of Toronto meant the possibility that there might be a bomb in a bus, a restaurant or whatever?
