An In-Depth Analysis of the Hezbollah Organization, its Tactics, and Organization

The terrorist group, Hezbollah, is a force that has persisted for decades and survives through tactics and cooperation by operating in and developing military campaigns from Lebanon, which it has been doing since the 1980s. Throughout its history, Hezbollah (also spelled Hizbollah, Hizballah, or Hizbullah) has been accused of destabilizing Lebanon, largely as a result of their extremely militant nature. At present, Hezbollah represents a significant threat as a military movement within post-civil war Lebanon. Although Hezbollah utilized successful military and effective propaganda campaigns to recruit members and develop a strong organization, in the recent decade crucial strategic mistakes and a diminished reputation have caused the organization to steadily decline, although it still remains a major threat for many nations.

In order to determine the current deadliness of Hezbollah, it is necessary to examine five different themes of Hezbollah, starting with its formation. Hezbollah actually was initially created as an extension of the Shi'a political movement. More specifically, after Lebanon was liberated in 1943, in the midst of World War II, the Shiites felt discriminated against and generally unwelcome in a Sunni-owned state, which led to an identity crisis for these Shiites, who needed a way to gather their strongest forces2. This crisis led to the need for some form of protection for the Shias, and thus, Hezbollah was born. However, their influence does not end there. Hezbollah truly came to power in the 1980s after the Palestinian Liberation Organization attacked north Israel, forcing Israel to retaliate against Lebanon. The Israeli attack garnered more animosity and caused more anti-Israel militant groups to develop. The largest of these new protection and liberation groups to emerge in the 1980s was Hezbollah3. Largely inspired by the Iranian Resistance Movement, Hezbollah adopted guerrilla tactics to attack Israeli and American troops4. This has been the ultimate goal of Hezbollah: to combat Israel along the northern border, as well as provide logistical assistance to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members inside Gaza and the West Bank.

The second major aspect of Hezbollah to be examined is the recruitment tactics of the organization. Obviously, Hezbollah requires its recruitment strategy to be both secretive yet sweeping and effective, in order to gather the greatest number of people. Due to a general lack of intelligence regarding Hezbollah's recruiting tactics, in addition to the lack of information gleaned from Hezbollah operatives captured, information regarding their recruiting tactics is somewhat scarce, although there are certain aspects of it that are known. For starters, it is well-known that Hezbollah's recruitment and training operations have been steadily expanding, both from a vertical and horizontal standpoint, since sometime in the 1990s.7 Hezbollah recruits its members largely through key members of its organization, such as Imad Mughniyeh, finding foreign operatives and bringing them through to Lebanon by circumventing Israeli security measures, oftentimes through intimidation or bribery of Israeli officials.8 Hezbollah also has close ties to Iran, which it leverages to its advantage by abusing the power of many of Iran's command leaders and clerical personalities in order to bring in even more recruits from abroad as well as domestic sources, which are a crucial source of manpower for the terrorist organization.9 Another obvious source of recruitment for Hezbollah has also set up a great number of training camps within its hometown of Lebanon, which it uses to train and recruit both domestic and foreign terrorists. This process of recruitment is so effective that it is estimated that Hezbollah's internal security branch consists of over 5,000 personnel today.10

The organization of Hezbollah itself is much more intricate and complicated than many would believe, since it requires a combination of both military strength and tactics, yet also the ability to disappear as the situation requires, as well as media influence and intimidation tactics, all staples of successful terrorist organizations. As such, the organization itself requires a key separation between Hezbollah's political and military branches, with the political wing exercising administrative control over the military wing, although oftentimes organizational errors and conflicts arise as a result of this structure. Another interesting aspect about the organization of Hezbollah is that oftentimes they must team up with Syria and Iran to form what is known as the Hezbollah-Syria-Iran triangle, also known as the Shi'a axis, in order to confront a common enemy, oftentimes Israel itself. This Shi'a axis acts as an extension of Hezbollah's influences and motivations, yet on a much larger scale. In fact, the ultimate goal of the Shi'a axis is much grander than the three countries could hope to achieve individually. That goal is to gain power in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Cairo, and Amman, which would give the triangle a great deal of political power and influence.13 In fact, Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah are inexorably linked in terms of organization, as Syria acts as the bridge through which Iran can provide weapons and manpower to Hezbollah, meaning that this alliance between the three has been a long time coming.14

The next aspect of Hezbollah to examine is their tactics. Being a well-funded and well-manned terrorist organization allows Hezbollah to be a bit less conspicuous than other terrorist organizations, but must still exhibit a great deal of caution any time they make a move. Hezbollah utilizes suicide bombings as one of its most lethal tactics against high-value targets, and was, in fact, one of the first organizations to utilize suicide bombers on such a grand scale during the 1980s, starting the lasting trend of suicide bombings. Hezbollah's ideology also centers on the belief that attacking targets will create the greatest amount of chaos and fear in its targets. As such, many of Hezbollah's revolve around attacking high-value targets in the United States, such as kidnapping citizens and torturing them, or hijacking airplanes.16 Hezbollah also relies largely on cooperation with Lebanese authorities in carrying out its attacks by presenting Hezbollah as the moderate, national party, which helped to garner more support for them.16 In terms of combat tactics, Hezbollah favors guerilla-style tactics and ambush maneuvers for surprise and hit-and-run attacks, although they do have the manpower to engage much larger forces, if necessary.

The fall of Hezbollah had been in the making for years, but only within the last decade or so have problems such as numerous assassinations of Hezbollah leaders and border conflicts been adding up to severely weaken the organization. In addition, in 2006, a war between Hezbollah paramilitary forces and Israeli military, which led to the deaths of over a thousand Lebanese, severely weakening Hezbollah in the process.18 This was a severe blow to the infrastructure of both Lebanon and Hezbollah, who is deeply related to them at this point. Adding to this are efforts by the United States, as well as the United Nations themselves, to stem conflict in the Middle East, which has led to fewer opportunities for Hezbollah to attack and instill fear as well as recruit others.19

These failings by Hezbollah represent key failures in the organization. Its violent nature has led to the organization starting a number of fights that it simply cannot finish, leading to a diminishing of the organization. However, Hezbollah, and organizations like it, continue to persist as threats to the security of the world, as Hezbollah still continues to operate, albeit quietly and with much less manpower than before. Nevertheless, Hezbollah continues to represent a strong threat, despite its numerous recent failures.

Bibliography

Amidror, Yaakov. "The Hizballah-Syria-Iran Triangle." Middle East Journal of International Affairs 11, no. 1 (2007): 1-5.

Harik, Judith Palmer. Hezbollah: The Changing Face of Terrorism. IB Tauris, (2005).

Jaber, Hala. Hezbollah: Born with a Vengeance. Columbia University Press, (1997).

Matthews, Matt M. We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War. DIANE Publishing, 2011.

Ranstorp, Magnus. "The Hizballah Training Camps of Lebanon." The Making of a Terrorist: Recruitment, Training, and Root Causes 2 (2006): 243-255.

Wege, Carl. "The Hizballah Security Apparatus." Perspectives on Terrorism 2, no. 7 (2010)