by Al Venter
There was good reason for all this concern. Just before I arrived a young Lebanese Hizbollah zealot with the name of Ali Amsher who hailed from the village of Addayseh, had strapped a case of explosives garnished with ball-bearings to his body. He waited for the first IDF patrol to arrive.
When the column stopped at the crossroads where he had taken up a position, he walked forward towards an Israeli patrol, saluted once and blew himself up. He took a Druze captain of the IDF with him and wounded several others. In its broadcasts from Beirut, a Hizbollah spokesman claimed a remarkable victory. Ali Amsher, his report stated, was in Paradise with his just rewards.
This was also a time when I covered much of South Lebanon by car, usually in the company of a UN official. Many of the places we visited were those mentioned by T.E. Lawrence in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I read it again recently and was surprised at its lucidity, even though that work will soon be a century old. Lawrence admirably captures the mindset of many of those who were involved in his war and, had he been alive today, El Aurens would probably have said something about very little having changed where it concerned the people.
Lawrence too, went to Damascus through Tyre, Al-Hanni Cheba’a, Marj’Ayoun, Rshaf and Dyar Ntar, all towns that subsequently found themselves in the sharply disputed IDF Zone of Influence, where Arab and Jew exchanged fire almost every day. In the weeks that I was there, I saw the Israelis regularly use artillery against suspected rebel positions in the Norwegian area. That was not long before Operation Grapes of Wrath.
While visiting South Lebanon, I’ve always made a point of trying to attach myself to one of the UN battalions. Even then, we were hassled by Hizbollah.
One of my hosts while Operation Grapes of Wrath went on was a young Swedish dynamo called Mike Lindvall, a civilian who worked for the United Nations and went on to Afghanistan when it was still under the Taliban. Judging by the speed at which he got us through a dozen roadblocks, including those manned by the Syrian Army, South Lebanese Army and what was then an extremely inept Lebanese Army, Mike knew everybody, both within the UN command, as well as those irregular Muslim units with whom he had to contend. Hizbollah was familiar to him too.
As we approached Tyre, he asked me whether I’d removed all evidence that I had come through Israeli lines. I hadn’t. My hip pocket contained a wad of Israeli shekels and my passport had been stamped at Ben Gurion. He wasn’t pleased. I’d better ‘watch it’ if we were searched, he said. As it happened, we weren’t.
I was to go back there some years later under the auspices of General Emile Lahoud with Hassan, a young Shi’ite captain in the Lebanese Army, and conditions were much changed. There was still an overbearing suspicion towards all strangers entering the area, but there had been progress. But for the war, modern Tyre might have been one of those lugubrious semi-tropical vacation spots that you see advertised in the Sunday papers, though the tall buildings were still pock-marked from the scores of battles over decades.
Along the port city’s Corniche, a real attempt had been made to clean up. Several banks had opened their shutters and there was a handful of new restaurants. Prices were high and in US dollars. There was even a routine Sunday afternoon market in almost-new European cars, mostly BMWs and Mercedes. All had been stolen and shipped to the Eastern Mediterranean from the Adriatic.
In fact, had I wished to do so, I could have bought a seven-series BMW not yet a year old for $12,000, but only if I didn’t ask questions. The only problem was what I would do with it once my assignment was over.
I certainly couldn’t drive it across the border to Tel Aviv …
Hizbollah has been running Tyre ever since it became an effective force in the region and, fundamentalist or not, they have done a good job of it. They had also imposed their own form of government based on Sharia Law; alcohol was already forbidden to all by the time I last called, even to the handful of Christians who’d stayed behind.
With the end of the civil war and the integration of the Lebanese Army, Christians had begun to return and there had even been a few wine shops that opened, which is not unusual for a country that produces its own vintages. There was little that the Mullahs could do about it at first. However, gradually the word got about: if those selling alcohol didn’t conform, things would happen. A few bikinis were even seen along local beaches, usually attached to female UN staff – but they too have since been declared verboten.
Being a scribbler, all my actions in the area were coordinated through Timur Goksell, spokesman for the UN in Lebanon, a tough-talking, three-packs-of-Lexington-a-day Turk. By then he’d been responsible for liaison with the press at Naqoura for more than a decade. Though since retired, the UN consults him when there is need, as they did during the 2006 invasion.
It was Timur who first put me in the picture about Hizbollah. Ever since Sayyed (kin to Mohammed the Prophet) Abbas Moussawi, the original leader of Hizbollah, and his family were rocketed in a sneak attack by an Israeli helicopter while travelling from the town of Jabship in 1992, the fundamentalists have become paranoid about the movements of strangers entering the area. Somebody had shopped Moussawi and they had no intention of it happening again, which was why the movement has always suggested what they like to refer to as the ‘real agenda’ behind some of the work done by Western journalists especially.
I was in Naqoura when the UN media chief in the Middle East made contact with the man who replaced the late Shi’ite cleric-turned fighter. For that historic Hizbollah meeting, Goksell and Lindvall drove from Naqoura to Tyre, but first they had to make contact with a Hizbollah militant at a neutral address in the port city and transfer to an unmarked car. For 40 minutes they were moved around in circles, calling first at one house and then another. At last they were led down a back street to one of the half-dozen safe houses in the town to meet Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of the Party of God.
Afterwards, neither of the two UN officials were prepared to comment about the discussions, but I did gather that the Hizbollah ‘Supremo’ told them that Southern Lebanon was about to enter a new and dramatic phase.
So, too, it did, with the guerrillas having subsequently emerged as an incredibly focused, semi-conventional military force. The guerrillas had somehow inculcated the kind of iron discipline and determination which, in years past, was as much a part of IDF élan as the history of the Jewish state.
What has also since become apparent is that the Israeli ground fighting machine is a shadow of what it used to be. It is manned by young men who, unlike previous generations, are more accustomed to the good life. They take their cell phones into battle with them – as they did in 2006 – and end up compromising the security of the unit because Hizbollah listens while they talk to their mother or their girlfriend. They don’t begin to compare to the resolute IDF fighters who took and held Beirut in the early 1980s.
On the slopes of Mount Hebron, on the border between Syria and Lebanon, stands this sign, used for target practice by soldiers from a dozen nations in the past. (Author’s collection)
More importantly, a new kind of enemy has emerged; one who is prepared to sacrifice one life – or many lives – if real loss to their enemies is achieved.
It was during that visit that I left with Lindvall for the mountains of the east where the borders of Israel, Syria and Lebanon converge near the modest little village of Cheba’a. The journey took us from Tyre through an area supposed to be controlled by Ghanaian UN forces and on to the Finnish HQ near Srifa. From there it was east again to the Israeli border post at Metullah and north-east to Marj’Ayoun and the South Lebanese Army.
At times, the road would meander almost to within spitting distance of the vast array of security measures that the Israelis had installed. Every 300 feet or so there’d be yellow and red warnings in Hebrew: mines. There were several rows of electric fences and razor-wire, ground sensors, video cameras, early-warning detection devices and, of course, still more mines. All were intended for men with guns and e
xplosives who tried to cross.
Of course, Hizbollah knew we were there. We would come to one of the small towns along the way, Dayr Qanu an Nahr, or Ett Taibe further towards the east, and Lindvall would gesture towards someone sitting by the roadside.
‘Hizbollah’, he’d say, with a nod of the head.
‘How do you know?’
‘He’s always there. You won’t see his radio, but as soon as we’ve passed he’ll warn the people ahead that we’re on our way.’ Mobile phones were the medium.
It was much the same at towns then not under the ‘control’ of the Israelis. Earlier, Lindvall told me about an American student who’d hitch-hiked through South Lebanon with the stars and stripes conspicuously displayed on his back-pack. He got through Hizbollah country without mishap; but as soon as he reached SLA territory they seized him and handed him over to the Israelis, for his own safety, they told him. That youngster was fortunate because other Westerners had disappeared in the region, some permanently.
Hizbollah intelligence, I discovered soon enough, was efficient. All movement, all travellers, were noted, me included. Earlier, when some of their security agents swooped on hundreds of suspected Israeli informers, they knew their movements to the last foot over the previous two or three years. Many agents were caught and executed.
Yet it wasn’t quite that simple, Mike added. Many innocents died too, which was one of the reasons why relations between the Party of God and the Lebanese government remained fractious. The authorities would prefer Hizbollah to leave police work to those in charge of such matters, but Nasrallah has always had his own views, which underscores the notion among non-believers in Beirut that the pervading Hizbollah presence is both revolutionary and autocratic.
On the ground, during my last independent visit out of Naqoura (as opposed to my ‘official’ trip with the Lebanese Army later), hostilities in South Lebanon had not been going well for Israel. I’d been there when the relief of about 20 soldiers from a camp in an area north-east of Bint Jubayl – a big Muslim town in the western sector and well known for its commitment to the fundamentalist cause – was taking place.
The Israeli fortification on high ground overlooking a large wadi had been attacked several times in the past year and those soldiers who were being sent home were replaced by 20 others who would come in by road. The work they did was not hard or overly dangerous, but at the end of a three-week tour of duty, they’d had enough.
The changeover began at dawn with the first South Lebanese Army ground patrol, backed by two APCs, moving over a specific route. They inspected the road, its adjoining gullies, overhangs and bridges. This patrol was followed by a squad of Israeli sappers who repeated the process. More soldiers fanned out in the surrounding hills and took up positions held overnight as observation posts by both the Israelis and the SLA. These were preliminary security assessments it was explained, with more to come.
Only about midday did the IDF road column reach the ‘Permanent Violation’ (as Israeli military strongpoints in South Lebanon are designated on the UN map). One group of Israeli youngsters would disembark and another would board the troop-carrier. There were few formalities and the mood was subdued. By some accounts I’ve since read, it could be a disconcerting experience.
Youthful Israeli troops, doing their requisite period of military service after leaving school, form the backbone of Jerusalem’s national defence initiative. Here they are seen on patrol along the South Lebanese frontier. (Author’s collection)
After exploding mines and roadside bombs had become almost routine, IDF commanders liked to vary their procedures. I never saw it happen, but I was aware that the route was often changed at the last moment, whether swept or not, and then only to confuse the enemy. Or the men would be taken out by helicopter, which they preferred anyway. IDF columns that entered South Lebanon in the 2006 invasion simply repeated the old process, but this time they were dealing with an adversary who’d had the time and patience to call the shots. Unlike the Israeli newcomers, Hizbollah cadres were waiting when the strike eventually took place.
As before, roads to and from camps, many of them unsurfaced in the final leg, which made them ideal for land mines, still had to be traversed to bring in supplies. Most of what IDF units needed to fight had to be hauled in by truck, with the usual support and escort: fuel, ammunition, razor wire, weapons and food; even water, because local supplies might have been poisoned.
With long experience in such matters, IDF officers learnt to adopt measures to limit the movement of guerrilla fighters. The first was the use of armour on all high points overlooking the routes used by convoys. Tanks were deployed, fitted with special equipment such as radar, infrared sensors and a variety of detection devices. In addition, convoys would be accompanied by vehicles with jamming systems that prevented the detonation of bombs by specific radio frequencies. At that stage, Hizbollah had cottoned on to using simple walkie-talkies for the purpose, many traded or stolen from UN troops who were supposed to be there to stop such things happening.
Over decades, vehicles were constantly modified to cope with the changing nature of conflict. By 2006, IDF troop-carriers weren’t much like those they had used even a decade before. Protected by steel panels round the cabs, drivers were now encased in capsules said to be able to absorb the full blast of a roadside bomb. They were mine-proof as well. Trouble is, almost nothing is impervious to the high-explosive, anti-tank (HEAT) rounds much favoured among some insurgent groups.
In earlier days, I remember an Israeli trooper telling me that an approaching Sagger missile (a Soviet weapon which is obsolescent today) ‘is a huge ball of fire coming at great speed. You can’t miss it! But if you see it coming, there’s just time to take cover’. It was frightening and it made a tremendous blast, he conceded. ‘But when anybody sees one, the cry goes out and we all get down.’ The man had been at the business end of a Sagger twice before, but like the Katyusha – a larger, unguided rocket with a longer range but also with a powerful blast – ‘there’s often more noise than effect’.
Israeli officers to whom I spoke after the 2006 invasion confirmed that as in Afghanistan, it was sophisticated command-detonated bombs that were most feared. In the old days many of these bombs, which could hold 20 kilos of high-explosive, looked like chunks of rock. Those that I photographed were barely distinguishable from the sandstone boulders among which they were laid. They were cunningly camouflaged, the majority filled with quarter-inch or half-inch ball bearings that could pierce sheet steel.
Cuttings or overhangs near the road were much-favoured as they are ideal for ambush in primitive surroundings since they tend to funnel the approach of the enemy, making them vulnerable to attack. Before they pulled out of South Lebanon the previous decade, Israeli specialists had partly solved the problem by shifting embankments and cuttings back 50 or 60 feet. The cost of such earthworks, which, in turn, had to be protected, was tough on Israeli taxpayers.
Meanwhile, Hizbollah devised other strategies. Instead of using some of the more complicated (and expensive) weapons available on the market, they sometimes laid 100 kilos of plastic explosive as a single bomb, buried in the middle of the road to cripple the vulnerable underbellies of Israeli amour. A little before my tour of the region in 1996, nine Israeli conscripts were killed by a single explosion that lifted a modified counter-mine M60 tank 20 feet into the air. Other favoured targets for such bombs were APCs and fuel bowsers.
Problems faced by IDF elements in those days would be similar today. For instance, large clumps of high-explosive are difficult to detect by conventional means because there is almost no metal. Detonation is either by pressure from above – a kilo or two will do it – or possibly by wire from a remote position overlooking the target. Radio frequencies are still used, but the Israelis are masters of electronic disruption. Occasionally, Hizbollah will employ a small metal contact detonator, again connected by wire but buried in the road ten or 15 feet ahead of the charge.
I
sraeli Army M60 tanks modified for mine-clearing were brought in for the job some years ago with turrets and main armaments removed and their flanks strengthened with steel and ceramic panels to withstand RPG-7s or wire-guided missiles. Additionally, upper hatches were toughened with steel plates to withstand air bursts and mortar bombs.
Many such adaptations were put into effect after Israeli intelligence found that Hizbollah had acquired Yugoslav TMPR6 penetration mines, supplied by Iran.
Towards the end of the 1990s, I visited a forward Israeli post on the security fence. It was the last year that the IDF sent their conscripts into South Lebanese postings and the experience was notable because such things are likely to happen again.
All terrain immediately beyond the unit’s defences was regarded as hostile. While snipers weren’t yet a significant problem, it was not impossible to get hit by a marksmen possibly sitting on high ground half a mile away. In wartime, such issues are of concern, a youthful lieutenant told me.
The camp in which I found myself was responsible for observing and stopping Hizbollah attempts to cross into Israel by air. They had knocked a microlight out of the air earlier in the year: it had taken off from the village of Bani Hayan, and exploded soon after lifting off.
Armoured troop carrier used by the United Nations on the slopes of Mount Hebron during winter. The temperature can fall to 20 below when the weather gets really bad. (Author’s collection)
‘We know exactly when they launch. They aren’t in the air a minute before we hit them. Poof!’ the Israeli sergeant gunner in our group explained.
Israel has other not-so-secret weapons in its armoury: ‘spies in the sky’ that can read the brand name on a packet of cigarettes from three miles up. These remotely piloted vehicles, or RPVs, can stay aloft for up to nine hours and transmit information to banks of monitors on the ground. Some are now being used by Western governments to follow the movements of terrorists elsewhere, or to keeps tabs on items that float and that might be considered ‘dubious’ in European waters.