Hezbollah

A militia, a political party and a social welfare network at once, created by an invasion and now the most heavily armed non-state actor in the world. Hezbollah emerged among Lebanon's Shia after the Israeli invasion of 1982, organised and trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and its founding purpose was to expel Israeli forces from southern Lebanon. It did: Israel withdrew in 2000 after eighteen years, and the claim to have been the first Arab force to compel such a withdrawal gave the movement enormous standing across the region. It is unusual in combining three things - an army independent of the state, a party sitting in parliament and cabinet since 1992, and a network of clinics, schools, construction firms and a satellite channel that substitutes for a Lebanese state that has largely stopped functioning. The 2006 war with Israel lasted 34 days, killed over a thousand Lebanese and around 160 Israelis, and ended without a decisive result, which Hezbollah presented as victory. It has been accused of assassinating the Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, and a UN-backed tribunal convicted a member in absentia. Its intervention in Syria from 2013 to save the Assad government cost it heavily in casualties and in domestic support. It is designated a terrorist organisation by many states and not by others. Israel killed its long-serving leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2024. Its arsenal has been estimated in the tens of thousands of rockets. The name means Party of God. The movement was founded in 1982 and has sat in the Lebanese parliament since 1992. Its stronghold is the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Bekaa valley and the south. Lebanon has around 5.5 million people. Nasrallah had led it for 32 years.

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