Hizballah’s tenacity in the villages was, to this observer, the biggest surprise of the war. As has been mentioned already, the vast majority of the fighters who defended villages such as Ayta ash Shab, Bint Jbeil, and Maroun al-Ras were not, in fact, regular Hizballah fighters and in some cases were not even members of Hizballah. But they were men, in the words of one Lebanese observer, who were “defending their country in the most tangible sense—their shops, their homes, even their trees.”
All the same, the performance of the village units was exceptional. Their job—to slow and to bleed the IDF as much as possible—was carried out with both determination and skill. In Maroun al-Ras, nearby Bint Jbiel, and other villages, Hizballah made the IDF pay for every inch of ground that it took. At the same time, crucially, Hizballah dictated the rules of how the war was to be fought. Or as one observer put it, “This was a very good lesson in asymmetric warfare. This was not Israel imposing its battle on Hizballah but Hizballah imposing its battle on Israel.” The narrow village streets of southern Lebanon do not lend themselves to tank maneuver, so the IDF would have to fight with infantry supported by armor, artillery, and air power. This kind of fight negated many of the IDF’s natural advantages and forced the IDF ground forces to fight a very different kind of battle than the one for which they had trained.
So the heroes of this war were ordinary people — although probably with some past military/guerrilla experience — defending their villages. Elsewhere in the report Andrew posits that the most experienced Hizbullah fighters, further up country, did not even see that much action. In my mind this makes the Lebanese Army’s inaction even more shameful: once again, ordinary villagers in the south were abandoned into the hands of foreign invaders.
Andrew, in your opinion, why are Lebanese Shiite ordinary people so much more successful at defending their villages then their Palestinian counterparts or any other Arab people for that matter against the israelis?
Issandr – as a Lebanese-American with close family ties to South LEbanon, I have often shaken my head over the Lebanese Army. Why do they let Hizbullah do their military work for them? It destabilizes the country in my humble opinion.
There was a dialogue over at Sic Semper Tyrannis about this, and an anonymous person who seems to be Lebanese argued pretty intelligently with me about it. His rationale was that the LEbanese Army could not beat Israel at this game of asymmetric warfare anyway, so Hizbullah must do it. (He also said, and the argument swayed me for the first time thanks to summer 2006, that if it weren’t for Hizbullah, Israel would have sprinkled settlements all over S. Lebanon by now and would be siphoning off Litani river water)
Anyway. I do think that it’s unconscionable that the Lebanese Army serves the invaders tea instead of spitting in their faces. Or maybe, as the old joke goes, they spat in the tea before bringing it out of the kitchen.
You do realize that the opposition demonstrators in Beirut are making posters, chants and jokes about this Lebanese Army officer who served tea to the Israelis last summer when they occupied his post.
Hey, Paul. I don’t think there’s anything special about the Shia of Lebanon that makes them tougher or better warriors or something. (I should note here that my Shia friends disagree!) First, it’s important to remember here that Hizbollah experienced little but failure against the Israelis until around 1992 when Nasrallah took over after the assassination of Musawi and instituted important internal security reforms that made Hizbollah much more difficult to infiltrate. He also “professionalized” the militia to some extent, separating the political and social services provided by Hizbollah from the military wing.
Second, the historical experience of the Shia in South Lebanon over the past 35 years is one of occupation (first by the PLO, then by the Israelis) and war. So the institutional knowledge and experience floating around Hizbollah and with its individuals is considerable. The same can be said for some of the other militias during the Lebanese civil war — Walid’s Jumblatt’s Druze/PSP militias, for example, were highly regarded and fearsome during the war. The difference is, after Taif, only Hizbollah has continued to train and equip to a high degree.
Third, the difference between Hizbollah — as an unconventional guerilla group — and other “Arab militaries” is the difference between apples and oranges. Ken Pollack’s “Arabs at War” is a good primer on the performance of Arab state militaries from 1948 to 1991 and makes for depressing reading!
Fourth, Hizbollah was fighting on their home turf. If the IDF ever decided to invade East Tennessee, for example, I’m sure we would give them quite a fight as well. (Hizbollah, it should be noted, has only *slightly* more sophisticated arms than the folks back home.)
Fifth and finally, let me stress once again that Hizbollah’s performance in the recent war has to be seen from within the context of a military evolution that’s been taking place since 1982. The Palestinian groups need to be seen from within the same context. No question, they too have grown more sophisticated in recent years with Hamas and the challenge they have posed to Fatah. The PLO’s poor performances in prior wars (read about the PLO v. IDF in Lebanon in 1982 … awful…) might be chalked up to the way the PLO was organized — not as a counterinsurgent but as a state military.
Okay, off to watch Sesame Street with my niece…
Pardon, that last sentence should read “as an insurgent” not “as a counterinsurgent.”
A question to Issandr and Leila,
Nasrallah’s “honour” costed Lebanon what it did, as guilty as Israel is in this war.
Would you rather have had the Lebanese army enter a war it neither start nor was a party of, and be destroyed as well?
How shameful is it that Seniora saved the army and many more Lebanese lives from ruin?
I don’t understand this.
You’re going to say that the Lebanese army is responsible for the protection of the whole of Lebanon. True. But isn’t it Nasrallah who insists on controlling his autonomy in the south (he has some reasons as you pointed out), and isn’t it his independent army “of God” which unilaterally triggered this predictable war?
So for the man to have the right grounds to “shame” the independence of the Lebanese army and government from his own maneuvers, he must on his part also be willing to relinquish his own authority over and independence of the Hizbollah army, and have the intention of merging it into one central Lebanese army and government. Right?
But does he have this intention at all?
Seneferu,
my take on it as readers familiar with this blog will know is that Nasrallah was stupid to engage in the kidnapping operation at the time that he did, the response being predictable after the capture of Gilad Shalit by Hamas. Nasrallah has after all said, as Andrew notes in his report, that he would not have gone ahead with the operation had he known of the Israeli reaction. I should also had that I have no particular affinity to Hizbullah’s ideology and think their role in internal Lebanese politics has been mixed at best, as is their alliance with Iran and Syria.
That being said, once Israel responded to what essentially was a super-local special forces operation by a devasting full-scale war on all parts of the country (just look at where the bombs were launched) the government had a duty to respond and protect the country. I don’t think they would have “won” but do think they might have made Israel think again about what it was doing.
In my view, Israel started this war, not Hizbullah, when it decided to attack the entire country. Lebanon — all of Lebanon — should have resisted. For me it just brings to mind the memory of my European family (in Belgium) who took part of the resistance during the whole of the German occupation (no this is not a Nazi comparison, just about being occupied). This is also why I support violent resistance to Israel’s occupation of Palestine, even if I do not support suicide bombings.
My take is that if Seniora did enter this war, he would have given an excuse to both Israel and Hizbollah to come out clean handed; to Hizbollah he would have relieved Nasrallah of his responsibility in this war, and given him the opportunity to point out to the world that this war is strictly between Israel and Lebanon the country. And to Israel he would have given them the same exact excuse and therefore a reason to annihilate the Lebanese army once and for all. I don’t think the regular army of Lebanon, especially a weak and small one as it is, would have stood any chance against Israel, and neither would it have been able to protect itself from Israeli fire by the tactics of guerilla warfare that are expertly employed by Hizbollah as pointed above.
Seniora acted correctly both tacticaly and politically, and also honourably, in my humble opinion.
Andrew, I seem to remember reading some strong critiques of the Israeli military in Ha’aretz or something that pointed to slackness in training or failures in strategic planning or something on the part of said military as an important factor in its failure to quash HA. Do you agree with that assessment?
Yes, SP, that’s true. I mentioned it in the report, but since it’s about Hizbollah and not the IDF, I just briefly touch on it. The Knesset progressively cut the IDF’s training budget in the years running up to the war, and as a result, the reserves and those units that had been serving in the territories weren’t prepared. But I just read that the IDF’s training allowence has been increased this year. Anyway, the IDF’s failures were legion, but that doesn’t take (much) away from Hizbollah’s performance.
The discussion has neglected to mention the element of terrain and topography, a major element distinguishing Gaza for example from Hezbollah-controlled Southern Lebanon.
Although everyone is right about the fact that the Lebanese Army has a duty to protect the country, his duty stops when an illegal armed faction in the country provokes and starts an illegal unilateral decided war. A war which embroiled the entire country. If the lebanese army did start fighting against the Israelis then the latter would have turned the war against all lebanese and no one would have been spared. The only reason Hizabllah “won” in this war, is because the Israelis had to tiptoe around places when they attacked and did not use the full destructive potential of the IDF. The IDF would have wiped every village off the face of the earth to advance their troops, and would not have left a place fo any one to fight afterwards. So, in theory, the lebanese army bu not fighting, it saved Lebanon and numerous lives which Hizballah idid not care about when it started the fight.
Andrew,
I’m taking a break from my nieces to write this as well — I understand about the training and the professionalization of the Hezbollah militias and their excellence at asymmetrical warfare, but I understood from the rest of the post that it wasn’t even necessarily this professional militia that was doing the fighting rather it was the ordinary people. And also the palestinians have also had the same amount of time and historical experiences as the Lebanese to become seasoned as well but Fateh and Hamas routinely get pasted by the IDF…
al-Himyari, make sure to read the report. I write a lot about the physical environment of Southern Lebanon, the way Hizbollah prepared it, and the way it affected the battle. You are right that it differs from the territories in important ways.
Paul, I am not an expert in the fighting in the West Bank and Gaza. Also, as I note, I was personally surprised by the excellence of the “village fighters” this summer. So why are the Lebanese Shia so good and the Palestinians so bad? Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe if the IDF withdrew from the territories for six years (as they did in Lebanon), the Palestinian groups could prepare for an invasion in the way the Lebanese did. Or not. The in-fighting in Palestine is vicious (especially now), and careful readers of human rights reports will note how many Palestinians die each week from violence wrought by other Palestinians as opposed to violence wrought by the IDF. (I subscribe to the PCHR newsletter, I think it’s called, a great source of info.) But once again, I am not an expert on the Palestinian groups. Maybe that would be a good upcoming project, though I try to avoid anything relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like the plague!
Andrew, this is indeed an excellent brief “military� assessment. However, I must disagree with you on one point. Even though the majority of the front villages fighters, who bled the IDF, were not professional Hizballah men, the towns’ commanders and many of the squad leaders were indeed elite professional officers from those towns, some of whom with as many as twenty years of experience in the resistance. At least this was the case in Maroun el-Rass and Bint Jbeil where an “operation officer� and the BJ’s HA leader were killed two days after the IDF, having failed to enter the town, pulled out of the surrounding hills and begun its systematic destruction of the town in revenge. The same must have been the case throughout the frontline villages where major battles took place, such as in Ayta Ash-Shaab, Khyam, Aytaroun, Mayss, Taybeh, Bayyada, etc.
Bassam wrote: “The only reason Hizabllah “wonâ€� in this war, is because the Israelis had to tiptoe around places when they attacked and did not use the full destructive potential of the IDF.”
I believe that Hizballah greatly miscalculated the Israeli reaction to its July 12th operation and it had failed to prepare the country as a whole, and more specifically the people in the South, for a major escalation such as this. And at the end of the war, Hizballah has opened up an even more controversial front against the government and a large portion of the Lebanese population, which, I believe, would end up costing the group much of the credibility it has earned during the war against the IDF.
However, it seems that Bassam has not seen what the Israelis have done throughout the South as well as in the Dahyeh. If this was “tiptoeing around places� then I don’t know what the “full destructive potential of the IDF� could be, nor do I think Halutz himself know it! Maybe he should consult with you if he is online! I think that you meant to say that the IAF tiptoed around non-Shiite areas, which is true, for the sake of turning the Lebanese population against Hizballah. Olmert himself, as well as his top brass, repeated this aim. Ironically, though, it is Hizballah itself who’s accomplishing that goal now on the streets of Beirut!
Bassam also wrote: “the lebanese army [by] not fighting, it saved Lebanon..� This sounds like an oxymoron. If this is true, then why having an army in the first place? Is it for the heck of wasting a $1 billion / year on it so it would be paraded on Independence Day, like all Arab armies? And how are you going to convince the Hizballah fighters to become part of the national army, if the mission of that army is to sit and watch its country being destroyed and/or invaded by the IDF ounce every a few years???
Sorry my friend, I’d rather see the whole army being destroyed before the country being invaded and occupied. At least, it would be honoring its promise to the people that entrusted it in that mission, just as Hizballah did so far!!!
Khalil,
Good point — you’re right. It’s important to note that there were, in fact, senior Hizbollah fighters on the ground in Ayta ash Shab, Bint Jbeil, etc. They surely had a great effect on the battle. Thanks.
As for the rest of you — Merry Christmas!
Ex
Andrew,
I just bought your book yesterday and really enjoyed it. I too was a platoon leader (prior Navy enlisted) in the 278 Armored Cav, and from Athens, TN. Like your sister, I also went to Vanderbilt (1999). I have some questions that I’d like to ask you via email or phone if possible. If you don’t mind, please contact me with your current email address or phone number.
Thank you,
Greg Cain
Andrew,
Here is my email address: gregcain@tds.net
Thanks