Inside Hezbollah

How a Hezbollah fighter’s old crush is helping him conduct this battle


Al-Arabiya, which is an Al-Jazeera for moderates, carries on its website a fascinating account on how Hezbollah guerrillas operate.

Apparently, the fighters have been preparing a long time ago for this war. They identify themselves by three-digit codes, they eat from cans and they hide their rings to avoid being revealed by the sun’s reflection. An otherwise normal geography teacher would replace his books with two Motorola talkie-walkies and a Kalashnikov machine gun.

Hajj Abu Hussein, 40, A.K.A (#103) says that he listens to the radio station for hidden instructions, but so far his only mission is to launch as much missiles as he can into Israel. He is now wearing civilian clothes, but when he’s on the field, he puts on the military Uniform. “It’s not wise to wander among civilians in military clothes” he says.

His childhood friend, Abu Muhammad, A.K.A (#121) explains how the two of them communicate: “we used to play together in these fields since we were kids”, “when we exchange information, we refer to little anecdotes that only we understand.”, “for example,” he continues, “when I was 20, I had a crush on this girl. I simply tell Abu Hussein: let’s meet at this girl’s neighborhood. The Israelis will never figure that one out”

Abu Hussein tells Alarabiya’s correspondent: We don’t like killing. We think all peoples are our brothers, no matter what religion they follow. But we want to defend our land and our honor. We love martyrdom, but we also love life and we don’t want to die in vain.