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Who Is Hezbollah?

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John E. Carey
No one knows for sure the answers to these question, but the Hezbollah leaders have hinted for months that they have more than Israel knows about.

"Israel doesn't know our capabilities on every level," Nasrallah said. "The Zionist enemy has not succeeded in infiltrating our group. The enemy doesn't know our capabilities or what we have."
Many outsiders view Hezbollah as a "terrorist group." But Hezbollah is, in many ways, more like a small but sovereign and very dangerous regional power, than it is like the 9-11 terrorists.

Hezbollah controls its own media, runs hotels and restaurants, and operates a thriving economy in southern Lebanon

Hezbollah provides social services that the government of Lebanon cannot afford to supply. It controls some 25% of the Lebanese land mass and almost half a million people. It runs its own schools, elderly centers, clinics, hospitals and libraries.


But what makes Hezbollah very different, in fact unique in the history of stateless terror groups to date, is its access to very sophisticated missiles and other weapons.

How else is Hezbollah more like a "state" than a terror group? According to Israel's Dr. Boaz Ganor, the deputy dean of the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy and the founder of the Institute for Counter Terrorism in Israel said, "The Hizbullah has succeeded in creating a situation in which it deters Israel more than Israel deters it. It is unprecedented for a terrorist organization to deter a state and not vice versa."

We do not know, and may never know, if Hezbollah possess or has access to weapons of mass destruction or really long range ballistic missiles.

But certainly Israeli military planners fear Hezbollah because of what they have done in the past and what they may yet do in the future.

Mr. Carey has been a military analyst for more than thirty years.

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John E. Carey is the former president of International Defense Consultants, Inc.
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