A lot of people are unfamiliar with the impetus for the fighting between pro-government forces and Hezbollah last week: telecommunications equipment.
Excerpts from the WSJ:
“Hezbollah was secretly expanding a [fiber-optic] network that could provide secure communications in times of battle.
The drama began developing late last year when engineers working for Lebanon’s telecommunications minister got an odd tip: Someone was mysteriously burying spools of fiber-optic cable near a village in southern Lebanon. Then came a call from the mayor of Choueifat, a suburb of the capital. “There are strange works, unknown to the municipality…on public and private lands,” he said, according to Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh. He sent engineers to investigate, and soon determined that Hezbollah had a network stretching for more than 200 miles — in a nation only about 140 miles long. It had wireless transmitters, Mr. Hamadeh said, and redundancies so communications could continue even if part of it was damaged.
The government long knew Hezbollah had a network of some sort, but thought it was limited and of little threat to central authority. But after the 2006 war, the government told the U.N., Hezbollah secretly expanded it under the guise of postwar reconstruction, burying cables beneath newly paved roads. The work, the government added, was done with the “participation in the field” of the Iranian Headquarters for the Reconstruction of Lebanon, an Iranian agency that has claimed credit for hundreds of rebuilding projects since the 2006 war. It wasn’t reachable for comment.
For government officials critical of Hezbollah, the system was a clear sign of Hezbollah’s worrisome ambitions. “This,” declared Mr. Hamadeh, pointing to a hand-drawn map of the network, “is the takeover of Lebanon.”
Since the government’s public challenge to the network, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has left little doubt of its importance: he’s defended it as a vital weapon against Israel, whose occupation of southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000 helped give rise to Hezbollah. Calling the system Hezbollah’s “No. 1 weapon,” the black-turbaned leader declared that “it is forbidden to touch [anything] linked to the networks, whether an engineer, a company or a mayor. Touching them is like touching me.”
The more rudimentary system that existed at the time of the 2006 war was considered vital in Hezbollah’s military successes against Israel. Some independent analysts and diplomats worried that enhancement of the network meant Hezbollah is gearing up for another confrontation with Israel.
Mr. Hamadeh, the telecom minister, says his engineers had discovered a Hezbollah fiber-optic cable in the heart of Beirut last year, he said. Confronted about it, Hezbollah reluctantly agreed to remove it from that area, and “things went quiet for a while.” But then, when his engineers investigated the tips from Beirut suburbs and southern Lebanon, they found a greatly expanded Hezbollah system.
On a hand-drawn map, Mr. Hamadeh traced the network’s route: a line south from Beirut to the port of Tyre, then to myriad sites in the southern tip of Lebanon, then north through central Bekaa Valley. Off the main trunk, he sketched what he said were several new branches, reaching toward Christian areas in the north, pro-Syrian Palestinian bases in refugee camps and to areas east of Beirut controlled by the Druze, another sect. His final line reached to a tiny border own called Tufayel, where, he said, the secure network starts to connect with Syria.
Mr. Hamadeh said the government tried three weeks ago to negotiate secretly with Hezbollah about dismantling the network, working through the army intelligence chief and the head of internal security. He said Hezbollah confirmed the existence of the expanded system but “absolutely refused to dismantle it, directing threats against officials” involved.”
