Hezbollah - a clever and determined
enemy By Richard M Bennett and
David McKenzie
As the Israeli response to
Hezbollah's attacks enters the fourth week, it is
a good time to assess the current military
position.
The reactions of the popular
media in the West, the Middle East and indeed even
Israel once again highlight the difficulties
ordinary journalists have in grasping the true
significance of military tactics and events on the
battlefield.
Those who expected a war of
dramatic military movement with lines of tanks and
armored vehicles racing north to the Litani River
and a ceasefire agreed within a week or so have
been, and will continue to be, disappointed.
It was an unrealistic expectation based on
experience and not on
today's rather different
situation. Hezbollah is not just a rag-tag
militia; it is a well-trained, well-armed,
disciplined and highly motivated fighting force.
With considerable help from Iran and Syria
and using even some North Korean expertise,
Hezbollah has created a vast network of
well-hidden tunnels, bunkers and missile-storage
dumps over a wide area of south Lebanon and the
Bekaa Valley.
Missiles and other arms have
been stored on farms and in garages, workshops and
office blocks as well as in the cellars and roof
spaces of private homes. Each village has a
network of "stay behind" bunkers from which small
groups of Hezbollah reappear each time the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) has "captured" the area.
Hit-and-run tactics by small, well-armed
units have caused more of an ongoing nuisance and
created additional casualties for the IDF than any
serious military defeat. However, the unwanted
losses and the embarrassment of apparent failure
have been difficult for the IDF to swallow. The
terrain is also much in favor of the defenders and
against the rapid deployment of massed armored
vehicles.
Israel's military
response Israel has therefore opted, out of
necessity, for a twin-track approach characterized
first by sustained, but occasionally wayward, air
strikes to paralyze Hezbollah's ability to move
significant quantities of men and weapons to the
south and to hinder the resupply of the fighters
by Iran and Syria while degrading Hezbollah's
command network. The Israeli Air Force has had
some success in this so far, but nowhere near
enough to satisfy its many critics.
The
second part of this approach has been to "fix the
battlefield" in an 8-kilometer strip inside the
Lebanese border. This has had far more success
than is currently being believed by the news
media. First, the IDF's combat engineers have
found and destroyed a considerable portion of
Hezbollah's military infrastructure directly
threatening northern Israel. Large quantities of
arms and many hidden facilities have now been
neutralized.
Though the IDF has been
unable completely to prevent the infiltration of
additional Hezbollah fighters into the newly
captured areas, Israeli commanders on the ground
have turned this to their own advantage. The IDF
has been presented with the opportunity to kill
many more of the Hezbollah than they could
possibly have hoped. Indeed, it is more than
likely that many of the civilian casualties being
repeatedly mentioned in the media are in fact
Hezbollah fighters killed while hiding in civilian
clothes.
This does not excuse Israeli
mistakes that have undoubtedly cost the lives of
genuinely innocent civilians, but exaggeration and
Hezbollah tactics of mixing combat fighters among
civilians clearly accounts for a fair percentage
of the lives lost so far.
Intelligence
failed at a vital moment There is justified
criticism of the lack of intelligence on the
ground in the Lebanon. Intelligence that should
have been available to find, fix and eliminate
many of the so far elusive Hezbollah targets has
simply not been available to the IDF.
The
Lebanese government is in part responsible for
this. Several months ago the Lebanese Security
Service, working in close cooperation with
Hezbollah's own counter-intelligence unit, smashed
an Israeli spy ring. As many as 80 Lebanese
Christian, Sunni Muslim and Druze agents working
for Mossad were arrested in a series of police
operations.
Crucially, in the last few
weeks before Hezbollah launched its missile
offensive, Israel was deprived of one of its vital
sources of intelligence in the cities and towns of
south Lebanon. During this critical period,
Hezbollah was able to move much of its weaponry
and support infrastructure to new sites, leaving
the Israeli Air Force partly blinded.
This
is one of the explanations for a series of Israeli
air strikes on what turned out to be non-Hezbollah
targets. Israel has not chosen to use this to
explain away its mistakes, for to do so would
endanger its operatives held in Lebanese
secret-police interrogation cells and, of course,
admit to a major intelligence failure.
What next for Israel? Assuming
that the US and British governments successfully
resist mounting international pressure to force
Israel to agree to an immediate ceasefire before
it has done significant and long-term damage to
Hezbollah, then much greater use of special forces
and a possible full-scale ground invasion to seal
off south Lebanon are undoubtedly being closely
considered.
Should Israel opt for this
high-risk strategy, it would at the very least
provide the opportunity to cut Hezbollah off from
reinforcement and allow the IDF to destroy the
remaining forces trapped behind the new front line
without the risk of incurring politically
unsustainable Israeli casualties.
Only
then would Israel be able to put a stop to the
Hezbollah barrage of shorter-range missiles.
There are two pointers to this becoming
the preferred option: First, the call-up of about
four full divisions of reservists, something that
Israel finds hard to maintain economically for any
length of time, and second, the special-forces
raids on Baalbek in eastern Lebanon and the one
carried out in Tyre by the elite naval commandos
of Shayetet-13 (S-13).
However, whatever
option Israel chooses, it will still be faced by a
determined and clever enemy that has growing
popular support and the patronage of two major
states prepared to rearm it in an attempt to force
the international community to accept them both
once again as major players in Middle East
politics.
It's fair to say that the
paymasters sitting in Damascus and Tehran are
quite happy to fight their war to the last
Lebanese, or Israeli, civilian.
There are
no bombs dropping on Syria or Iran ... yet.
It remains to be seen whether an
international force will ever have the will or
military capability or be backed by sufficient
political resolve to enforce any resolution that
requires Hezbollah being disarmed. Signing
ceasefires or peace settlements may please
protesters and the media, but it doesn't stop
missiles.
Ultimately the Israeli armed
forces may still be called on to fight this war
all over again, though one suspects using rather
more aggressive tactics.
AFI
Researchprovides expert information
on the world's intelligence services, armed forces
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(Copyright 2006 AFI Research. Used
with permission.)
