Washington Institute fellow Andrew Exum is just back from a trip to Lebanon and has written up his own take on Hezbollah’s doings north of the Litani. Andrew is a former Army Ranger platoon leader and incorporates his knowledge of military tactics into his analysis. I’ve pulled out a few passages below, but the whole thing is worth a read.
From the perspective of a Hizballah military planner, it is difficult to surmise what strategic objectives Israel might seek to accomplish in the event of another war. Hizballah is left in the awkward position of trying to answer the question of how Israel might fight without knowing why it would fight.
At the moment, the group seems to think that despite Israel’s heavy reliance on airpower in the last war — with ground forces deployed in only a limited fashion — the next war would begin with a much larger Israeli ground assault. Any attempt to defend the area south of the Litani would therefore be suicidal.
Accordingly, even as Hizballah continues to train village units south of the Litani in the hope that they could slow an Israeli ground invasion, the group has constructed its main defensive positions to the north, where the terrain favors the defender and where Hizballah could deny Israeli armor columns easy access to the Bekaa Valley.
Observers have been taken aback by how overt much of the construction has been — very unlike Hizballah, an organization famous for its secrecy. Perhaps these positions are being constructed as decoys in the same way that others were constructed for this purpose between 2000 and 2006. Or, as some have argued, maybe these construction projects are just a way to keep Hizballah’s gunmen busy while the real fight — the political one — takes place to the north, in Beirut.
There is speculation that Nasrallah’s “surprise” would be the inclusion of antiaircraft capabilities in the next round of fighting, a move Hizballah hopes would break Israel’s air superiority and enable it to fight on a more fluid battlefield. For U.S. observers, however, the source of continued fascination remains Hizballah’s transformation from the world’s finest guerrilla army into a force that, in 2006 and today, seems quite comfortable in conventional fighting as well.
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1 Quick Human Security Links | Human Security Review // Aug 23, 2007 at 11:55 pm
[…] A soldier’s analysis of Hezbollah’s war preps […]
2 Anyone Listening? « The WYSIWYG* Blog // Aug 24, 2007 at 12:36 pm
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3 lisoosh // Aug 24, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I would have liked to hear a first hand source, but it sounds realistic. Hizbollah have shown themselves to be very good students when it comes to the Israeli Military.
What is fascinating of he is accurate is the extent to which Hizbollah is increasingly comfortable acting outwith the Lebanese political structure. While Lebanons pols witter and twitter away, Hiz is pretty much doing whatever it wants, wherever it wants unimpeded.
4 Anonymous // Aug 25, 2007 at 3:28 am
Lisoosh, when you say acting outside the Lebanese political structure, well that pretty much describes every political party and sectarian warlord in Lebanon. Hizbullah is by no means unique, they are simply the most effective on several broad fronts. The state is simply a dead skeleton which sectarian interests struggle to pick the remaining flesh off of to feed their minions. The reality is that the disfunctional sectarian system created so long ago and weakened all the more over the years is simply not a basis for creating a genuinely unified national identity and system of governance that is colorblind (or perhaps “sectblind” is the appropriate term in Lebanon). Which makes it seem all the more glaring and obvious that those who refer to the need to defer to the power of the state today are really just saying to surrender to the dictates of whoever holds the most levers of power in the state at any given time.
5 lally // Aug 25, 2007 at 11:18 pm
“From the perspective of a Hizballah military planner, it is difficult to surmise what strategic objectives Israel might seek to accomplish in the event of another war. Hizballah is left in the awkward position of trying to answer the question of how Israel might fight without knowing why it would fight.”
I would guess Hezbollah has a better idea of how Israel would fight than the reverse. Does Baladia City ring any bells? Doubtful that they would waste much time fretting over the WHYof yet another Israeli war of “self defense”; WHEN is the more important question .
6 Abu Muqawama // Aug 27, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Lally: I agree with your first point, that Hizbollah has a keen understanding of Israeli tactics, but the question of WHY Israel might fight is an important one from Hizbollah’s perspective. Nations fight wars to achieve strategic objectives. Hizbollah needs to know what Israel’s strategic objectives might be because their own strategy largely consists of denying Israel those objectives.
7 lally // Aug 27, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Abu.
What were Israel’s “strategic objectives” last summer? Hezbollah was certainly surprised by the Israeli response as they may have believed Olmert’s promise to continue Sharon’s policies.
Israel wanted to “cleanse” southern Lebanon of Hezbollah influence up to the Litani. Did they suceed? Given their efforts to amend the UN resolution language in order to force UNIFIL into widening their mandate using more “proactive” methods, I wonder.
I certainly don’t pretend to have a clue about what Nasrallah thinks or knows about Israel’s objectives but have noted that he has made plans to turn the site of his former headquarters in Beirut into a public park. Wouldn’t he be looking at Israel’s political and military preparations in order to determine their future actions?
I wonder what Hezbollah thinks of the IDF’s use of very young female soldiers to role-play their fighters in the mocked-up Arab villages of Baladia City. What an odd choice that is. Do you have any idea why the Israelis wouldn’t utilize their more seasoned troops as stand-ins for Hezbollah guerillas?
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