Guns in the Closet

At home in a town in southern Lebanon, a Hezbollah fighter waits to be called to action.

SOUTHERN LEBANON - Plumes of black smoke begin to fan out over the coastline in the distance. We ask someone in town what has happened. He tells us it's the power plant; the Israelis have struck it with a missile. But it's impossible to confirm because the roads leading to it were bombed early in the offensive.

In fact, Lebanon's main north-south road is so pocked with bomb craters, blown-out bridges and blasted highway spans that there is only one route left for drivers headed into Beirut.

Twisted cars and wreckage litter the roadside. Craters, some as wide as 60 feet, have filled with water and become small lakes.

Hezbollah fighter reveals the weaponry inside his house» View

It is in this unfortunate but familiar reality for Lebanon that the new landscape is being formed — deepening current loyalties rather than shifting them.

Nowhere is that more clear than in the area I am traveling today, a Hezbollah stronghold north of the city of Tyre. Here, I am told, few families have fled. Instead, they are waiting for the call of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah to come south to fight the Israelis.

And there do seem to be more people on the streets and more families still in their homes, compared with areas further south, where so many have joined white flag convoys fleeing the fighting — as well as the uncertainty of where this conflict may lead.

It's not a difficult or even particularly mysterious undertaking to meet members of Hezbollah. Politically, they are part of the current Lebanese government and have been highly visible throughout the country, particularly for the millions of Shias in Lebanon. But it is Hezbollah's militia with which

In the Mideast, many credit Hezbollah's militia with inflicting heavy losses on the Israeli Army and forcing Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000. In the West, the group is widely condemned as a terrorist organization, supported by

Even its critics concede that Hezbollah is well-organized politically and highly disciplined militarily, and the two are woven together through common religious, cultural and social threads.

"They are an integral part of the fabric of Shia society here," a source with an intimate knowledge of Hezbollah who did not want to be identified told me. "It's a fallacy to think they can be cleaned out or eliminated."

I'm asked if I want to meet a Hezbollah fighter in his village and speak with him briefly.

We meet "Hussein" at his home and sit down to talk in his living room, while his four-month-old baby daughter lies on a blanket on the floor. He is in his late 20s and has a calm face. He is polite but has a resolute sense about him that creates a cautious distance. Like many fighters, he says, he has another job and only joins the militia when he's needed.

But even though he's not on the front lines now, he says there is still a lot of work to do in the village — like looking for Israeli spies.

"We caught someone last night, he says, "sneaking around in the middle of the night."

I ask him how he knew the person was an Israeli agent.

A Hezbollah fighter's weapons stash

"He had two Lebanese passports," he says, "with the same picture but different names, and when we asked him a simple question he gave us a confusing answer."

"What do you do with 'spies' after you catch them?" I ask.

"We question them for a while," he says, "then turn them over to the (Lebanese) army."

As for the fighting in the south, he says it's not necessary for him to leave yet.

"I have a job to do and if the Israelis want to come inside," he says, "then we'll do our job and defend our families."

He shows me what he will use to defend them. In a closet in an adjoining bedroom he reaches into the top shelf and pulls out a green shoulder harness full of ammunition clips.

Then, from the corner of the closet, next to some shirts on hangers, he pulls out an American-made M-16 assault rifle and places it on the mattress in the room next to the ammo belt. He goes back to the closet and from the same corner reaches for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and two canvas shoulder bags. He places these on the bed as well.

I ask if nearly every house in the neighborhood has a stash of small arms like this.

"Some have more," he says, pulling an AK-47 from one of the canvas bags and locking on a 30 round banana clip, named for its banana-like curve. "But the larger weaponry is kept somewhere else."

Not in the houses, he says later, but in secret places.

"Where does the M-16 come from?" I ask.

He says that Hezbollah buys all the weapons, sometimes even from the Lebanese Army.

He then pulls a grenade from the closet, screws on a cylinder of propellant behind it and then loads it into the grenade launcher. He shows me what has to be done before the trigger can be pulled to shoot it.

"Have you ever fired one of those?" I ask.

He smiles as if it were an obvious question. Yes, of course, he replies.

He then puts all the weapons back on the bed for a moment so I can photograph them. Although it's not uncommon for households in the Middle East to have at least an AK-47 around the house, it's incongruous to see the three rifles and grenade launcher beside a  baby's bassinet.

Just as quickly as he pulled them out, he puts the weapons back in the closet and we are done. But neither he, nor the rest of the neighborhood, knows for sure how long the weapons will stay there.

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