HUNG OVER WITH THE HEZBOLLAH

Henry McDonald finds that the Islamist party

is adopting a more emollient approach particularly towards bibulous Westerners

THE HEZBOLLAH spin doctor poked his mobile phone into my expanding gut and said in perfect clipped English, 'You should play a bit more sport.'

When the Party of God gives you advice like that you have to think up a good excuse to throw them off the scent. Being hung over with the Hezbollah is an unnerving experience.

The previous night a UN officer and I had drunk a few cans in the officers' mess at the Irish battalion's peacekeeping camp in Tibnin. 'Er, actually I was unwell last year and had to put on some weight before my operation.'

Ever polite, the Hezbollah man nodded and whispered in Arabic to the phalanx of bearded security men around their mili- tary leader, Sheikh Nabi Qawook. 'Then we will pray to my God that you will be better,' the Sheikh's press officer replied, and the guards with heavy metallic bulges in their cardigans nodded sternly in agree- ment.

Surrounded by Sheikh Qawook's securi- ty team, I suddenly remembered that the last Irish civilian who was a 'guest' of Hezbollah was Brian Keenan. Those kid- napping days, the Sheikh assured me, were long gone, although he couldn't resist reminding me that 20,000 Lebanese were seized during the civil war and little or nothing was reported about them in the Western press. He then pointed to the oranges, apples, grapes and fruit juice laid out on the table and urged me to eat.

Today Hezbollah, the movement nor- mally associated with suicide car bombs and kidnapping Westerners, is on a sophisticated charm offensive. Just after Christmas the Islamic fundamentalist, Ira- nian- backed movement went on the Internet to promote their cause. They also published a freephone number asking for recruits among the non-Shia Muslim Lebanese to join their 'resistance squads' in the armed struggle to flush Israel out of its self-declared security zone in south Lebanon.

Sheikh Qawook, reclining in an arm- chair under a blown-up picture of Sheikh Moussawi, the Hezbollah leader killed by the Israelis, seemed taken aback that the West would be surprised that his move- ment was opening its doors to non-Mus- lims. `Hezbollah was the first party to come up with the idea of national resis- tance squads. Our units will embrace all the Lebanese, Christians and other reli- gious sects, in the war of liberation.'

The Sheikh was proud to announce that the first groups of secular resistance units had just completed their training in the Bekaa valley and were ready to move south to attack the belt of heavily fortified compounds established by the Israelis to protect their northern frontier.

This new, happy-clappy, all-inclusive side of Hezbollah is partly due to the fact that the Islamist party is learning to live with a multi-faith, semi-secular Lebanese state. The Hezbollah's only allies in the Beirut parliament, Sheikh Qawook point- ed out, are Christian MPs.

New Hezbollah, however, retains some old revolutionary values. The other mod- erate Shia resistance force, Amal, says that once Israel leaves Lebanon, the war is over; there is no desire to march on to liberate Jerusalem. Sheikh Qawook refused blankly to answer that question, confirming Israeli fears that a pull-out by their forces would leave northern settle- ments at the mercy of Hezbollah guerril- las.

Forty-eight hours after this tense encounter in a heavily fortified flat in downtown Tyre, I went out drinking with a group of Irish UN officers on R and R in the Keller bar, a dreary basement night-club run by an English couple off Rue Hamra in west Beirut, close to the area where many of the Western hostages were seized. A group of middle-class Shia Muslim students dressed like snowboard- ers were throwing back tequila slammers and smoking dope while gyrating to the sounds of a Liberian reggae band. If only Sheikh Qawook knew what some of his co-religionists get up to. The gay, dread- locked singer minced over to our little group, attracted to an army captain from Cork city whom he tried in vain to chat up. Several hours later we stumbled out of the club, bleary-eyed and blinking in the dawn light. The following morning we drove past the Beirut seafront en route to the area nominally under UN peace-keepers' con- trol. Along the seafront there were raunchy advertising posters of a semi- naked couple in their bedroom. The woman, in a black bikini and black stock- ings, dangled a pair of jeans, enticing her lover with the dominatrix-style command: `Put them on.' Ten minutes later the jeans ad was competing for space in the south- ern Shia suburbs with the comic cartoon drawings of Hezbollah martyrs and an array of Iranian ayatollahs, only here the bodies on the poster were covered in brown masking tape applied by the local branch of the Party of God to protect their flock from the provocative poses. This is as far as the Hezbollah can go in grafting its pure Islamist values onto the rest of Lebanon.

The sleek politicians in Beirut are happy to let the Hezbollah fight the war in the south, and for most Lebanese, like the rev- ellers in the Keller, the Shia villages in the front line of the armed struggle are as remote as Belfast is to someone in Sur- biton.

Looming over all Lebanese is the spec- tre of Big Brother Syria. The road south from Beirut to Tyre is littered with Syrian pillboxes and checkpoints and portraits of the dictator Hafez Assad. Brother Assad and his army are there to impose peace on the warring Lebanese factions, but it is peace at a heavy price. Every businessman transporting goods to the south suffers bla- tant extortion by Syrian troops. (Those liv- ing inside the security zone suffer a double extortion because they have to pay Israel's surrogate militia, the South Lebanon Army, as well.)

One of the traders who sells designer clothes and watches to Irish peace-keepers in south Lebanon told me he has to get out wads of dollars to slap into the hands of Syrian soldiers at checkpoints outside Beirut. 'Tom Cruise', as he is known to the Irish UN troops due to his remarkable resemblance to the Hollywood actor, said that on one occasion he had to slip several thousand dollars into the hands of a Syrian officer to pass through a roadblock.

The Hezbollah also have good reason to fear and mistrust Brother Assad. In 1982 his regime slaughtered thousands of Islam- ic militants in the Syrian city of Hama. Hezbollah supporters privately admit that once Israel leaves the Syrians will crush anyone who tries to upset a peace package made in Damascus. Perhaps the survival instinct is partly the reason why New Hezbollah is reaching out to other Lebanese, sounding more pragmatic on the Internet and being nice to hung-over Western journalists.

Henry McDonald is Ireland correspondent for the Observer and author of Irish Batt: The Story of Ireland's Blue Berets in Lebanon.