3 NOVEMBER 2007, Page 14

All Hezbollah lacks is a group on Facebook

Lauren Booth tours Beirut as a guest of Hezbollah's media arm and discovers a slick spin operation that still needs to 'drop the Islam stuff for Western journalists' Beintt Ayear after Israel's failed attempt to bomb Hezbollah into the Middle Ages, the 'war' of 2006 is now known as the 'Divine Victory' in these parts. With November's general election on hold, politics in Lebanon is as complicated as it ever has been. Druze, Christian groups, Muslim parties and a smattering of Marxists are all vying for a say in a government led by a hugely unpopular prime minister. Fouad Siniora lost the public's support last July when he was filmed warmly hugging Condoleezza Rice as US-made cluster bombs fell on voters' homes. Not a great PR move. Meanwhile Hezbollah continues winning hearts and minds nationwide.

Widely believed to have the slickest PR operation of any similarly sized organisation in the Middle East, the group is headed by Hassan Nasrallah. He is regarded as a rhetorical giant in some quarters. Take his words broadcast last 14 July: 'Now in the middle of the sea facing Beirut, the Israeli warship that attacked our infrastructure and civilians . . . Look at it burning!' Today every student in Beirut can repeat this verbatim with the same misty-eyed pride we Brits reserve for 'We shall fight them on the beaches.' It's hard to quantify the immense impact this announcement had on Lebanese morale.

Today, however, Nasrallah is invisible, hoping to avoid the fate of his predecessors — namely, assassination by Israeli agents. But that does not mean that Hezbollah has adopted a low profile, far less gone into hiding. On the contrary. Nasrallah's favoured deputies are busy making foreign journalists very welcome. All you have to do is ask if you want to tour the bombed villages in the UN-patrolled south, and meetings with highranking members are readily arranged.

Yet Lebanon itself lies beneath a sheet of heavy paranoia. The gaps in the centre of Beirut made by Israel's air assault are unofficially patrolled. An outsider who lingers beside the craters will be briskly told to get lost by irritable-looking men.

I tour the southern part of the city as a guest of Hezbollah's media arm, al-Manar. In the badly damaged suburb of Haret Hreik it's necessary for my guide to repeat `Hezbollah' several times before the guards let us pass. Wherever construction is taking place (cranes are almost as common as chickpeas) the accompanying scaffolding is swathed in yellow or green banners. These thank Hezbollah in glowing terms for 'investment' in the city. Billboards featuring the kind of developments that would not look out of place in the Docklands feature projects seemingly underway, paid for by Hezbollah Inc.

The 'Party of God' was remorselessly inventive and effective during the war. Not content with disabling a warship live on TV, Nasrallah personally guaranteed $12,000 for every family made homeless by the bombing. To do this a company was quickly set up to manage cash flooding in from Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and, yes, Iran too. Within 12 months Lebanon has no homebred refugees, despite hundreds of thousands displaced between 12 July and 14 August last year. Hezbollah inc is filling the funding gap left by a government accused of failing to distribute several billion dollars received from foreign governments and aid agencies. Sally, a student of journalism working part-time for alManar, confirms her parents have received the 12k. They now have 'a nicer home with better furniture'. As a vote-winner, this obviously carries a good deal more weight than, say, a good conference speech.

Keen to win the peace after the war, Hezbollah's slogan today is: 'More Beautiful than Before.' The White Road, a shopping street partially flattened in the bombing last year, is now being rebuilt. It reminds me of the Arndale Centre in Manchester — of the glam rejuvenation that followed the IRAs bomb. That same sense of 'See? You did us a favour' exists among Beirutees as it did among Mancunians.

For all its practical chutzpah on the ground, Hezbollah faces huge problems in its attempt to communicate directly with people outside the Middle East. Sheikh Nabil Kawok is Hezbollah's leader in the south. He is the man whose mujahedin delivered Nasrallah his 'divine victory'. I meet the cleric in a large room with an interior from Arab Statesmen R Us. The walls are adorned with gilt-framed photos of Khomeini and Nasrallah. To students in Beirut, Nabil is Jude Law to his leader's Brad Pitt. The young women who take me have their hair hidden in scarves, and blush at the mere mention of his name. It is an exciting time. The night before, car horns across Beirut proclaimed the return of several corpses and one prisoner captured by Israel, Naseem Niser, in an 'exchange'. Nabil, a tall man in a floor-length grey coat, a brown cape and turban, sips black tea, smiling indulgently when I ask how this is possible if Israel does not deal with `terrorists'. 'What I can tell you is a Lebanese farmer from the south with no links to our party has come home. I was involved. He was sitting where you are, just three hours ago. He was taken by Israel because he had a long beard — which obviously means you are Hezbollah.' He strokes his own growth which is more Richard Branson than Osama bin Laden. The room erupts in laughter. The rest of his answers are less opaque. Hezbollah reps realise they are not believed in the West, so in interviews they often back up what they have to say by quoting directly from the Jerusalem Post or Haaretz. Much of what else the pleasant sheikh has to say is so deeply hidden beneath references to Mary, Moses and Ibrahim that his answers remain frustratingly bereft of a good soundbite. In PR terms this is a stunning own goal. After an hour, I am comfortable enough to wonder aloud if he would ever 'drop the Islam stuff for Western journalists'? He flicks hazel eyes my way, chuckling. 'Maybe.'

There's another stumbling block in Hezbollah's campaign to win the information war. They have absolutely no idea of the potential power of new media. None.

Dr Hussein Rahal is head of Hezbollah's media centre. He dresses snappily in a shortsleeved plaid shirt and slacks. Like men in his job the world over, he compulsively checks his vibrating phone every 30 seconds, eyes darting about the restaurant we are in. He talks furiously about a BBC film broadcast on 21 August, made by Darius Bazargan, Lebanon — Hunting for Hezbollah. In it the journalist talks of coming across a Hezbollah military base, then being detained and interrogated by a patrol. 'Lies, lies, lies,' says Dr Rahal. 'He just wanted to pretend to be a hero.' So, I ask, what has his media office done to counter the claims? Dr Rahal looks nonplussed. 'Done?' Had they contacted the BBC, prepared a dossier to prove operatives were not in the area, reported the so-called 'lies' to other Arab media for them to follow up? 'No. No one ever believes us anyway,' he says a little sulkily. Does Hezbollah now have a website? 'It was attacked last year by hackers. We are still working on it.' Do they have a rebuttal unit, or people monitoring Englishspeaking news channels for output concerning them? 'We want to do that in the future,' he says, taking notes on a scrap of paper.

Perhaps I've just been overexposed to Sky News. Or perhaps I've been made hard by a decade of New Labour government where the message, not the facts, is what matters. Either way, the fact remains that Hezbollah is bereft of international clout when its dramatic clued-up leader is not on show. Sans website, sans Facebook, sans everything. It may have kept southern Lebanon (for now), but its enemies are winning the war for cyberspace.

Lauren Booth is a broadcaster and a journalist on the Mail on Sunday.