In December, a Lebanese journalist was able to interview two Hizballah fighters held captive by Nusra Front, a Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda. David Daoud explains what this interview reveals about Hizballah’s influence in Lebanon and its current war in Syria:
Hizballah . . . runs its own private educational system [in Lebanon], which graduates some 2,000 competitive and well-trained university students a year. Though mixed with the party’s ideology, the education these schools provide far exceeds anything offered by the state and even rivals the country’s prestigious Christian missionary schools. . . . [Furthermore, Hizballah] helps needy families with tuition—a luxury not available to them in other Lebanese school systems.
The indoctrination [found in these schools and other] institutions constructs children’s identity so that their moral compass is based on the ideology of . . . “guardianship of the jurist” [i.e., a belief in the absolute religious and political authority of Iran’s supreme leader] that governs political life in Iran, Hizballah’s main backer. And even if these institutions do not transform young Shiites into adult party ideologues, they make them more amenable to Hizballah’s pressures by force-feeding them the notion that they have no alternative to the party. . . .
Once . . . inexperienced fighters [like the two captives] are in Syria, . . . they are often handed to the Iranians. In Syria . . . the Iranians “are running the show,” giving deployment and battle orders to Hizballah fighters, who are thrown together with other Shiite foreign fighters including Iraqis and Afghans.
Read more on National Interest: http://nationalinterest.org/feature/joining-hezbollah-insiders-account-15370