By Nohad Topalian | 2024-11-23

BEIRUT -- Hizbullah launched a recruitment campaign on October 13, targeting Lebanese youth as young as 16 for what it termed "the battle to defend Lebanon and triumph over the enemy."

The Iran-backed party has suffered debilitating losses. A mid-September explosion of Hizbullah communication equipment resulted in over 2,000 dead or wounded, according to AFP, and triggered an internal collapse.

Lebanese Taharror political movement founder Ali Khalifeh estimates even higher casualties, of between 4,000 and 7,000 fighters and support personnel.

"Fighters abandoned battlefronts and tunnels, either refusing to fight or fleeing internal conflicts," he told Al-Fassel.

Lebanese Center for Research and Consulting director Hassan Qutb described a force in disarray.

"Large numbers have deserted their battle posts and fronts after finding themselves isolated in cut-off areas, too terrified to move by car or motorcycle," he said, following the killing of Hassan Nasrallah and top commanders.

The Iranian regime has dispatched experts to direct Hizbullah's battles, Qutb added, emphasizing the need "for manpower in the field."

The party's new recruitment campaign is "a violation of Lebanese law, which prohibits Hizbullah from maintaining an armed faction," Khalifeh said.

It violates the constitution as well, he added, "which reserves defense and security functions exclusively for the national army."

Its campaign also violates the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict, international laws that prohibit the recruitment of child soldiers by any armed group.

Hizbullah has a history of using children in combat. Human Rights Watch denounced it for using children as active combatants in an October 2006 report.

According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, it used child soldiers as young as age 10 prior to 2001.

Lives shattered

Lebanese families who have lost sons as a result of Hizbullah's recruitment efforts are seething but silenced by fear of retaliation, multiple sources told Al-Fassel.

The new recruitment drive reveals Hizbullah's "attempt to rebuild its ranks, which means that it is continuing its war without regard to ... suffering," Khalifeh said, noting that young recruits are viewed as expendable resources.

The party's latest recruitment drive demonstrates "Hizbullah does not care about the tragedies it causes to the people of Lebanon and especially the south and the Bekaa Valley," Qutb said.

He particularly criticized Hizbullah's casualty reporting, saying the party "treats people as mere numbers," without publishing names of the dead.

"This recruitment of youth to die underscores the intransigence of Hizbullah and its backer Iran, which seeks to keep the war away from its territory by prolonging it in Lebanon," he said.