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Crowds of people gathered last week in the ruined town square of Aitaroun, south Lebanon, to attend the mass burial of 95 people – one of the largest funerals held in Lebanon since the start of the Hezbollah-Israel war.
Hundreds of people waving Hezbollah flags watched as rows of coffins were brought in by four semi-trucks, the vehicles’ procession lined with pancaked buildings destroyed in Israeli bombardment months earlier.
Thirteen months of fighting with Israel has left the Iran-backed Shia Islamist group, once renowned as the world’s strongest non-state militia, reeling. The group’s near-total dominance of the Lebanese state for the past two decades has been weakened by the losses it suffered in the past year of war.
The war started when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel “in solidarity” with Hamas on 8 October 2023. Fighting was concentrated near the Lebanese-Israeli border, until Israel dramatically expanded its aerial campaign and invaded south Lebanon in late September, leaving more than 3,900 dead across the country and destroying dozens of Lebanese border villages such as Aitaroun.
Most of Hezbollah’s senior leadership was killed in the fighting, along with thousands of its fighters, and many of its weapon caches were destroyed.
But the damage inflicted on the group has also been felt heavily by the communities in southern Lebanon that make up its support base.
In Aitaroun, one of Lebanon’s hardest hit villages, residents were left wondering if their sacrifices were worth it.
Maggie Seyedhassan, a 23-year-old student attending Friday’s funeral, was carrying a picture of her neighbour, Abbas. He was killed along with 22 other Aitaroun residents in an Israeli strike on Aitou, a Christian town in north Lebanon where they had taken shelter.
“Abbas didn’t want to be a martyr, he had so many things he wanted to do with his life. The price of this war was huge. Why did we have to fight it?” Seyedhassan said.
Ahmad Grube, a 67-year-old farmer and resident of Aitaroun, has been sleeping in a tent after his home was heavily damaged in an Israeli strike. The village has no running water or electricity as a result of damage to public infrastructure.
Like others the Guardian spoke to in the border villages last week, Grube had yet to receive compensation from Hezbollah for damages caused by fighting.
Hezbollah promised early in the war to compensate anyone who suffered damages. Now, with wide swathes of the country primarily populated by members of its base destroyed, Hezbollah has struggled to find the funds to fulfil its promise and has asked its supporters for patience.
“We’re not optimistic at all. The future of our kids, it’s all gone. And we don’t expect to receive the value of the house back,” Grube said.
Lebanon and Hezbollah have looked to the international community for money to rebuild the war-torn country, which has sustained damages estimated to be in the billions. The militia has backed the country’s new government in order to get reconstruction money flowing to Lebanon, despite previously blocking the appointment of the country’s current president.
Lebanon’s government has pledged to restore the state’s monopoly on violence and to work towards disarming all militias in the country – a statement primarily directed at Hezbollah.
As a condition of the 27 November ceasefire with Israel, Hezbollah has withdrawn its weaponry from its historical heartland south of the Litani river, about 18 miles from the Israeli border. The subsequent fall of the Assad regime on 8 December in Syria was another loss for the group, which used Syria as a vital lifeline to ferry funds and arms from Iran to Lebanon.
The Lebanese army has been active in enforcing the terms of the ceasefire deal. It has been dismantling military assets belonging to the group in south Lebanon and conducted raids in the southern suburbs of Beirut – something unthinkable just six months earlier.
The group has also lost control of key assets such as the Beirut airport and smuggling routes along the Syrian border, both historically key for the group’s cashflow. On Friday, Reuters reported that an individual was caught arriving at the Beirut airport from Turkey carrying $2.5m(£2m) in cash apparently destined for Hezbollah.
Despite this, last Thursday, Hezbollah MPs endorsed the new government and gave it a vote of confidence.
According to a western diplomat in Beirut, Hezbollah is in “wait and see mode”, as the group recovers from the war and adjusts to a new political reality in Lebanon and the wider region.
“They are playing along because it’s the best option they have. It’s temporary,” the western diplomat said under the condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Experts have said that Hezbollah is still the strongest domestic political actor by far – and should not be underestimated. “We’re telling our closest allies, especially the US, not to alienate parts of the population, that’s a recipe for failure. The group is not dead,” the western diplomat said.
