Hezbollah Has Its Own Tunnels — And Civil War Ghosts

-Analysis-

BEIRUT — I was in the northern Lebanese town of Dhour El Choueir, escaping the noise of the war, when I received Hezbollah’s footage of its Imad 4 underground missile facility, which was released on Aug.16.

While the video left me with questions, it also made me recall scenes from the town’s surroundings to which the Communist Party had transferred us to fight in the mid-1980s. Hezbollah’s Imad 4 is another layer of the Lebanese tragedy. I do not know whether it was part of the war story or its actual events, but it brought back to my memory images that I thought had faded and disappeared after four decades of denial.

The tunnel and its worlds did not resemble my memories of that war in 1980s. But for some reason the footage brought back memories of my journey at the time from Ouyoun El Siman mountain to the village of Ghabeh, or Bologna, and from there to a hill overlooking the mountain town of Bikfaya, where our enemies at that time, the Kataeb Party, were stationed.

In Dhour El Choueir, the impacts of the war we committed four decades ago are still evident in many stone houses that were abandoned by their owners, who never returned. They are very beautiful houses, built apparently during a prosperous era. I was one of those sent by the Communist Party to eliminate this prosperity.

​A memory of the civil war

Suddenly, the faces of the Syrian nationalist fighters from Dhour El Choueir, whom our commander had advised us not to mix too much with, came to mind.

I don’t know if what I’m recalling is real or imagined. Most likely, it is tunnel delirium, because there is no trace of the ruined and destroyed houses in Dhour El Choueir in my memory. The Syrian nationalist living here say that their decay was caused by Syrian army units that came after the war and stayed in these houses.

To me, the tunnel is unreal. It’s from another time. And the soldier in the recent video making a call on a landline is nothing like the shabby, chaotic life we had in the 1980s. The sleek white Japanese trucks are nothing like the lumbering Russian truck as it climbed to Ouyoun El Siman.

Tunnel delirium

Wars are wars, and what comes after them is similar. That’s what I kept telling myself when I asked myself why those scenes had come to life in my memory.

I shouldn’t be surprised. Four decades ago, I was here to inspect the cannon that would rain shells on the town of Bikfaya once we got the “green light” to attack. The differences are great and many, but they are connected through that internal tunnel, which kept sending me images of myself on that Soviet truck with an engine that roared louder than the sound of the drones that invade the skies these days.

The euphoria of the tunnel had created a feeling that what lay ahead was not lacking in electricity.

Just after Hezbollah released its tunnel video, the Lebanese government announced nationwide blackouts after the state electricity company, Électricité du Liban, ran out of fuel reserves for its power plants. But there was no outage in Dhour El Choueir — the town most likely has its own generators, and its residents pay bills parallel to the electricity bill.

I did not feel the “total darkness,” which was more of an idea than to a reality. And the euphoria of the tunnel had created a feeling that what lay ahead was not lacking in electricity. In the Soviet truck, as it drove up the Metn and stopped at the abandoned hotel in Ghabeh, the darkness was also intense — although it was not accompanied by an official announcement of its arrival.