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Re:Dozens of Hezbollah members said to be seriously injured ... by sudosysgen on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @12:48PM (#41569708)
Hezbollah is essentially a governmental organization, they provide healthcare, education, agricultural infrastructure, social services, etc...
Re:Dozens of Hezbollah members said to be seriously injured ... by johnnyjeans on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @01:16PM (#41570095)
No essentially about it. Hezbollah is part of the government, one of many political parties in Lebanon. Just like most of the other major political parties in Lebanon, they maintain their own militia separate from the Lebanese military.
Re:Dozens of Hezbollah members said to be seriously injured ... by shadowgovt on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @02:32PM (#41571041)
I think this is something that many people may not grasp about Lebanon.

The "There's Your Problem" podcast did an episode on the fertilizer explosion that leveled Beirut's port in 2020. The amount of breakdown that had to occur for that outcome was both astonishing... And utterly predictable given Lebanon's governmental structure, which is barely functional. It's less a government and more a power detente that hard-codes sectarian differences in the culture into the power structure, like trying to build a government out of a band of feuding warlords with no particular underlying agreement amongst the warlords to leave each other alone. Among other things, this makes their foreign policy heterogeneous; a given faction can just wage war without the government's consent, and the government lacks top-level power to do anything about it.

(Ironically, one of the things that minimized the potential damage in the fertilizer blast is that much of the material had been stolen and shipped away before the explosion. Likely by actors with the tacit support of high-level government functionaries looking the other way and refusing to do enforcement).

Re:Dozens of Hezbollah members said to be seriously injured ... by Nathanba on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @09:41PM (#41574858)
I read that all other political parties were forced to disband their militia after the civil war, only Hezbollah was allowed to keep their arms.