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Hizbullah's Boy Scouts

(Foreign Policy) Thanassis Cambanis - In the year following the 2006 Israel-Hizbullah war, the Mahdi Scouts had nearly doubled its national enrollment to 60,000. We drove to Khiam to visit the scouts in action. The younger scouts wore blue shirts with epaulets, white scarves, and oversized badges featuring a photograph of a scowling Ayatollah Khomeini. Two boys who looked about ten wore full military fatigues. In "guided drawing," the kids drew pictures of Israelis weeping in defeat, denoted by Stars of David on their helmets, or of Israelis stepping on Lebanese. A six-year-old boy with a high-pitched voice recited from memory a speech of Nasrallah's: "The Israelis target the innocent! We will destroy the Israelis!" Fun puzzles at the end of every lesson featured standard children's fare like mazes, but with Hizbullah themes - a bearded Hizbullah fighter at the start of the maze, with an Israeli bunker at the far end. The occasional illustration featured bearded fighters charging Israeli soldiers cowering behind sandbags. Success in the Scouts led to an invitation to join Hizbullah as a probationary member. The most promising boys were recruited to join the ranks of the fighters. The younger Hizbullah members often projected the calm inner focus of the religious acolyte. They lived and breathed Hizbullah's credos. This is an excerpt from the writer's newly-published book, A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah's Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel.
2010-10-22 09:40:58
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