Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon, where its extensive security apparatus, political organization, and social services network have fostered its reputation as “a state within a state.” Founded in the chaos of the fifteen-year Lebanese Civil War, the Shiite group is driven by its opposition to Israel and its resistance to Western influence in the Middle East.

Led since 1992 by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah’s paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament.

Hezbollah was established in the wake of the 1982 Lebanon War by Lebanese clerics who had studied in Najaf. It adopted the model set out by Ayatollah Khomeini after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the party’s founders adopted “Hezbollah” as the name chosen by Khomeini. The organization was created with the support of 1,500 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps instructors, and aggregated a variety of Lebanese Shia groups into a unified organization to resist the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon.

During the Lebanese Civil War, Hezbollah’s 1985 manifesto listed its objectives as the expulsion of “the Americans, the French and their allies definitely from Lebanon, putting an end to any colonialist entity on our land”. From 1985 to 2000, Hezbollah also participated in the 1985–2000 South Lebanon conflict against the South Lebanon Army (SLA) and Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and fought again with the IDF in the 2006 Lebanon War. During the 1990s, Hezbollah also organized volunteers to fight for the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War.

Since 1990, Hezbollah has participated in Lebanese politics, in a process which is described as the Lebanonisation of Hezbollah, and it later participated in the government of Lebanon and joined political alliances. After the 2006–08 Lebanese protests and clashes, a national unity government was formed in 2008, with Hezbollah and its opposition allies obtaining 11 of 30 cabinet seats, enough to give them veto power. In August 2008, Lebanon’s new cabinet unanimously approved a draft policy statement that recognizes Hezbollah’s existence as an armed organization and guarantees its right to “liberate or recover occupied lands” (such as the Shebaa Farms). Hezbollah is part of Lebanon’s March 8 Alliance, in opposition to the March 14 Alliance. It maintains strong support among Lebanese Shia Muslims, while Sunnis have disagreed with its agenda. Hezbollah also has support in some Christian areas of Lebanon.

Since 2012, Hezbollah involvement in the Syrian civil war has seen it join the Syrian government in its fight against the Syrian opposition. Between 2013 and 2015, the organisation deployed its militia in both Syria and Iraq to fight or train local militias to fight against the Islamic State.

From 2006, the group’s military strength grew significantly, to the extent that its paramilitary wing became more powerful than the Lebanese Army. Hezbollah has been described as a “state within a state”, and has grown into an organization with seats in the Lebanese government, a radio and a satellite TV station, social services and large-scale military deployment of fighters beyond Lebanon’s borders.The group currently receives military training, weapons, and financial support from Iran and political support from Syria, although the sectarian nature of the Syrian war has damaged the group’s legitimacy. In 2021, Nasrallah said the group had 100,000 fighters.

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      • Cromalin [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        8 months ago

        i would say it’s less horror than umineko, if you’re familiar with that. horror is not the main thing going on, though it has some moments. i haven’t played since it came out and so i could be forgetting something!

        it’s also only one volume in, out of a currently planned three, so it could get scarier

        but unless you really hate anything scary i’d say go for it, higurashi this is not

          • Cromalin [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            2·
            8 months ago

            umineko is excellent, and was definitely an influence on misericorde. i’d have guessed that even without xeecee being the reason i played umineko in the first place, but having heard a lot of them talking about it and their covers of some of the umineko ost i felt 100% certain that it was one of the biggest inspirations for it. and then also they posted about it the other day, which helps

            misericorde is definitely a friendlier story to enter rn, if only because it’s like a 10 hour thing and umineko is probably 8 to 10 times that. it also doesn’t start with the worst part of the story

    • AlpineSteakHouse [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      2·
      8 months ago

      If I had a nickel for every time Cromalin suggested a queer murder mystery with the setting at least partially set in a christian environment I’d have two nickles which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.

      • Cromalin [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        8 months ago

        took me a minute to connect umineko to the partially christian environment thing, but that is true

        unless i recommended gideon the ninth at one point and that’s what you were thinking of?