Facing Israel, increasingly young Hezbollah fighters?

The youthful faces, sometimes hairless, adorned with a Kalashnikov, fallen on “the road to Jerusalem”… This kind of image has become recurrent in the press releases published by Hezbollah as its “martyrs” have accumulated since on October 8, 2023, as part of clashes with the Israeli army. This week, it was Mehdi Ayoub Yacoub, a young man with even more childish features, who was treated to his macabre portrait, which circulated massively on social networks. Enough to make many Internet users, several of whom clearly identify themselves as pro-Israeli, say that the Shiite party was sending minor fighters to the front line in South Lebanon. The Orient-The Day looked into these claims and what we know about Hezbollah’s younger elements.

“Many recruits come from scouts”

“After liquidating the first class and the older generations, Hezbollah sacrifices children and boys. O Shiites of Lebanon, wake up,” commented Edy Cohen, an Israeli journalist of Lebanese origin widely followed on X who relayed several false information about the Israeli offensive on Lebanon. In this post, he shows the portraits of two young men, including that of Mehdi Ayoub Yacoub. Contacted, the press service of the Shiite party, which did not itself publish these portraits, denied the assertions according to which young fighters under the age of 18 had been killed in combat, calling them “erroneous information” . As a reminder, the UN considers the recruitment of child soldiers to be a war crime only when they are under 15 years old.

The portraits of young Mehdi Ayoub Yacoub and Abbas Ali Akil, presented as Hezbollah fighters killed on the front as part of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Shiite party, in photos circulating on social networks. Photomontage L’Orient-Le Jour

And indeed, it seems that the teenager in question, whose exact age cannot be found, did not die “at the front”, as many have suggested. In any case, this is what a message of tribute from a youth association affiliated with the Shiite party of which the young boy was a member indicates: “Mehdi died as a martyr after being injured during a brutal Zionist raid on the house of his relatives in the town of Maqné,” quotes the press release published last Monday on the organization’s Facebook page. The town cited, which is located on the northern outskirts of Baalbeck, was hit on Friday, November 1, by an Israeli air strike. An attack which also cost the lives of two other young scouts from the same siblings. In his book Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against IsraelShiite party expert Nicolas Blanford also indicates that each new member of Hezbollah must pose for a similar portrait, which will be broadcast in the event that he becomes a “martyr”. “This young Mehdi appears to have been killed in the house of his uncle, a member of Hezbollah, with the rest of his family. He was not in combat,” assures L’OIL Qalaat al-Mudiqa fact-checker based in Syria which documents the evolution of fighting in the region. He also indicates that the other young “martyr” displayed alongside him, Abbas Ali Akil, was also a former scout who had reached his majority. “Many young Hezbollah recruits come from its scout associations,” he adds. Their number has increased recently with the losses suffered by the party. »

Non-combatant positions

Because Mehdi’s case is far from isolated. Even before September 23, the date of the intensification of the Israeli offensive in Lebanon, the Hezbollah members killed by Israel seemed younger and younger. It was during this period that the face of the youngest “martyr” officially announced by the party appeared: Abdel Menhem Jamal Abdel Menhem, born in 2008 and originally from Aïtaroun. We can list 22 militants born between 2000 and 2006 that Hezbollah has claimed as “martyrs”. A source close to the training simply asserts that “a large part of the youngest who were killed occupied non-combatant positions” within the armed group.

This trend has been accentuated since last summer, with several consistent sources reporting a recruitment campaign for young men within the party in recent months. Certainly, “it is unlikely that Hezbollah, which has tens of thousands of fighters, is sending barely recruited individuals to fight against Israel on the border,” notes Nicholas Blanford. However, these newcomers might have been given fairly basic missions for which the party would not want to sacrifice seasoned warriors. “Hezb needs fighters, but also rescuers and people to whom it entrusts some simple logistical tasks, such as passing messages between different units, especially since Israel managed to destroy its parallel telecommunications network,” analyzes Ali Amine, specialist in South Lebanon and notorious opponent of Naïm Kassem’s party. And added: “Today, Hezbollah seems to have established a kind of decentralization, where the units deployed in each geographic region operate more or less autonomously to limit movement and the use of communications that could be intercepted by Israel . When necessary, a messenger is mobilized. This is the kind of task that can be assigned to new recruits. »

But at a time when joining its ranks is sometimes tantamount to a real suicide mission, how does Hezbollah manage to attract these young people? “It can take advantage of the increasingly difficult economic situation, particularly among Shiite Lebanese who live under bombs or whose families are displaced by the war and have therefore lost their means of subsistence,” notes a source opposed to Hezbollah. In addition to the financial opportunity that enlisting in the pro-Iranian militia constitutes, the martyrology carried by the Khomeinist doctrine and instilled in Hezbollah’s schools and scout camps is one of the main levers on which the latter relies to expand its ranks. In his book, Mr. Blanford also claims that, to build a “resistance society”, the party encourages young people aged six to seven to participate in “activities” organized by organizations such as the Imad Mahdi Institute and the Imam Khomeini Cultural Center. He even cites cases where young people aged six to nine whose father is a party “martyr” were invited to participate in military training. “This is the first step to becoming a ‘resistance’ fighter,” he writes