Hizballah Nation

How the Lebanese militants morphed from guerrilla group to political party and then set off the confrontation that has the world on edge

Nervously eyeing the skies for Israeli warplanes, Hussein Naboulsi, a spokesman for Hizballah, took quick strides as he accompanied foreign journalists through the bombed-out neighborhoods of Beirut's southern suburbs. "Listen to me!" he shouted. "We have to move very fast!" He paused amid the devastation to point out the pulverized office blocks in the Harat Hreik district where Hizballah's headquarters had stood only a week earlier. "Now I have no place to work," said Naboulsi, the son of a prominent Shi'ite Muslim cleric.

But the primary work Hizballah does these days is not in office buildings but on the battlefield, and...

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