Comment by flyinglizard
Comment by flyinglizard 3 days ago
These are pagers connected to Hizbollah's internal communication network. Why would they be used by the general population?
Comment by flyinglizard 3 days ago
These are pagers connected to Hizbollah's internal communication network. Why would they be used by the general population?
These aren't normal retail pagers, like the world uses (or used to use) for pager-duty? And Hezbollah maintains its own network infrastructure?
You can also think of them as an Iranian army occupying southern Lebanon.
I know what Hezbollah is, I’m surprised they maintain stand-alone pager infrastructure apart from the system in use by the rest of thecpeolle
Hezbollah is essentially a governmental organization, they provide healthcare, education, agricultural infrastructure, social services, etc...
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.
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).
As I understand it, people are saying that the most likely way that this was carried out was that a shipment of pagers where intercepted and modified. My concern is that part or all of the shipment might not go to Hezbollah. Perhaps the shipment gets rerouted to somewhere else due to supply chain issues. Perhaps only half of the shipment was intended for Hezbollah. Perhaps a postal worker steals a few and sells them on the black market. Perhaps Hezbollah decides they have more than they needs and does something with the rest. Perhaps part or all of the shipment gets delayed and is sitting in a post office when it goes off.
Basically: warfare via mail bomb seems like it might be irresponsible.