SCRIPT: Hezbollah Ch4 report
ITN - C4 Indy
In the Shia Muslim heartlands along Lebanon's eastern frontier with Syria, the Party of God is on the march.
Here, yellow is the colour of courage.
Yellow is Hezbollah -- a martyrdom project inspired by Iran's ayatollahs. To the western world, they are terrorists.
They are the most potent political and military force in Lebanon. They are highly secretive, but have granted us unprecedented access.
Twenty-six year-old Abbas Farhad was cut down by machine-gun-fire inside Syria, fighting Sunni Muslim jihadis.
PTC
ASTON
Jonathan Miller
Foreign Affairs Correspondent
"Until recently, Hezbollah fighters were being martyred in battle with Israel. It's why their movement was founded. Now they are fighting and dying in Syria, waging somone else's war."
In less than a year, Hezbollah has turned the tables for Syria's once-beleaguered President, Bashar al-Assad, their Shia ally. Trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and armed by them too, Hezbollah have held their own against Israel. Now they have rallied to the cause of their patron, Iran, and ridden to al-Assad's rescue.
Hezbollah's operations in Syria have been decisive; entire rebel-held cities, recaptured for Assad.
Al-MANAR TV
Here, Hezbollah's TV station boasts of a spectacular ambush in which nearly 200 Islamist fighters were blown up, then survivors raked by machinegun-fire.
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Hezbollah forbids its fighters from speaking to journalists. But under conditions of strict anonymity, we spoke to a senior commander, just back from Syria.
JM Q: So you believe that by fighting this war in Syria, you are stopping it from coming into Lebanon? 0344
SYNC [SUBTITLED]
"Jihad"
Hezbollah Commander in Syria
ADDITIONAL ASTON: ACTOR'S VOICE
"For sure, it's in defence of Lebanon, when you have a knife to your neck and they want to slaughter you and are telling you: 'you're next when we're done with Syria.' What? You wait until he comes into your house? If someone who comes at you, holding a knife, to slice off your head, cut our your heart and your kidneys, rape your women and steal your land, what would you do? Would you just stand there watching? We have our country, our religion and our beliefs. And we have our Resistance. If we are not defending them with our blood, what do we defend them with?"
Heavy fighting is raging inside Syria, just on the other side this range that lines the eastern flank of Bekaa. Many Lebanese are watching aghast, as Syria's sectarian conflict spills in.
The Lebanese town of Arsal nestles deep in those mountains, right on the frontier. It's crawling with jihadi fighters from al-Qaeda-linked groups who are locked in a fight to the death with Hezbollah inside Syria.
PTC
"So this little valley is now a Syrian rebel enclave inside Lebanon. They're all Sunni Muslims here. But over there, on the other side of those mountains, that's the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon's Shia Muslim Heartland, where Hezbollah calls the shots. And just over those hills, that's Syria, where Hezbollah is hard at work claring the whole area and driving the rebels and tens of thousands of refugees in here, keeping them contained and completely surrounded."
Arsal has been swamped by Syrian Sunni refugees, so many, in fact, that it's upsetting Lebanon's fragile sectarian balance. They've been bombed out of the Qalamoun mountains by the Syrian regime, with Hezbollah cleaning up on the ground.
REFUGEE VOX UPSOT
SUBTITLED:
"They followed us and they bombed us. They used everything. Airstrikes, rockets and bombs. I don't know how we managed to escape, but we did."
SCRIPT: The women cover their faces because they feel they're not safe, even here in Lebanon.
SUBTITLED:
"If they catch us, they will slaughter us. They will slaughter us. We are terrified of him [Bashar]."
SUBTITLED:
"The Party of Satan, if they catch us, will slaughter us. They'll kill the children."
SCRIPT: Hezbulshaytan, "The Party of Satan", is the new Sunni slang for Hezbollah, "The Party of God."
JM Q: "But you have run into an area completely surrounded by Hezbollah in Lebanon."
SUBTITLED:
"Where can we go? Just tell me, where can we go? We escaped from Bashar and Hezbollah. We ran from the frying pan into the fire."
The Syrian regime launches regular airstrikes on Arsal. Jihadi rebels are back and forth across the frontier all the time.
In a field hospital we meet a young fighter from the Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's franchise in Syria. He's looking for an injured friend.
UPSOT
Hezbollah shelled us, he told me. Our men were wounded. With God's help, he said, we got them back here.
UPSOT JM Q: And you're going straight back?
UPSOT
Yes, he said. And added he was now in a rush.
Down the corridor, a Syrian doctor attends wounded fighters and civilians.
JM Q: "Who is killing and injuring the people?"
SYNC
Dr Basem al-Faris
Director, Field Hospital
Dr: "From plane. From the Syrian regime and the bullets from Hezbollah."
JM Q: "Hezbollah is shooting and killing people inside Syria but they're also all around you here in Bekaa?
Dr: "Of course."
JM: "You're stuck?"
Dr: "It's a dangerous situation. We have some fear that Hezbollah may do something to this area. Something dangerous, yeah."
Hezbollah, the protector of Lebanon's once-downtrodden Shia Muslim minority, now dominant and feared.
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Dahiyeh, a Beirut suburb contolled by Hezbollah. That's Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, it's leader. But even he has his bosses.
ITN - C4 Indy
Hezbollah is paying a price for waging al-Assad's war. It's not just the bodybags from the front.
From Bekaa to Beirut, they're sandbagging shopfronts after a wave of suicide bombings; carbombs, driven here from Arsal. This is how the al-Qaeda-linked groups have chosen to exact their revenge on the Party of God.
SYNC [SUBTITLED]
"Jihad"
Hezbollah Commander in Syria
ADDITIONAL ASTON: ACTOR'S VOICE
"Let them come. If they are real men, let them face us. Why are they attacking civilians? We are fighting an enemy that has no religion and no honour. He is using the forbidden ways."
YOU TUBE
Hezbollah taunts them in music videos, branding them with the hate-name "Takfiri."
UPSOT TAKFIRI
A Takfiri is a malevolent, fanatical Sunni jihadi, prepared to kill anyone who does not see the world as they see it. Oh, Takfiri, Hezbollah is coming, to make your days black, the song goes.
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The Commander insists Hezbollah is not inviting sectarian war, but he has no qualms about killing Takfiris.
COMMANDER SYNC [SUBTITLED]
"He is a terrorist, not a man, not a human being. He is far removed from humanity."
In the coffee shops of Dahiyeh, everyone says they support Hezbollah -- although our Hezbollah minder is listening.
UPSOT: 0540 Takfiri...
In a mind-warping leap of logic, enemies old and new are conflated. Takfiris, Israelis, all part of the American conspiracy against the true Party of God, a party whose members compete for the honour of spilling their blood defending their land and their faith.
The martyrs' mausoleum in Dahiyeh, filling up with young Lebanese Shia Muslim men, dying in Syria.
SYNC [SUBTITLED]
"Jihad"
Hezbollah Commander in Syria
"In Hezbollah, we have a martyrdom project, above all else. We in Hezbollah are begging our leaders to send us back [to Syria]. Everyone wants to go! No-one wants to come back. We are proud about to be called 'martyrs'. And we are empowered by it."
In Baalbek, we are 40 miles north of Damascus as the crow flies.
The martyr Abbas Farhad, cut down by the hated "Takfiris" as Hezbollah spear-headed the fight-back for Bashar al-Assad.
Word from the front line, this week, that Hezbollah has won the hard-fought battle in the strategic Qalamoun mountains. But this is cold-comfort for Ali, another fatherless child; role model: a martyr; growing up in a volatile world where death dominates life and hatred's fast hardening hearts.
Some say it's the blood of its people that colours the Lebanese earth.
As Hezbollah fighters queue up for their one-way ticket to Paradise, the prophets of doom will be mulling this martyrdom project and shaking their heads in despair.
Jonathan Miller, Channel 4 News, Baalbek