Inside Hizbullah's Illegal Bunkers

The busy bees at Hizbullah have been building a network of bunkers throughout South Lebanon ever since the 2000 withdrawal of Israel from the area. Hizbullah has used the time to build this network, despite UN SCR 1701, 1559 and other resolutions because it continues to show that Hizbullah has no inclination to disarm.

The bunkers were built in and among the Lebanese villages and are quite difficult to detect, even with knowing the GPS coordinates:

We almost missed the manhole cover beneath its layer of dirt, dead leaves and twigs. Using metal footholds, I climbed down into the gloom below and saw with some relief that the tunnel at the bottom was larger than we had feared. We would have to crouch, but not crawl. It was still a tight squeeze as we inched cautiously along the dank silent passageway which ran for about 20 feet before turning left and descending in a gradual slant. The rock sides of the tunnel were lined with a mesh of steel bars and girders. Huge brown spiders clinging to the walls watched the human intruders impassively.

A side tunnel was shielded with white steel plates and girders, which led into a small steel-walled chamber. The room, which was bare apart from two empty five-gallon water containers, must have been at least 100 feet underground, and could probably have withstood a direct hit by a heavy bomb. A power cable along the walls linked several bare bulbs, while a black plastic bag hanging from a hook contained the remnants of what last summer could have been fresh oranges or apples.

A few hundred yards away we found two rocket firing positions, one of them located in a 15-foot deep pit with reinforced concrete walls. A tunnel at the rear wall doglegged after a few feet into a small chamber lined with panels from wooden ammunition boxes where the rockets would have been stored. The second post consisted of a foot-thick reinforced concrete frame smothered with sandbags and camouflage netting and bolstered by Hesco blast protection walls. Even from a few yards up the hill, the position was all but invisible. And during the war, Hizballah gunners had tossed fire-retardant blankets over the launchers immediately after unleashing their rockets to hide the lingering heat signature from prowling Israeli aircraft.

Well, we do learn one tactic that Hizbullah used to reduce the effectiveness of Israeli aircraft to acquire and target Hizbullah launchers, and the Israelis will be sure to take this into account when the next round gets underway.

Hizbullah is planning a next round - that's for certain. Their masters in Tehran are pushing the situation with Britain to see how far they can go - and then some.