Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon, where its extensive security apparatus, political organization, and social services network have fostered its reputation as “a state within a state.” Founded in the chaos of the fifteen-year Lebanese Civil War, the Shiite group is driven by its opposition to Israel and its resistance to Western influence in the Middle East.
Led since 1992 by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament.
Hezbollah was established in the wake of the 1982 Lebanon War by Lebanese clerics who had studied in Najaf. It adopted the model set out by Ayatollah Khomeini after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the party's founders adopted "Hezbollah" as the name chosen by Khomeini. The organization was created with the support of 1,500 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps instructors, and aggregated a variety of Lebanese Shia groups into a unified organization to resist the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon.
During the Lebanese Civil War, Hezbollah's 1985 manifesto listed its objectives as the expulsion of "the Americans, the French and their allies definitely from Lebanon, putting an end to any colonialist entity on our land". From 1985 to 2000, Hezbollah also participated in the 1985–2000 South Lebanon conflict against the South Lebanon Army (SLA) and Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and fought again with the IDF in the 2006 Lebanon War. During the 1990s, Hezbollah also organized volunteers to fight for the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War.
Since 1990, Hezbollah has participated in Lebanese politics, in a process which is described as the Lebanonisation of Hezbollah, and it later participated in the government of Lebanon and joined political alliances. After the 2006–08 Lebanese protests and clashes, a national unity government was formed in 2008, with Hezbollah and its opposition allies obtaining 11 of 30 cabinet seats, enough to give them veto power. In August 2008, Lebanon's new cabinet unanimously approved a draft policy statement that recognizes Hezbollah's existence as an armed organization and guarantees its right to "liberate or recover occupied lands" (such as the Shebaa Farms). Hezbollah is part of Lebanon's March 8 Alliance, in opposition to the March 14 Alliance. It maintains strong support among Lebanese Shia Muslims, while Sunnis have disagreed with its agenda. Hezbollah also has support in some Christian areas of Lebanon.
Since 2012, Hezbollah involvement in the Syrian civil war has seen it join the Syrian government in its fight against the Syrian opposition. Between 2013 and 2015, the organisation deployed its militia in both Syria and Iraq to fight or train local militias to fight against the Islamic State.
From 2006, the group's military strength grew significantly, to the extent that its paramilitary wing became more powerful than the Lebanese Army. Hezbollah has been described as a "state within a state", and has grown into an organization with seats in the Lebanese government, a radio and a satellite TV station, social services and large-scale military deployment of fighters beyond Lebanon's borders.The group currently receives military training, weapons, and financial support from Iran and political support from Syria, although the sectarian nature of the Syrian war has damaged the group's legitimacy. In 2021, Nasrallah said the group had 100,000 fighters.
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hell yeah! it rules, can't recommend it enough. i'm not caught up lmao, haven't read the latest chapter
elevator pitch to others - marxist submarine mecha space opera where 99% of the cast is gay and like half are trans. read it! (though madiha absolutely does not subscribe to the doctrine of the volcel vanguard, if you like to avoid any sexual content)
I just got to arc 2, loving the characters, worldbuilding, and ideology, and my one complaint so far is that
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we spent too long away from the communist q-ship right after introducing it with the introduction of the princess and the arc 1 intermissions back to back, I think I would have preferred the episode 4 and 5 chapters interleavedspoiler
that's fair, and i had the same complaint. it all comes together really nicely, but i do wish there'd been more time with the newly introduced core cast right away. there are a lot of charactersthe intermissions get released as the arc is being written, so they weren't all coming out after episode 4 which i imagine made it work better if you were reading as it was being released. but sadly that doesn't show in the archival read
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___Yeah, that order definitely would have worked better. Having the princess finally meet Murati then immediately cutting away again for six more chapters of (excellent) intermission was what solidified my complaint. Speaking of the intermissions, though, the anarchists meeting the catgirl jihad was so real and so tragic.::: spoiler spoiler yeah. the way unjust depths handles its imperialist nations is maybe the most refreshing part of it, it really gets it in a way that's super rare
the other thing is just. having a communist state that isn't perfect but provides necessities and the ways people from other contexts react to it. elena's time on the ship is so good
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Yeah, so far the anarchists aren't quite imperialists, but they absolutely are Settlers.I was a little wary of just how imperfect the Union was at first, what with my favorite SF communist setting being the Culture, but it really does fit the world without condemning the Union for doing AES type stuff.
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the union has a lot of problems, but the fact that madiha writes with a materialist understanding of politics means the story never condemns them for the realities they live in, and it never forgets how vast the gulf is between their quality of life and basically everywhere elseok i went and finallly am fully caught up. still really good!!!!