As refugees flood back to their war-ravaged villages, Hizbullah has flung itself to the front of the burgeoning reconstruction effort in southern Lebanon, funded with a deluge of petro-dollars from neighbouring Iran.

"We want to bring south Lebanon back to life and rebuild it better than it was before the war," said Nabil Kaouk, Hizbullah's top official in southern Lebanon, standing before the group's flattened headquarters building in Tyre.

In nearby villages, his supporters were already hard at work. Hizbullah activists in T-shirts and green caps cleared rubble-strewn roads and piles of rotting refuse, and ferried the dead and wounded through the scrub-covered hills in shiny modern ambulances.

But the most extravagant element of Hizbullah's plan is to provide a year's rent and a set of new furniture for every family whose house has been destroyed. The promise was made by Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, within hours of Monday's ceasefire.

The housing scheme will benefit 15,000 families, Mr Nasrallah said, and will cost up to $150m, according to one estimate. Funding will come from oil-rich Iran, which until now has mostly supplied Hizbullah with thousands of missiles used against Israel.

Yesterday in Beirut, hundreds of refugees shuffled through a registration centre where officials noted their losses and made promises of help. The cash will be spent in towns such as Bint Jbail, near the southern border, where entire neighbourhoods have been razed.

"There is no central government presence here. Hizbullah is doing everything," said local official Hamed Harab, standing outside the bomb-pocked town hospital.

Behind him stood a group of trim young men in dark t-shirts who refused to have their photographs taken. They watched a stream of overloaded cars carrying residents home. "The people want things to move quickly. They know that we can deliver," he said.

This multimillion pound aid drive marks a new phase in Hizbullah's struggle. The militant group has already won admiration across the Arab world for its dogged resistance to Israeli attack.

Now it is fighting to retain the support of Lebanon's Shia Muslims, who constitute about one third of the population, and to maintain the "state within a state" that allowed the militant group to develop the military arsenal and network of village bunkers that thwarted the Israeli invasion.

The success of this strategy is evident from the proclamations of undying loyalty, even from families who have lost everything.

"When Sayed Hassan [Nasrallah] speaks, we listen," said Amar Balhas outside the remains of his house. "If he asks, I will give my life for Hizbullah."

But other residents are shocked by the destruction that Hizbullah's belligerence has wrought on their already impoverished lives.

"I will be sleeping in the streets tonight," said Nohead Hamoud, 46, yesterday after arriving in Bent Jbail to find a pile of broken bricks and furniture where her home once stood.

She cringed in fear as an Israeli fighter jet roared overhead. Asked her opinion of Hizbullah's popularity, she replied, tersely: "That is a question I cannot answer."

The housing scheme could further weaken the influence of central government in Hizbullah strongholds, deepening rifts between Lebanon's rival religious confessions.

Some Christian and Druze leaders resent Hizbullah's autonomy and have called for it to disarm.

That tension is one of several problems facing the 30,000-strong peacekeeping force due to start deploying to southern Lebanon today.

Under the UN resolution, foreign countries are due to send 13,000 troops. Yesterday the Lebanese cabinet approved the deployment of 15,000 soldiers south of Litani river, starting today.

A 2,000-strong Unifil mission is already in place.

Hizbullah's Nabil Kaouk welcomed the Lebanese deployment but warned that disarmament of Hizbullah was "not on the table". And he said Hizbullah reserved the right to resume fighting against Israeli soldiers if they remained too long in southern Lebanon.

Human Rights Watch warned that thousands of civilians were at risk from unexploded bombs and called for an urgent operation to secure and clear affected areas.

Meanwhile, the death toll continued to rise. In Srifa, a village east of Tyre, rescue workers have pulled another 32 bodies from the rubble, said mayor Afif Najdeh. Airstrikes flattened 15 houses in the village on July 19 after Hizbullah rockets were fired from the area.

Municipal authorities in Tyre expect to bury more than 120 war victims in a mass grave today.

source: www.guardian.co.uk

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