“Bulgaria’s interior minister announced on Feb. 5 the result of his country’s investigation into the July 2012 bombing of a bus filled with Israeli tourists in the city of Burgas, which killed five Israelis and the vehicle’s Bulgarian driver. Two of the individuals who carried out the terrorist attack, he said, ‘belonged to the military formation of Hezbollah.’ 

It was not by chance that his statement fingered only the military wing of Hezbollah, not the group as a whole. Within the European Union, the findings of the Bulgarian investigation have kicked off a firestorm over whether to add the Lebanese militant organization — in whole, or perhaps just its military or terrorist wings — to the EU’s list of banned terrorist groups. But are there in fact distinct wings within the self-styled “Party of God”?

Hezbollah is many things. It is one of the dominant political parties in Lebanon, as well as a social and religious movement catering first and foremost — though not exclusively — to Lebanon’s Shiite community. Hezbollah is also Lebanon’s largest militia, the only one to keep its weapons and rebrand its armed elements as an “Islamic resistance” in response to the terms of the 1989 Taif Accord, which ended the Lebanese Civil War.

While the group’s various elements are intended to complement one another, the reality is often messier. In part, that has to do with compartmentalization of Hezbollah’s covert activities. It is also, however, a result of the group’s multiple identities — Lebanese, pan-Shiite, pro-Iranian — and the group’s multiple and sometimes competing goals tied to these different identities.”

Read more…