hezbolla picks up shovel

forget about comparisons with the govt of Lebanon; this puts to shame the US govt's feeble efforts post-Katrina.


With speed, Hezbollah picks up the shovel
Group's engineers, funds pour into war torn Lebanon

By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff | August 19, 2006

BEIRUT -- Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's grand promises to rebuild Lebanon began to materialize at Shahed High School yesterday, in the form of neat packs of $12,000 in US dollars handed without ceremony to people displaced from their homes.

``I like Hezbollah more and more," said Riyadh Nasser, 53, as he waited in a south Beirut suburb for the money from the Shi'ite Islamist movement. The money is meant to pay for a year's rent and new furniture, until his original home can be rebuilt.

Glossy posters of Nasrallah and the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, surrounded Nasser in the high school classroom-turned-branch office for Construction Jihad, as Hezbollah calls its engineering department.

Lebanon's government is still talking about its own reconstruction plan, but Hezbollah has already flexed its organizational muscle to deploy heavy machinery, hundreds of engineers, and thousands of workers across the country, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in the process leaving the government looking flat-footed.
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