Al-Maarid Ash-Shee‘ee Yakhruj minal Qumqum

"The Shiites of Lebanon are as old as Lebanon itself. They have participated with other groups in cultivating its plains and mountains, reclaiming its land, and protecting its borders. The Shiites of Lebanon have lived a life of prosperity despite the hardships, and have watered its soil with the blood of their sons, and have raised the banners of glory in its sky because they have been at the head of most of the revolutions." With these words of the symbolic Imam Sayyed Musa al-Sadr - a man of thought and belief, and a man of peace and dialogue - Nicholas Blanford, a journalist for the American Time magazine, opens his controversial book "The Shiite Genie is Out of the Bottle" in which he sheds light on the thirty years of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah is considered the most powerful Islamist group in the Middle East today. No Western journalist has delved as deeply into this secret organization as Nicholas Blanford. Blanford has written the first comprehensive investigation into Hezbollah and its long struggle against Israel. Drawing on more than a decade and a half of reporting in Lebanon and interviews with Hezbollah operatives, Blanford reveals their ideology, motivations, and training, as well as new information on military tactics, weapons, electronic warfare, and sophisticated communications systems. Using exclusive sources and his meticulous investigative skills, Blanford traces Hezbollah’s extraordinary evolution from a group of enthusiastic, inexperienced fighters galvanized by Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution to the world’s largest nongovernmental military organization, whose charismatic leader is on the cusp of Israel’s destruction. With gripping eyewitness accounts, including Blanford’s own experiences of the battles, massacres, triumphs, and tragedies that have defined the conflict, this book tells the story of the resistance’s increasingly successful campaign that led to Israel’s historic withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. The Shiite Genie Is Out of the Bottle shows how Hezbollah won hearts and minds with its comprehensive social welfare programs and sophisticated propaganda skills. Blanford traces the group’s military development since 2000, revealing the staggering scope of its vast underground network of tunnels and trenches, becoming the only journalist to have independently discovered and explored it. As the Middle East fears another, more ferocious war between Lebanon and Israel, Blanford doggedly investigates Hezbollah’s post-2006 preparations in the Lebanese mountains, not only reporting on his own interrogations but also his own night in prison. The Shiite Genie Is Out of the Bottle, a sixteen-year account of interviews with Hezbollah leaders and operatives, is essential to understanding a key player in a region rocked by uncertainty and change.