It’s not as if they’re trying very hard to hide it: Hizbollah builds up covert army for a new assault against Israel.

The dead of southern Lebanon watch the living from the sides of buildings and from lampposts, their faces staring out defiantly from posters, heads often superimposed on bodies of generic men in uniform. These are Hizbollah’s martyrs: men killed fighting against Israel before it abandoned the occupation of the south in 2000 or in the numerous clashes since, including the bloody summer war of 2006.

The images are often the only public acknowledgement of the individuals who make up this most secretive of institutions: Hizbollah’s military wing.

But an Observer investigation has discovered that this covert organisation is quietly but steadily replacing its dead and redoubling its recruitment efforts in anticipation of a new, and even more brutal, conflict. Hizbollah has embarked on a major expansion of its fighting capability and is now sending hundreds, if not thousands, of young men into intensive training camps in Lebanon, Syria and Iran to ready itself for war with Israel. ‘It’s not a matter of if,’ says one fighter. ‘It’s a matter of when Sayed Hasan Nasrallah [Hizbollah chief] commands us.’

I love that description of a “covert army.” Yeah ... the kind of covert army that has giant billboards and posters all over every apartment building, and gives interviews to the Observer.

Real masters of disguise.

(Hat tip: sr_soph.)