Inside Hizbollah’s fake news training camps
The Iran-backed militant group is training thousands to spread propaganda and disinformation online
THE three-storey run-down building on the outskirts of Beirut blended in among the nondescript apartment blocks and businesses lining the busy street. But when Mohammed stepped through the door he was greeted by an opulent interior filled with advanced technology and the blinking lights of specialist computer equipment.
The young Iraqi had entered a 10-day fake news training camp run by Iran-backed militant group Hizbollah which would equip him to spread fear and division around the Middle East.
It would teach him how to build up networks of false social media profiles that he would later use to spread propaganda and disinformation online, sowing confusion and sometimes death in his home country. His experience is not unique. A Sunday Telegraph investigation can today reveal that Hizbollah has trained thousands of Iran-backed social media activists, helping create so-called “electronic armies” across the region. This newspaper can disclose that since at least 2012, Hizbollah has been flying individuals into Lebanon for courses teaching participants how to digitally manipulate photographs, manage large numbers of fake social media accounts, make videos, avoid Facebook’s censorship, and effectively spread disinformation online.
Students have come from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Syria, according to interviewees that spoke to The Sunday Telegraph on the condition of anonymity. The portrait of Hizbollah’s digital training operations is based on more than 20 interviews with politicians, analysts, social media specialists, a member of Iraq’s military psychological operations unit, a member of the Iraqi secret service, and several former members of electronic armies.
These included two detailed interviews with people directly involved with sending people on Hizbollah courses in Lebanon over multiple years, who had an intimate knowledge of how they operated.
Before arriving in Lebanon, Mohammed had been told that he was not allowed to talk to anyone about his trip to Beirut, and during the whole 10-day course the students were monitored by CCTV. “When I landed I was nervous because of all the secrecy involved,” he said, adding that he was greeted at the camp by an elderly Hizbollah imam dressed in traditional religious clothes. The following day he met the specialists that would teach the different parts of the course, who were dressed casually or in suits and mostly did not have beards.
Some of the trainers did not join the staff and students as they took place in regular communal prayer sessions during the day. “When I met the specialist trainers and realised how technical and in-depth the course was – I became very enthusiastic,” he told The Telegraph from Iraq, where he passes on his training to new recruits.
During the years that followed his first course in 2015, Mohammed would go on to send dozens of other people to receive training in Beirut in a variety of areas as he helped to create new teams of social media specialists and hackers. “It is the illusion industry. Hizbollah is making millions of dollars from running these courses, but for the clients it is worth spending the money,” he said.
Abdullah, who asked to withhold his full name, is a senior politician in one of Iraq’s biggest political parties and has been involved in sending individuals to Beirut for the training.
“It became a business for Hizbollah. The people we sent developed their skills in Beirut and when they returned they started training activists inside Iraq,” he said.
Hizbollah is listed as a terrorist organisation by 18 countries, including the UK and the US, as well as the EU and the Arab League.
Among the groups to access the training is Kata’ib Hizbollah, a powerful Iraqi paramilitary group with close ties to Hizbollah in Lebanon. The group ran large-scale, ruthless social media campaigns over 2019 using its social media networks to distribute high quality videos that aggressively targeted public figures perceived as enemies to its expansion.
Mohanad al-Semawee, the head of Iraq’s Digital Media Centre, an independent media monitoring and analysis base, believes that the impact of social media misinformation in Middle East countries like Iraq, which
‘It is the illusion industry. Hizbollah is making millions of dollars from running these courses, but for the clients it is worth spending the money’
lack strong governmental and journalistic institutions, is far greater than in Europe and the US.
“False statements and messages inciting violence, which spread online can easily lead directly to deadly violence in real life in Iraq,” he said.
The killing of the Iraqi security expert Hisham al-Hashimi on July 6 sparked outcry on social media with thousands of Iraqis reposting messages saying that US companies Facebook and Twitter should take some responsibility for his death.
Al-Hashimi was subjected to an online smear campaign for months before his death, accusing him of ordered the assassination of Shia Muslims. His death prompted calls for social media platforms to do more to control the spread of disinformation.
In May this year, Facebook removed a network of 324 pages, 71 accounts, five groups and 31 Instagram accounts, which had spent a total of $270,000 (£213,000) on Facebook ads. The pages were followed by about 4.4million accounts and had been exhibiting signs of “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”, according to Facebook.
This network, which focused on Iraqi Kurdistan, used fake accounts to post online, impersonate local politicians and parties as well as managing pages that masqueraded as news outlets.
This story was developed with the support of the Money Trail Project.