....In a game of paintball :v:
[quote]
[B]LEBANON - NOW:[/B] We figured they’d cheat; they were Hezbollah, after all. But none of us—a team of four Western journalists—thought we’d be dodging military-grade flash bangs when we initiated this “friendly” paintball match.
The battle takes place underground in a grungy, bunker-like basement underneath a Beirut strip mall. When the grenades go off it’s like being caught out in a ferocious thunderstorm: blinding flashes of hot white light, blasts of sound that reverberate deep inside my ears.
As my eyesight returns and readjusts to the dim arena light, I poke out from my position behind a low cinder-block wall. Two large men in green jumpsuits are bearing down on me. I have them right in my sights, but they seem unfazed—even as I open fire from close range, peppering each with several clear, obvious hits. I expect them to freeze, maybe even acknowledge that this softie American journalist handily overcame their flash-bang trickery and knocked them out of the game. Perhaps they’ll even smile and pat me on the back as they walk off the playing field in a display of good sportsmanship (after cheating, of course).
Instead, they shoot me three times, point-blank, right in the groin.
From this distance (well within the 15-foot “safety zone”), paintballs feel like bee stings. I raise my hands in pain and confusion, signaling to the referee that I’m leaving the game. But the bigger one—a tall, muscular farm boy from the deep south of Lebanon who tonight is going by the name Khodor—isn’t finished with me yet: He wraps his giant hands around my body and tries to throw me over his shoulder with the kind of deftness that only comes from practice. I’m quick enough to break free and flee, but my teammate Ben isn’t so lucky. Khodor and his partner move past me in perfect military formation, plunging deeper into our defenses. Soon they apprehend Ben, pushing him ahead of them, human shield-style.
Yes, I remind myself, this is really happening: Four Western journalists (two of whom alternated in and out of our rounds of four-on-four), plus one former Army Ranger-turned-counterinsurgency expert, are playing paintball with members of the Shiite militant group frequently described by US national security experts as the “A-Team of terrorism.” It took nearly a full year to pull together this game, and all along I’d been convinced that things would fall apart at the last minute. Fraternizing with Westerners is not the sort of thing Hezbollah top brass allows, so to arrange the match I’d relied on a man we’ll call Ali, one of my lower-level contacts within the group.
Ali had sworn that he’d deliver honest-to-God trained fighters for an evening of paintball, but when the four-man Hezbollah team first walked into the building, I was dubious. In the Dahiyah, the southern suburbs of Beirut controlled by Hezbollah, every macho teenager and his little brother consider themselves essential members of “the Resistance.” And one of the fighters—a tall, lanky, 20-something with a scruffy beard and the spiked-and-gelled hairdo favored by secular Beirut kids—seems like a wannabe. Especially after he introduces himself as Coco.
“Ali, what the fuck?” I ask out of earshot of the men he brought. “This guy is named Coco?”
“No, of course not,” he answers. “Nobody is giving their real names, man.”
“Is he, umm, in the Resistance? If he’s not, that’s fine; the other guys look legit. But I need to know if he’s real for the story.”
“Oh, they’re all real, bro,” Ali says in a high-pitched voice he uses whenever I challenge the veracity of his information. “Wait and see.”
With me out of the game, another teammate eliminated, and a third being held hostage, that leaves only one remaining member of Team Sahafi (Arabic for “journalists”): Andrew Exum, a former Army Ranger captain who retired after three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and has since become a noted counterinsurgency expert. When he’s not playing paintball in the basement of a Beirut strip mall, Exum is flying to Kabul to advise the US military or writing papers with phrases like “population-centric” in their titles. He also heads up abumuqawama.com, a blog revered by War on Terror geeks. The main thrust of Exum’s strategy is to separate insurgents from the broader population. Tonight, however, as two Hezbollah fighters drag and push his comrade-turned-hostage toward him, Ranger Exum makes little effort to separate good guy from bad and shoots all three of them repeatedly. This delights our opponents, who appear to appreciate the lack of emotion shown by the American warrior. Finally, they relent—no one can doubt they have been “killed”—and forfeit the game.
We all convene back in the arena’s cantina, where there are snacks and weird murals suggesting that paintball is the best way to deal with one’s inner aggression. If the initial introductions between the two sides had been slightly tense—the fighters seemed nervous about being identified, and we were anxious about them backing out—the realization that they had just attempted to use a hostage as a human shield during a paintball fight loosened things up. The Hezbollah guys all laugh when Exum jokes that he killed Ben to keep him off some Al Jazeera reel. And they respond—pointing at me—that after the next game “the Germans will have to negotiate for this one.” It’s a somewhat sick inside joke: German diplomats are usually tasked with negotiating Hezbollah-Israeli prisoner and body swaps.
[/quote]
Highly recommend that you check the source and read the whole 6 page article. Really cool stuff.
[url]http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/paintballing-with-hezbollah-0000151-v19n3[/url]
[img]http://scs.viceland.com/int/v19n3/htdocs/paintballing-with-hezbollah/three-guys-covered-up.jpg[/img]
[I]Hezbollah members getting in position right before a match starts. It’s almost like they’ve done this before or something.[/I]
Loving the fake magazines on the guns.
You know, I never thought I'd hear paintballing and hezbollah in the same sentence.
[QUOTE=Nikota;35309047]Loving the fake magazines on the guns.[/QUOTE]
Plenty of paintball guns have them, (at least the more relica-ish ones). Normally people keep tools inside them, although you can get paintball guns that use shaped rounds and make use of the magazines.
I came in this thread to tell you you're a horrible person for using the humor thread icon.
But this is nice.
They weren't cheating. They were accurately recreating a real life situation, in which they only fight when they've jacked themselves up with Epinepherin and take 15 bullets to maybe slow down. And since Headshots probably aren't allowed, and Going for bone in paintball is useless. The odds were with them on that glorious day, Praise Allah!
"The Germans will have to negotiate for this one."
Loving their sense of humour.
so they play a game of paintball instead of arresting a terrorist group.
10/10 American army, you won a golden dabloon
[highlight](User was banned for this post ("Didn't read" - Starpluck))[/highlight]
[QUOTE=XTREME GYPSIE;35309594]so they play a game of paintball instead of arresting a terrorist group.
10/10 American army, you won a golden dabloon[/QUOTE]
They're American journalists, doofus.
Forgot the part were one of them had 15 paintball grenades strapped to his chest..
XTREME GYPSIE's post makes me cringe.
What this article shows is something that it's easy to forget. People are people. Even Hezbollah militants. They're a little scary because they're hard men, but it seems they cut loose like anyone else. These guys don't look like hardliners to me, just young idealists.
I suppose it's cool that they managed this or whatever, but what exactly is the point? If you have a group of presumably employed journalists in a room with Hezbollah members whose collective guard is down in a friendly match of paintball, why not interview them about some of the more intimate point of being a part of the movement? Surely that's more interesting than a vignette about their wily cheating ways.
[QUOTE=Mlisen14;35310170]I suppose it's cool that they managed this or whatever, but what exactly is the point? If you have a group of presumably employed journalists in a room with Hezbollah members whose collective guard is down in a friendly match of paintball, why not interview them about some of the more intimate point of being a part of the movement? Surely that's more interesting than a vignette about their wily cheating ways.[/QUOTE]
Or have Seal Team 6 storm the place... But with Airsoft rifles! or Simunitions
[QUOTE=Mlisen14;35310170]I suppose it's cool that they managed this or whatever, but what exactly is the point? If you have a group of presumably employed journalists in a room with Hezbollah members whose collective guard is down in a friendly match of paintball, why not interview them about some of the more intimate point of being a part of the movement? Surely that's more interesting than a vignette about their wily cheating ways.[/QUOTE]
Theres some extremely interesting stuff on page 6 of the article
[quote]"Hellllooooo there,” the Boss shouts in English to the startled soldiers, who whip around in surprise. He follows this with a hearty “Fuck you!” and we speed off. Once we’re far enough away that I stop worrying about getting shot, I ask him what he really thinks—personally—about his Israeli enemies.
“They are well trained and tough,” he says. “They fight hard and defend their land and people. I respect them as enemies. They work with their hands, they fight for themselves, and they take care of their own people, so they’re much better than the Saudis.” He goes on: “Saudis are the worst people alive. They claim to be the most religious Muslims and were given the greatest gift of any nation by God himself. Do they protect Muslims with this money? Do they feed the poor? Build a culture? No, they spend it all on cars and whores. I hate them.”[/quote]
I wont post the whole page but its less about paintball
[QUOTE=Timebomb575;35310387]Theres some extremely interesting stuff on page 6 of the article
I wont post the whole page but its less about paintball[/QUOTE]
Oh my bad, I didn't realise it was only an excerpt.
Jesus christ, I was expecting something TOTALLY different.
What strikes me the most about these Hezbollah fighters is that they seem very intelligent. They're thinkers by nature, if only in so far as they're strategists. But it makes a big difference and goes against the image most westerners have of them.
This made my day.
Must be some scary shit going against military grade flash-bangs.
I expected war, but instead it's friendly colourful war. :>
[QUOTE=TheTalon;35309427]They weren't cheating. They were accurately recreating a real life situation, in which they only fight when they've jacked themselves up with Epinepherin and take 15 bullets to maybe slow down. And since Headshots probably aren't allowed, and Going for bone in paintball is useless. The odds were with them on that glorious day, Praise Allah![/QUOTE]
If they wanted a real life situation they'd use airsoft, or anything other than paintball.
[QUOTE=joost1120;35317205]If they wanted a real life situation they'd use airsoft, or anything other than paintball.[/QUOTE]How is airsoft in any way more realistic than paintball, other than the guns look more like guns?
With paintball at least there's the advantage of seeing if someone gets hit, rather than having only their word to go by.
[editline]28th March 2012[/editline]
That being said, most militaries use a system like the KASI simulator. Seeing as they're just journalists, and Hezbollah being unlikely to possess military simulator systems, paintball isn't too bad a choice.
Great article, though your headline should be "western journalists slaughter Hezbollah fighters" since the U.S. journalists won despite the Hezbollah guys cheating a bit at first.
[QUOTE=joost1120;35317205]If they wanted a real life situation they'd use airsoft, or anything other than paintball.[/QUOTE]
isn't some form of paintball used for actual military training in the US
Fuck man, you scared the shit out of me with that title. I'm Lebanese and heading to Lebanon next month for holidays and did not fancy more political instability...
[QUOTE=BLOODGA$M;35322004]isn't some form of paintball used for actual military training in the US[/QUOTE]
simunitions and airsoft
+miles
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.