This revered Lebanese singer became a symbol of national unity by refusing to sing in her homeland during 15 bloody years of civil war. Now, her haunting laments crowd the airwaves again as radio programmers offer solace in terrible times.

But there's another quite insistent beat. This is a mesmeric mix of Arabic anthems . . . nationalist and martial. It is all slickly packaged with images of precision militia parades, heavy weapons being fired in battle, bruising encounters with the enemy and dying or dead Israelis. This is Al-Manar, a satellite TV channel . . . the voice of Hezbollah.

The thinking of people like Ali Saleem, 30, is shaped by AlManar. In Houla, a border village being bombed by the Israelis, his home was hit during an Israeli air strike last weekend and he is being treated at Beirut's Rafiq Hariri Hospital for broken limbs and burns. Saleem demands to be propped up in bed so that he can make the V-for-victory sign. Invoking the names of Shi'ite saints and Gandhi, he declares: "If Israel agrees to a ceasefire, it is a victory for us; but if [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah lays down his weapons, we're defeated."

Fervour like Saleem's is hardly surprising in the war zones.

But the man on the banquette in Beirut's Commodore Hotel is from a different mould.

The breast pocket of his fine cotton shirt is monogrammed and he chomps a fat cigar. As he juggles two mobile telephones, Dr Ali Fayyad explains he has recently presented Hezbollah's submission on electoral reform to the Lebanese government.

Hezbollah is a key part of that government . . . it has three ministries; it has 14 seats in the national parliament; and it controls more than a third of the country's municipal councils. Fayyad is a senior member of Hezbollah's executive committee.

At the modern Al-Rassoul Hospital, Ahmad Talal, 33, enters a small office wearing theatre scrubs. Al-Rassoul was built and is run by Hezbollah.

Talal is on stand-by to receive the latest victims of Israeli attacks.

Across town, Ibrahim alMussawi guides us to a dark corner in the lobby of another hotel. His languid frame folds into an armchair and he proceeds to analyse Hezbollah's split personality in the global media . . . in the west they are terrorists; in the Arab and Islamic worlds freedom fighters. Mussawi is circumspect, but others observe he has to be close to the centre of Hezbollah power to be trusted as the face of the militia for foreign TV audiences.

All three attend to their tasks in the capital with all the aplomb of lobbyists, technocrats and spin doctors the world over. At the same time their leader, the bearded and turbaned Nasrallah, choreographs the Lebanon end of a brutal war with Israel.

It's a conflict which Washington has seized upon as an opportunity to step over the carcass of so many failed diplomatic efforts to stabilise the Middle East, hoping that allowing Israel to bomb Hezbollah might shift the region towards reform and democracy.

This chapter of the Lebanon story starts in February last year, when the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated in a massive car-bomb explosion in downtown Beirut. Hariri was the father of the $50bn resurrection of the city from the rubble of the civil war and the outpourings of anger at his murder gave rise to what became known as the Cedar Revolution.

Urged on by the US and France, demonstrators demanded that neighbouring Syria dismantle its vice-like military and intelligence apparatus in Lebanon. Damascus caved in and withdrew abruptly, a spectacular outcome that kindled Washington's hope that here was a new Middle East candidate for democracy which, along with liberated Iraq, could be a force for change in the region.

But those who marched for genuine democracy and for a voice in their nation's affairs were cheated. At the time, much of the diplomatic and media analysis split the big Lebanese players into democrats and non-democrats, proSyrians versus anti-Syrians.

But other forces were . . . and still are . . . at work.

Just as they did in the old days, tight circles of powerbrokers from the different religious sects and Mafia-like clans keep a tight rein on the numbers and the money in Lebanon. Despite a Muslim majority, seats in the parliament are shared evenly between the Muslim and Christian communities. Key positions are reserved accordingly . . . the president is a Christian; the prime minister a Sunni Muslim; and the parliamentary speaker a Shiite Muslim.

But fuelled by the tortured Shiite ascendancy in Iraq and manipulation by Shiite Iran and its allies in Syria, sectarian divisions are deepening.

Amid rising tension between Shiites and Sunnis, there are complaints of an influx into the country of Salafist clergy and militants, adherents to the Islamic creed that underpinned the Taliban in Afghanistan and which still fires much of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

The US might have grave difficulties with the Sunnis of Iraq. But its warm relationship with the Sunni-dominated Hariri power bloc in Beirut prompted a warning from General Michel Aoun, a powerful Christian leader who aspires to be president: "The Americans don't understand the complexity of relations between Sunnis and Shiites.

The lesson of centuries of experience in history [is] Sunnis and Shiites cannot live together. Christians are needed."

IF LEBANON finds itself at a geopolitical crossroads, the same can be said of Hezbollah, which, faced with intense USled pressure to disarm, is confronted by hard choice . . .

become a conventional political party and stay in the open; or go underground for a purely guerilla-war campaign.

Hezbollah has become one of the most powerful and complex militia and political operations in the Middle East. It takes spiritual guidance, money and weapons from Tehran; it remains close to Damascus. In Lebanon's political gridlock it has built itself into such a formidable machine that the efficiency of its service delivery is as much of an embarrassment to the government as its ruthless military prowess is to Israel.

Hezbollah built and runs six hospitals and dozens of health centres; it subsidises the education of thousands. It operates agricultural advice centres and runs a quasi-bank that provides micro-credit for small businesses. Like all its other services, its housing projects are for the most deprived section of the Lebanese population . . . the Shiite underclasses who congregate in the south of the country and in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Apart from Al-Manar, the Hezbollah business empire also includes four radio stations and a stable of print publications. A senior Hezbollah figure declines to identify any of the organisation's businesses because he feared they would become Israeli targets in the war.

Hezbollah has insinuated itself into legal, medical and other professional groups; into trade unions and student groups; and into the public service. Its finances are tightly guarded. But in his book In the Path of Hezbollah, the American University of Beirut politics professor Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh estimates Iran's contribution to be as much as $1bn a year.

The organisation also receives generous donations from the Shiite diaspora. But Fayyad says the anti-terrorism monitoring of financial transactions after the 11 September attacks has stemmed a healthy tide of money that flowed from Shiite expatriates in the US, Canada and Australia.

IBRAHIM Bayram, an analyst with Beirut's An-Nahar newspaper, was to the point in his response to questions on Lebanon's national security.

Can the existing Lebanese security forces defend the country? No. Can Hezbollah do the job? Yes. "All the Arab armies could not fight Israel . . .even together, " he said.

"Hezbollah can't prevent an invasion, but it has proved itself as a resistance force and it broke the Israelis' reputation as the undefeated army. That makes the Lebanese people feel better about themselves.

"But this may be Hezbollah's last battle . . . the time for them to disarm and drop the resistance-fighter role is closer than it has ever been. Israel and the US have been laying the ground for this outcome . . .

that is why Hezbollah was so surprised by the ferocity of the Israeli attack."

That transition is Nasrallah's choice. The 46-year-old cleric has already proved to be a deft player in the brinkmanship of Lebanese politics.

Playing the unwritten rules like a violin, he has manipulated myriad alliances, even with elements of the Christian establishment, to build a strong bloc in the parliament.

But Talal Salman, the founder of As Safir newspaper, can't believe we're mentioning 'Hezbollah' and 'disarmament' in the same sentence. "It's impossible. Hezbollah has one million supporters . . . Nasrallah cannot let them down. The people have never complained about his weapons because he has never turned his guns on them.

HEZBOLLAH'S legitimacy in the west is under challenge.

Despite . . . or because of . . . its refusal to accede to a UN Security Council resolution demanding its disarmament, it remains a respected and powerful player in Lebanon. But its political opponents reveal edginess.

The Hezbollah associates adopt an 'and-your-problem-is' attitude when questions turn to the abduction of Israeli soldiers and/or the firing of Iranian-supplied missiles into northern Israel. One of them demands: "If Israel can use American-supplied F-16s to bomb Lebanon why shouldn't we use Iranian rockets? And if they are holding our fighters as prisoners, why shouldn't we capture their fighters to swap them for our men?"

As a state within the state, Hezbollah operated in a sphere of its own while Syria controlled Lebanon. It had been contesting . . . and winning . . .

elections but it was not until after the Syrian retreat to Damascus last year that it decided to accept government ministries.

Bayram, the An-Nahar analyst, says without the protection of Syria, Hezbollah was obliged to enter the political mainstream if it was to have a forum in which to defend its military campaign against Israel. But, he says, without arms it stands to become even stronger politically. By his reckoning, Hezbollah has about 60% popular support.

"They have virtually all the Shiites and a good portion of the Christian support, " he says.

"And they live here . . . they can't be shipped off to Tunis the way the PLO was in 1982."

One of the seemingly inexplicable alliances in the new Lebanon is that between Nasrallah's Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement of the Christian leader, General Michel Aoun. The general went into exile in 1990 after turning his weapons on the Syrians . . . but how he has returned and is in coalition with Hezbollah, Damascus's best Lebanese friend.

One of his advisers, Ziad Abs, explains it all quite matter-of-factly: "The Syrians have left . . . so that is not a problem any more. And both Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement are territorial extremists." Abs claims that the two parties have been in months of discussion on the future of Hezbollah and disarmament, and he sees a way forward in dealing with the disarmament question after the territorial and prisoner-exchanges issues with Israel have been dealt with.

In Rome last week, Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Siniora, implied that the right time to deal with the disarmament question was after a resolution of Hezbollah's demands on Israel, which were also Beirut's demands . . . that Israel withdraw from the disputed Shebaa Farms; that it release Lebanese prisoners; and that it turn over a map showing the locations of landmines it placed in southern Lebanon.

Siniora is from the Washington-friendly Future Bloc in the Lebanese parliament.

Walid Aido is one of the founders of the group, which was set up to continue the work of the murdered former prime minister.

As Aido surveys the Beirut carnage, he warns of grim times if the US has effectively contracted out the forced disarmament of Hezbollah to the Israeli Defence Forces: "Disarming Hezbollah by force will create an internal struggle and maybe a new civil war."