Latest news with #Grube
USA Today
16-05-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
A PGA Tour tournament director called this Massachusetts course 'unbelievable.' Which one?
A PGA Tour tournament director called this Massachusetts course 'unbelievable.' Which one? Nathan Grube, tournament director of the Travelers Championship, called it one of the top five golf courses he has played. Andy Bessette, Travelers executive vice president and chief administrative officer, declared it was the most fun golf course he has played. So which golf course were they talking about? No, it wasn't TPC River Highlands, site of the Travelers Championship June 19-22 in Cromwell, Connecticut. They enjoy that course as well, but believe it or not, they were referring to Worcester Country Club. Bessette and Grube played in Golf Fights Cancer's Good Guy Invitational at Worcester CC last September. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan founded Golf Fights Cancer with Holy Cross graduate Brian Oates, the executive director of sales at Kraft Sports and Entertainment. Bessette and Grube have played in the event for about 15 years at various sites. Last fall was the first time they played at Worcester CC, and they raved about the course when asked about it at the Travelers media day at TPC River Highlands on April 29. 'Oh my gosh,' Grube said of the course, which ranked No. 13 in the state on Golfweek's Best private club rankings. 'That golf course is unbelievable. I've played a lot of golf courses in my life, but it became one of my top five favorite courses within probably the first seven or eight holes. The sightlines, the playability, the history. When you walk around that property, it's just like it wraps its arms around you.' 'That was phenomenal,' Bessette said. 'It was the most fun course I've played. Nathan and I both agreed.' 'We had the best time I've ever had on a golf course,' Bessette said. 'That's a great golf course. The people were fun, too. Worcester Country Club, I would join that country club in two seconds and drive an hour occasionally to go play it. That's a great golf course.' Bessette also appreciated the history of Worcester CC, home of the 1925 U.S. Open, the inaugural Ryder Cup in 1927 and the 1960 U.S. Women's Open. Worcester CC head pro Andy Lane was thrilled to hear that Grube and Bessette had praised the course. 'It's really exciting to hear feedback like that,' Lane said. 'I'm fortunate to spend every day at this golf course and see how much our membership and our guests know how special our golf course is, especially on the centennial year for our 1925 U.S. Open and two years away from our centennial of the first Ryder Cup. It's a special time here at Worcester Country Club. The golf course has never been better." Lane credited superintendent Adam Moore and his staff with keeping Worcester CC in great shape. 'They're always on top of their game,' Lane said. 'They love every inch of this golf course, and it shows.' Bessette said his son travels to UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester for his Type 1 diabetes care. 'Phenomenal facility,' Bessette said. 'It's a center of excellence.' He urges golf fans from the Worcester area to make the drive to watch the Travelers. When reminded about the upcoming 100th anniversary of 1925 U.S. Open at Worcester CC, Grube joked, 'If I went right now, I'd probably shoot a 100 on the 100th anniversary.' That's because he's busy preparing for the Travelers Championship. As one of the PGA Tour's eight signature events, the Travelers will host most of the tour's top players. The entire field will consist of 72 players, half the number of a regular event, but there will be no cut. So there's no danger of a top player going home after two days. Scottie Scheffler, No. 1 in the World Golf Rankings for 103 consecutive weeks, will defend his championship. The only other golfer to be ranked No. 1 for 100 or more consecutive weeks is Tiger Woods, who did it twice, for 281 and 264 consecutive weeks. Bessette pointed out that unlike other sports, golf offers the opportunity to watch many of the top players perform at the same place on the same day. Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele, Ludwig Aberg and Justin Thomas are among those scheduled to play at the Travelers. The Travelers has been the only PGA Tour event in New England since 2020 when TPC of Boston hosted its 17th and final PGA Tour event. Dustin Johnson won the Northern Trust that year at TPC Boston with no fans on hand due to the pandemic. Grube said the Travelers offers more than the chance to watch many of the top golfers play. 'I would put our fan experience against any other professional sport in the country,' he said, 'and I would welcome people to come experience it.' The Travelers offers convenient parking, sunscreen stations, free water and several free venues, including a treehouse constructed in a grove of trees between the 14th tee and the 15th green. Tree House Brewing Company of Charlton will host a beer garden there. This is the 19th year that the Travelers has been the title sponsor, the longest reign of any title sponsor since the PGA Tour began holding events in Connecticut in 1952. 'The PGA Tour had killed the tournament,' Bessette said, 'and we brought it back to life.' Travelers inherited the tournament debt and worked hard to draw the tour's best golfers. Last year the tournament raised more than $3.2 million for more than 100 charities, including some in Massachusetts. Since Travelers became the title sponsor in 2007, the tournament has raised more than $31 million for charity. The Travelers is the only PGA Tour event to be voted as the players' favorite event for two years in a row. 'It's a week in which the players and our families and our caddies get treated as good as we do all year,' Scheffler said. The Travelers provides a welcomed relief to golfers the week after they have to grind it out through the difficult conditions of playing in the U.S. Open. Scheffler defeated Tom Kim in a playoff at TPC River Highlands last year after they each shot 22-under for 72 holes. That was 16 strokes lower than the 6-under that Bryson DeChambeau shot to win the U.S. Open the week before. 'It's a fun, relaxing week for us as players,' Scheffler said. 'That's why I think we get excited to go play and go make some birdies and have some fun.' Grounds tickets cost $109 for Thursday or Friday, and $115 for Saturday or Sunday. General admission tickets include access to four free venues. Admission is free for children ages 15 and under. There's also no charge for members of the military, veterans, health care workers and first responders, but registration is required. For tickets, visit Scheffler's caddie, Ted Scott, carried Bubba Watson's bag when he won the Travelers in 2010, 2015 and 2018. So when Scheffler plays TPC River Highlands, Scott keeps telling him what Watson did on each hole during those victories. 'After a few holes, that can get pretty annoying listening to Teddy talk about when Bubba won,' Scheffler said. Scheffler joked that he told Scott he would hit him with his club if he kept talking about Watson. Last Christmas, Scheffler suffered what he called a 'silly injury,' a puncture wound to the palm of his right hand from a broken wine glass while making ravioli. The injury required surgery and caused him to miss the first four tournaments of the season. He wasn't as sharp as he would have liked for a while, but the week after the Travelers media day he shot 31-under par to win the CJ Cup Byron Nelson in McKinney, Texas, to set a 72-hole scoring record and win by eight shots. —Contact Bill Doyle at bcdoyle15@
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Travelers Championship named among favorite golf tournaments for players, fans
CROMWELL, Conn. (WTNH) — Tuesday was media day for the Travelers Champion golf tournament. That means some our own News 8 folks hit the links at TPC River Highlands. It also means in less than two months, dozens of the world's top professionals will be in Cromwell. Those players voted the Travelers Championship their favorite two years in a row. Rory McIlroy commits to 2025 Travelers Championship 'Athletes know that worldwide that you never stop trying to get better, and that's what driven us,' said Andy Bessette, the Travelers' executive vice president and chief administrative officer. The top people running the tournament sat down and talked to the media before play began. The Travelers has been voted one of the best tournaments for fans. Tournament director Nathan Grube said that's because they keep asking ticketholders what they want. 'What do you want to see when you come out here. What's the experience that you want to have? What's your expectation?' Grube explained. 'The player field is the top of the list. We want to see the best players in the world.' Scottie Scheffler signs on to 2025 Travelers Championship The number one golfer in the world, Scottie Scheffler, is also the reigning tournament champion. He is definitely coming back this year. 'You know, you're always staying close to the course,' Scheffler said over Zoom. 'You're able to rent a house and the food's great, and you get to go eat pizza. So, it's a fun, relaxing week for us as players.' It is also a week that raises lots of money for local charities, including more than $3 million just last year. Former Travelers Championship winner to play in 2025 'The people they're serving have no idea what the Travelers Championship is, probably, but their lives are being monumentally changed and shifted and affected by what we're doing,' Grube said. One thing they point out about the tournament is, if you go to a World Series game or even the Super Bowl, you'll only see a handful of the best players in the world in that sport. But in Cromwell, you'll see dozens of the top golfers in the world all in one long weekend. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ABC News
28-04-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
The CSI squad closing a dark chapter in Colombia's history
With an estimated 120,000 people missing after decades of civil strife, finding them has become a national mission. The concrete box standing in the middle of the kitchen seems to have no earthly reason for being there. It's curious: too low for a table, not really a seat, and yet it dominates the space like some crude sarcophagus in an ancient burial chamber. The mystery of what, or who, may lie inside is what we've come to find out. But there's none of the romance of an archaeological expedition on this dig. This is more CSI than Indiana Jones. The team about to crack open the box with pickaxes and shovels are crime scene experts from Grube, a forensics unit in Colombia's national prosecutor's office. They have a grim task — to find, identify and return the missing victims of Colombia's long-running civil war. We've come to a small farm in the country's rural north, just outside the town of Tierralta. We're here, it's hoped, to find a body. A small farm outside the town of Tierralta in Colombia, where crime scene experts from Grube went searching for a body. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) Members of the Grube team crack open a concrete box inside the farmhouse kitchen. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) Mountains beyond the edge of the farm. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) A CTI officer at the dig site. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) In Colombia, it's estimated over 120,000 people are missing, presumed dead, after six decades of armed conflict between leftist guerillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and government forces. The country's notorious drug cartels only added to the body count. The sheer volume of missing people is a collective trauma the Colombian government hopes to ease by finding the bodies and returning them to the families, a task it has made a national priority. Warning: This story contains graphic content that may be distressing to some readers. "Finding the bodies is very important for Colombia," says Marta Ruiz, a former journalist who spent 15 years covering the country's armed conflict. For families of the missing, it's "an open wound, impossible to close, painful," she says. "For every missing person there are 15 to 20 survivors with suspended lives. The country has a lot buried and we have to look for them and we have to dig them out and we have to heal." Grube is one of several search units created to find the bodies. It's a mission they take to heart. "Just not knowing what happened to your loved one has destroyed many families in Colombia," says Miguel Villadiego, a young prosecutor leading the dig. Since Grube was established in 2006, it has recovered over 10,000 bodies, returning many to their families. "In a way it helps the living victims to heal every time we can deliver a body to them so that they can mourn properly." The property is checked for explosives. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) An armed CTI officer stands by the front gate. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) Prosecutor Miguel Villadiego led the dig. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) A bird cage at the farm. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) Miguel has been planning to search this place for months, ever since he received a tip-off from a former resident. "The information we received was that in the kitchen there was a kind of concrete construction … and that there, in that place, apparently there were human remains," he says. "The person who lived here left the next day." "The country has a lot buried and we have to look for them and we have to dig them out and we have to heal." — Marta Ruiz In Colombia, digging up the past can be a dangerous business, especially for an out-of-town prosecutor like Miguel, who hails from Monteria, the regional capital about an hour's drive away. We're joined by a squad of burly Technical Investigation Team (CTI) officers brandishing military-style weapons, along with a detachment of Colombian Army soldiers from the local barracks. Miguel is coy about why he's wearing a bullet proof vest at all times. But it's well known one of Colombia's most powerful criminal networks, the Clan del Golfo drug cartel, still runs the cocaine trade in this area. Each morning before digging can start, a bomb squad searches the property. One of the Grube team takes to the concrete box with a sledgehammer. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) One of the dog handlers on the K9 team wheels loads of earth out of the kitchen. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) These digs are a significant investment for the Colombian government. Miguel's team of forensics experts have come from all over the country. It takes a unique combination of brains and brawn to do this kind of work: there's an anthropologist, topographer and a photographer, along with a highly-trained cadaver dog named Kefir. He might be the only one not expected to pick up a shovel. Each member of the team takes it in turns to hack open the concrete box and start removing the soil. There's never any guarantee they'll find anything, but Miguel has confidence in his informant. "You always feel some pressure in the development of this type of mission," he says. "We feel the pressure of not being able to find the truth or not finding the bodies of the missing people. We are carrying on our shoulders the mission of this search." One thing is not in doubt — Tierralta's tragic history in the armed conflict during the 1990s and early 2000s produced a lot of missing people, and some still living here know where the bodies are buried. Downtown Tierralta after nightfall. The town was once under the control of paramilitary soldiers. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) Living alongside the killers The town of Tierralta has no traffic lights. Motorcycles negotiate its grid-like intersections in a chaotic cross-weave. In the heat of the day, people gather in the streets outside rows of stifling concrete homes. It's a loud place for a town of just 95,000. After dark, it gets even louder. Dance clubs pump Latin anthems into the narrow streets; pulsing beats that ruminate in your chest. Day or night, the one constant is the humidity. This, after all, is Colombia's swampy lowlands, a far cry from the crisp, mountainous climes of the capital Bogotá in the south. Some find relief in the Río Sinu, the broad river that skirts the edge of town on its way north to the Caribbean Sea. Kids leap into the current and float downstream. For those with longer memories, it's a scene that evokes harrowing images from the town's troubled past. "We used to swim here, we played, we fished, like those children you see around here," says Helmer, leaning against a railing overlooking the water. "The time came when these rivers were no longer clean waters. No, it was rivers of blood. You'd find corpses. You'd find heads floating. You'd find death." Kids play in the Sinú River in Tierralta, Colombia. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) Helmer grew up in Tierralta when it was controlled by ruthless paramilitaries. Then he became one of them. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) When Helmer grew up in Tierralta, the Colombian state barely existed here. The town was under the control of a paramilitary group, which waged a brutal war for control of the area's rich grazing lands and cocaine smuggling routes. Not all their victims were enemy combatants. Locals went missing too. All over Colombia, the paramilitaries styled themselves the "autodefensas", or self-defence forces, a coalition of right-wing militias formed to counter leftist guerillas like the FARC, the country's biggest insurgent group which had taken over large parts of the country. In reality, life under paramilitary "protection" was hellish. They ruled towns with terror, violence and extreme paranoia. "There was a woman who was killed [in Tierralta] for being pretty," recalls Helmer. She was a visitor from Bogotá whose looks had marked her as an outsider. To the paramilitaries, she was a potential spy. "The commander said she must be from some group and that's why they executed her. Thirty-one people died that day. The dead passed by here in the river." Tierralta is surrounded by cattle grazing lands and mountain ranges. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) A boy climbs a tree next to the river. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) Helmer knows first-hand the atrocities committed by paramilitaries. He was once one of them. He grew up in a poor rural family, one of eight kids raised by a single mother. As a boy he ran errands for the police, buying them coffee and cigars. "I wanted to be a police officer, not a paramilitary," he says. But he had little choice. At 15, he was "summoned" to a farm and forcibly recruited. "Once you were there, there was no turning back," he says. "There was a saying that went, 'If you're not good enough to kill, you were good enough to be killed.'" The crimes he confesses to are chilling. He once murdered a man just so his brother would come to the wake, so he could kill him too. "The real objective was not the dead person but the one who was far away," he says. "[You] kill this one so the other will come." Another time, he dragged a man from the church pews during prayer and assassinated him in a corner. "I was around 17, 18 years old. I was at a stage where I thought that with a gun, a rifle in my hand, I was everything," he says. The bodies were often disposed of in remote places where only the killers could find them. "What we used to do was bury them, mass graves, whether in the mountains, on the beaches, in the backyards of the houses," he says. In war, he says, bodies become an object just like any other. "To bury a body fully extended you'd have to make a big hole. So you'd say, 'No, let's dig a small hole.' You'd chop the limbs off and put them in there. The smaller the hole, the less work." The Sinú River flows north through Colombia's Cordoba department to the Caribbean Sea. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) He recounts his deeds without shame or pride. They were the mundane realities of war. "Confirmed kills, I've killed 60 people for sure," he says. In the mid-2000s, the Colombian government moved to disband the paramilitary groups. Under president Alvaro Uribe, they were promised lighter prison sentences in exchange for demobilising, confessing their crimes and helping families find the missing. Some former soldiers have since become informants for search groups like Grube. Helmer spent 15 years in jail, just three months for each of the victims he claims he killed. These days he's living and working in the community again, and helping the authorities find his victims. "We owe it for what we did," he says. "It's like a way of telling society, I am not proud of what I did. Every time I have the opportunity, I meet … a person who was a family member of a victim, I beg for pardon." Maria Agua (centre) has spent 23 years without answers about what happened to her son. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) But many Colombian families are still waiting for information. In the nearby town of Valencia, Maria Agua's ordeal has stretched on for over 23 years now. Her son Luis was 21 when he disappeared. She knows in her heart he's dead but she can't rest until she knows how and why. "That kind of anguish is something that you can't get rid," she says. "Not when going to bed or when getting up." The last time she saw Luis was September 17, 2001. He went around the corner to help some friends load bananas onto a truck and was kidnapped by men on a motorcycle. Maria believes he was forcibly recruited by paramilitaries. "[Luis] was supposed to come home for lunch at noon but he never arrived," she says. "I almost went crazy that day. I wanted to die. I didn't know where to run." For a long time, she looked everywhere for Luis. She prayed that he was still alive somewhere and would one day walk back through the door. "Days passed, years passed," she says. "My son has never returned." Now she only prays his body will be found. "I ask God to give me the wisdom to find him and to bury him," she says. "But so far, my son is lost. He was swallowed by the earth." Grube's anthropologist digs deep under the spot where an informant said they found human remains. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) 'A grain of sand in the peace of this country' Back at the dig site, the forensics team is reading riddles in the soil. After two days of digging they've completely removed the concrete box and excavated piles of the earth from underneath. But they've found no sign of human remains, not even a hint that the soil has ever been disturbed before. The shovels fall silent as they debate what to do. Miguel is soon forced to accept the crushing truth — there's no body here. The search is called off. "Sometimes it hurts," he says, as the team packs up the site. "Every time we go out, the idea is to find a body but sometimes things don't work out. This shows all the difficulties of finding a missing person." But Miguel's team isn't ready to head home just yet. There's still another job for them in Tierralta. Grube's mandate goes beyond just finding missing bodies, they're also tasked with conducting the forensics work required to formally identify remains and register a death. Grube security guards outside the Tierralta cemetery. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) Grube topographer Jairo making notes in the cemetery before the body is removed and examined. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) Bones in the Tierralta cemetery. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) Bodies were often dumped in cemeteries during the armed conflict. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) The team reassembles under the white stucco arch of Tierralta's town cemetery. In the chaotic war years, bodies were often dumped in cemeteries without being properly interred. Some were left by the killers. Others were stashed by family members who feared holding a funeral could make them the next target. Scattered among the crumbling mausoleums, piles of bones lie out in the open. Today's case is more complicated still. The bones Grube has come to recover were brought here only recently, but the murder happened decades ago. According to the victim's brother, he was up in the hills beyond the River Sinu in June 2002 when he was seized by paramilitaries and tied to a post outside a church. "My brother was afraid," he says. "He knew all those who were taken by the paramilitaries at the time were disappeared. So he broke free … he started to run. He was hit three times with bullets." The killers warned the family not to hold a funeral. They buried the body in a makeshift grave on the side of the road where the bones remained until a few years ago, when the family finally felt safe enough to dig them up and bring them here. Miguel watches on as a forensics expert recovers human remains from the Tierralta cemetery. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) The bones are removed from a bag and laid out on the mat. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) The victim's father. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) Family vaults in the cemetery. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) The victim's brother and father show the forensics team where they stashed the plastic bag containing his remains. It's carefully removed and placed on a white sheet. One by one the bones are laid out, and the outline of a person slowly emerges. It's a solemn procedure. Only the brother's sobs break the silence. It can be tough for the Grube team too. "Physically, we get used to it," says topologist Jairo Torres. "But the emotional part, knowing that was a human being who unfortunately ended up in this state. You think about your family … especially the children, your sons." With all the bones recovered, they'll be sent to one of Grube's labs to be formally identified through DNA testing. The family can then get a death certificate and hold the funeral they have long been denied. It's a small victory for Miguel too. "It gives a little peace of mind because the family will later be able to give him a Christian burial," he says. "They will be able to go to a place where they can visit him." Bones are cleaned and DNA tested in a lab in Bogotá. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) A lab technician in Bogotá. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) A face is digitally reconstructed using scans of their facial bones. ( Foreign Correspondent: Matt Henry ) Still, there are challenges in reuniting so many families with so many missing people across a country as vast as Colombia. It's a cruel irony that many of the bodies Grube has recovered have never been claimed. Grube maintains a DNA register of families looking for loved ones, which it cross-checks against unidentified remains found during field work. But thousands of boxes of unclaimed bones are piling up in body banks in various cities, the largest being in Bogotá. It's hoped new technology will help identify some of the unclaimed. Using a state-of-the-art digital scanner, Grube morphologists can map a victim's facial bones to create a detailed 3D model. When combined with information from the victim's DNA, the result is a realistic depiction of what they looked like before death. The images are published in a magazine, along with photos of any items of clothing or personal possessions found with the body, in the hope someone will recognise them. It's a massive task but former journalist Marta Ruiz says is essential. "People will never give up looking for their missing persons and I believe we are going to find them," she says. "I believe we have started to build the institutions for that to happen." Even in the face of setbacks, topographer Jairo says every body found is "a grain of sand in the peace of this country". It's "a little bit to reparation," he says. "That makes us feel good that we are contributing to a beautiful work."
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Hometown Hero Alicia Grube of Appleton handled classified information in the DMZ
APPLETON, Wis. (WFRV) – Army Veteran Alicia Grube's family has a tradition of serving one's country across generations and the world. 'My dad is a Marine vet,' she said while showing several photos on the wall of honor in her home. 'This is my mother's father (in uniform) in Spain. This is my Uncle Danny from when he got his Purple Heart. And here's my grandfather Bill Borman.' Click here for more Hometown Heroes stories With a family tree like that, you might think service would come automatically. But Grube says her reason was far more practical. 'I didn't want to put any financial burden on my mother. A single mom raising two girls sometimes has two or three jobs. And so one day my sister and I came home and told my mom we had both enlisted.' Both were in the army. Her sister deployed to Desert Storm while she ended up in South Korea twice. Her first tour dealt with classified communications. The second tour, while in the same country, was completely different with her dream assignment with the The 1st Air Cavalry Brigade. Hometown Heroes: Menasha's Medal of Honor recipient Kenneth E. Stumpf 'You saw where the North Korean flag was and where the South Korean flag was right there,' Grube recalled. 'You realize we're right at the border, training and shooting our weapons all the time. It was an eye-opener that we were right there.' Grube left the military after 6.5 years of active duty and a couple more in the National Guard. She married a Marine, and her youngest daughter is a Marine. Now Grube serves the community as a county fraud investigator. 'It's all about my community and how I can make my community better.' Hometown Heroes: Vietnam War Veterans Day is March 29, celebrating dedication and sacrifice Her only regret is that she didn't stay in the military longer. 'The camaraderie with the rest of the soldiers, there's nothing else like it. The bond that you create with these people, you don't even know that you trust them. You know every single person is there to take care of themselves and each other.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Guardian
03-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘The price of this war was huge': Hezbollah left reeling after conflict with Israel
Crowds of people gathered last week in the ruined town square of Aitaroun, south Lebanon, to attend the mass burial of 95 people – one of the largest funerals held in Lebanon since the start of the Hezbollah-Israel war. Hundreds of people waving Hezbollah flags watched as rows of coffins were brought in by four semi-trucks, the vehicles' procession lined with pancaked buildings destroyed in Israeli bombardment months earlier. Thirteen months of fighting with Israel has left the Iran-backed Shia Islamist group, once renowned as the world's strongest non-state militia, reeling. The group's near-total dominance of the Lebanese state for the past two decades has been weakened by the losses it suffered in the past year of war. The war started when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel 'in solidarity' with Hamas on 8 October 2023. Fighting was concentrated near the Lebanese-Israeli border, until Israel dramatically expanded its aerial campaign and invaded south Lebanon in late September, leaving more than 3,900 dead across the country and destroying dozens of Lebanese border villages such as Aitaroun. Most of Hezbollah's senior leadership was killed in the fighting, along with thousands of its fighters, and many of its weapon caches were destroyed. But the damage inflicted on the group has also been felt heavily by the communities in southern Lebanon that make up its support base. In Aitaroun, one of Lebanon's hardest hit villages, residents were left wondering if their sacrifices were worth it. Maggie Seyedhassan, a 23-year-old student attending Friday's funeral, was carrying a picture of her neighbour, Abbas. He was killed along with 22 other Aitaroun residents in an Israeli strike on Aitou, a Christian town in north Lebanon where they had taken shelter. 'Abbas didn't want to be a martyr, he had so many things he wanted to do with his life. The price of this war was huge. Why did we have to fight it?' Seyedhassan said. Ahmad Grube, a 67-year-old farmer and resident of Aitaroun, has been sleeping in a tent after his home was heavily damaged in an Israeli strike. The village has no running water or electricity as a result of damage to public infrastructure. Like others the Guardian spoke to in the border villages last week, Grube had yet to receive compensation from Hezbollah for damages caused by fighting. Hezbollah promised early in the war to compensate anyone who suffered damages. Now, with wide swathes of the country primarily populated by members of its base destroyed, Hezbollah has struggled to find the funds to fulfil its promise and has asked its supporters for patience. 'We're not optimistic at all. The future of our kids, it's all gone. And we don't expect to receive the value of the house back,' Grube said. Lebanon and Hezbollah have looked to the international community for money to rebuild the war-torn country, which has sustained damages estimated to be in the billions. The militia has backed the country's new government in order to get reconstruction money flowing to Lebanon, despite previously blocking the appointment of the country's current president. Lebanon's government has pledged to restore the state's monopoly on violence and to work towards disarming all militias in the country – a statement primarily directed at Hezbollah. As a condition of the 27 November ceasefire with Israel, Hezbollah has withdrawn its weaponry from its historical heartland south of the Litani river, about 18 miles from the Israeli border. The subsequent fall of the Assad regime on 8 December in Syria was another loss for the group, which used Syria as a vital lifeline to ferry funds and arms from Iran to Lebanon. The Lebanese army has been active in enforcing the terms of the ceasefire deal. It has been dismantling military assets belonging to the group in south Lebanon and conducted raids in the southern suburbs of Beirut – something unthinkable just six months earlier. The group has also lost control of key assets such as the Beirut airport and smuggling routes along the Syrian border, both historically key for the group's cashflow. On Friday, Reuters reported that an individual was caught arriving at the Beirut airport from Turkey carrying $2.5m(£2m) in cash apparently destined for Hezbollah. Despite this, last Thursday, Hezbollah MPs endorsed the new government and gave it a vote of confidence. According to a western diplomat in Beirut, Hezbollah is in 'wait and see mode', as the group recovers from the war and adjusts to a new political reality in Lebanon and the wider region. 'They are playing along because it's the best option they have. It's temporary,' the western diplomat said under the condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media. Experts have said that Hezbollah is still the strongest domestic political actor by far – and should not be underestimated. 'We're telling our closest allies, especially the US, not to alienate parts of the population, that's a recipe for failure. The group is not dead,' the western diplomat said.
