As war between Israel and Hezbollah looms, an estimated 86,000 Americans remain in Lebanon, potentially being caught in the crossfire.
A war between Israel and Hezbollah would likely spark the most destructive war in the region in decades and lay waste to vast swathes of Israel and Lebanon. In the event of war and evacuation, most Americans would be evacuated by the United States military — 15,000 were evacuated by the military during the 2006 war. But for those who miss extraction, a rescue nonprofit has set up shop in Lebanon to extract those left behind.
Grey Bull Rescue, led by Bryan Stern, was founded in August 2021, after the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Since then, the organization says it has rescued over 7,000 people across 35 different countries, funded by donations.
With rumors of war heating up, the next major target appears to be Lebanon, where Stern has set up shop in preparation. The country presents its own, unique challenges to evacuation.
“The biggest [challenge] is that there’s only one airport,” Stern told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “So very often I can find a backup or an alternate … So it’s either by air or by sea. I’m not going to bring Americans into Syria; that doesn’t work. Yeah, that’s not going to work out well at all.
“Obviously, can’t go south, because I’m going into Hezbollah territory and then into the Israeli war machine, into the war. So that doesn’t make sense,” he added. “So this… this will be largely a maritime operation to a neighboring country… which is a challenge.”
The single operational commercial airport, the Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport, also serves as a prime target for the Israeli Air Force in the event of war.
“Nobody actually knows, but it is rumored that Hezbollah stores a tremendous amount of munitions, missiles, and explosives, and guns, and whatever else at Beirut airport, that gets flown in from Iran and stored at the airport,” Stern said.
“If Israel targets just the munitions … it’s going to hit all the munition sites. If that happens, we’ll see… secondary explosions that look a lot like or bigger than the explosion that happened here in 2020 at the port, which took out 30 or 40 or 50 city blocks,” he continued. “So the explosion, the secondary explosion … [will] render the airport unusable, at least for a while. Probably the tower goes, probably radar goes, probably communications goes. So at that point, everybody will go bananas, and people will need to evacuate because the war will start and there won’t be an airport to to leave from, or at least not one that functions.”
However, a strike at the Beirut airport isn’t guaranteed. Hezbollah is based primarily in the Shiite stronghold in the south, and Israeli ground operations would likely be confined there. Stern believes a strike on the airport is more likely than not, as the Israel Defense Forces will aim to cut off Hezbollah’s supply lines. If they do, it would serve as a “triggering moment for all sides.”
Previous evacuations have involved various levels of danger. When asked what a typical rescue mission is like, Stern said it’s impossible to say.
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“You know, it’s like … it’s like asking … what’s a typical teenager like? Each one of these things is different. There’s nothing cookie-cutter about them, especially when you’re doing them yourself. They’re all very various levels of risk,” he said.
“We’ve taken missile fire, artillery fire, small arms,” Stern continued. “We’ve had in Haiti, our contact was getting shot at all kinds of stuff. So, you know, there’s nothing really cookie cutter, other than you have people in a place that they don’t want to be anymore, and they’re having a hard time getting out of that place, and need to get to someplace better. And there’s no easy way to do that other than that. They’re all different.”
