Pager explosions in Lebanon: Why Hezbollah still uses pagers in the age of smartphones

At 3.30 pm (local time) on Tuesday (September 17), the most bizarre incident took place across Lebanon. The Hezbollah announced that hundreds of pagers carried by its members blew up nearly simultaneously, wounding at least 2,800 people and killing at least nine.

The blasts, which continued for almost an hour, have raised many questions about how the tiny devices could have exploded at the same time.

Shortly after the explosions, CCTV and phone videos flooded social media channels showing hospitals flooded with wounded people, as well as apparent explosions happening around waist height and images of damaged pagers. As Musa, a resident of Beirut’s southern suburbs, told AFP, “In all my life I’ve never seen someone walking on the street… and then explode. People didn’t know what was happening.”

Another witness describing the scenes told CNN, “There was blood on the roads and people were being transported in ambulances to the hospital. But we did not know what was happening,” he said.

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Soon after, the Hezbollah also blamed Israel for the complex attack, and has vowed to seek revenge. Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces has chosen to remain mum on the issue.

As tensions grow, with concerns that this could lead to a further escalation in the West Asian region, we take a closer look at what are these devices and why  the Hezbollah uses this form of technology in the day of smartphones.

What are pagers?

Also known as a beeper, the pager was the first compact mobile communication tool to appear on the mass market — a predecessor to the smartphones that are used today by almost everyone. Designed to look like small boxes, these electronic devices allow a user to receive messages and sound alerts.

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The pager uses its own frequency to send and receive messages. These messages can be numeric — a phone number — or alphanumeric — text.

While smartphones are the norm today, pagers have been around for decades with some reports saying that the first paging-like system was developed by the Detroit Police Department way back in 1921.

It was only in 1959 that Motorola coined the term ‘pager’ when it began manufacturing personal radio communications, combining elements of a walkie-talkie and car radio technology.

Soon, pagers became the most popular communication device across the world. US-based pager manufacturer Spok reports that in 1994, at least 61 million beepers were in circulation worldwide.

And today, even though smartphones are everywhere, pagers continue to be used in some sectors, like hospitals. A study in the Journal of Hospital Medicine published in 2017 revealed that nearly 80 per cent of hospital doctors surveyed used pagers and half of the messages received through them were related to patient care.

Organisations linked to search-and-rescue operations and other emergency services also use beepers even today. In fact, in 2019, when the National Health Service in the UK ordered the removal of pagers, many NHS employees took to social media to outline the reasons pagers remain popular among care teams and they supported pagers as crucial tools for coordinating and delivering patient care.

What are the benefits of using a pager?

Proponents of this device hail the pager for being simple and effective. Communication experts note that beepers cover a larger area and are more reliable, especially in areas where the cellular network is weak.

Moreover, they have minimal features, making them easy to use and less prone to technical glitches. One-way pagers are also mostly untraceable because there is no signal transmission to the base station that sends the signal in the first place.

They also have a longer battery life than phones, which makes them even more reliable and useful in times of emergency.

Why does Hezbollah use them?

Apart from being used by those in the medical and emergency services, beepers have also been the preferred mode of communication for criminals.

The Hezbollah, which is long been known for being secretive, has extensively used pagers to communicate with one another, as the device is almost untraceable. Just six months ago, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called on Hezbollah members and their families in southern Lebanon to relinquish their mobile phones. “Shut it off, bury it, put it in an iron chest and lock it up,” he said in February. “Do it for the sake of security and to protect the blood and dignity of people.”

“The collaborator (with the Israelis) is the cell phone in your hands, and those of your wife and your children. This cell phone is the collaborator and the killer,” he went on to say in his fiery speech.

What he implied in his speech was that Israel was using its high-tech technology to hack into phones and gain access to valuable information.

Moreover, Hezbollah is wary of mobile phones after Israel used an exploding phone to kill a Hamas bomb maker in 1996. Since then, the militant group based in Lebanon has used a private, fixed-line telecommunications network since the early 2000s.

Elijah Magnier, a military analyst, told Al Jazeera that Hezbollah relied on pagers because it helped avoiding interception by Israel.

Moreover, pagers operate on messages. This helps the militant group to send simple instructions, which are encrypted and safe from the prying eyes of Israel.

Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, also said that forgoing cell phones makes Hezbollah members far more difficult to track.

However, she noted that there is a downside. “These countermeasures also make Hezbollah’s leadership far less effective at communicating rapidly with their troops,” she was quoted as telling Reuters.

What comes next?

The Hezbollah has vowed retaliation against Israel after the pager attacks. Lebanon’s information minister called the explosions an act of “Israeli aggression”.

The attack marks another escalation in tensions between Hezbollah and Israel with experts saying that this is dangerous for the region. Moreover, it could affect the Gaza ceasefire talks, which would also be a diplomatic failure for the US, which has supported Israel since the beginning of the war in Gaza and played a leading role in the ceasefire negotiations, all with the objective of maintaining stability in West Asia.

With inputs from agencies