"It was not really done then, these posters," Sowan said, pointing to a wall full of daring photos, now back up and promoting the latest European designs. "We wanted to be careful--to be on the safe side."

During the sectarian fighting of the 1980s, it was the Hezbollah movement that executed the most daring attacks, bombing the U.S. and French embassies, kidnapping Western hostages and promising to carry the militancy of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Lebanon and the coast of the Mediterranean. But it is a different day now, for Lebanon and for Hezbollah.

From bars that survived the war to a shiny symbol of American commercialism--Starbucks--life along the commercial strip of Hamra Street is proceeding without concern for Hezbollah, or Party of God. Even in the heavily Shiite neighborhoods of southern Beirut, Hezbollah's heartland, women dress as they please and storefronts advertise the latest U.S. videos.

Hezbollah's armed militia, the Islamic Resistance, has been successful as a military force in opposing Israeli troops in the south, for which it has drawn praise from Lebanon's varied political and religious factions. But at the same time, the militant Shiite organization has sustained a political importance here by playing down some of its most conservative aims. In recent years, it has demonstrated what many say is substantial independence from Iran and a willingness to get along with Lebanon's more relaxed Sunni Muslims and the Christians concentrated in East Beirut and the hills of Mount Lebanon.

"Islam is diverse enough to be applied differently in different countries. . . . Iran is different from Lebanon," said Sheik Naim Qasim, Hezbollah's deputy secretary general.

In that spirit, a movement whose beginnings included groups involved in hostage-taking and terrorist attacks has flowered into a political party and a social welfare network of hospitals, schools and a television station. It has helped elect nine deputies to the 128-member Lebanese National Assembly, and elections scheduled for this summer may give the party its first cabinet seat.

In part, this is because Hezbollah has wide support among the Shiite Muslims who form about a third of Lebanon's 3 million inhabitants. But it has gained sympathy among many others, particularly in rural areas of the south, because of its social work and development assistance--and for its ability to harass and kill occupying Israeli troops.

The behavior of Hezbollah and the estimated 2,000 members of its armed militia in the south will be closely watched if the two-decade Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon ends in July as promised by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. While saying Barak's intentions amount to a victory, Hezbollah officials have yet to clarify whether they intend to stand down as a military organization.

It is a complicated equation. Hezbollah receives support from Iran and Syria, the main political arbiter in Lebanon. Syria has 35,000 troops in the country but has sought to avoid direct confrontation with Israel. Instead, on the only remaining military front in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Syria has used Hezbollah as leverage in its quest to have Israel return the occupied Golan Heights, allowing Islamic Resistance guerrillas to attack Israeli troops and sometimes to launch rockets into Israel.

Hezbollah's interest in a long-term political presence in Lebanon, some argue, may cool its militancy once Israeli troops depart. Pressure to that effect is already coming from other Arab states, whose leaders feel an Israeli withdrawal should be treated as a victory and a chance to ease tensions. Others say Hezbollah would put its political popularity at risk if it continues attacking Israel and thereby triggers retaliatory airstrikes that might well include--as they have in the past--Lebanese power plants and other civilian targets.

"There is a justification for Hezbollah to be a military organization, but it should end as soon as Israel withdraws," said an Arab intelligence official.

One important unknown is the role Iran will play in Hezbollah's strategy after the withdrawal. As fellow Shiites--members of a minority and traditionally downtrodden branch of Islam--Iran and Hezbollah have ties that remain a major source of concern for U.S. officials, ties that are cited as a reason Iran remains on a list of countries the United States accuses of sponsoring terrorism.

Although political moderates are ascendant in Iran today, its security forces and other major power centers, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, remain under the auspices of the conservative supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Regional observers suspect that, despite political changes here and in Iran, Hezbollah still has factions with the potential to mount acts of terrorism under the influence of a similarly radical Revolutionary Guard faction.

In an interview, Hezbollah official Qasim said the movement's "main relationship" is with Khamenei, the country's most important political and religious authority. He would not detail the amount of financial support, estimated to be at least in the tens of millions of dollars annually, but he did say it came through Iran's Martyrs' Foundation, one of many charitable groups established after the Iranian revolution to manage assets seized from the family and supporters of the deposed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The foundation is under Khamenei's direct control.

Over the years, Hezbollah's funding also has diversified to include the proceeds of businesses it operates in Lebanon and donations from supporters within the country and abroad. Its access to weapons and other resources also has broadened, making less important the regular shipments of supplies that diplomats in Tehran and Lebanon say are still transshipped on a regular basis from Iran through Damascus, the Syrian capital.

Formulation of strategy and policy, meanwhile, has become largely local; Hezbollah's Lebanese leaders accept advice from Iran and Syria but have displayed a growing autonomy. A contingent of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which numbered perhaps as many as 800 when Iran was most involved in training Hezbollah guerrillas, has dwindled to as few as 100, according to local sources; Qasim says they have left altogether.

The spiritual, political and family ties between Iran and Lebanon's Shiites are longstanding, predating Hezbollah and the standoff with Israel that emerged in the south. Iran's reformist president, Mohammed Khatemi, for example, is related by marriage to the family of Lebanon's most influential Shiite theologian, Imam Musa Sadr, who disappeared in 1978 during a visit to Libya after launching the Shiite political movement with a group called the Movement of the Deprived and its militia, called Amal. Khatemi's chief of staff, Mohammed Abtahi, worked for a while in the group's broadcasting outlet.

But Lebanese citizens and longtime observers here say the movement's most radical days, when it tried to curb gambling, drinking and music, were given up long ago as self-defeating in this socially rambunctious and religiously diverse society. The harder Hezbollah pressed in its early years, the more it lost support.

"There were morality patrols on the beach," when Hezbollah was at its most aggressive, said one Lebanese official. "They were seen as an extension of Iran, and they were not being accepted."

In today's reemerging Lebanon, which remains about one-third Christian, even Hezbollah leaders acknowledge that, as much as they remain inspired by the Iranian model, local political survival requires adaptability. "We are not a state within a state, and we are not a security force," Qasim said. "We are an independent political party playing its role. We try to increase our numbers and preach our ideology. In the end, it is the choice of the people."