Since the 2006 war, Hezbollah has continued to substantially grow its weapons arsenal, manpower, and intelligence appatus. The group is widely used as the textbook definition of a hybrid actor, with conventional and unconventional warfare capabilities. As a hybrid actor, Hezbollah's main weakness is its need to maintain civilian support to hide among the population while causing great harm to civilians if war breaks out. This causes Hezbollah to have to justify its actions to maintain public support and to avoid war. Since the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Hezbollah has deployed a substantial amount of its manpower in the country, where the group engages in counterinsurgency and large scale operations. Most sources agree that this deployment has harmed Hezbollah's morale and public image while improving the organization's ability to conduct large-scale maneuvers and interoperability with allied forces. As of 2017, Hezbollah's military operations include thousands of fighters deployed to Syria to back the Assad government, about 250-500 fighters in Iraq training the Shiite-dominated Popular Mobilization Forces, and about 50 fighters in Yemen on a covert train-and-support mission for Houthi rebels.