Hezbollah Read online

  The cell reportedly established commercial businesses as fronts for its operational activities, purchased apartments in el-Arish and on the Egyptian side of Rafah for use as safe houses, and contacted criminal elements in Egypt to procure forged Egyptian passports so that members could leave Egypt as needed and purchase or rent apartments. Some of the cell members reportedly worked for the Egyptian bureau of al-Manar, Hezbollah’s satellite television station, as cover for their activities in Egypt.45 Following the exposure of the Hezbollah cell operating in Egypt, UN special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen noted “a growing concern that Hezbollah has engaged in clandestine and illegal militant activities beyond Lebanese territory.”46 The Baku plot was made public that May, prompting senior State Department officials to comment that the foiled plot “illustrate[d] the group’s continued disregard for the rule of law, both inside Lebanon and outside its borders.”47

  Hezbollah’s Operation Radwan continued apace as the group mobilized operatives to carry out attacks to avenge Mughniyeh’s assassination. In April 2009 Israeli officials issued warnings to Israeli businesspeople traveling to Europe in response to what was described as “pinpoint” intelligence of a specific threat.48 In August 2008 Israel had issued similar warnings of a pending Hezbollah attack targeting Israelis in Africa.49 A few weeks later senior Israeli officials confirmed that five attempts by Hezbollah operatives to kidnap Israeli citizens abroad had been thwarted.50 In May 2009 the US Treasury Department issued a press release adding two Africa-based Hezbollah supporters to its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists (see chapter 9).51

  Halfway across the world, pressure on Hezbollah continued to build as Argentine prosecutors issued an international arrest warrant for Samuel Salman al-Reda, who was charged with involvement in the 1994 bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) Jewish community center (see chapter 4).52 Within days Nasrallah gave his final major address before the Lebanese elections. In the speech Nasrallah bemoaned what he described as an Israeli effort to “return to the strategy of introducing Hezbollah as a terrorist organization that attacks countries and peoples and threatens world security.” Even worse, Nasrallah said, was “the attempt to accuse Hizballah of assassinating [the] martyr Rafiq Hariri in order to foment a sectarian sedition in Lebanon.”53

  While the Hezbollah coalition would underperform in the July 2009 election, by early 2011 it led a coalition government and held the reins of power in Beirut. In the interim Hezbollah attacks continued. According to leaked diplomatic cables cited by Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi informed the United Nations envoy to Lebanon of intelligence indicating that Hezbollah was behind the January 2010 bombing of an Israeli diplomatic convoy in Jordan.54 By then, six different Hezbollah plots, each intended to exact revenge for Mughniyeh’s assassination, had reportedly been foiled.55 While the Israeli diplomats were unhurt, Hezbollah continued to threaten revenge, with Hezbollah second-in-command Naim Qassem stating in February 2010 that the “commitment exists” but that “the (attack) period and specifications [will] come in due time.”56

  And so even as it was crowned as the dominant political force in Lebanon, Hezbollah’s illicit activities were highlighted by a series of international criminal investigations. “Since 2008,” the government of New Zealand would later conclude in its decision to ban Hezbollah’s military wing, the Islamic Resistance (IR), “there is clear evidence that IR has re-engaged with planning terrorist attacks against Israeli interests abroad.”57 What started out as a desire by Hezbollah to avenge Mughniyeh’s assassination would, by early 2010, evolve into a larger shadow war between Iran and the West in which Hezbollah would play a central role (see chapter 12).

  Hezbollah’s Multiple Identities

  Hezbollah—Lebanon’s Party of God—is many things. It is one of the dominant political parties in Lebanon, as well as a social and religious movement catering first and foremost (though not exclusively) to Lebanon’s Shi’a community. Hezbollah is also Lebanon’s largest militia, the only one to maintain its weapons and rebrand its armed elements as an Islamic resistance in response to the terms of the Taif Accord, which ended Lebanon’s civil war and called for all militias to disarm.58 While the various wings of the group are intended to complement one another, the reality is often messier. In part that has to do with compartmentalization of the group’s covert activities. But it is also a factor of the group’s multiple identities—Lebanese, pan-Shi’a, pro-Iranian—and the group’s multiple and sometimes competing goals tied to these different identities.

  Hezbollah is also a pan-Shi’a movement and an Iranian proxy group, rounding out the foundation and context for the group’s radical Shi’a ideology. In 1985 Hezbollah’s original political platform included the establishment of an Islamic republic in Lebanon as a central pillar, although this emphasis has since been downplayed.59 Also prominent in this document are the fight against “Western imperialism” and the continued conflict with Israel. A source of inherent conflict associated with Hezbollah is its ideological commitment to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolutionary doctrine of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurist), which holds that a Shi’a Islamic cleric can also serve as the supreme head of government. The group is thus committed simultaneously to the decrees of Iranian clerics, the Lebanese state, its sectarian Shi’a community, and fellow Shi’a abroad. Hezbollah’s other (often competing) goals have included resisting Israeli occupation of Lebanese territory and contesting, and ultimately seeking to eliminate, Israel’s very existence; promoting the standing of Shi’a communities worldwide; undermining Arab states with Shi’a minorities in an effort to export the Iranian Shi’a revolution; and serving as the long arm of Iran in coordination with the IRGC–Qods Force. The consequences of these competing ideological drivers was clear after Hezbollah dragged both Israel and Lebanon into a war neither state wanted by crossing the UN-demarcated border between the two countries in July 2006 and killing three Israeli soldiers while kidnapping two more.

  The literature on Hezbollah’s political, social welfare, and militia activities in Lebanon is rich. Much has been written on the group’s ideology, its provision of charity and cradle-to-grave services, and its military structure and tactics—to include standing and reserve members of its formidable militia and an arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets—all within Lebanon. But when it comes to the group’s international activities—from financial and logistical support networks to procurement agents and terrorist operatives—the literature is remarkably thin. Most books on Hezbollah make some mention of the group’s terrorist activities, especially those in Lebanon in the early and mid-1980s and better-publicized attacks like the bombings in Argentina in 1992 and 1994. But even those references tend to be made in passing, rarely occupying more than a few paragraphs or pages.

  To be sure, Hezbollah cannot be truly understood without an appreciation for its political, social, and military activities in Lebanon, underscoring the importance of the existing literature on the group. But its activities outside Lebanon are equally fundamental, including its criminal enterprises and terrorist networks. These sectors, even more than its militia activity at home and its wars with Israel, have led countries around the world to task their law enforcement and intelligence agencies with countering Hezbollah’s activities.

  Because of Hezbollah’s involvement in international terrorism, the US Treasury Department listed the group as a Specially Designated Terrorist entity in 1995.60 Two years later the US Department of State designated Hezbollah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.61 In 2001, inline with Executive Order 13224, the United States named Hezbollah as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity. In an interview on Lebanese television just months after the designation, US ambassador to Lebanon Vincent Battle reiterated the US position that “Hezbollah is on the list of terrorist organizations because it is considered an organization that carries out terrorist acts and is capable of staging them [with] vast global reach.”62
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  In addition to blacklisting the organization, the United States named several Hezbollah individuals as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, including Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, described as Hezbollah’s spiritual leader; current secretary-general Nasrallah; former secretary-general Subhi al-Tufayli; late military chief Imad Mughniyeh; his successor (and brother-in-law) Mustapha Badreddine; and current IJO chief Talal Hamiyeh. Other US-designated Hezbollah entities comprise financial institutions, including the Islamic Resistance Support Organization, Bayt al-Mal, Yousser Company for Finance and Investment, and al-Qard al-Hassan; communication outlets, including the Lebanese Media Group, Radio al-Nour, and al-Manar television, among others; and foundations, such as the Martyrs Foundation, which provide financial and operational support.63

  In Europe and elsewhere in the West the approach to Hezbollah has been varied. Many European governments have resisted international efforts to designate the organization as a terrorist group by distinguishing between Hezbollah’s political and military wings. The United Kingdom distinguishes among Hezbollah’s terrorist, military, and political wings and banned both the terrorist and military wings in 2000 and 2008, respectively.64 Similarly, only the ESO terrorist wing was banned by Australia in 2003.65 However, the Netherlands designated Hezbollah a terrorist entity in 2004 without distinguishing between the group’s political and military wings. A 2004 Dutch intelligence report highlighted investigations that show “Hezbollah’s political and terrorist wings are controlled by one coordinating council.”66 Canada does not distinguish among Hezbollah’s different wings either and banned the entire organization in 2002.67 Israel banned Hezbollah as a terrorist group in June 1989.68

  In May 2002, the European Union froze the assets of a non-European terrorist group for the first time by adding seven Hezbollah-affiliated individuals, including Imad Mughniyeh, to its financial sanctions list for terrorism. However, it did not sanction Hezbollah as an organization.69 On March 10, 2005, the European Parliament passed a nonbinding resolution recognizing that “clear evidence exists of terrorist activities on the part of Hezbollah” and calling on the EU Council to take “all necessary steps to curtail them.”70

  And yet despite all these actions, for journalists and scholars alike, researching Hezbollah’s political, social, and military activities is a far more accessible endeavor than examining its terrorist and other covert activities. Hezbollah’s leaders, members, and supporters are more likely to speak openly and honestly about the group’s overt activities than about its covert, often blatantly illicit, ones. Nor is it a simple matter to identify the overlap and interconnectivity of the overt and covert activities of a multifaceted group like Hezbollah.

  But upon closer inspection the ties that bind Hezbollah’s political leadership with its international illicit activities become unmistakable. According to the CIA, even before Hassan Nasrallah rose to the position of secretary-general in 1992, he was “directly involved in many Hizballah terrorist operations, including hostage taking, airline hijackings, and attacks against Lebanese rivals.”71 His personal envoys as far afield as South America and Africa have been linked to explicitly apolitical activities (see chapters 4 and 9). And according to information made public by the US government, it was Nasrallah who oversaw Hezbollah’s support for the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad in its efforts to crush the Syrian rebellion.72

  Consider two less well-known cases in the United States (discussed in detail in chapter 12). At the same time that Ali Karaki was planning a Hezbollah attack in Baku, his brother, Hassan Karaki, was helping to lead a broad criminal conspiracy to sell counterfeit and stolen currency to an undercover FBI informant posing as a member of the Philadelphia criminal underworld. In a parallel plot overseen by Hezbollah politician Hassan Hodroj, Hezbollah sought to procure a long list of sophisticated weapons in a black market scheme involving Hezbollah operatives across the globe.73

  As senior State Department officials have testified on numerous occasions, while “Hezbollah attempts to portray itself as a natural part of Lebanon’s political system and a defender of Lebanese interests … its actions demonstrate otherwise.”74 In particular, when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 in compliance with UN Security Council resolutions, Hezbollah quickly filled the political vacuum left in the long-established security zone along the Israel-Lebanon border. Some expected that Hezbollah, having achieved its goal of ending the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, would give up its arms and focus on development and civil society. Yet despite calls for the group to disarm under UN Security Council Resolution 1559, the group did quite the opposite. And overall Hezbollah sees its social welfare, political, militant, and international terrorism activities as equally legitimate means of accomplishing its goals, which transcend threats to Lebanon’s territorial integrity.

  The Party of God Is Born

  Founded in the early 1980s by a group of young Shi’a militants, Hezbollah was the product of an Iranian effort to aggregate under one roof a variety of militant Shi’a groups in Lebanon, themselves the products of the domestic and regional instability of the time. On the one hand, Hezbollah was the outgrowth of a complex and bloody civil war, during which the country’s historically marginalized Shi’a Muslims attempted to assert economic and political power for the first time. Hezbollah was also a by-product of Israel’s effort to dismantle the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) by invading southern Lebanon in 1982.75 Decades later, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak noted: “When we entered Lebanon … there was no Hezbollah. We were accepted with perfumed rice and flowers by the Shia in the south. It was our presence there that created Hezbollah.”76

  Although Hezbollah first emerged following the 1982 Israeli invasion, the organization did not coalesce into a centralized party until a few years later.77 According to Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, Naim Qassem, the 1982–85 period was foundational “for the crystallization of a political vision, the facets of which were harmonious with faith in Islam as a solution” and for the establishment of “an effective jihad operation as represented by the Islamic Resistance forcing Israel’s partial flight from Lebanon in 1985.”78

  Many of Hezbollah’s founders originally belonged to Amal, the military arm of a Lebanese political party founded by an influential Shi’a cleric named Musa al-Sadr. The cleric, who disappeared in Libya in 1978 and has long been presumed dead, urged the Lebanese Shi’a community to improve its situation both economically and politically. He also intended for the Shi’a militia he established to fight against Israel as part of the Lebanese army. But other armed factions representing various interests in Lebanon emerged after al-Sadr’s death, and many Shi’a were disappointed by Amal’s moderate policies and the willingness of al-Sadr’s replacement, Nabih Berri, to accommodate Israel politically rather than confront it militarily. As a result, disaffected Amal members joined with other Shi’a militant groups—including the Muslim Students Union, the Dawa Party of Lebanon, and others—and established their own umbrella militia, Hezbollah.79

  The paramilitary networks that made up Hezbollah in its early years revolved around clans such as the Musawis and Hamadis.80 While these groups agreed on strategic goals such as the creation of an Islamic state in Lebanon, they often diverged on tactical and operational measures.81 In the early 1980s, the Islamic Dawa Party in Lebanon became a “core component in the establishment of the Hezbollah movement,” joined by other radical Shi’a groups.82 The formation of a revolutionary Shi’a movement under the Dawa Party, according to a CIA account, was advocated early on by Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, later a “spiritual guide” for Hezbollah.83 Ultimately Iran’s Qods Force (or Pasdaran) drew from the coalition of Shi’a militant groups and, working with the Iranian embassies in Lebanon and Syria, “sired the creation of Hezbollah in Baalbek.”84

  Indeed, Iran played a central role in Hezbollah’s founding. Shortly after the Israeli invasion, approximately 1,500 IRGC advisers set up a base in the B
ekaa Valley as part of its goal to export the Islamic Revolution to the Arab world.85 All Hezbollah members were required to attend IRGC-run camps in the valley, according to Naim Qassem, which taught them how to confront the enemy.86 In 1985, Hezbollah identified its ideological platform: “We view the Iranian regime as the vanguard and new nucleus of the leading Islamic State in the world. We abide by the orders of one single wise and just leadership, represented by ‘Waliyat el Faqih’ and personified by Khomeini.”87 Over the past three decades, Hezbollah has remained Iran’s proxy, and the Pentagon estimates that Tehran provides Hezbollah with weapons and spends up to $200 million a year funding the group’s activities, including its media channel, al-Manar, and operations abroad.88 By other accounts, Iran may provide Hezbollah as much as $350 million a year.89

  In addition to Iran, Syria’s regime under Hafiz al-Assad has been tied to the group’s founding. Not only did mutual Iranian-Syrian support for Hezbollah serve to maintain Syria’s alliance with Iran, but it also allowed the Assad regime to retain influence over Lebanon and remain a threat to the United States and Israel. In early 2004, four years after Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father as president of Syria, Damascus and Hezbollah further solidified their alliance. Ali Shamkhani, then Iranian defense minister, placed Hezbollah under Iran’s direct protection by signing a memorandum of understanding with Syria, a move that signified an Iranian commitment to protect the Syrian regime against an attack by either Israel or the United States—and that extended to Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon.90 A year later, after the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri and the subsequent Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, Hezbollah declared its full support for and “gratitude” to Syria.91 Hezbollah would soon side with the Assad regime in its violent crackdown against Syrian citizens.