Hezbollah: 'Party of God' wages war with 'Great Satan.'

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 1, 1997 | by Yedidya Atlas

The "HizbAllah" (literally "the Party of God") is an umbrella organization for a plethora of radical Shi'ite Muslim terrorist groups sharing common Khomeinist ideology. Objectives include:

* Liberating Lebanon as a revolutionary Shi'ite Islamic state modeled after Iran;

* Israel's removal from Lebanon as a prelude to Israel's obliteration;

* Escalated fighting against the imperialist "Great Satan" (the United States), focusing on Israel as a U.S. surrogate;

* Establishing Islamic rule over Jerusalem.

Created in 1982 by Iranian military intelligence, Hezbollah's original power base was assured by the presence of the Teheran-dispatched Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps in the Lebanese town of Baalbek in the north of the Bekaa Valley. Hezbollah is part of the overall strategy of the late Ayatollah Khomeini and his successor, Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, to export the Islamic Shi'ite Revolution. The relatively large number of Lebanese Shi'ites, coupled with the free-for-all atmosphere of war-torn Lebanon, provided Teheran with an ideal opportunity that has been fully exploited.

Hezbollah is a loose confederation of a dozen or so semi-independent subgroups. On the local level, these are headed by functional and regional commanders responsible to the Central Committee, a 17-man consultive Supreme Shura (Islamic council), which decides on administrative, legislative, executive, judicial, political and military matters and reports directly to Iran. It has four regional headquarters: Baalbek (training); Beirut (operational planning and administrative); Nabatiyah (southern regional); and Teheran (international headquarters).

Owing to the loose nature of the organization, Hezbollah does not have a single identifiable political leader such as the Amal militia's Nabih Beri. However, because of its fundamentalist & Islamic outlook, it has a spiritual leader," Sheikh Muhammed Hassin Fadallah, the "mujahid" (chief judge of Islamic law for Lebanon's fundamentalist Shi'ite community). His first central-committee secretary was Sheikh Abbas Musawi, who was killed in a 1992 Israel air raid. Musawi's successor is Sheikh Hassan Nassrallah, who is Hezbollah's commander.

The idea promoted by Iran in the Western media that Hezbollah is an independent group receiving support from Iran because of shared theological beliefs is nonsense, say U.S. intelligence sources. Following his appointment as Hezbollah's secretary, Nassrallah immediately reported in Teheran to assure the Rafsanjani regime that he would coordinate his activities with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

At a March 1, 1992, press conference in Teheran, Nassrallah declared: "As for any connection between the Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, we [Hezbollah] consider ourselves part of the Islamic revolution of Iran and there is no secrecy about it."

Hezbollah's troops are indigenous to Lebanon and number no more than 5,000, including some 2,000 trained fighters operating out of camps in the northern Bekaa Valley and another 3,000 armed men who live in their own villages and actively assist Hezbollah operations. Supplied by Iran with arms delivered by Syria, Hezbollah has a vast array of the latest weaponry, including artillery, Sagger and Katyusha missiles, military carriers needed for land assaults and even high-speed attack boats and related naval equipment.

While Hezbollah clearly is an Iranian appendage (Teheran maintains a separate government ministry to promote the Islamic revolution directing Hezbollah), it is the Syrian army that physically transports the Iranian-supplied weaponry as well as providing additional material and logistical support. Hezbollah's military camps are located in the northern Bekaa, an area strictly controlled by the Syrian armed forces. Moreover, Hezbollah and Amal, together with the Syrians, share the same operations room where attacks against Israel and targets in South Lebanon are planned and coordinated and orders for implementation are issued -- including the firing of Katyusha rockets.

Whether assassinations, bombings, hijackings, kidnappings, paramilitary attacks and suicide bombings or supplying drugs and counterfeit money, everything is permissible in the global war against the "Great Satan." Among the more notorious Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah operations has been the suicide truck bombing of the US. Embassy and U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984, attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992 and attacks on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994. Many of Hezbollah's international activities are run out of Iranian diplomatic and commercial facilities abroad.

Hezbollah is known to have training camps in Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon and the Sudan and maintains cells and activities in the United States and Canada (drug distribution) as well as in Western Europe (France, Italy and Germany), Scandinavia (Denmark and Sweden) and on the jungle border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. The Ayatollah Muhammad Nassiri reportedly is the coordinator and supervisor of all Hezbollah cells in North America.