Hezbollah (5 page)

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.
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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.
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Hezbollah would soon side with the Assad regime in its violent crackdown against Syrian citizens.

The Party of God initially identified its main objectives on February 16, 1985, in an open letter addressed “to all the Oppressed in Lebanon and the World.” First, the letter pledged to expel all colonialist entities—the Americans, the French, and their allies—from Lebanon. Second, it committed to bringing the Phalangists to justice for the crimes they had committed against Lebanese Muslims and Christians alike. Last, although it professed to permit “all the sons of our people to determine their future and to choose in all the liberty the form of government they desire,” the letter encouraged Lebanon to install an Islamic regime, the only type of government that could “stop further tentative attempts of imperialistic infiltration into our country.” Moreover, party officials did not attempt to hide the militaristic aspect of their organization. Hezbollah’s guiding document professed, “Our military apparatus is not separate from our overall social fabric. Each of us is a fighting soldier.”
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At the center of the group’s insignia is not a map of Lebanon but a globe alongside a fist holding an AK-47 rifle.

According to the CIA, in the first few years following its founding, Hezbollah “established what is virtually a radical Islamic canton in the Bekaa Valley, despite Syria’s military presence there.” In areas under Hezbollah’s control, the CIA reported in 1987, strict Islamic rule was implemented: “Sale or transport of liquor are prohibited, women are forbidden from interacting with men in public and must adhere to a strict dress code, civil crimes are punished according to the Koran, and Western education and influences are prohibited.”
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Since 1982, Hezbollah has built an extensive global network that relies on operatives and supporters mainly from Lebanese Shi’a diaspora communities. Throughout the 1980s, Hezbollah targeted Western interests within Lebanon, including bombing embassies and military barracks, kidnapping Westerners, and hijacking aircraft. By the 1990s operatives expanded their reach. Hezbollah operatives were involved in attacks as far afield as South America and Europe. Attacks like those targeting the Israeli embassy and the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994, respectively, highlighted Hezbollah’s capability to mobilize operatives far from home.
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But where this covert network fits within the overall overt structure of Hezbollah is a matter of debate. “Little is known about [the Hezbollah military wing’s] internal command hierarchy,” a Western government report noted in 2012, “due to its highly secretive nature and use of sophisticated protective measures.” Still, before 2006 Hezbollah’s Islamic Resistance militia was believed to field 400 to 800 full-time fighters plus 5,000 to 10,000 part-time reservists or village guards. These numbers are believed to have increased significantly since the July 2006 war.
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The structure and manpower of Hezbollah’s external operations wing, which is responsible for its financial and logistical as well as terrorist operations abroad, is similarly opaque. Sometimes referred to as the Special Security Apparatus (SSA) or the External Security Organization (ESO), it is referred to here as the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO, or Islamic Jihad)—not to be confused with the Palestinian Islamic
Jihad (PIJ)—the name under which Hezbollah’s international wing was formally founded in 1983 when Mughniyeh fled to Iran after the Beirut bombings (see
chapter 2
).

This much is clear: Since its founding, the group has developed a sophisticated organizational and leadership structure. The overall governing authority, the Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Council), wields all decision-making power and directs several subordinate functional councils. Each functional council reports directly to the Shura Council, which, according to Hezbollah deputy secretary-general Qassem, is “in charge of drawing the overall vision and policies, overseeing the general strategies for the Party’s function, and taking political decisions.”
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US assessments echo Qassem’s description: “Hezbollah has a unified leadership structure that oversees the organization’s complementary, partially compartmentalized elements,” according to a Congressional Research Service report.
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The secretary-general, currently Hassan Nasrallah, presides over the Shura Council and functions as the group’s leader under the authority of the “Jurist Theologian,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Five administrative bodies, organized around thematic responsibilities, run Hezbollah’s political, military (jihad), parliamentary, executive, and judicial activities.
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The Shura Council considers all elements of the group’s activities, including its political and military wings, as part of one holistic entity. In the words of Naim Qassem,

If the military wing were separated from the political wing, this would have repercussions, and it would reflect on the political scene. But Hezbollah has one single leadership, and its name is the Decision-Making Shura Council. It manages the political activity, the Jihad activity, the cultural and the social activities…. Hezbollah’s Secretary General is the head of the Shura Council and also the head of the Jihad Council, and this means that we have one leadership, with one administration.
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The Executive Council manages daily operations and oversees all cultural, educational, social, and political affairs.
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The Political Council administers Hezbollah’s external relations, oversees the group’s relations with the other political forces in Lebanon, and organizes public information and propaganda efforts through a series of subcommittees.
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For example, the recruitment and propaganda organ runs Hezbollah’s radio stations and al-Manar television station.
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The Political Council continuously seeks to foster “relationships with the various political powers and parties” in Lebanon, according to Qassem. The Parliamentary Council coordinates the activities of the party’s parliamentarians and studies proposed legislation brought before the government, while the Jihad Council coordinates “resistance activity.”
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The Jihad Council, Qassem explains, “comprises those in charge of resistance activity, be that in terms of oversight, recruitment, training, equipment, security, or any other resistance-related endeavors.”
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The Jihad Council is responsible not only for Hezbollah’s formal militia activity (the Islamic Resistance) but also for its covert activity—at home and abroad—under
the auspices of the IJO. To accomplish its mission the Jihad Council is divided into several smaller units in charge of protecting the leadership, carrying out internal and external surveillance, and overseas operations. The party security branch is further divided into three subgroups: central, preventive, and overseas security. In 2000 a dedicated counterintelligence branch was reportedly founded as well.
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Under this structure Hezbollah’s militia, terrorist wing, and security organ all report to the Jihad Council.
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Unlike its sister councils, the Jihad Council enjoys strategic ambiguity such that neither the majority of its officials nor the party’s elected parliamentarians are aware of the details of Hezbollah’s covert military and terrorist activities, which are decided upon by the party’s most senior leadership. According to the US government, while these activities are “executed” by the leadership of the Islamic Resistance (led today by Mustapha Badreddine) and the IJO (led today by Talal Hamiyeh), they are “overseen” by Secretary-General Nasrallah.
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Until he was killed, Mughniyeh was Hezbollah’s “top militant commander” and reportedly led the Jihad Council himself.
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By some accounts he held a seat on the Consultative Council as well, which would be typical for the party’s standing military commander.
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According to Deputy Secretary-General Qassem, “a limited circle of individuals was aware of resistance operations. Only those directly involved with planning and execution within the tactics set by the military command formed part of this circle.”
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Some have construed Qassem’s account—itself to be taken with a grain of salt, since a leader of his stature would have every incentive to obfuscate—to mean that Hezbollah’s covert military apparatus “exists as a distinct entity from the main body of the organization.”
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No matter how one understands Hezbollah’s structure, such a conclusion is a leap too far. The same report that asserts the IJO is a “distinct entity” somehow also upholds its status as the group’s “foreign intelligence unit specializing in espionage, counter-intelligence, and dispatching operatives overseas to infiltrate diaspora communities [and] business and criminal networks, and carry out terrorist attacks.”
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Some governments, such as Canada, differentiate between Hezbollah’s efforts to work with foreign individuals, organizations, and communities that are sympathetic to the group, which are carried out by Hezbollah’s Foreign Services Department (FSD), and the group’s foreign logistics, procurement, and terrorist operations, which fall under the IJO. The FSD, Canadian intelligence assesses, is responsible for setting up front organizations and other platforms in foreign countries, serving as talent spotters, and organizing local Shi’a communities to support Hezbollah and Iran. Canadian authorities—who describe Hezbollah as “one of the most technically capable terrorist groups in the world”—investigate both entities but see the FSD’s mission as propaganda, financing, and support, and the IJO’s as procurement and terrorism.
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Still, Canada proscribed the group in its entirety in 2002.

US officials have also long acknowledged, respected, and feared Hezbollah’s terrorist network, not only because of its devastating attacks on US interests abroad, such as the early 1980s bombings of the US Marine barracks and embassy in Lebanon and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, but also because of
Hezbollah’s active presence in the United States. In 2007 the US National Intelligence Estimate on the threat to the US homeland noted that Hezbollah’s operational capabilities extend to the United States. The report warned of an increased likelihood that Hezbollah could attack on US soil if it (or Iran) felt threatened by the United States.
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Such concerns are warranted, given CIA reports observing Hezbollah operatives “actively casing and surveiling [
sic
] American facilities” and noting “extensive contingency plans” for attacks.
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The key question, however, is under what conditions Hezbollah might target US interests abroad or in the homeland. One consideration is Hezbollah’s own perception of threats to its interests and whether the group sees a US hand behind such threats. A second, and at least equally important, consideration involves Hezbollah’s intimate relationship with Iran—a relationship in which the Tehran regime has long used Hezbollah as a militant extension of its foreign policy. The increasingly tense standoff between Iran and the West over Iran’s nuclear program could therefore play a central role in Hezbollah’s operational calculus. A June 2006 British intelligence report warned of “an increased threat to the UK from Iranian state-sponsored terrorism should the diplomatic situation deteriorate.”
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And that it has.

Today, Hezbollah shows no signs of moderating its commitment to violence. At home the party continues to dominate Lebanese politics, even as its support for the brutal Assad regime in Syria threatens to undermine the party’s support and popularity and spark a sectarian conflict pitting Sunni against Shi’a across the Syria-Lebanon border. Meanwhile, the party continues its campaign to shape a culture of resistance within Lebanon that glorifies violence and perpetuates hate. In February 2012, for example, Hezbollah’s al-Manar television station aired a segment in which Imad Mughniyeh’s grandson, a child no more than five years old, says he wants to be “in the resistance” and then handles his grandfather’s gun.
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Hezbollah not only continues to seek vengeance for the 2008 assassination of Mughniyeh. As tensions escalated over Tehran’s nuclear weapons program, the group embarked on an international terrorism campaign as part of Iran’s larger shadow war with the West. “The last year,” the Treasury Department reported in September 2012, “has witnessed Hezbollah’s most aggressive terrorist plotting outside the Middle East since the 1990s” (see
chapter 12
).
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But let us start at the beginning, Beirut in the 1980s.

1.
Government of New Zealand, “Statement of Case to Designate Lebanese Hizbollah’s Military Wing, al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (‘The Islamic Resistance’) as a Terrorist Entity,” October 11, 2010.

2.
Yossi Melman, “Hezbollah, Iran plotted bombing of Israeli embassy in Azerbaijan,”
Haaretz
(TelAviv), May 31, 2009.