Hezbollah (62 page)

As early as 1985, the CIA was aware that Iran was known to “promote subversive activity” among remote countries with Shi’a populations, including Nigeria.
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Three years later, a CIA report acknowledged the phenomenon was far more widespread than originally thought, highlighting Hezbollah’s participation in efforts to spread Iran’s Islamic revolutionary vision across Africa. Despite the group’s relatively small size at the time, the CIA wrote in 1998, “We believe Hezbollah—sometimes acting in concert with Iran—will continue to seek the spread of its brand of fundamentalist Islamic revolution in Africa.” Working both independently and together, the intelligence report anticipated, Hezbollah and local Iranian diplomatic missions would be “likely to focus attention on the African Muslim communities in West Africa, especially in pro-Western Liberia and Sierra Leone.” And while unlikely to win many religious converts, Hezbollah and Iranian diplomats could be counted on to “expand their inroads among Africa’s Christian and animist populations” by offering more of a populist than a religious message as a counterweight to Western influence in the region.
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Analysts and officials confirm that Hezbollah continues to partner with Iran to spread a shared ideological message of Islamic revolution. “In some parts of Africa,” Doug Farah wrote in 2006 based on interviews with US and European intelligence officials in West Africa, “Hezbollah, through Iran, has also worked to recruit militants and develop a teaching network of radical Shi’ite imams and mosques to compete with the larger and more visible Saudi-funded Sunni Salafist efforts.”
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Sometimes such efforts are understated and coordinated through local institutions sponsored by Iran. For example, an Israeli report identified a mosque in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, that was financed by the Iranian embassy and suspected of serving as “a kind of umbrella framework for fundraising activity on behalf of Hezbollah.”
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Another report pointed to a similar institution, the Iranian Cultural
Center in Khartoum, Sudan, which “is used as a meeting place by Islamic networks and as a center for disseminating Iranian propaganda and Shi’ite literature.”
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Shortly after setting up its first diplomatic mission in Sierra Leone in 1983, “the Iranian embassy in Freetown acquired the reputation of being the centre of Iran’s spy network for all West Africa,” according to Global Witness. Suspicions were likely fed by the establishment of an Iranian cultural center in Freetown that was never actually opened to the public.
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In 2009, the Moroccan government cut off diplomatic ties with Iran over Tehran’s aggressive use of such proselytizing tactics in the North African state.
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In other cases—though rare—Hezbollah and Iran have engaged in more blatant, public radicalization efforts. In 2008, for example, press reports included pictures of a joint Hezbollah-Iran parade in Nigeria, where an unidentified Shi’a mullah was given full military honors by uniformed militiamen before a crowd sporting hundreds of yellow Hezbollah flags and giant posters of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s late Ayatollah Khomeini and current leader Ayatollah Khamenei. “One can draw a number of similarities,” one analyst noted, “between the Cuban ‘volunteers’ who were acting at the behest of the Soviet Union, promoting communism in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s and Hezbollah acting as Iran’s proxy, advancing Tehran’s Islamic revolution today.”
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Often Iran recruits directly from the pool of Lebanese Shi’a communities across Africa. The Africa Division of the Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force has “built many cells in Africa,” according to a 2011 report, “most of which rely on Shiite emigrants from Lebanon who live in Africa.” Once spotted and recruited, these recruits are sent to Iran for training. According to a retired Israeli military officer, “Lebanese recruited for the Iranian intelligence efforts were invited to visit Iran, where they underwent training in the field of intelligence. Upon their return, they serve as a nucleus for recruiting others and provide a base for Iranian intelligence activity in their countries.”
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Such efforts are not limited to Lebanese Shi’a. According to a study commissioned by the US military, Iran uses scholarships to African students as “a major recruitment tool.” Iranian scholarships are offered to students across Africa as part of Tehran’s “greater diplomatic effort to simultaneously promote the broader Hezbollah agenda in Africa and undermine Western influence and credibility across the continent.” Wherever Iran has embassies in Africa, the report added, “it also sets up cultural centers that ‘award’ scholarships and ‘study tours’ to Iran.”
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One such effort, focused on the recruitment of Ugandan Shi’a for religious study—and military and intelligence training—in Iran was exposed in 2002.
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The Ugandan recruits, along with young Lebanese Hezbollah members, underwent a month-long basic training course “specially tailored by Iranian intelligence.” The mixed group of Ugandan Shi’a and Lebanese Hezbollah recruits was then taught to use a variety of small arms, produce improvised explosive devices, collect preoperational intelligence “on installations and people for terrorist attacks,” plan escape routes, and withstand interrogation techniques. The students were given fictitious covers, money, and means of communication and then “instructed to collect intelligence on Americans and Westerners present in Uganda and other countries.”
Their Iranian handlers saw these new recruits as force multipliers, telling both Shafi Ibrahim, leader of a cell of Ugandan Shi’as working for Iran, and his partner Sharif Wadoulo to be attuned to the need to expand Iran’s network in the region and “to recruit other Ugandan civilians for similar assignments.”
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Iran has a long history of smuggling weapons through Africa.
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As case after case has demonstrated, Hezbollah enjoys greater operational flexibility and support in those places where Iran runs intelligence and logistical support networks. Iranian involvement in the
Karine A
weapons smuggling ship—intercepted by the Israeli Navy in the Red Sea in January 2003—is especially revealing not only in terms of the quality and quantity of the weapons being shipped, or in its intended recipient being the Palestinian Authority, but also in the hands-on role played by Hezbollah in the operation.

The naval commando raid had all the makings of a Hollywood script. As dawn broke on January 3, 2002, Israeli Navy commandos boarded the
Karine A
as it plied the waters of the Red Sea en route to the Suez Canal. The operation, executed in the high seas some 500 kilometers south of Israel, went forward flawlessly and without injury. In a press statement the following day, then–Israeli chief of staff Shaul Mofaz praised the “daring and complicated mission” executed by a task force made up of Israeli Navy commandos, air force fighter pilots providing air cover, and intelligence specialists.
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The seized ship was rerouted to the southern Israeli port of Eilat, where its crew was arrested and contents seized. Spread out over the secured dock, the weapons arsenal was huge.
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Most weapons smuggled through this region would arrive by ship at Port Sudan, after which they would be smuggled north overland across the Egyptian border, through the Sinai, and into the Gaza Strip. Not in this case. Purchased in Lebanon in August 2001, the ship then sailed to Port Sudan, where over twelve days it was loaded with regular cargo and renamed the
Karine A
. Both the regular cargo and the name change were designed to provide cover for the ship’s true mission, smuggling weapons. Also in Sudan, the ship’s original crew was replaced with the smuggling team, including Omar Akawi, an officer in the Palestinian Authority’s nascent navy. Over time, Port Sudan became well known as “a shipping point for Iranian arms to Hamas in Gaza and to Islamist organizations in both North and Sub-Saharan Africa.”
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In November, the
Karine A
departed Port Sudan and sailed over four days to the port city of Hodeidah, Yemen. On the instructions of Adel Mughrabi, the Palestinian Authority’s point man on the weapons smuggling operation, the ship then sailed for the Iranian island of Qish in December 2001. According to Israeli officials, since October 2000, Mughrabi had been in regular contact with the Iranian agents and Hezbollah operatives with whom he planned the smuggling plot.
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Near Qish, a ferry commanded by a Mughniyeh deputy, Hajj Bassem, approached the
Karine A
in Iranian waters, and the process of loading the weapons—stored in eighty large wooden crates—from the ferry to the
Karine A
began. Hajj Bassem
personally oversaw the transfer, according to Israeli and US accounts. Meanwhile, one of Bassem’s men aboard the ferry trained a member of the
Karine A
’s crew to configure the submergible flotation devices in which the weapons would ultimately be delivered.
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The plan was to pass through the Suez Canal and unload the weapons onto three smaller boats, which would then approach the coast and drop the waterproof containers off the shore of El Arish in the northern Sinai and the Gaza Strip just to its north. The containers, designed in Iran specifically for weapons smuggling, would float just below the surface, where they would remain until retrieved, all the while invisible from above water. But mechanical problems resulted in slight delays for the ship, including a return to the port of Hodeidah, Yemen. Unbeknownst to the smugglers, Israeli intelligence caught on to the plot and planned a raid several hundred kilometers away from the Suez Canal.
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The
Karine A
episode stands out not only for the magnitude and audacity of the arms Iran attempted to smuggle but for the quality of these weapons as well. The weapons seized aboard the
Karine A
were described as “force multiplier weapons systems” that would have drastically shifted the balance of power between Israeli forces and Palestinian militant groups. The weapons included 107-and 122-millimeter rockets and launchers with ranges of up to twenty kilometers, antitank launchers, 120-millimeter mortars, antipersonnel mines, and more. Some of these arms still bore serial number markings revealing they were produced in Iran in 2001. By some accounts the money needed to purchase both the ship and the arms was underwritten by Iran, while the ship’s operational expenses (crew salaries, insurance payments, etc.) were covered by the Palestinian Authority.
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But according to another account, the Palestinian Authority paid $15 million for the apparently discounted weapons themselves, but Hezbollah footed the $400,000 bill for the boat, purchased by a Palestinian Authority official.
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Asked who he thought sent the weapons, the Palestinian captain of the
Karine A
replied, “I believe it was from Hizballah.”
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Speaking before the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, in February 2002, European Union head of foreign affairs Javier Solana described the
Karine A
as “the link between Iran and the PA [Palestinian Authority].”
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While it is by far the biggest smuggling plot thus far funded by Iran, the
Karine A
incident is by no means the only one. Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command were both involved in other maritime smuggling efforts involving the
Santorini
and the
Calypso-2
, which between them made three successful smuggling runs to Gaza and the Egyptian Sinai—in November 2000 and twice in April 2001—before a fourth attempt was thwarted by the Israeli Navy in May 2001.
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In May 2003, the Israeli Navy intercepted the
Abu Hassan
, a fishing vessel on which Hezbollah was attempting to smuggle to Palestinian militants thirty-six CD-ROMs featuring bomb-making instructions, detonators, and a radio activation system compatible with rockets, suicide bombs, and remote-controlled explosives. The Israeli commandos also captured Hamad Abu Amar, a Hezbollah explosives expert, on board the boat.
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Six years later, in January 2009, Sudan’s continued role as the preferred weapons smuggling route in the region was exposed when Israeli fighter-bombers, backed by
unmanned drones, destroyed a twenty-three-truck convoy traveling through the Sudanese desert carrying arms destined for Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The arms arrived at Port Sudan and were loaded into the vehicles for the cross-desert trek. Iran’s role in the plot was confirmed when news broke that several Iranians were reportedly killed in the airstrike.
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Two years later, another Israeli airstrike targeted a car some fifteen kilometers south of Port Sudan, killing both passengers. One of them, according to press reports, was a Sudanese citizen; the other was a senior Hamas military commander.
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In October 2012, four aircraft—presumably Israeli—bombed a Khartoum weapons factory reportedly run by the IRGC.
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In the words of one analyst, Sudan offers “a very practical supply route for the Iranians to use.” Sometimes it is not just a route for transporting weapons but also a place to procure them. “The arms market in Sudan is thriving and acts as a very easy way for Iran to send agents, mainly though Hezbollah, to come under false passports into Sudan, buy those arms, and transport them primarily via trucks across Sudan and into the Sinai Peninsula” and from there to the Gaza Strip.
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By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hezbollah operatives began appearing in areas where Sunni Islamist groups were operating. For example, a 1987 CIA report documented Hezbollah’s propaganda ties to Egyptian extremists. “Although logistical ties probably are extremely limited and are likely to remain so,” the CIA noted, “for Hezbollah and its Iranian patron closer public ties and apparent cooperation with radical Sunni groups constitute a valuable propaganda success underscoring their commitment to Islamic unity.”
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Within a few short years Hezbollah would be cooperating much more closely with Sunni extremist elements in Africa.