Barrel of a Gun

by Al Venter

  While Pierre Guth did his bit, he was hampered by the labyrinthine politics of Shaba Province, blighted as they were by years of insurrection. All this was explained to me by a South African intelligence officer whom I sat alongside on a flight between Johannesburg and Nairobi a long time afterwards. He was travelling incognito because, he said, South Africans of all persuasions were to remain ‘undercover’ in Black Africa for many years to come. It would be another 16 years before Nelson Mandela was released.

  The South Africans certainly knew about me, the man on the flight said, and they’d already liaised with London. Within days of the message getting out, Pretoria had sent an emissary to Kinshasa to argue my case with the Great Panjandrum. Pretoria’s relations with Zaire had always been good, but, as it turned out, our release eventually emerged from a most unusual source.

  Le Monde, it seems, played a seminal role in achieving our freedom. Using all the influence this newspaper group wielded within the French diplomatic establishment – and it was considerable – an approach was made to Francois Mitterrand, then still in opposition in the French Parliament. He got in touch with the head of a former French colony in Africa, who, in turn, spoke to Mobutu.

  I’ve often speculated about exactly who that head-of-state might have been. Perhaps the President of Congo-Brazza? Brazzaville is just across the river from Kinshasa. Or maybe President Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, the great guide, philosopher and friend to many African leaders and, until the end of his illustrious career, on the best of terms with the Elysées Palace. Like Mobutu, President Houphouet-Boigny hated communists.

  I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.

  Gilles and I knew it was all over when André opened our cell door several mornings after the British diplomatic visit. Zaki was with him and the two men greeted us enthusiastically with hugs and kisses on both cheeks. We were his brothers, Zaki grandly told us, with an oily, clotted-cream niceness. What a load of bullshit, but Gilles and I played along because this was very unusual indeed. Clearly, something was happening…

  Zaki said he’d hoped that we’d enjoyed our little sojourn while in his care. We smiled. Then, surprise, surprise, he asked us what we’d like for breakfast? André went off to town to fetch croissants, confit and cafe au laite and for the first time since we’d arrived in Zaire, we weren’t asked to pay.

  Later that day the two men accompanied us to the Zambian border in the prison governor’s car, escorted by a motorcycle outrider, no less. We weren’t stopped at a single road block. The driver parked a discreet distance from the frontier post while André got our passports stamped. More hugs and kisses followed.

  ‘It was good’, l’Assassin called in French as we walked away. ‘N’estce pas? ’ We didn’t look back.

  What a difference at the Zambian border post. The officials spoke good English, they conducted themselves like government officials, clad in well-pressed uniforms with starched white shirts and they didn’t ask for matabish. Most strikingly, they were courteous. ‘Welcome to Zambia!’ said one of them. We might have been a couple of tourists from Europe on a jaunt. Our Congolese jailors hadn’t passed on to the Zambians that until a few hours before, we’d been held in close arrest in one of their detention centres.

  Later that day I took a flight from Ndola on the Copperbelt to Blantyre in Malawi and was in Johannesburg before dark.

  Only once did I hear from Gilles afterwards. He was both curt and furious, since I’d mentioned his foreskin in one of the articles that I subsequently wrote. I wrote back telling him that he would be much better off if he had it removed!

  CHAPTER TWENTY - THREE

  ‘Kill all Infidels – Allahu Aqbar!’

  Hizbollah and Hamas [in Israel], Al Qaida, Jaish al Mahdi and a range of other militant groups in Iraq. Al Qaida, the Taliban and a diversity of associated fighting groups in Afghanistan. They are different but they are linked. They are linked by the pernicious influence, support and sometimes direction of Iran and/or by the international network of Islamist extremism… Tactics tried and tested on IDF soldiers in Lebanon have killed British soldiers in Helmand Province and in Basra. These groups are trained and equipped for warfare fought from within the civilian population.

  Colonel Richard Kemp, formerly both commander of British forces in Afghanistan and Intelligence Co-ordinator for the British government.

  IRETURNED TO LEBANON for an extensive tour in the late 1990s as a guest of the then Christian chief of the Lebanese Army, General Emile Lahoud. As a measure of the trust he’d engendered in bringing the country together – against almost impossible odds – this competent tactician-turned-politician went on to become the country’s President.

  Nobody was to anticipate his role – devious and ultimately utterly destructive – as the principal factotum of Syrian policies along the shores of the Levant. It took a while, but it gradually became clear to us all that President Lahoud was taking his orders from Damascus. He danced to the pipes of former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and, as we all feared, Emile Lahoud was instrumental in Syria continuing its clandestine security role in Lebanon when Bashar al-Assad succeeded his late father.

  For all that, I found in General Emile Lahoud a truly remarkable individual. He was seminal in rescuing Lebanon from the most destructive civil war the country had faced in its three millennia of recorded history. By the time he was able to bring pressure to bear on the combatants – there were about 100 different armies and militia simultaneously vying for power – the country was locked into an almost permanent state of conflict.

  To his credit, he stepped into the breach and created a platform, to which he invited most of the major warrior groups, which would ultimately play a role in bringing a peace of sorts to this embattled nation. Had he not done so, Lebanon might have been permanently ripped apart.

  Following lengthy interviews with the man himself, I dealt with some of the issues that faced him in a report subsequently published by Washington’s Middle East Policy.1 As he admitted, it was an extremely tough call and his life and those of others involved in the peace process were constantly on the line. What he did not tell me was that Syria’s continued subversive role in Lebanon fostered a number of destructive political undercurrents, including, to his discredit, one or more which he led himself.

  Meanwhile, following the murder of the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Harriri, domestic and international pressure forced Damascus to recall its troops from Lebanon, ostensibly at least. Yet assassinations, car bombings and other acts of terror continue, the majority sponsored by President Bashar al-Assad.

  Going back to Lebanon was a thoroughly engrossing assignment. In part, I went in for Jane’s Defence Weekly, as well as the group’s monthly International Defence Review for which I’d done occasional work in the Middle East and Africa over three decades. Once I’d made contact with Lahoud’s office, a young Shi’ite officer was delegated to escort me.

  Captain Hussein Ghaddar and I did a lot in those three weeks together. With this enterprising young army officer – who afterwards went on a course at an American military establishment and by all accounts excelled – I covered great tracts of Lebanon, north and south.

  Sharp, erudite and totally fearless, he encapsulated the contemporary image of today’s youthful Shi’ite combatant. Ghaddar was focused and well-informed about everything that went on in his own domain and well beyond its borders. From what he told me, he used the web to read all the newspapers in the region, including Israel’s Jerusalem Post and the more liberal Ha’artez. With the Koran in one hand and his AK-47 in the other, this young man cut a striking figure.

  On our third day out in Lebanon, Captain Hassan and I went south to Sidon and Tyre and were able to visit the so-called Zionist Front. We were stopped at a roadblock near Nabatiya during a shootout between what was termed ‘Hizbollah and insurgent enemies of the people’, though exactly who was involved and what took place eluded me. Prior to that, I spent time with the miniscule Lebanese Navy
and its new American patrol craft. Finally, there was a stint with a totally integrated Special Forces unit where, only a few years before, its Christian and Muslim components – a group of tough, no-nonsense professionals – had been battling each other.

  Throughout this little sojourn in the Levant, it had been my intention all along to try to make contact with Hizbollah, something that Jane’s Defence Weekly wanted, though they didn’t hold out any high hopes because this radical military-politico organization had always been notoriously xenophobic. Contacts with Westerners were few, especially for those working for the non-Islamic media. It happened, of course, but, as Hassan phrased it, you had to have ‘connections’.

  From the start, I tried to communicate with Hizbollah headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs, not far from the city’s international airport. I did so first by phone, then through one of my Lebanese Army friends, but to no avail. I even sent a fax to a number I was given. Eventually, I took the most obvious route and spoke to one of the bellhops at the hotel at which I was staying: being Muslim, he would know the ropes, I’d been assured. Chances were good that he had somebody within his family circle close to the Party of God.

  Once General Emile Lahoud was able to stabilize the situation in Lebanon, the Americans came forward and produced naval patrol boats, armour and these US Army surplus helicopters, which were used to patrol the borders. (Author’s collection)

  I wanted to meet with someone senior in Hizbollah, I told him. Two days later the man came back: it might be possible but I should wait for somebody to make contact, he said. It took another week for things to happen and by then I was thinking of returning to London.

  Finally, one Saturday afternoon, I was collected from my hotel in a limousine and taken first to one office to explain my needs and then to several more. Two more days of delays followed. Meanwhile, I was asked to prepare a list of questions.

  Finally, a few days before I was due to leave the country, another car arrived to take me ‘somewhere’. I was told not to worry but to trust my new hosts. The idea was that I accompany the driver to a new destination, but there were to be no cameras. Interestingly, no blindfolds either and I wasn’t even searched for firearms. On the face of it, it was all straightforward.

  Our destination was Harek Horeik, the impoverished, mainly Shi’ite quarter in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which was still very much within rifle shot of the city’s fleshpots along the Cornice. What gave it away was that there were as many ten-times-life-size posters of the Ayatollah Khomeini as could be squeezed onto a city block without obscuring the view of the residents. These replaced more explicit billboards of the latest Hollywood offerings which can be seen in the main parts of Beirut, and which became fewer the farther south we travelled.

  The meeting with Hizbollah secretary, Ibrahim Moussawi, on the first floor of a nondescript office block not far from one of Hizbollah’s military encampments, went off without incident. We’d passed the base on the way in, as well as what was obviously a well-guarded communications centre. Then two flights of stairs and a formal salutation followed, at which tea was offered.

  In my initial approach to the movement, I’d mentioned that it was my intention to write an article for Jane’s, my British principals. Consequently, I wasn’t surprised when one of the first questions raised was about something that I’d written a short while earlier after a visit to Israel: I’d previously been warned that the organization kept files of everything that anybody wrote on the region. The issue wasn’t in any way contentious; instead, I got the impression that mentioning my previous reports on Middle East events had more to do with Hizbollah subtly telling me that they knew exactly who they were dealing with.

  Ibrahim Moussawi, Hizbollah’s spokesman that day, wasn’t entirely the image of the average Party of God functionary that I’d anticipated. Dressed in a dark suit and Iranian-style collarless shirt buttoned at the top, his English was clipped, precise and Middle Eastern. Always the pragmatist, this was no Ivy League or British public school-educated academic. A large Koran sat on his desk at his elbow.

  I had my list of questions. These, he said, would need to be translated into Arabic. He would then need time for them to be considered and I’d have his replies, again in Arabic, in a day or two.

  We went over a lot of ground involving the role of the Party of God, not only in Lebanon but its links to Iran and Syria, its weapons, their origins and deployment. Moussawi – as might have been expected – was guarded on almost all these issues, the Tehran connection especially.

  We talked about the Israeli presence, but he never once wavered from the quiet diplomatic approach that had been notable from the moment he first greeted me. He was a consummate professional throughout. Moussawi didn’t mention my request about going to the front with his people and I didn’t raise the matter again. If it were to happen, it would almost certainly have been one of the first items on the agenda. I have yet to meet any Westerner who has been on full military operations with Hizbollah, though I’m sure it’s happened by now, probably under the auspices of Al Jazeera.

  Curiously, nothing more was said about my having been in Israel a short while before which, judging by some of the questions, he was aware of. In fact, he let slip something about my holding a second British passport and that I’d used it to enter Lebanon. Somebody had obviously been doing their homework.

  Since the chips were down, I told him that a month earlier I’d spent a short while at one of the IDF front-line positions to the west of Metullah, adjacent to what was once termed ‘The Good Fence’. There was no point in being devious: his people could just as easily have gleaned as much from one of several calls that I made to the office of the Military Attaché at the British Legation in Beirut: I took it for granted that my hotel phone was tapped.

  The last question Moussawi asked was pointed. Having been on ‘the other side’, what did I think of the war in South Lebanon? What he was really after was my take on Israel’s struggle in the south of the country and in which direction these hostilities might be heading.

  I remained candid, replying that I believed Israel would pull back behind its own lines within a year. This surprised him and for first time his smile was genuine, though I suspected that the reaction was more one of incredulity than humour.

  As it eventually transpired, I was about a month out in my projection, which I wrote about in one of my Jane’s reports. The Israelis pulled out of Lebanon altogether 11 months later and for being negatively candid, the Israelis never forgave me.

  Having left Moussawi at his South Beirut headquarters (all of which was subsequently totally destroyed by Israeli bombing raids in the summer of 2006) I was back at my hotel in an hour. Three days later I transited Cairo while heading for London, complete with Moussawi’s translated text, which appeared in Jane’s Defence Weekly a week later.

  What did rankle was that on my way back to the United States shortly afterwards, I was cleverly ‘relieved’ of my briefcase on my way in from JFK Airport. The incident couldn’t exactly have been construed as a mugging: rather it was a brilliant bit of sleight of hand. One moment my baggage was there and the next, my briefcase was gone. What hurt was that with a lifetime of journalistic experience behind me, I’d always regarded myself as considerably more streetwise than most. The fact is, it shouldn’t have happened: I was obviously under surveillance from the moment I stepped off the plane.

  Lost in the briefcase, along with several sets of important documents, were all my notes covering the Hizbollah meeting, together with a stack of operational photos from time spent operationally with Hassan.

  Though I reported my loss to the local precinct of the New York Police Department, nothing was ever found.

  As an extremely successful guerrilla force, Hizbollah has come a long way from the exuberant, oft-times ill-disciplined revolutionaries of the 1970s and early 1980s who waved fists and AK-47s and screamed obscenities whenever Israel or America was mentioned.

  According
to the United Nations they are few in number, perhaps a couple of thousand hard-core professionals. However, that’s deceptive because every man and boy who is able to carry an AK or haul a Katyusha rocket system out of a cellar is a soldier. It also suggests that there are many thousands more. Most support comes from villagers who have been trained, often abroad, and who go about their daily business until they are needed to do a job: ‘sleepers’.

  With the demise of the SLA in the south of the country, Hizbollah took over the region, for a while using the same equipment and hardware that had originally been supplied to the embattled Christians by the Israelis. (Author’s collection)

  As one UN functionary put it: ‘The average Hizbollah volunteer will drink tea on his verandah and, given the word, will go down to his basement, assemble a tube and base-plate and then lob off a clutch of mortar bombs or rockets at a given target. He’ll then strip his weapon, return it to its hiding place and go back to his tea. That’s how the war is waged in these parts.’

  The Mullahs with their long frocks, beards and Khomeini turbans – white or black – might seem to be a visible manifestation of Muslim regression to the Middle Ages. Their long term programme is not.

  Hizbollah’s stated aim – as is Iran’s, its mentor and its main source of succour – is to wipe the State of Israel off the map. This is not idle talk. It is a threat that is daily uttered by Al Manaar, the official Hizbollah broadcasting station with its headquarters in Beirut as well as by the Iranian Majlis or Parliament.

  In a comparatively short time, Hizbollah has become a government within a government with powers of arrest, its own secret police and death squads. Apart from its military wing, there is a well-established and entrenched political structure within the movement that has accumulated a number of seats in the Beirut Parliament, all legally and properly contested within the democratic process. However, when things start to go wrong, Hizbollah tends to resort to threats or intimidation and, more often than not, violence, which some observers fear might ultimately lead to another civil war.