Warriors of God

by Nicholas Blanford

  An agreement was reached at the end of January 1989 between Iran and Syria and their two quarrelsome proxies that strengthened the unwritten deal of May 1988. But fighting waxed and waned over the following months, flaring in December 1989 and again in July 1990 as a handful of Hezbollah fighters endured a three-month siege in their bases in the Iqlim al-Touffah. Among them was Hassan Nasrallah, who had intended only to visit the Hezbollah cadres but found himself trapped in the mountain pocket when Amal tightened its grip. Nasrallah had never played a direct military role in Hezbollah; his forte was logistics and organization. He had moved to Beirut in 1984 to work ostensibly as an assistant to Sayyed Ibrahim al-Amine, the party’s spokesman, but was promoted three years later to the newly formed post of chief executive officer and a member of the Consultative Council. Although only twenty-nine years old when he was trapped with the hardened Hezbollah combatants in the Iqlim al-Touffah, Nasrallah was clearly a rising star within the party. The hardships and dangers of the “hundred-day siege,” during which he exchanged his black turban and cloak for combat fatigues, added to his stock and earned him the respect of the fighters. One Hezbollah fighter from the 1980s recalls his colleagues referring to Nasrallah as a “beacon” who would one day lead the party.

  Iran and Syria hammered out a second “Damascus Agreement” in November 1990 to bring the internecine fighting to an end once and for all. This time, the arrangement held, and the fighting between the two Shia groups ended.

  The Moderates Prevail

  The end of the Hezbollah-Amal conflicts also marked the resolution of Lebanon’s civil war, after sixteen long years. The momentum toward finding a lasting political solution to end the war had picked up a year earlier, when Lebanon’s aging parliamentarians were flown to Saudi Arabia and corralled in a hotel in the resort of Taif to negotiate a compromise agreement. After twenty-two days of argument, the parliamentarians reached consensus on a National Reconciliation Accord, more commonly known as the Taif Agreement. The agreement essentially permitted a more balanced distribution of power among the sects and provided for the gradual abolishment of the sectarian system, although no time frame was given. Syria’s influence in Lebanon was formally enshrined by the accord, granting Damascus a role in helping establish and preserve security in the country. It also demanded the dismantling of all militias within six months of the agreement’s adoption by parliament.

  For Hezbollah, the Taif Agreement was wholly unsatisfactory. Not only did it fail to produce the sweeping constitutional reforms that Hezbollah sought, such as the immediate abolition of the sectarian political system, but the clause calling for the dismantling of all militias threatened the party’s resistance priority.

  Despite its misgivings about Taif, however, Hezbollah was compelled to accept the agreement due to dramatic domestic and regional changes that required the party to modify its position.

  First, the Taif Agreement and the end of the civil war established Syria as the preeminent power in Lebanon, one that could not be ignored by Hezbollah despite their recent history of animosity and distrust. Following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, Syria sided with the U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein, a move that permitted Damascus to finalize its control over Lebanon, with tacit American blessing, and also to secure a seat at the subsequent Madrid peace conference in September 1991. If Hezbollah was to maintain its ability to pursue resistance against Israel, it would have to accept the reality of the Pax Syriana and operate within whatever parameters Damascus wished to set.

  Second, there was new leadership in Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini had died in June 1989 and been replaced by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who, as supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was also Hezbollah’s new source of authority. Khamenei was adamant that Hezbollah must maintain resistance against Israel, but Iran also was emerging from a crippling eight-year war with Iraq and was seeking an understanding with the West. The argument in Iran over accommodation with the West was reflected in a fervent internal debate within Hezbollah over how, or indeed whether, the party should shape its policies to reflect the new realities in Lebanon and the region. Sheikh Sobhi Tufayli, who had been formally elected Hezbollah’s first secretary general in 1989, believed that Hezbollah should maintain its distance from Lebanese politics and concentrate on the broader goal of confronting Israel. Tufayli, a disciple of Khomeini, had little respect for Khamenei, who would be dogged by suspicions that his religious credentials were insufficient for the position of wali al-faqih and supreme leader of the Islamic Republic. Lebanon’s political system with its inequities, self-serving alliances, and trade-offs was anathema to a rigid ideologue like Tufayli.

  But other leaders, such as Mussawi and Nasrallah, argued that if Hezbollah was to survive the post–civil war era, it would have to accommodate itself to the new situation. The dogmatic Islamist rhetoric and demands for an Islamic state would have to be softened, in public at least. Syria’s paramount role in Lebanon must be recognized. Railing against the new realities was futile and possibly self-destructive.

  The split within Hezbollah over its future direction was profound. Tufayli had watched with some dismay as his hold on the party he had helped establish began to weaken, his role as secretary general notwithstanding. The ranks of the emerging leadership were drawn from south Lebanon, and they were more open to the path of pragmatism than the dour and obdurate clerics from the Bekaa like Tufayli, or dogmatists like Hussein Mussawi, the leader of Islamic Amal. The differences were personal as well as doctrinal. In 1989, Nasrallah left Lebanon for the holy city of Qom in Iran, where he intended to pursue his studies having decided he could no longer work with Tufayli. Although he intended to remain in Iran for five years, he was persuaded to return and resume his duties after a few months when the situation with Amal deteriorated once more.

  With the backing of Khamenei, the moderate line within Hezbollah prevailed. Tufayli’s term as secretary general ended in May 1991 and he was replaced by Mussawi, a transition that symbolized the end of the unflinching zealotry of Hezbollah’s early years. Certainly, the core ideological pillars upon which Hezbollah was founded had not changed: driving Israeli forces from south Lebanon as a precursor to the destruction of Israel and the liberation of Jerusalem, adherence to the wilayat al-faqih, the abolition of political sectarianism, and the establishment of an Islamic state in Lebanon. But Lebanon was stepping into a new era of Syrian-policed stability, central government control and the rule of law, and the beginning of the Madrid peace process, which promised a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. These presented a new set of challenges for Hezbollah that would have to be met with caution, guile, and tact.

  Under Mussawi, Hezbollah began moderating its public image. The last of the Western hostages was released, and the Islamic Resistance allowed the Lebanese army to deploy into their strongholds in the Iqlim al-Touffah. A press information office was established where polite multilingual men sporting neatly trimmed beards and dark suits would offer bemused journalists glasses of sweet tea and smile benignly as they answered questions.

  Hezbollah’s newfound pragmatism was rewarded by Syria’s sparing the Islamic Resistance the fate of wartime militias eligible for termination under the Taif Agreement. Instead, Hezbollah was classified as an officially sanctioned resistance against the Israeli occupation, in accordance with Taif’s stipulation that the state must take “all necessary measures to liberate all Lebanese territory.”

  The Madrid peace process notwithstanding, Syria was not inclined to abandon a potentially valuable bargaining chip prior to what were likely to be protracted and difficult negotiations with Israel. Hafez al-Assad may have had little liking for the Iran-backed radicals of Hezbollah, but he recognized that the ability of the Islamic Resistance to bleed Israeli troops in south Lebanon even as his representatives debated peace at the negotiating table would win him valuable leverage against Israel.

  For Hezbollah, the path ahead was clear. The immediate threat to its resistance
priority was over, and with Iran’s religious blessing and continued material support as well as Syria’s political backing, Hezbollah could concentrate on the task for which it was born: confronting the Israeli occupation.

  THREE

  The “Gate of the Mujahideen”

  Paradise has a gate called the Gate of the Mujahideen, which when they approach they will find open, their swords they will bear and all shall stand to receive them and the angels shall welcome them.

  —AL-KITAB AL-KAFI

  FEBRUARY 16, 1992

  TOUFFAHTA, south Lebanon—Mohammed Jeziyah heard the helicopters before he saw them. Stepping outside his small whitewashed house on the edge of Touffahta village, the fifty-nine-year-old farmer saw the black, insectlike lines of two Apache AH-64 helicopters hanging in the air just to the east, the heavy beat of their rotor blades reverberating through the deep blue late afternoon sky. One of the helicopters unleashed a missile, a dart of light that streaked toward the ground at a sharp angle. The Hellfire missile struck the gas tank of the black Mercedes passing down a narrow lane toward Touffahta. The vehicle exploded in a ball of fire, sending a thick cloud of black smoke billowing skyward as more of the laser-guided missiles homed in on the two Range Rovers following just behind.

  Jeziyah instantly knew who was inside the burning Mercedes. He had returned minutes earlier from Jibsheet, a small hill village a few miles to the south, where Sayyed Abbas Mussawi, Hezbollah’s secretary general, had led a commemoration marking the eighth anniversary of the assassination of Sheikh Ragheb Harb. But there had been an air of unease rippling through the crowd in Jibsheet, felt particularly by the bodyguards of the Hezbollah chief. The whine of Israeli reconnaissance drones and the rumble of jets had been heard above the village all day. By afternoon, Israeli helicopter gunships were also present in the skies near Jibsheet. Residents of the area were accustomed to hearing warplanes and helicopters—Jibsheet was less than five miles from the closest Israeli outposts on the hills overlooking the market town of Nabatiyah. But the unusually high level of Israeli air activity coinciding with Mussawi’s visit to Jibsheet was unnerving.

  Mussawi conducted prayers at Harb’s tomb in the cemetery before leading the crowd up the hill to the mosque in the center of the village. Three Israeli helicopters could be seen hovering in the distance.

  Residents urged Mussawi not to leave the village. It was too dangerous, they said. But Mussawi simply replied, “What’s the matter? You think I am afraid of dying?”

  His bodyguards insisted that he at least switch cars for the drive back to Beirut. But the Hezbollah leader refused and climbed into the black Mercedes along with his wife, Siham, and five-year-old son, Hussein.

  The two Apaches above Touffahta pummeled the burning vehicles and the road on either side with bursts from the 30 mm cannons slung beneath the nose of the helicopters, creating a perimeter of fire that prevented rescuers from reaching the stricken convoy. The surviving bodyguards shot back at the helicopters with automatic rifles in a courageous but futile act. Five of them were killed in the attack.

  The Israeli helicopters eventually departed, having stayed long enough to ensure that Mussawi was dead. His wife and child were killed alongside him. For several days afterward, the fire-blackened hulk of the Mercedes was kept under close guard in Touffahta until Shia clerics and Hezbollah officials were satisfied that every last scrap of flesh belonging to Mussawi and his family had been collected from the wreck.1

  Mussawi’s death was a pivotal moment for Hezbollah, serving as a catalyst for several key precedents that would help shape the conflict with Israel over the next decade.

  On March 17, a month and a day after Mussawi’s assassination, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car beside the four-story Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing twenty-nine people and wounding more than two hundred. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, naming Abu Yasser, an Argentine convert to Islam, as the perpetrator and dedicating it to the “martyr infant Hussein,” Mussawi’s five-year-old son.

  It was a sobering moment for the Israelis, especially as Mussawi’s assassination apparently was an unplanned tactical “target of opportunity” strike rather than the outcome of a strategic decision to kill the Hezbollah chief. A former Israeli intelligence officer revealed to me that the original intention was to abduct Mussawi from Jibsheet and exchange him for Ron Arad, the missing Israeli air force navigator. However, when the snatch squad assessed that it was too dangerous to touch down and grab Mussawi, the order was given to kill him instead, using the Apache helicopter gunships that were monitoring the Hezbollah leader’s movements on the ground.

  “The order was given by a relatively junior officer who was not in a position to make such a decision. It was not intended to be an assassination,” the former intelligence officer said.

  Although Hezbollah officially absolved itself of involvement in the Buenos Aires bombing, the message was clear: the organization had the means and will to retaliate on a global basis to Israeli assassinations of its leadership cadre. It was a lesson that the Israelis evidently absorbed; although top resistance commanders were subsequently targeted when opportunities arose, no further assassination attempts were made against senior party leaders for the next sixteen years.

  The second key repercussion of Mussawi’s death was the decision by Hezbollah to fire, for the first time, Katyusha rockets at population centers in northern Israel. Hezbollah had used Katyusha rockets to attack Israeli and SLA positions inside the occupation zone in south Lebanon, but as a policy the party had refrained from firing them into Israel. The first barrage of two dozen 122 mm rockets was launched before dawn on February 17, some twelve hours after the helicopter attack on Mussawi’s motorcade. Some of the rockets exploded in and around Kiryat Shemona in northern Galilee and in areas of western Galilee. The Israeli army immediately ordered the shocked residents of Kiryat Shemona into the town’s bomb shelters. Kiryat Shemona had been a regular target of PLO artillery before the 1982 invasion, but since then there had been almost no rocket attacks against the town. Israeli troops, punching north of the occupation zone to destroy the Katyusha launchers, clashed with Hezbollah. By the time the fighting ended three days later, more than a hundred Katyusha rockets had been launched, with about a third of them striking Israel.

  But the rocket fire was greeted with some apprehension in Lebanon, even by supporters of the resistance. Cross-border rocket fire was reminiscent of the bleak era when the south had been the PLO’s stronghold. The PLO’s random Katyusha attacks into Israel invariably triggered heavy Israeli retaliation, with Lebanese civilians tending to bear the brunt. No one wanted a return to those grim days.

  “Now that the enemy has been defeated and forced to retreat, there is no need to resume the firing of Katyusha rockets,” said Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the influential Shia cleric. Omar Karami, the Lebanese prime minister, also said that firing rockets into Israel could not be classified as resistance.

  Even Nasrallah played down the party’s role in launching the rockets. Asked if he knew who fired them, Nasrallah replied, “We have no information in this regard and cannot point a finger at anyone.”2

  But he did articulate a new tactic that would turn the 122 mm Katyusha rocket into a strategic asset that would impose future restraints on the IDF’s freedom to act. The resistance, Nasrallah said, should work toward “creating a situation in which the enemy is subject to our conditions.”

  “We should tell him: ‘If you attack us, we will use our Katyushas; if you do not attack us, we will not use our Katyushas.’ … We have to turn the situation around,” he said.3

  The third major consequence of Mussawi’s assassination was the election of Nasrallah as his successor. It had been clear for some years that Nasrallah’s star was in the ascendant. His charisma and organizational skills had won him many admirers in the party. One veteran Hezbollah member recalls that even when Mussawi was elected secretary general in 19
91, it was his protégé, Nasrallah, who drew the eyes of the rank and file.

  Hezbollah’s consultative council met the day after Mussawi’s death and unanimously elected the thirty-two-year-old Nasrallah. He was expected to follow Mussawi’s realist line in which the dogmatic extremism of the 1980s would give way to greater pragmatism in dealings with the Lebanese state. But on Israel and the resistance, there would be no softening. Speaking before some forty thousand mourners at Mussawi’s funeral in Nabi Sheet a day after his election, Nasrallah vowed to follow his predecessor’s path.

  “America will remain the nation’s chief enemy and the greatest Satan of all,” he said. “Israel will always be for us a cancerous growth that needs to be eradicated, and an artificial entity that should be removed.… The Islamic Resistance will remain our only option, our constant response, the path we shall not relinquish, and the battle we will pursue even if the entire world surrenders.”

  “A State of Resistance”

  Nasrallah’s ascension to the party leadership heralded a fresh beginning for Hezbollah. In line with the increased focus on armed activities in south Lebanon, Hezbollah began moderating its public image, shedding the aura of the war-torn 1980s when wild-eyed and bearded gunmen imposed an austere ad hoc Islamic rule on the areas under its control. The most visible shift in public attitude was the heated internal debate over whether to run candidates in the parliamentary election, the first for twenty years, scheduled for August and September 1992. While Nasrallah supported participating in the election, he faced stiff opposition from party hard-liners led by Sheikh Sobhi Tufayli. Tufayli argued that it was impermissible for Hezbollah to participate in, and give legitimacy to, a form of government that was non-Islamic. The legacy of Khomeini must be preserved, he said, and Hezbollah should not waver from its path simply because of changed circumstances in Lebanon.