Warriors of God

by Nicholas Blanford

  “We would have been much stronger,” Tufayli told me many years later when asked how Hezbollah could have survived into the 1990s without adapting to the new political environment. “This point was discussed thoroughly at the time. [Our] view was that Hezbollah could continue as a strong force with all the other players orbiting us instead of us chasing after them. It was Iran that stepped in and said we had to run candidates in the elections.”

  The debate might have been fervent within the leadership circle, but ultimately the party had little option. A special internal consultative council of twelve delegates voted 10 to 2 in favor of electoral participation. Khamenei pronounced that it was legitimate for Hezbollah to contest the elections and approved the council’s vote. The supreme leader had spoken, and for Hezbollah the matter was settled. Although Hezbollah was obliged by the Syrians to form an electoral alliance with Amal, the party fared well, gaining eight seats, which, along with four allies, gave it the largest bloc in the 128-seat parliament.

  Following the elections, Hezbollah underwent an internal reorganization, adding new bodies to handle its ever-expanding activities—the political council, the jihad council to oversee military affairs, the judicial council, and the “Loyalty to the Resistance” parliamentary bloc.

  Rafik Hariri, a billionaire construction tycoon with close ties to the Saudis, was appointed prime minister, and he began implementing an ambitious multi-billion-dollar reconstruction program to repair the damage of the civil war years and restore Lebanon as the financial and commercial hub of the Middle East.

  Hezbollah was not offered, nor did it apparently seek, a seat in Hariri’s first government, instead opting for an opposition role, using its parliamentary foothold to rail against the government’s spending excesses, which focused on Beirut and neglected Hezbollah’s strongholds in the Bekaa and the south. Hariri’s reconstruction policies were based on a massive gamble. He would use his international contacts and credibility to amass billions of dollars in grants and loans to help pay for the rehabilitation of Lebanon’s infrastructure on the premise that comprehensive Middle East peace would be realized by 1996. The new era of peace and consequent international investment in the region, Hariri assumed, would allow Lebanon to pay back its debts, or, better still, have them written off as part of the peace dividend. But Hezbollah, which vehemently opposed the peace process, was less than impressed. Mohammed Raad, one of the eight Hezbollah MPs elected in 1992, told me that the party was at odds with Hariri’s “continual optimism” about achieving peace and considered his ambitions for the country “unrealistic.”

  Relations between Hezbollah and Hariri’s governments in the 1990s were marked by tension and rooted in mutual irritation and mistrust. In September 1993, nine Hezbollah supporters were shot dead by Lebanese soldiers during a peaceful demonstration against the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and Yasser Arafat’s PLO. The killings provoked angry public protests until Hariri attempted to mollify Hezbollah by officially declaring the dead to be “martyrs,” thus making their families eligible for government compensation.

  Hariri was obliged to pay lip service to Hezbollah’s resistance campaign in the south because it was sanctioned by Syria, but it was evident that he considered it a nuisance that continually threatened to disrupt his reconstruction agenda. The paradox of resistance and reconstruction would plague his governments in the years ahead.

  The policy of pragmatism pursued by Hezbollah from 1992 on did not represent an ideological softening, but was intended first and foremost to sustain the armed struggle in the south. The resistance was to be protected and insulated through layers of political influence in parliament, by the expansion of popular support among Lebanese Shias, and by fostering a public dialogue with all shades of Lebanese society to mollify, appease, reassure, and persuade. But Hezbollah’s resistance priority, its beating heart, would remain paramount.

  “In reality, we were, and will always be, the party of the resistance that [operates] from Lebanon in reaction to occupation and daily aggression,” Nasrallah said days after the 1992 elections. “Our participation in the elections and entry into the [parliament] do not alter the fact that we are a resistance party; we shall, in fact, work to turn the whole of Lebanon into a country of resistance, and the state into a state of resistance.”4

  “An Atmosphere of Religion and Faithfulness”

  The process of joining Hezbollah has evolved as the organization has grown in size and become more institutionalized and entrenched within Shia society. In the initial stages following Israel’s 1982 invasion, personnel were recruited in the Bekaa Valley through a process of mass mobilization along family and clan lines, which helped preserve internal security as well as facilitate the enrollment of hundreds of volunteer fighters. In south Lebanon, devout young Shias needed little incentive to join the nascent resistance, given that it was their homes and land that bore the brunt of Israeli occupation.

  Today, however, the motivations for joining Hezbollah are more multidimensional, blending religious observance, hostility toward Israel, and the Shia commitment to justice and dignity. On a more prosaic level, many young Shias naturally gravitate toward an organization that has helped empower their community in Lebanon and has earned respect for its martial exploits over the years.

  “Our fighters are driven by complex motives—patriotism and Islamic motives,” Sheikh Khodr Noureddine told me in 1996, when he was Hezbollah’s political chief in south Lebanon. “Our Islamic beliefs makes these young men refuse to accept injustice. They will do anything to resist Israel. I know the West does not understand, but our youth cannot live with Israel.”

  Recruits drawn from the south who have grown up with an inherent distrust of Israel will dwell more on the aspect of defending their border communities against the perceived perpetual threat of the Jewish state.

  “It’s an honor to serve,” said one veteran Hezbollah fighter, explaining in 2009 why he still served with the Islamic Resistance even though Israel had withdrawn from Lebanon almost a decade earlier. “It’s like this. If you have a house or a villa and someone powerful takes it over, you have a long struggle and after a while he gives you a room. You struggle a bit longer and then he gives up and hands back the house to you. You might think the struggle is over, but then he parks his car in your parking spot outside the house. Do you accept this? We are in the south because Israel is like this powerful usurper and there is no government to protect us, and the UN can’t protect us either. That’s why we need the resistance.”

  Given Hezbollah’s long-term strategic perspective and commitment to building a “society of resistance,” the process of mobilization and radicalization of its potential recruits begins at an early age. Children as young as six or seven are encouraged to participate in Hezbollah’s youth movement, a first step on the long path to becoming a resistance fighter. Activities include lectures, plays, and sporting events through which the youthful participants are immersed in Hezbollah’s moral, religious, political, and cultural milieu. Hezbollah-affiliated cultural associations and publishing houses churn out books and pamphlets and hold seminars and conferences to spread the creed of resistance. Among them are the Islamic Maaref Cultural Association, the Imam al-Mahdi Institute, and the Imam Khomeini Cultural Center, all of which promote the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini. Other institutes produce material that ranges from explaining Hezbollah’s concept of jihad and promoting hostility toward Israel to treatises on the role of women in Islamic society and the importance of a healthy lifestyle. Some of the material is intended for a youthful audience, with cartoon books telling stories of resistance fighters or fairy tales featuring villainous Israelis and heroic Palestinian and Lebanese children.

  During the summer holiday months, a common sight in the southern suburbs of Beirut is rows of wide-eyed children sitting patiently at desks in outdoor classes being taught the way of Hezbollah. They are raised in a heavily militarized environment in which the youngsters are encouraged
to venerate and emulate the fighters of the Islamic Resistance. During the Ashoura commemoration or the annual Jerusalem Day parades, small children march alongside regular combatants, all of them dressed in camouflage uniforms and carrying plastic toy rifles, wearing headbands inscribed with slogans such as “O Jerusalem, we are coming.”

  The process continues in the Hezbollah-affiliated nationwide network of Mustafa schools, where pupils study religion and pray for Islamic Resistance fighters. Hundreds of youngsters each year pass through the dozens of summer camps held by the Hezbollah-run Imam Mahdi Scouts in valleys and hills in southern Lebanon and the northern Bekaa, where they are imbued with a sense of military brotherhood and discipline replete with uniforms, parades, and martial bands.

  Hezbollah generally does not accept combatants into the Islamic Resistance below the age of eighteen, but basic military training and familiarization with weapons does begin at a much younger age. A tall, rangy Hezbollah fighter in his midthirties, whom we shall call “the Chief,” once showed me video footage shot on his cell phone of more than fifty children aged between six and nine dressed in camouflage uniforms marching through rugged mountains and woodland in a south Lebanon valley. The children were the sons of “martyrs”—Hezbollah fighters killed in action—and they were participating in a military-style training exercise. Uniformed adult instructors walked alongside the children, helping them plunge across a narrow river and scramble up steep, rocky slopes. They smeared their faces with dirt, and some even fired a few rounds from an AK-47 rifle, each one aiming at rocks in the river with a kneeling instructor helping prop up the heavy weapon.

  “The next generation of mujahideen,” said the Chief with a smile of paternal pride.

  In addition to the childhood induction process, Hezbollah deploys recruiters in every village and neighborhood where the party wields influence to look out for likely prospects among the local young men and women. The recruiter is looking for pious, disciplined, modest, intelligent, healthy, well-behaved individuals who could fit into Hezbollah’s way of life. Young men who listen to music, drink alcohol, drive fast cars, and flirt with girls stand little chance.

  “The idea is to meet potential recruits and cultivate a friendship. You don’t hit him at the same moment with an offer to join. You make him love Hezbollah first. You sell the idea, then he can choose whether to join or not,” explained the Chief, himself a recruiter.

  After observing a potential recruit for a period of months, even years, the recruiter will make his move, inquiring whether he or she would consider joining Hezbollah. If the person accepts there follows an intensive initial phase known as tahdirat, or “preparation,” lasting up to a year, in which recruits are taught the ideological foundations of Hezbollah. “At this stage, we give them Islamic lessons, ethical, political [and] social lessons, as a preparation, as part of the resistance. He will live in an atmosphere of religion and faithfulness,” says Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy leader.

  “Our Life Dictates Our Death”

  The new recruits absorb the principles of the Islamic revolution in Iran, obedience to the wali al-faqih, and enmity toward Israel. They are taught the Islamic texts according to the interpretation of Hezbollah’s clerics, and learn to pursue the “greater jihad” of spiritual transformation to bring them closer to God. “The religious lessons are first,” says the Chief. “Religion first, before you even see a gun.”

  A recruit can have different reasons for joining the party in the first place—a desire to resist occupation, religious commitment, or simply peer pressure—but realizing the importance of jihad as it is taught by Hezbollah is critical to understanding what drives the fully trained and committed Islamic Resistance fighter.

  Sheikh Naim Qassem describes the world as a “perishable home,” a transient “place of test and tribulation for man,” and how a person chooses to live his life will dictate his fate in the hereafter.5 The “greater jihad” is the daily spiritual struggle within the carnal soul to resist and overcome the temptations and vices of the human condition in order to achieve divine knowledge, love, and spiritual harmony. According to Hezbollah, success on the “greater jihad”—the inner spiritual struggle—is a necessary precondition to undertaking the “lesser jihad”—the outer, material struggle. The “lesser jihad,” or “military jihad,” falls into two categories. The first is “offensive jihad,” in which Muslims are permitted to invade other countries or wage war against other societies on the basis that Islam is the one true religion. However, “offensive jihad,” according to the interpretation of Hezbollah’s clerics, is not considered applicable until the return of the “awaited imam.” The second category is “defensive jihad,” which confers not just the right but the obligation of Muslims to defend their lands and communities from aggression and occupation. For Hezbollah, the call for “defensive jihad” can be made only by the wali al-faqih. Hezbollah’s campaign of resistance against Israeli occupation in south Lebanon and its post-2000 military confrontation with Israel were conducted under the rubric of “defensive jihad” sanctioned by Khomeini in his role as wali al-faqih, and later endorsed by his successor Khamenei. Accordingly, Hezbollah fighters are taught that when they confront Israeli troops in the stony hills and valleys of south Lebanon, they are not merely resisting occupation but also fulfilling the deeper religious obligation of pursuing jihad.

  Central to Hezbollah’s observance of the “lesser jihad” is the culture of martyrdom. For the Shias, the paradigm of jihad, resistance, and sacrifice is Imam Hussein, whose death at Karbala against the numerically superior forces of Yazid epitomizes the struggle against oppression and injustice and serves as a powerful inspiration and exemplar for new generations of Shia warriors serving with Hezbollah. Hezbollah teaches that Imam Hussein actively sought martyrdom at Karbala, rather than choosing to engage with Yazid’s army knowing that despite the odds there was a faint possibility of survival.

  A Hezbollah fighter who has advanced in the “greater jihad” will have spiritually moved beyond the human fear of death, instead welcoming it as a sacrifice in God’s name during the fulfillment of the “lesser jihad.” Unlike suicide, which is forbidden by Islam, Hezbollah considers the act of self-sacrifice as a paramount demonstration of faith in God, far removed from earthly, corporeal concerns. The motifs of martyrdom are inescapable in Hezbollah’s strongholds, where streets and roads are lined with the portraits of “martyrs”—fighters who have died in battle—and billboards with paintings of fallen fighters entering garish representations of paradise with richly colored landscapes of green hills, wildflowers, and flowing rivers bathed in bright sunlight. The annual Martyrs’ Day commemoration held each November 11 (the anniversary of Ahmad Qassir’s suicide bombing of the IDF headquarters in Tyre in 1982) is one of the most important events in Hezbollah’s calendar. Each Hezbollah fighter is photographed for an official “martyr’s” portrait on joining the Islamic Resistance. His picture will adorn his neighborhood’s lampposts should he be killed in the course of duty, and each year he updates a “martyr’s letter,” containing his final thoughts and wishes.

  Conversations with committed Hezbollah fighters on the subject of martyrdom hold a certain surreal quality. When I met Maher, commander of a sector in south Lebanon, in May 2000, he mentioned that two of his friends had been killed days earlier in an operation inside the occupation zone. Normally, one would offer a polite commiseration, but Maher forestalled any expression of condolence with a raised hand. “Do not be sorry for them, be happy for them,” he said with a wistful smile. “God chose them to be martyrs, and, God willing, one day I, too, will be martyred fighting the Israelis.”

  Maher had light brown crew-cut hair and a neatly trimmed beard, and his pale blue eyes shone with unquestioning confidence in the certainty of his convictions. At thirty-three years of age, Maher was a combat veteran, having joined the resistance in 1983. He was in charge of four units, two assault and two fire support. But he was also married and a fathe
r; when I met him, his wife was pregnant with their fourth child. If he were to die in combat, Hezbollah would provide for his family—a house, free education for his children, medical care, and a pension of around $350 a month. Yet how could he relish the prospect of death when he would leave behind him a widow and four fatherless children? Maher smiled again, nodding sympathetically.

  “It is difficult for you to understand because you are not a Muslim. My wife will feel great joy and pride if I am martyred,” he said. “Martyrdom is a religious and philosophical concept. Islam is the same as Christianity and Judaism in the sense that if you follow God you will go to Heaven. But in Islam, it’s explained differently. We are born to get acquainted with God. Our goal of living is to reach God. To reach God we have to move from the living world to the next world. This is done by death. We are all going to die, but each person has a choice of how to die. The way we lead our life dictates our death. According to Islam, the best way to die is to die for God.”

  Hezbollah fighters can volunteer to join the Martyrdom (Istishadiyun) Unit, which means that they could be selected for specific suicide attacks or particularly perilous missions where chances of survival are low. Although Hezbollah has always been associated in the public mind with suicide bombings, it conducted only eleven such operations in Lebanon during the years of Israeli occupation between 1982 and 2000. Of the eleven, only four were carried out during the 1990s.