Hezbollah Becomes Potent Anti-U.S. Force

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
New Yourk Times
24/12/02

NABATIYE, Lebanon — The Hezbollah band marched through first, its
thumping tune accompanied incongruously by seven bagpipers, drawing
the first cheers from thousands of drenched spectators who arrived
hours early for the Jerusalem Day parade, an annual military
spectacle with a virulent "I hate Israel" theme.
The public-address system then rumbled into life, drowning out the
howling wind as the announcer bellowed the main slogan: "Jerusalem,
Hezbollah is coming, coming!" For the next two hours, thousands of
men in black fatigues with green or purple berets — the cadres of
Hezbollah, whose name is Arabic for Party of God — performed a kind
of jogging goose step down the main street. "We face a plan by the
United States and the Zionists to control the region, to redraw the
political map of the region!" Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the party's
secretary general, thundered after the marching stopped. "We should
realize the extent of the dangerous and satanic goals these people
have."The reference to a possible American invasion of Iraq was
clear, and the vitriol underscored the depth of Hezbollah's loathing
for Israel and by extension its main backer, the United States. Its
stance prompts some senior American officials to deem Hezbollah a
more immediate threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq.Hezbollah has indeed
become a potent anti-American force, but dozens of interviews here
suggest that it has scant inclination to save President Hussein.
Senior American officials have singled out Hezbollah as the "A team"
of terrorism, more menacing than Al Qaeda. Senator Bob Graham, the
Florida Democrat who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, has suggested that Hezbollah be dealt with before Baghdad
because it is the most dangerous terrorist group on earth. But a
bitter history divides Lebanon's Shiite Muslims and the government of
Iraq — Mr. Nasrallah says he himself fled Iraq one step ahead of the
secret police when he was a seminary student there.Neither Syria nor
Iran, Hezbollah's two main backers, display any desire to save Mr.
Hussein now. Syria voted for the tough United Nations resolution that
sent weapons inspectors back to Baghdad, and Iran has been quietly
cooperative in curbing Iraqi oil smuggling and helping the Iraqi
opposition.
Still, Israeli military officers say it is possible that Hezbollah
may use missiles and other weapons from its Syrian and Iranian
sponsors to wreak havoc with any anti-Hussein coalition by trying to
draw Israel into the fray. Israel remains Hezbollah's central target.
Iran and Syria helped to build Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite group,
into a proxy force to fight Israel. Sheik Nasrallah is adamant that
his group — which military experts say undoubtedly plays a role in
providing arms and training for Palestinian militants — concentrates
solely on the Arab-Israeli dispute. "Outside this fight we have done
nothing," he said in an interview. "Everybody knows where Hezbollah's
arena is, where Hezbollah's battle is."
He accuses Israel of exaggerating Hezbollah's threat to lay the
groundwork for hitting the organization while the world is distracted
by Iraq. Indeed, Hezbollah's incessant oratory about destroying
Israel reflects more psychological warfare than the reality along
Lebanon's southern border. Only periodic, carefully scripted attacks
have occurred since Israel withdrew its military from southern
Lebanon in May 2000 after 22 years there.
Hezbollah, whose reputation soared with the Israeli withdrawal,
launches small Katyusha rockets every few months against the disputed
Shabaa Farms area in what analysts call a means of maintaining its
resistance credentials. "The attacks on Shabaa have been symbolic,"
said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a political science professor at the
Lebanese American University. "They are random, scattered and low-
key." The office where Mr. Nasrallah receives visitors is housed in a
bland apartment block about eight stories high amid Beirut's
ramshackle southern suburbs. Lampposts are hung with giant posters of
the men who died fighting the Israeli occupation, along with the
pantheon of Iranian revolutionary figures including Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini.Lebanon remains the only place where the Shiite
Muslims of Iran succeeded in inspiring the creation of an
organization in their image after their own revolution in 1979.
Elsewhere their aspirations for a fundamentalist Islamic state have
foundered on the general disdain of Sunni Muslims, by far the
majority in world Islam, for Shiites.
Shiites have been a kind of party in opposition ever since the
seventh century, when they split with the Sunnis over their demand
that Muhammad's direct descendants lead the faithful. The rivalry
could prove explosive in Iraq, where Shiites form a 55 percent
majority of the population but have long been subjected to control by
Sunnis like Mr. Hussein. "There is a consensus among all Shiites that
they would like to see a Shiite predominance in Iraq after Saddam,"
said Nizar Hamzeh, a professor of political science at the American
University of Beirut.
If Mr. Hussein's government is ousted, Iran might be expected to
support the emergence of something like Hezbollah there, at least in
trying to spread its political system based on a supreme religious
guide. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has two faces: public and intensely
private. On one hand it maintains important public institutions — 12
members of Parliament, television and radio stations, a construction
agency, agriculture outreach program, medical services and numerous
charities.
But that is not all.
"At its core Hezbollah maintains a secret military security service
that even its members don't know about," said Waddah Sharara, a
professor of sociology at Lebanese University and a descendant of
Shiite clerics from southern Lebanon. Experts say Syria and Iran
coordinate this activity, but the identity of the official liaison is
unclear. One likely candidate is Imad Mugniyeh, a man with a $25
million reward on his head from Washington. American authorities
accuse him of planning most of the terror acts attributed to
Hezbollah, starting with pioneering the technique of suicide bombings
that killed hundreds of Americans in Beirut in 1983 and 1984. He is
believed to be responsible for the kidnapping and deaths of numerous
Western hostages and is among three suspected Hezbollah members on
the list of terrorists wanted for the hijacking a TWA flight in 1985
that led to the killing of a United States Navy diver, Robert Dean
Stethem.
Washington has said repeatedly that he is in Lebanon, although he
travels frequently. But Lebanon denies he is here, and Hezbollah
professes no knowledge of the man. Meanwhile, Hezbollah, growing
richer through donations from Shiite charities worldwide and business
interests like gas stations, has transformed southern Lebanon into a
kind of showpiece for fighting Israel. Beaufort Castle has commanded
the stunning hills of southern Lebanon since it was built by the
Crusaders in 1139.The distinctive Hezbollah flag, a fist formed from
the group's name in Arabic thrusting a Kalashnikov rifle skyward, now
snaps above its ramparts.
One weekend a group of middle-class Christians, Beirutis on a tour of
important archaeological sites, emerged from their small bus to
clamber up the battlements. The view stretches over the Israeli
border to the distinctive red-roofed houses of the Israeli town of
Metulla. A portly man dressed in a Tommy Hilfiger red and white
striped shirt pointed out the sites. "To the left is Lebanon, but to
the right is Azrael," he said, making a pun in Arabic by using the
name for the Angel of Death. Then he pointed up to the crumbling
castle walls and talked about the Israeli withdrawal: "They blew it
up with explosives. That is the nature of those people; they are
rats."Another man, his admiration clear as he tilted his head
backward to take in the castle walls, said: "Can you imagine?
Hezbollah chased them out of here."
Huge billboards along the roads celebrate Hezbollah attacks in
gruesomely vivid detail. "Haitham's eyes are monitoring the convoy
meticulously as his car is getting closer and closer," starts the
description in English and Arabic of a suicide bombing. "A moment
later the scene changed dramatically when Haitham stormed into the
convoy — that had 30 occupation troops in it ranks — blowing up his
car amid the vehicles that turned into fireballs and scattered bodies
on the ground.
In recent speeches, Mr. Nasrallah has gloated that the most
accomplished military minds have failed to develop a means to counter
suicide attacks. "What will protect Jerusalem, its holy places, and
get it and Palestine back, is the path of the Palestinian people,
through martyrdom seekers who astonish the world each day and night,"
he said at the Jerusalem Day parade on Nov. 29.The Hezbollah
satellite station, Manar TV — manar means lighthouse in Arabic —
maintains a similar drumbeat, directing its message in video clips
and songs primarily at the Palestinians. In a typical clip, a boy
heaves a rock at a tank, and Arabic and Hebrew words fill the
screen. "Stronger than your oppression," the Arabic reads. "My people
in the West Bank: resist, resist, resist, resist," intones one song
against a backdrop of old clips of Palestinian refugees and current
clashes. "Hit with your dagger. Use your stone. Smash your enemy."
Hezbollah filches live film of suicide bombings from Israel
television. A small team of interpreters who apparently learned
Hebrew in Israeli jails translates the running commentary. Although
numbers are hard to come by, Manar is clearly gaining an audience
throughout the Arab world. Walk into fundamentalist strongholds like
the Medical Doctors Syndicate in Alexandria, Egypt, and the
television will inevitably be tuned to Manar rather than the Qatar-
based front-runner, Al Jazeera.Manar never refers to Israel itself,
always the "Zionist entity." News of an announcement from the Israeli
Foreign Ministry will start, "The enemy foreign ministry
announced . . ."
Hassan Fadlallah, the station's young, clean-cut news director,
explained simply, "All Arab states consider Israel our enemy, so we
go ahead and call it that." This Ramadan, Manar was one of many
stations in the Arab world to broadcast a nightly Egyptian series
called "Knight Without a Horse," which the United States and Israel
protested vigorously after the producer announced that it was based
partly on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols, a late
19th-century Czarist forgery that detailed a supposed plan by Jews to
control the world, has been used to persecute Jews ever since.In the
vein of what some specialists believe to be a hardening anti-Jewish
mind-set in the Arab world, the news director suggested that reality
seemed to exceed the book, which he said he knew only by reputation.
"The strength of the Jewish lobby and its ability to control U.S.
policy," Mr. Fadlallah said. "That goes beyond what is in the book".