Hezbollah’s Continuing Threat
Sadly, Lynn is right. Those responsible for the Marine barracks attack continue to get away with their crimes and to plot new ones. Hezbollah is widely regarded in intelligence circles as the most dangerous Shia Muslim terrorist organization in the world. Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has said that “Hezbollah may be the A team of terrorists,” while “al Qaeda is actually the B team.”141
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, continues to breathe murderous threats against Americans and Israelis and to recruit and train jihadists while working closely with Tehran to prepare for the Islamic messiah known as the Mahdi to come and bring about the end of the world. Consider a mere sampling of Nasrallah’s statements:
“Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the Great Satan [America] is absolute. . . . Regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, ‘Death to America’ will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan: ‘Death to America.’”142
“We do not believe in multiple Islamic republics; we do believe, however, in a single Islamic world governed by a central government.”143
“Jerusalem and Palestine will not be regained with political games but with guns.”144
“America will remain the nation’s chief enemy and the greatest Satan of all. Israel will always be for us a cancerous growth that needs to be eradicated.”145
“We pledge to persevere on the path [our founders] had chosen, the path of Khomeini and Khamenei.”146
“I ask Almighty Allah . . . to make you the men who would clear the way for the Mahdi of this earth to establish divine justice.”147
Nasrallah, the oldest of nine children, was born on August 31, 1960, in an East Beirut slum. He was only eighteen when the Islamic Revolution unfolded in Iran. But he quickly proved to be a powerful orator, a magnetic leader, and a highly effective organizer. He helped found Hezbollah in 1982 with direct Iranian funding, training, and organizational assistance, and he helped build it into an enormous force with aid and ongoing strategic and tactical guidance from Iran.148
By 1983, Nasrallah and his team had already recruited and trained some two hundred jihadists and launched the Marine barracks attack, killing more Americans at one time than any terrorist had before that point. Within a decade, Nasrallah had at least two thousand trained jihadists at his command, though most were “reservists,” not full-time paid operatives.149 By the time of the Second Lebanon War against Israel in 2006, Hezbollah had between 6,000 and 10,000 trained jihadists in their network compared to 170,000 IDF forces and over 400,000 Israeli reservists, yet under Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah was widely perceived to have all but defeated the Israelis in that thirty-four-day showdown.150
Terrorist attacks by Hezbollah (sometimes spelled “Hizballah” or “Hizbullah”) have extended far beyond the suicide truck bombings of the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. According to the U.S. State Department’s 2008 Patterns of Global Terrorism report, Hezbollah was also behind the 1984 attack on the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut; the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, during which a U.S. Navy diver was murdered; the kidnapping, detention, and murder of Americans and other Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s; the 1992 attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Argentina; the 1994 attack on the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires; and the 2000 kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers and an Israeli noncombatant.”151
At least since 2004, Nasrallah’s forces have also been training members of the Iraqi “Mahdi Army”—the Shia terrorist group run by Moqtada al-Sadr—to attack and kill U.S., Coalition, and Iraqi military forces, as well as Iraqi civilians.152 Senior Iraqi and U.S. military and intelligence officials say that several thousand Mahdi Army insurgents have traveled to Lebanon to receive Hezbollah training, returning to Iraq as “the best-trained fighters in the Mahdi Army.”153 Boasted one twenty-six-year-old Mahdi Army fighter: “We have formal links with Hizbollah. We do exchange ideas and discuss the situation facing Shiites in both countries. . . . It is natural that we would want to improve ourselves by learning from each other. We copy Hizbollah in the way they fight and their tactics. We teach each other and we are getting better through this.”154
Now Nasrallah is building what he believes will be the ultimate fighting force to destroy the U.S. and Israel in the “end of days.” According to Hezbollah documents captured by Israeli soldiers during the 2006 war, Nasrallah has recruited forty-two thousand Muslim children ages eight to sixteen into a jihadist youth movement known as “the Imam al-Mahdi Scouts.” The children are immersed in understanding Shia eschatology—end times theology—about the coming of the Islamic Messiah known as the Mahdi. They study the lives and teachings of Nasrallah and current Iranian ayatollah Khamenei, whom they refer to as their “commander-leader.” They wear camouflage suits, paint their faces black, and swear an oath to participate in jihad against Jewish and Christian infidels. According to official organization documents, 120 members have already died in terrorist actions, including as suicide bombers. Once they turn seventeen, they join Hezbollah’s formal military units.155
Yet, inexplicably, despite Hezbollah’s history of killing Americans, Israelis, and Iraqis—and their clear plans to kill many more—the U.S. has done precious little to crush Hezbollah as it has sought to crush al Qaeda. Nor has it done much to bring Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah or his forces to justice. This has served to embolden Nasrallah, who is convinced that Allah is with him and that the Mahdi is on his way.
Chapter Seven
Christmas in Kabul
How the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to the rise of Osama bin Laden
1979 was not a good year for the CIA.
On February 14, Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped and killed by Radicals in Kabul. Aghanistan had been imploding for much of the previous year, with a bloody coup, assassinations, violent antigovernment demonstrations, and numerous bombings rocking the country. A pro-Soviet Marxist by the name of Nur Mohammad Taraki was newly in charge, having seized power in April of 1978.
Having effectively missed the Islamic Revolution in Iran just weeks earlier, the CIA’s Middle East analysts were busy trying to catch up and understand the implications of the fall of the shah and the rise of Khomeini. On the day Dubs died, Langley’s Near East Division was primarily focused on the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, which had just been seized for the first time by followers of Khomeini, though the Valentine’s Day siege ended after just a few hours.
The Soviet KGB’s Near East analysts, however, were fixed primarily on the rising chaos in Afghanistan. Yes, Taraki was a Soviet ally. Yes, he and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev had signed the Soviet-Afghan friendship treaty in December of 1978, binding the two countries together more formally than ever before. And yes, Taraki was a student of Stalinesque methods of torture and repression. But KGB analysts were watching their would-be puppet create anarchy along the Soviet southern border, not establish and maintain stability. In less than a year since coming to power, Taraki had already executed three thousand political prisoners, had another seventy thousand rotting in Afghan jails, and had allowed internecine warfare to leave nearly a hundred thousand civilians dead.156
“We Cannot Lose Afghanistan”
In addition to this horrific violence, Taraki had seized some 3 million acres of farmland, planning to redistribute it to those he deemed most worthy. Now Afghanistan’s Islamic clergy had been awakened to the Communist threat. They were railing against the godless atheists who were supporting Taraki and his brutal tactics, and they were mobilizing to take Taraki down.
The Kremlin was worried. Though Afghanistan was a poor, uneducated, and nearly resourceless country, it was strategically important to them. Why? Location, location, location. By fully controlling Afghanistan, the Soviets effectively controlled two borders of Iran, which gave the Soviet military an excellent launching pad to take over that oil-rich country and
dominate if not outright control the economically vital Persian Gulf region. With a Revolution already under way in Iran and the U.S. having just lost its key ally in the shah, the Soviets believed they might soon have an opportunity to seize Iran for themselves, and this was far too valuable a prize to allow a pawn like Nur Mohammad Taraki to lose.
Moreover, Moscow deeply feared the possibility of 40 million Muslims in the central Asian republics becoming radicalized if they saw Islamic Radicals successfully rolling over the Soviets and their puppets in Afghanistan. The stakes for the Kremlin were just too high, and on March 17, in a closed-door meeting of the Politburo, Soviet intelligence chief Yuri Andropov told senior officials point-blank: “We cannot lose Afghanistan.”157
Already Moscow was considering the steps necessary to maintain control of Afghanistan, including an invasion if necessary. They began moving some thirty thousand combat troops to the Afghan border as a precautionary measure. But analysts at Langley completely misread the situation. On March 23, 1979, the CIA’s top secret daily intelligence report to senior officials at the Carter White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department stated categorically: “The Soviets would be most reluctant to introduce large numbers of ground forces into Afghanistan.”158
In July, President Carter authorized a half million dollars in covert financial aid to the Islamic rebels known as the mujahadeen (wagers of jihad) to help them resist Taraki’s pro-Soviet regime. The funds were not for weapons. Rather, they were “for insurgent propaganda, and other psychological operations in Afghanistan; establishment of radio access to the Afghan population through third-country facilities; and the provision, either unilaterally or through third countries, of support to the Afghan insurgents, in the form of either cash or non-military supplies,” recalled Robert Gates, then a member of Carter’s National Security Council staff.159
The money was not nearly enough to overthrow Taraki or drive out Soviet influence. Six weeks later, the money was gone. But then again, it was really just a gesture of tepid support by the Carter administration, not the makings of a real anti-Soviet strategy. After all, neither the White House nor the CIA accurately saw the growing Soviet threat. On August 24, for example, a CIA report to the president stated that the majority of Agency analysts “continue to feel that the deteriorating situation does not presage an escalation of Soviet military involvement in the form of a direct combat role.”160
But even without American weapons, the mujahadeen were attacking Taraki’s forces with ever-increasing frequency, and the Soviets were clearly getting edgy. Then, on September 14, Taraki was assassinated. CIA Director Stansfield Turner finally wrote to the president that day, warning him that “the Soviet leaders may be on the threshold of a decision to commit their own forces to prevent the collapse of the regime and to protect their sizable stakes in Afghanistan.” But Turner concluded his memo by saying that though such a decision was being contemplated, it still seemed unlikely.161
Hafizullah Amin—Moscow’s man—took over after Taraki’s death and eagerly launched attacks against the mujahadeen, killing more than a thousand in just a few weeks. But by December, mujahadeen operations against Amin’s regime were growing more effective. The Soviets, afraid the newly installed Amin might soon be toppled, moved more than five thousand combat troops and several high-ranking Soviet military commanders into the theater to join the growing number of forces already pre-positioned along the border.
Yet on December 17, Director Turner told the National Security Council that that “the CIA does not see this as a crash buildup” or evidence of an imminent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.162 Even as late as December 19, the CIA’s top analysts concluded, “The pace of Soviet deployments does not suggest . . . urgent contingency.”163
On December 25, 1979—Christmas Day—eighty-five thousand Soviet combat troops invaded Afghanistan. Two days later, Soviet special forces assassinated Hafizullah Amin. They installed a new puppet and sent in another twenty thousand troops to crush the mujahadeen and secure the country for themselves once and for all.
Once again, President Carter and senior White House officials were stunned, as were the American people. Two nations, Iran and Afghanistan, had fallen within a short period of time. Radical Islam and Soviet imperialism were on the rise. The U.S. had been blindsided by both developments and seemed powerless to affect events.
In his State of the Union address delivered on January 23, 1980, the president captured the gravity of the situation. “The implications of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan could pose the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War,” a sober commander in chief told a joint session of Congress and the nation, adding that “the crises in Iran and Afghanistan” posed “a clear and present danger” to U.S. national security, in part because jihadists and Communists now threatened to control U.S. and Western access to Middle Eastern oil supplies.164
And still the CIA stonewalled. “The CIA not only missed the invasion,” noted New York Times intelligence reporter Tim Weiner, “it refused to admit that it had missed it. Why would anyone in his right mind invade Afghanistan, graveyard of conquerors for two thousand years?”165
Robert Gates, who in 1979 had just returned to the CIA after a five-year stint with the National Security Council, concurred. “Between summer and December, CIA’s Soviet analysts just couldn’t believe that the Soviets actually would invade in order to play a major part in ground combat operations. They saw all the reasons why it would be foolish for the Soviets to do so—the same reasons many in the Soviet leadership saw—and simply couldn’t accept that Brezhnev or the others might see the equation differently. The analysts thought that the Soviet leaders thought as they did. It was not the first or the last time they would make this mistake.”166
The Turning Point
Enter Osama bin Laden, a shy, lanky, awkward, underachieving twenty-two-year-old management student in Saudi Arabia.
When the Ayatollah Khomeini established in Iran the first Islamic republic in history and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and began killing Muslims en masse, few who knew bin Laden could ever have imagined him emerging one day as the undisputed leader of Sunni Islamic jihadists, the architect of the deadliest terrorist attacks in American history, and the charismatic hero of Radicals around the globe, be they Sunnis or Shias.
Without question, 1979 was the turning point. Bin Laden quickly became obsessed with both Khomeini’s Iran and the Soviet invasion. He examined their causes and their implications, and it was these two events that changed his destiny forever, leading him to conclude that Allah had chosen him for a very specific mission: to help destroy the Soviet Union and the United States and to reestablish a global Islamic caliphate on earth.
Born in late 1957 or early 1958 (the record is not entirely clear), Osama—which means “lion” in Arabic—was the seventeenth of at least fifty-four children born to Mohammed bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi who was the founder of one of the largest construction companies in the Middle East.167 Osama’s mother, Alia Ghanem, was a Syrian of Palestinian origin and met Mohammed in Jerusalem when he was doing renovations work on the Dome of the Rock. She was only fourteen years old when she married Mohammed, becoming one of his twenty-two wives.
Osama was the only child Alia had with Mohammed, and the boy received little if any attention from his father. When Osama was only four or five years old, Mohammed divorced Alia and forced the two to move out of his house—away from all of Osama’s brothers and sisters—into a small home a few blocks away. It was a traumatic moment for the little boy, now effectively an only child, being raised by a single mother in the rigid, antiwoman, fundamentalist culture of Saudi Arabia.
But it was about to be terribly compounded. Not long after the divorce, Osama learned that his father had died in a plane crash.168 Later, Osama’s brother Salem would also die in a horrific plane crash.169 Planes and death, it would seem, became inextricably intertwined in Osama’s psyche at a fairly young age.
Eventu
ally, his mother married again, this time to an employee of the bin Laden construction empire named Attas, and bore him three sons and a daughter, giving Osama new brothers and a sister to grow up with. But in June of 1967, as he approached his tenth birthday, Osama and the rest of the Arab world experienced another major trauma. They watched the tiny State of Israel devastate the Soviet-funded, -trained, and -armed military forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in just six days.
Why? the emotionally devastated Osama and his friends asked themselves. What was going wrong? Why was Allah turning his back on the Arab forces? They were not the only ones asking such questions, of course. It seemed as if everyone in the Islamic world was asking what was going wrong.
Joining the Muslim Brotherhood
The first time Osama bin Laden heard an answer that made sense to him seems to have been around 1972, in his freshman year of high school. It was then that he met a Syrian gym teacher who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic jihadist group founded in Egypt in 1928 by a charismatic radical Sunni cleric named Hassan al-Banna.170
Applying the teachings of al-Banna to the disaster of the Six-Day War, the gym teacher explained to bin Laden that the Arabs had turned their back on Allah by embracing the godless Soviets, so Allah was turning his back on the Arabs. Apostasy was crippling the Arab people. Only if the Arabs purified themselves, turned wholly and completely to following the teachings of the Qur’an, and engaged in holy war against the Jews and the Muslim apostates could they ever regain Allah’s favor and the glory that was once theirs.
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