Warriors of God

by Nicholas Blanford

  There is substance to these accusations. While supporting the Palestinian intifada was a moral and ideological duty, Hezbollah would not have intervened without the orders and logistical assistance of Iran. Hezbollah’s role in Iraq, albeit limited, testifies even more strongly to Iranian influence over the party. As a Lebanese resistance against Israel, Hezbollah had little motive to step into the Iraqi morass from 2003. Indeed, at the time of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, Hezbollah’s cadres were under strict instructions not to join the flow of volunteer militants streaming into Iraq to fight the American invaders. But the Iranians clearly had a use for Hezbollah operatives in training and organizing Iran-guided factions, and Hezbollah was obliged to obey.

  Hezbollah does not share the disorganized nihilism of al-Qaeda, but operates according to a carefully assessed, rationally applied long-term strategy that is principally directed toward the struggle against Israel. Gratuitous attacks against American or other Western targets around the world have no practical value for Hezbollah, as they would only serve to raise the ire of the international community and threaten to disrupt the flow of funds into the party’s coffers. But Hezbollah’s “global reach” is not only a useful mechanism for generating funds. It also furnishes the party with a tool of deterrence against its enemies. If Hezbollah were to come under serious attack, such as the assassination of a top leader, or to face an existential threat, it has an international infrastructure in situ to facilitate reprisal operations.

  In the immediate aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, it was speculated that Hezbollah could be the target of the next phase in the war on terrorism. When I met Nasrallah in his headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs in July 2003, it was evident that he and his advisers had been mulling that possibility.

  “Let’s talk a little bit about the past,” Nasrallah said. “Can anyone come up with one example where Hezbollah targeted American interests in the world, civilian or military, diplomatic or economic? Such a thing never happened.”

  What about the 1983 bombings of the U.S. marine barracks and U.S. embassy? The kidnapping of American citizens in the late 1980s?

  “Those events took place in the civil war … and at that time Hezbollah did not even exist,” Nasrallah replied. “If Hezbollah has not targeted American interests until now despite the fact that Hezbollah’s existence has been very difficult [for] twenty years, especially [because of] Israel … [then where] is the justification for such accusations? If Hezbollah has the assumed ability [to strike globally] but has not used it, despite twenty years of war, when is it going to use it?”

  What if Israel or the United States launched a war against Hezbollah that threatened the organization’s very existence? Would it retaliate globally?

  “In such a case, everyone has a right to defend its rights, its existence, its people, and its country by any means, and at any time and in any place,” Nasrallah replied. “In addition to this fact, there are many people who love Hezbollah and support Hezbollah throughout the world. Some may not sit idly by [if Hezbollah comes under attack].”

  The point Nasrallah wanted to make was in that final sentence, of course. His denial of “external branches” notwithstanding, Nasrallah was implying that Hezbollah had the potential to stage attacks globally and might do so if it felt sufficiently threatened.

  “Two Great Arab Zaim”

  When I met Nasrallah in 2003, the Hezbollah leader was at the apex of his popularity, hailed by friends and acknowledged by enemies as one of the most credible leaders in the Middle East and beyond compare with any other Islamist leader in the region.

  He lived in Hezbollah’s security quarter—the sealed-off quadrant of bland concrete high-rise buildings in the heart of Beirut’s southern suburbs. Although security surrounding the Hezbollah leader was tight, he still appeared in public and attended meetings with politicians. When my interview request was granted, all I had to do was drive my car up to the entrance of the security quarter, where a guard in a black uniform with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder checked my press ID and then slid open the heavy steel gate, allowing me through. My car was not searched, to my surprise, and I was told to park in the ground-floor garage of a tall apartment building. Security measures were limited to passing through an airport-style metal detector and having to briefly surrender my watch, wallet, notebook, pens, and tape recorder. Accompanied by security staff, I ascended in a small elevator to an apartment on the fourth floor and was ushered into a cozy living room fitted with thick velvet drapes over the windows and Louis XV–style armchairs and sofas. Nasrallah joined us minutes later.

  Just short of his forty-forth birthday, the Hezbollah leader exuded a calm confidence, having long ago overcome an initial awkwardness in dealing with the media when he was elected secretary general in 1992. In conversation, he was polite, good-humored, soft-spoken, and quick to smile, his lisp further softening his image. He was dressed in his customary brown cloak and black turban, the color denoting his status as a sayyed, or descendant of the Prophet. His full beard had expanded in size over the previous decade and was turning a steely gray, a sign of aging that Nasrallah probably welcomed, as it conferred upon him a certain gravitas that his youth, and his chubby face, otherwise belied.

  Nasrallah saved the passionate outbursts for his public performances, whipping up sentiment among Hezbollah’s cadres and the party’s supporters with powerful speeches that he invariably laced with quips and bons mots to balance his thunder and fiery rhetoric. Not only his audiences hung on his every word. Analysts closely studied his speeches and interviews, parsing his comments for insights and hints as to Hezbollah’s intentions.

  He developed a reputation among Israelis as someone whose word could be trusted and whose promises would be kept, which did not always bode well for Israel. Senior Israeli army officers admitted to a grudging admiration for Nasrallah, an enemy to be treated with wary respect. “I must say that the way in which he leads his organization fascinates me,” said Major General Amos Malka, the IDF’s military intelligence chief in 2001. “He combines strategic thinking, perfect control, tactical work, and use of the psychological element. He is definitely a fascinating figure for any intelligence agent.”5

  In mid-2004, Nasrallah struck up a secret and close relationship with Rafik Hariri, who was then caught in a bitter rivalry with President Lahoud and whose relations with the Syrian regime were deteriorating.

  Politically, Nasrallah and Hariri were poles apart. The former was committed to an unrelenting struggle against Israel and obedience to the wali al-faqih. The latter was a businessman-philanthropist of boundless ambition who regarded the Arab-Israeli conflict as a distraction to the goal of rebuilding Lebanon and reviving its pre–civil war role as the financial and services center for the Middle East. Yet the two men possessed many similarities. Both were devout Muslims from south Lebanon who shared a strong sense of humor, who had suffered the tragedy of losing a son, and whose achievements had cast them far above the ranks of their political contemporaries in Lebanon.

  They met at night at least twice a week at different secure locations in Hezbollah’s “security quarter” in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The meetings would begin at eleven o’clock or midnight and continue often until the early hours of the morning, and the conversations included regional issues such as the unfolding chaos in Iraq, worsening Sunni-Shia tensions, and the plight of the Palestinians. “They didn’t talk to each other like one was a Lebanese prime minister and the other a Lebanese party leader. They used to talk to each other in the manner of two great Arab zaim6 whose responsibilities covered the region,” recalls Mustafa Nasr, Hariri’s go-between with Hezbollah, who, along with Hussein Khalil, Nasrallah’s top political adviser, was the only other person to attend the meetings.

  They found they had much in common, and, according to Mustafa Nasser and other advisers to Hariri, a close personal relationship blossomed between the two leaders. “Rafik Hariri trusted Hassan Nasrallah and liked h
im. Nasrallah similarly liked and respected him. This talk expressed itself in the secrets they used to tell each other. Rafik Hariri used to say to me, ‘I don’t trust Lebanese political leaders except for Hassan Nasrallah,’ ” Nasr recalls.

  Their conversations occurred during a period of political turbulence in Lebanon as opposition steadily grew against Syria’s viselike grip over its smaller neighbor. At the beginning of September 2004, ignoring the wishes of the Lebanese opposition and international warnings, Syria forced the Lebanese parliament to vote for an amendment to the constitution allowing a three-year extension of Lahoud’s six-year presidential mandate, which was due to expire the following month. On September 2, a day before the parliamentary vote, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1559, which called for a “free and fair” presidential election; for “all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon,” a reference to the fifteen thousand Syrian troops still on Lebanese soil; for the “extension of the control of the government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory,” which chiefly meant the deployment of Lebanese troops up to the Blue Line; and for “the disbanding of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias.” The last clause referred to Hezbollah and Palestinian armed groups.

  Despite initial intelligence cooperation in the wake of 9/11, U.S.-Syrian relations had steadily declined since then, especially during and after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that began in March 2003. Syria had turned a blind eye toward the flow of volunteer Arab fighters slipping across its border with Iraq, and also continued to host and support militant Palestinian groups in Damascus and to provide backing for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

  In an attempt to ameliorate growing international pressure, Bashar al-Assad had shown some flexibility in a resumption of peace talks with Israel. In December 2003, he said in an interview with The New York Times that he was willing to restart peace talks with Israel immediately. In the following ten months, he repeated the same message at least five times, in public and through intermediaries. In Israel, even senior military officers began advocating a renewed peace process with Syria. In August 2004, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, then the IDF chief of staff, dropped a bombshell by declaring that Israel was strong enough militarily that it could hand the Golan Heights back to Syria. Israel had long argued that the retention of the strategic heights was vital for the defense of the north.

  Sharon, however, ruled out negotiations with Syria, insisting that Damascus would have to end its support for radical Palestinian groups and Hezbollah before he would consider sitting at the same table with the Syrians. In fact, Sharon was more than happy with the status quo in which Israel faced no pressure to yield the Golan Heights to the beleaguered regime in Damascus. One of Sharon’s top advisers related to me an incident in a cabinet meeting in 2004 when Silvan Shalom, then the foreign minister, suggested that the time was opportune to launch operations to destabilize Syria and bring down the Assad regime. “Sharon replied, ‘No way,’ ” recalls the Israeli adviser. “He said that ‘this is the best situation for us. If we get rid of Assad, one of two things will happen. Either the [Sunni Islamist] Muslim Brotherhood will take over, or Syria will become a democracy—and then we will have to make peace with it.’ ”

  In Lebanon, Resolution 1559 helped deepen the political rift between supporters and opponents of the Syrian-backed regime and complicated Hariri’s hope that the relationship with Damascus could be modified from one of dominance and subordination to a mutually respectful partnership. Resolution 1559’s clauses relating to Hezbollah’s arms and freedom of action in the south put the party on the defensive even as Hariri attempted to persuade Nasrallah of the necessity in redefining relations between Lebanon and Syria. Hariri allegedly reassured Nasrallah that despite his objections to Hezbollah’s continued armed status, he would not seek to disarm the group by force. “My two hands cannot sign a decision by the Lebanese government for a war against Hezbollah,” Hariri told Nasrallah, according to Mustafa Nasr. Instead, Hariri would convince international opinion to allow the Lebanese to resolve the issue of Hezbollah’s arms, irrespective of the demands of Resolution 1559.

  Nasrallah must have recognized that Hariri’s preference for compromise over confrontation was an asset that could be exploited to Hezbollah’s benefit. Hariri was respected internationally; his views were received sympathetically and carried weight. In January 2005, Hariri used his influence with Jacques Chirac, the French president and a close friend, to keep Hezbollah’s name off a European list of terrorist organizations. Nasrallah appreciated Hariri’s intervention with Chirac and reciprocated by promising to broker a secret meeting in Damascus between himself, Hariri, and Bashar al-Assad to resolve their differences. A senior Hezbollah figure was in Damascus making the arrangements on the morning of February 14, 2005, the day that Rafik Hariri died, along with twenty-one other people, when a massive truck bomb ripped through his motorcade on the seafront corniche in downtown Beirut.

  “Beirut on Fire”

  With Syria instantly blamed for Hariri’s murder, tens of thousands of Lebanese protesters gathered in central Beirut for a series of demonstrations to demand an end to Syrian domination. In less than two months, international pressure and the extraordinary “independence intifada” rallies in Beirut, which peaked on March 14 when some one million people gathered in Martyrs’ Square, had brought down the pro-Syrian government and forced Damascus to withdraw its troops from Lebanese soil.

  Syria’s disengagement from Lebanon also deprived Hezbollah of the political cover it had enjoyed since 1990. With Syria no longer directly pulling the strings in Lebanon, Hezbollah had little choice but to become more politically engaged to safeguard its own interests. It was the continuation of a process that had begun fifteen years earlier, when Hezbollah’s leadership understood that with the end of the civil war and the advent of the Pax Syriana, the party could no longer pursue its anti-Israel agenda in isolation from its environment. With the Syrians gone, Hezbollah was compelled to take another step into the morass of Lebanese politics. It consolidated an alliance with the Amal movement, its erstwhile rival for the Shia vote, and in February 2006 signed a memorandum of understanding with Michel Aoun, a once-vociferous anti-Syrian Christian leader who spent the 1990s in exile in Paris before returning to Lebanon in the wake of the Hariri assassination. Aoun, who had his eyes on the presidency, was shunned by the newly formed March 14 coalition, named after the date of the anti-Syrian rally in Beirut, but he calculated that allying with Hezbollah could bolster his presidential hopes. Following the May-June 2005 general election, which was dominated by the March 14 bloc, Mohammed Fneish became Hezbollah’s first cabinet minister when he was handed the electricity portfolio in the new government headed by Fouad Siniora, Rafik Hariri’s long-serving finance minister.

  It was a profoundly unsettling period for Hezbollah, and especially for Syria’s staunch allies in Lebanon, who kept low profiles in the aftermath of the Beirut Spring and the onset of a UN investigation into Hariri’s murder. But in the south, the Islamic Resistance diligently pursued its war preparations irrespective of the seismic political shift in Beirut.

  Hezbollah and Israel had conducted a prisoner swap in January 2004 in which Elhanan Tannenbaum, the Israeli reservist colonel and would-be drug smuggler, along with the bodies of the three soldiers abducted from the Shebaa Farms in October 2000, were exchanged for twenty-three Lebanese detainees, four hundred Palestinian prisoners, and twelve other Arabs. Among the detainees were Mustafa Dirani and Sheikh Abdel-Karim Obeid. Israel also agreed to repatriate the bodies of fifty-nine Lebanese resistance fighters, provide information on twenty-four Lebanese who went missing during Israel’s 1982 invasion, and hand over maps of land mines planted in south Lebanon during the years of occupation.

  The swap deal included a follow-up component in which Hezbollah promised to try to find definitive proof of the whereabouts of Ron Arad, the missing Israeli aviator. In exchange for concrete information, Israel would release the last Lebanese detainees,
including Samir Kuntar, a Druze who was serving a 542-year jail sentence for killing an Israeli policeman and three members of a family during a commando raid on northern Israel in 1979.

  Whether Hezbollah knows what happened to Arad or genuinely lost track of him in 1988 remains unclear. By April 2005, fifteen months after the prisoner exchange, no progress had been made in concluding the second part of the deal. Nasrallah then declared that it was unacceptable for Kuntar and the other Lebanese detainees to remain in jail just because Hezbollah had so far been unable to discover Arad’s whereabouts. “If we fail in the negotiations, the result of which, no matter what, will be known very soon … we will have only one option,” he said, referring to kidnapping more Israeli soldiers.

  Hezbollah exercised that option seven months later. In the early afternoon of November 21, the Islamic Resistance launched a coordinated multipronged assault against Israeli positions in Ghajar village and the adjacent Shebaa Farms in what was the largest and most complex operation since the October 2000 abduction of the three soldiers. Under cover of a heavy mortar and rocket barrage against Israeli outposts, some twenty members of Hezbollah’s Special Forces unit traveling in jeeps, all-terrain vehicles, and a motorcycle penetrated the Israel-controlled southern neighborhood of Ghajar. But the Israelis had received intelligence of an impending kidnapping operation and had redeployed the troops in Ghajar. An Israeli corporal armed with a sniper’s rifle, who was fortuitously placed along the route used by the Hezbollah men to infiltrate the village, shot and killed four of the attackers, foiling the raid. The operation was notable for being the first time that Hezbollah employed the tandem warhead RPG-29, the more modern version of the ubiquitous RPG-7, which it fired in large numbers at Merkava tanks and armored personnel carriers at a compound just east of Ghajar. One Merkava was struck seven times by antitank missiles and RPGs, but the crew survived unscathed. After the assault team pulled out of Ghajar, Israeli troops entered the northern third of the village and blew up the old bomb shelter that Hezbollah had used as a command post. Israeli Air Force jets bombed around thirteen Hezbollah positions in the southern border district, the largest air strikes since May 2000.