“Hezbollah” and “Terror” have always been twin children of their parent Iran. Terror has been its principal weapon.
Throughout the 1980s Hezbollah kidnapped more than 200 foreign nationals in Lebanon, most of them Americans or western Europeans (including Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy).
It organized the hijacking of civilian aircraft and more or less pioneered the idea of suicide bombings against American and French targets, killing almost 1,000 people, including 241 US marines in Beirut and 58 French paratroopers.
Since 1984 Iran has created branches of Hezbollah in more than 20 countries. None has equalled the success of the Lebanese branch, which until recently enjoyed something akin to cult status among Arabs, including non-Muslims, because of the way it stood up to Israel.
According to Naim Kassem, Hezbollah’s number two, the party has an annual budget of £279m, much of which comes from businesses set up by the movement. These include a bank, a mortgage co-operative, an insurance company, a travel agency specialising in pilgrimages to Muslim holy places, several hotels, a chain of supermarkets and a number of urban bus and taxi companies. In its power base in southern Lebanon, particularly south Beirut and the Bekaa valley, it is possible for a visitor to spend a whole week without stepping outside a Hezbollah business unit: the hotel he checks into, the restaurant he eats in, the taxi that takes him around, the guide who shows him the sights and the shop where he buys souvenirs all belong to the party.
Hezbollah is a state within the Lebanese state. It controls some 25% of the national territory. Almost 400,000 of Lebanon’s estimated 4m inhabitants live under its control. It collects its own taxes with a 20% levy, known as “khoms”, on all incomes. It runs its own schools, where a syllabus produced in Iran is taught at all levels. It also runs clinics, hospitals, social welfare networks and centres for orphans and widows.
Hezbollah also has its own media including a satellite television channel, “Al-Manar” (the lighthouse), which is watched all over the Arab world, four radio stations, newspapers and magazines plus a book publishing venture. The online version of Al-Manar is hosted in India (the country that bans opposition opinion of its minority militant Muslims).
The party has its own system of justice based on sharia and operates its own police force.
The backbone of all that is Hezbollah’s militia, a fighting force of about 8,000 men, trained and armed with the latest weapons by Iran and Syria. Of these about 2,000 men represent an elite force under the direct command of the party’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, a former pupil of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the man who founded Iran’s Islamic republic. But the party also claims more than 30,000 reservists. The party’s crown jewels, however, are an estimated 14,000 rockets and missiles shipped in from Iran over the past six years. Most of these are modified versions of the Soviet-designed Katyusha. The party also has some Chinese-made Silkworm missiles for special use in naval warfare.
Why has Tehran decided to play its Hezbollah card now? Part of the answer lies in Washington’s decision last May to reverse its policy towards Iran by offering large concessions on its nuclear program. Tehran interpreted US concessions on its nuclear program as a sign of weakness. Ahmadinejad believes that his strategy to drive the “infidel” out of the Islamic heartland cannot succeed unless Arabs accept Iran’s (his) leadership – does this sound strangely familiar to the way Hitler came into power?.
Saddam Hussein had a vision for the Middle East. His was secular and military rule of the Middle East with himself as the Supreme Dictator. Ahmadinejad, like Hitler, wants to wipe Israel, and all Israelis, out of existance. His is a war of religion and theocracy, with himself as Supreme Iman.
Saddam Hussein’s vision of the Middle East has been crushed by the US-led forces in Iraq. Now the mini war that is taking place between Israel and Hezbollah is, in fact, a proxy war modelled after Iran’s vision for the Middle East.
And yet in Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Moscow, Montreal, Sydney, London, Switzerland, Copenhagen, and Berlin thousands of people are openly marching in support of Hezbollah – of Terror and Death. Try as I might this is something I cannot understand. These people are desirous of Islamofascism.
Hezbollah, Terror, Iran, kidnap, hijack, suicide bomb, Arab, Muslim, Israel
