Hizbullah's Role in Attacks Against U.S. and British Forces in Iraq Part 2.

 

By Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan D. Halevi

 

2nd part of 2

 

Hizbullah’s Ideological Platform

 

The ideological platform of Hizbullah in Iraq is predicated on the Shiite faith and the path of Imam Khomeini. It sets forth three fundamental principles – “resistance, Jihad, liberation.” The major avowed goal is the removal of the “occupation” from Iraq. “From the very first minute our objective was to defeat the occupation within Iraq and subsequently expel it from Iraq, humiliated and defeated….The enemy will witness in the future things that will cause him great pain and the loss of many soldiers…that he has largely assembled from the back streets of New York, Texas and Hollywood. We swear by Allah that we have chosen this path and we will not abandon it until these invaders have been defeated.” This statement appeared on the group’s official Internet site in an announcement regarding the organization’s objectives.

 

Another announcement on February 13, 2008, was devoted to the memory of Imad Mughniyeh, the head of Hizbullah’s military wing who was assassinated in Damascus on the previous day. “We the Hizbullah Brigades in Iraq have sworn to avenge his death and continue on the path of struggle and Jihad until the removal of the Americans from the region,” the “liberation of Palestine,” and “the restoration of dignity and sovereignty to the Arab and Islamic homeland.”¹⁷ The Hizbullah Brigades also announced that any security agreement that would be signed between the Iraqi government and the American forces would be considered null and void and that Iraq had to adopt a policy that defined the United States as a threat to the region, defended Islam, and prevented any foreign control over its natural resources.¹⁸

 

Hizbullah has never concealed its support and sympathy for terror organizations operating in Iraq. When the Fourth Congress in Support of the Resistance was convened in Beirut on March 30, 2006, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah supported “resistance” in Iraq and Palestine.¹⁹ Hizbullah television station Al Manar provided ongoing coverage, surveying the terror attacks that the Hizbullah Brigades were carrying out in Iraq.²⁰

 

 

Summary and Implications

 

Hizbullah’s deep involvement in terror throughout Iraq demonstrates that the organization does not view itself purely as a Lebanese factor with national and local objectives, but as an arm of Iran in spreading the Shiite Islamic Revolution throughout the Middle East (the Shiite crescent) and in the long term throughout the entire world. Over the last few decades, Hizbullah branches have appeared in several Arab countries with substantial Shiite populations like Bahrain, Kuwait, and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The military arm of Hizbullah, as the British Home Office Secretary termed it, is a dexterous arm of terror that is spreading its tentacles to various countries in the West for the purpose of fundraising, recruitment and establishing a network of sleeper terror cells to be activated by Tehran at the appropriate time.

 

The distinction between the military wing of Hizbullah and the political or social wing is an artificial distinction that is fundamentally flawed. Hizbullah views all wings of its organization as parts of a single body that are intended to achieve the identical strategic goal of spreading Islam and waging constant war against the apostates until their defeat. Decision-making on the military level is the purview of Hizbullah leaders headed by Hassan Nasrallah. The major objective of Hizbullah’s social-educational network, as Nasrallah’s deputy Naim Qassem has testified, is to create a new generation that will follow the path of the Imam Hussein, by “yearning for death in the love for Allah and craving for Jihad in the path of Islam.”²¹ In other words, the educational network of Hizbullah serves as an assembly line for the brainwashing of the younger generation to make them fit for their role as fighters prepared to serve as live bombs and suicide terrorists in the struggle against the apostates.

 

Western countries as well as international organizations have been collaborating with Hizbullah front groups and economic entities. Western aid funds help reinforce the Hizbullah infrastructure in Lebanon that is attempting to take over the country by exploiting the protection of democracy, in order to establish an extremist Islamic Shiite regime, similar to Iran, that will abolish democracy.

 

Hizbullah’s Jihad al-Bina (Jihad for development) construction company is in contact with European bodies and it receives funding, inter alia, from Lebanese municipalities that are supported by the West. This organization was apparently a partner in the establishment of Hizbullah’s clandestine military communications infrastructure and other projects set up in the context of Hizbullah’s attempts to establish the institutions of a “state within a state” prior to its final takeover of the Lebanese government.

 

Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan D. Halevi is a senior researcher of the Middle East and radical Islam at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He is a co-founder with Brian Falkenstein of the Orient Research Group Ltd. and is a former advisor to the Policy Planning Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

 

Notes

 [1]. Ali Nourizadeh, “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to Train Iraqi Shiite Youths,” Asharq Alawsat, August 18, 2008.

2. http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/07/02/britain.Hizbullah/index.html

3. Refers to the organization Asaib al Haq (The “Bands of the Righteous”) and Hizbullah Brigades in Iraq that split off from the Mahdi Army.

4. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/15/america/NA-US-Iran-Iraq.php

5. Yaakov Katz, “"Hizbullah Operatives Caught in Baghdad,” Jerusalem Post, August 1, 2008, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1215331169189&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

6. Matthew Levitt and David Schenker, “Who Was Imad Mughniyeh?” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, PolicyWatch #1340, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2716

7. Ali Nouri Zadeh, “Imad Mughniyeh: Hezbollah’s Phantom,” Asharq Alawsat, August 11, 2006, http://www.asharqalawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=3&id=5964

8. http://www.mnf-Iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21764&Itemid=128

9. http://www.mnf-Iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&lang=arabic&id=21218

10. http://www.mnf-Iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21786&Itemid=128

11. http://www.mnf-Iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13845&Itemid=128

12. http://www.mnf-Iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&lang=arabic&id=18280,

http://www.mnf-Iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13664&Itemid=128, http://www.mnf-Iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13790&Itemid=128, http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/Petraeus-Testimony20070910.pdf

13. http://www.mnf-Iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&lang=arabic&id=17514

14. http://www.mnf-Iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&lang=arabic&id=17281,

http://www.mnf-Iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&lang=arabic&id=14275

15. http://www.mnf-Iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13542&Itemid=128

16. http://www.d-sunnah.org/forum/showthread.php?t=7733. The website of the Hizbullah Brigades in Iraq operated at http://www.alaseb.com and is currently unavailable.

17. http://www.alaseb.com

18. http://lahdah.com/vb/showthread.php?t=73699

19. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/world_news/newsid_4860000/4860280.stm

20. http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=40231&language=ar,

http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=42458,

http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=40002,

http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=40091,

http://www.almanar.com.lb/newssite/EpisodeDetails.aspx?EpisodeID=114&language=ar,

http://www.almanar.com.lb/newssite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=36503&language=ar

21. http://www.naimkassem.net/books/hizb/jihad.htm#3