More Dangerous than Al Qaeda or Iraq...??
Party of God
By Jeffrey Goldberg
The New Yorker
Issue of 2002-10-14 and 21
Posted 2002-10-07
newyorker.com
This week in the magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg writes about the world's most successful, and perhaps most dangerous, terrorist organization, Hezbollah, or Party of God, which is based in Lebanon. Before September 11th, Hezbollah had murdered more Americans than any other terrorist group—two hundred and forty-one in the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut alone. Goldberg travelled to Lebanon to report his story, which will appear in the magazine in two parts. Here he talks about his trip, and about the threat of Hezbollah.
THE NEW YORKER: What is Hezbollah? Who are its members?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Hezbollah is a radical Lebanese Shiite movement, headquartered in Beirut, and backed by the governments of Iran and Syria. It is a political party—it has eleven seats in the Lebanese parliament—and it is a social-service group that runs hospitals and orphanages and the like throughout Lebanon. It is a movement, one expert said, that operates on four tracks simultaneously: the political, the social, the guerrilla, and the terrorist. From the perspective of the American government, though, Hezbollah's political activities and charity work are irrelevant; it is the terrorism that interests the American government. American officials consider Hezbollah to be one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world, one that has killed, over the past twenty years, more than three hundred Americans.
In your article, you describe Hezbollah as "the most successful terrorist organization in modern history." Do you mean that it is successful in the narrow sense of having pulled off acts of public violence, or in the achievement of certain political ends?
Unlike Al Qaeda, for instance, Hezbollah has succeeded, on two notable occasions, in achieving policy goals through the application of terrorist techniques. First, it drove American and French peacekeepers from Lebanon in the early nineteen-eighties, after a series of deadly bombings. (In one, two hundred and forty-one U.S. marines were murdered.) And two years ago, through guerrilla warfare and terrorism, it forced the Israeli Army to pull out from Israel's so-called security zone in southern Lebanon.
Does Hezbollah have a final goal, a point at which it would be satisfied? For example, certain groups in Ireland want all the Irish counties to be united.
Hezbollah is more ambitious than that. It wants to create in Lebanon an Islamic republic in the style of Iran; it wants to destroy Israel; and it wants to unite the Islamic world under its banner. The word "Hezbollah" means "Party of God," and its leaders do not think of their membership as Shiite alone. All righteous Muslims, in their formulation, are members of the Party of God.
You travelled to Lebanon to report this story, partly, you write, in the hope of interviewing one man: Hussayn al-Mussawi. Why him?
Mussawi was one of the original Hezbollah radicals—he helped to found the organization in the early nineteen-eighties, and he was involved in the kidnapping of Americans in the eighties. I wanted to talk to someone who had played a direct role in those events. I wanted to gauge whether he'd changed, and also to see what I could learn from him—both about the past and about the direction Hezbollah is taking. As it turns out, he didn't give me the chance to ask. As soon as Mussawi's aide heard that I would be asking his boss about his ties to Imad Mugniyah, the head of Hezbollah's terrorism branch and one of those responsible for the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, in 1983, he cut off discussions about an interview.
Hezbollah is based in Lebanon, and yet it seems beyond the control of the Lebanese government—if it can even be called a government. Who controls Lebanon? And is there any state that can be said to control Hezbollah?
The short answer to both questions is Syria. Syria is the power broker in Lebanon; it has occupied the country since the end of the civil war, and it is Hezbollah's patron. Syria's patronage, in fact, explains why Hezbollah was the only militia not forced to disarm when Lebanon was reunified. There is, of course, a government in Lebanon, split up among the country's many confessional groups—Christians, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and Druze, mainly. But national-security decisions are in the hands of the Syrians. That said, Hezbollah receives support, inspiration, financial aid, and weapons from Iran. It is not clear, though, if Hezbollah is completely controlled by Iran and Syria, or if it has the capacity and the will to act on its own.
One interesting question you explore is where, in the rhetoric and ideology of Hezbollah, hatred of Israel ends and frank anti-Semitism begins. Can you discuss this distinction? How unusual is Hezbollah in this respect? And how dangerous is it?
To most Israelis, and, indeed, to most Jews, the belief that Israel should be destroyed is itself a kind of anti-Semitism. In other words, the argument approaches anti-Semitism when it goes beyond, say, the rights and wrongs of Israeli policy with regard to the West Bank and Gaza, and becomes a question of whether the Jews constitute a nation that deserves a state at all. That said, something new is happening in the Arab world—namely, the melding of Arab nationalist-based anti-Zionism, anti-Jewish rhetoric from the Koran, and, most disturbingly, the antique anti-Semitic beliefs and conspiracy theories of European Fascism. Add Holocaust denial, which is also becoming popular in the Arab world, and you have a dangerous new ideology, an ideology that Hezbollah, despite its assertions that it has nothing against Jews as Jews, propounds quite vigorously.
What about anti-Americanism? At times, the people you spoke to seemed connected to American culture themselves, as with the young man who had lived in Boston and now produces music videos for Hezbollah. And yet they consider America their enemy.
Well, the music videos he produces are meant to encourage suicide bombings, so he is manipulating an American cultural form in pursuit of a distinctly non-American goal. The people I spoke to consider America their enemy, although, for the moment, Israel ranks first on their list. Hezbollah, if nothing else, is a Khomeinist organization, and so they believe in the arguments that Ayatollah Khomeini made against America at the time of the Iranian revolution.
There is some concern that the first act of a military conflict between Iraq and the United States might involve Hezbollah firing missiles into Israel. How real is this threat? Do you see a war between the U.S. and Iraq turning into a regional war?
The short answer is that anything is possible. The threat is real; the only question is whether American pressure on Hezbollah's sponsor, Syria, can keep Hezbollah from opening up a campaign to spark an Arab-Israeli war. Such a war would, among other things, divert the world's attention and hamstring the Bush Administration's effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Can you talk a little bit about your trip to Lebanon? You spoke with people who have, directly or indirectly, been involved in attacks on Americans. What precautions did you take? Were you given any guarantees of safety?
It's true that reporting in the Bekaa Valley presents certain challenges (and having the name Goldberg probably adds to them). I wasn't given any guarantees, but I took the usual precautions. I didn't let too many people know ahead of time where I was going, but I made sure that a handful of Lebanese friends knew my schedule. And I would try to assess the intent of someone who agreed to meet with me before actually meeting him. But, despite its hostility to Jews and Americans, I don't believe that Hezbollah currently believes it is in its best interest to kidnap reporters. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, to be sure, but it has become a slight bit more sophisticated over the past twenty years. |
