Word: hizballah
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...course, Sunnis and Shi'ites do sometimes cooperate. Ali Mohammed, a former Green Beret who pleaded guilty to being an al-Qaeda agent, testified in 2000 that he had provided security for a meeting in Sudan between Hizballah security chief Imad Mughniyah and Osama bin Laden and that Hizballah had provided al-Qaeda with explosives training. If there was cooperation, it seems to have been short-lived; the two groups certainly aren't allies. Lebanese police in April arrested nine men that Hizballah officials claim were al-Qaeda agents plotting to assassinate their leader. In a recently published interview with...
...nasty crew. Consider what prompted Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah to arrange for the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers on July 12, which is what led to the current crisis. Nasrallah says he wants Israel to release from prison Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese citizen who was part of a Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) cell that in 1979 arrived by boat in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya and invaded the apartment of the Haran family. Smadar Haran hid in the attic with her daughter Yael, 2, and was so intent on stifling the girl's crying that she accidentally suffocated...
While it can be emotionally satisfying to see Nasrallah and his ilk set back, that doesn't qualify Hizballah as an appropriate target for U.S. efforts against terrorism. Robert Baer, a former CIA covert officer who tracked Hizballah, says that by the late 1990s, the CIA was watching the group to see if it might resume violence against the U.S., but it never did. Eventually, within the agency, he says, "they just weren't important." That U.S. authorities in 2002 convicted a ring in North Carolina for raising money for Hizballah by smuggling cigarettes doesn't mean the group...
Bush two weeks ago likened Hizballah militants to the terrorists who last summer bombed London subways. That implies that Hizballah has the same mind-set and agenda as the global jihadis of al-Qaeda and its imitator groups, but they are not the same. Hizballah's military mission is principally to defend Lebanon from Israeli intrusion and secondarily to destroy the Jewish state. As an Islamist group under Iran's sway, Hizballah would like to see Islamic rule in Lebanon. The global jihadis think much bigger. They are Salafists, radicals who seek to revive the original and, to their minds...
Although Washington includes Hizballah as a war-on-terrorism target, the U.S., of course, isn't actually fighting the group; it is Israel that is paying that price in blood and treasure. Still, by taking the approach it has, the U.S. bears different costs. For one thing, Washington may not ultimately be serving as Israel's best friend. It has become clear that the Israelis didn't expect their offensive to escalate into a war so costly and messy. If Washington were playing its conventional, pre-9/11 role--calling for moderation from all parties--the Israeli officials could...