Conflicted S4 E17: Hezbollah: Rise of the Islamic Resistance

Thomas: Hello, and welcome back to Conflicted. I'm Thomas Small, and with me today is my unstoppable co-host, Aimen Dean.

Aimen: Nothing can stop me, Thomas. Nothing.

Thomas: Nothing can stop you, Aimen. Nothing at all. Aimen, today on Conflicted, we're celebrating an important anniversary. Well, not celebrating, really.

It has now been 40-ish years since the formation of the Lebanese Militant Group designated a terrorist group by most international authorities, militants, politicians, resistance fighters. Take your pick of how you want to define them. I'm talking about Hezbollah.

Aimen: Ah, yes. My old frenemies, Hezbollah.

Thomas: After looking at the granddaddy of Shia Islamism last week, Iran, now we are embarking on two episodes looking at their younger sibling, Hezbollah, their proxy on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean in the beautiful but tragic country of Lebanon.

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How was Hezbollah formed out of the chaos of the Lebanese Civil War? How did it establish itself as a state within a state in Lebanon? And what is its malign influence doing to the country? Let's find out.

So, really Aimen, I think over the next two episodes, we'll be asking the question of how an Islamist Vanguard movement evolves to achieve its power aims, because that's what we're dealing with in Hezbollah.

In our episodes on the Muslim Brotherhood, we talked about Sayyid Qutb’s idea that what was needed to further the aims of a worldwide Islamic revolution was a militant vanguard overcoming all the obstacles put in the revolution's way, obstacles like democracy, obstacles like capitalism, obstacles like secularism, overcoming them all, paving the way, or really forcing the way to an Islamic state.

Do you think that's a fair estimation of Hezbollah as a militant vanguard according to Sayyid Qutb's model?

Aimen: Well, the short answer is yes, and the slightly longer answer, I would let the current leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah answer this in a speech he gave in 1984, so, long time ago.

Thomas: A long time ago, 1984. He wasn't the leader of Hezbollah then. He was the deputy leader. But in 1984, what did Hassan Nasrallah say?

Aimen: He said, “The aim of our movement is not to make Lebanon an Islamic Republic. The aim of our movement is to make Lebanon part of the greater Islamic Republic led by the absent Imam, and until his return by his Deputy Imam Ayatollah Khomeini.”

Thomas: Well, there you have it. I mean, that's pretty clear, isn't it? Hezbollah is part of Iran's larger Islamic revolution and looks to the supreme leader in Tehran as its marja.

Explain Aimen, what a marja is. All Shia are expected to have a marja, and in Hezbollah's case, their marja is the supreme leader of Iran.

Aimen: Yes, indeed. I mean, the Shia faith dictates on its followers that each one must follow a marja. And a marja should be one of a handful of grand Ayatollahs that are spread around the world, especially in Qom in Iran, Najaf in Iraq, and Jabal Amil in Lebanon. So, a marja is basically the ultimate religious authority.

Thomas: Yeah. It literally means something like reference. It's the reference.

Aimen: Yes.

Thomas: The person to whom you refer for religious rulings, for advice, for guidance in religious matters, and certainly following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, you look to the marja for political guidance as well. This is part of the transformation of Shia Islam that the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers affected.

Aimen: Oh, yeah. I mean this is exactly what happened because actually sometimes they say Sistani in Iraq is the religious marja, but Khamenei in Iran is the political marja.

Thomas: That’s right. And with that in mind, we want to tell the story of Hezbollah as objectively as we can because a lot is said about Hezbollah, even though it's not really that murky of an organisation.

Nonetheless, people don't really know the history of Hezbollah, the true story, where it came out of, how it formed, and also, and most importantly, how it has evolved along with events to maintain the torch of Islamic resistance, the torch of attacking the enemies of the revolution in Lebanon, specifically Israel, but beyond Israel, all other enemies of the Islamic Revolution.

And before we start the story of Hezbollah itself, we have to take the listener back to the world that we covered last season in our episode on Lebanon. And dear listener, we are going to do our best not to repeat ourselves. In fact, we really can't repeat ourselves because we've got too much to cover in these next two episodes.

So, if you haven't listened to our episode on Lebanon, you really just should stop this episode and listen to it.

Here, I'm simply going to give a quick historical recap just so everyone is on the same page. In 1943, Lebanon becomes independent of France. And in the new constitution, all the different sectarian groups in Lebanon received a part of the new Lebanese government.

The Shia got the speakership of parliament, by far a weaker political role than either the presidency, which was given to the Maronite Christians or the premiership, the prime ministership, which was given to the Sunnis.

Now, the Shia were poor and underdeveloped, generally speaking, compared to the other groups in Lebanon. Most of them lived in the south, some lived in the northern Beqaa Valley, but they were more or less a rural impoverished people.

However, in the 50s, 60s and 70s, Shia birth rates exploded along with development of the country, and this coincided with their increasing politicisation.

Aimen: We have to understand, Thomas, that there were multiple factors in the politicisation of the Shia population in Lebanon. Apart, of course, from what you mentioned in terms of the poverty, lack of development and education that they have suffered from, for the previous decades.

There were already about 200,000 Palestinian refugees living in the south of Lebanon, the natural location of where the Shia lived. And add to this, the fact that the Palestinians at that time were mostly leftist, proto-communist, and they were supported by the Soviet Union, as well as many other leftist organisations across Europe and the Middle East.

So, the Shia youth were attracted to these leftist Marxist ideals that were first set up by the Palestinian militias in the south of Lebanon in the 60s. And then when Black September happened in Jordan, and the Palestinians were expelled from Jordan, president Nassar of Egypt did the worst possible thing before he died. He relocated Arafat to PLO and all the worst possible Palestinian fighters to Lebanon.

And that attracted more and more Shia Lebanese to join the militias, to be trained with them in order to fight against Israel. That's the aim, and that's the goal at that time.

Thomas: That's right. So, from a kind of more or less left wing bent, starting in the 60s, the late 60s, the sectarian, which is to say religious politicisation of the Shia in Lebanon, really began in earnest.

And to explain this, we actually have to go to Iraq. Now Aimen, we have to make a pact with ourselves here not to get too bogged down in the inner workings of the Iraqi Lebanese Shia nexus.

And especially not to get too bogged down in the life story of a very important family knowledge of which is key to understanding the genesis of Hezbollah. And of course, Aimen, I'm talking about the family of the al-Sadr.

Aimen: Yes.

Thomas: A very key Shia family with connections initially in Lebanon, but deep in Najaf in Iraq as well. And we'll start the story with one, a very important member of that family, an Iraqi really, although again, his ancestry is Lebanese, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr.

He was born in 1935. He was one of the founders of an Iraqi political party, which was called the Islamic Dawa Party, the Islamic Message Party, or the Call to Islam party, if you like, which was founded in the late 50s as an alternative to the Communist Party, which was very popular in Iraq, especially again amongst Shia.

So, this sort of communist, anti-communist dimension is part of the story of the beginning of Hezbollah.

Aimen: The Dawa Party, for those who don't understand what it is, is I would say the Iraqi Shia copy of the Fada'iyan-e Iran Movement, that in the previous episode we talked about Navvab Safavi established.

And this movement was designed in order to become a clandestine terror movement that would go on to commit assassinations, carry out kidnappings and some terror activities.

Their aim and their goal is the creation of pan-Shia Islamic state. That's the idea. So, it is the forerunner of so many of the movements that we would see in the Shia Muslim world that would emerge in the 70s and 80s.

Thomas: That’s right. And a branch of the Dawa Party was set up in Lebanon in the early 60s. So, there are so many echoes of the present, really, an Iranian political organisation, the Fada'iyan-e Islam setting up or helping to set up or to inspire a carbon copy in Iraq amongst the Shia there. And then a carbon copy of that being spread in Lebanon, in order to further the goals of a pan-national Shia movement.

It was happening in the 50s and 60s already. Now, back to Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, one of the founders of the Dawa Party. He was an Ayatollah. He lived in Najaf, and he attracted a lot of pious young Lebanese Shia to go and study under him. One of these was Abbas al-Musawi.

So, as a teenager, he was only 18 in 1970, he travelled to Najaf in Iraq to study under Ayatollah Baqir al-Sadr. And he became himself a cleric. He became religiously authorised, if you like, and in time would one day become one of the two co-founders of Hezbollah.

So, let's just put a pin in that. So, we have Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr influencing, teaching students, including one of the two co-founders of Hezbollah, Abbas al-Musawi.

Now tell us Aimen, about another Sadr, also very important in the genesis of Hezbollah, Musa al-Sadr.

Aimen: So, who is Musa al-Sadr. Musa al-Sadr is for all intents and purposes, an Iranian citizen, ironically. He was born in Qom in Iran and grew up there, but his family traces its roots first in Najaf and then to Jabal Amil in Lebanon.

So, his great-great-grandfather Sadr al-Din, the founder of the Sadr clan, left Lebanon in the early 1800s to go to Najaf to get away from the Ottoman authorities in Lebanon.

And then after that, Sadr al-Din moved to Isfahan in Iran. And there he founded the Sadrist clan that we all hear about all the time from Musa al-Sadr, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, and of course-

Thomas: Muqtada al-Sadr.

Aimen: Muqtada al-Sadr, in Iraq.

Thomas: So many Sadrs.

Aimen: Yeah, yeah. However, Musa here, who is a Persianate-Arab with Iraqi and Lebanese extraction-

Thomas: A man after your own heart really, Aimen.

Aimen: Yeah. Me being half Bahraini, born-

Thomas: Here we go again, dear listener, I know Durrani and Hashemite, and yeah.

Aimen: Yeah. Born in Saudi Arabia, Lebanese mother, all of that. Anyway.

Thomas: Musa al-Sadr.

Aimen: Musa al-Sadr. So, Musa, his mother is Persian, and funny enough, she is the sister of none other than Navvab Safavi.

Thomas: I know, Navvab Safavi. He keeps coming back. My goodness. So, Navvab Safavi, the founder of Fada'iyan-e Islam in Iran, whom we've talked about on and off through many episodes, was Musa al-Sadr's uncle.

Aimen: Yeah. He was Musa al-Sadr's maternal uncle. And that says a lot about the influence of revolutionary Shia, militant Islam in Musa al-Sadr's thinking.

Musa al-Sadr, after he graduated from a seminary in Qom and from Tehran's University, decided that he should go back to the ancestral homeland because he believed that he has a vision, a vision for Lebanon Shia, who were in his mind, and at least in their mind, feeling the Jack boots of the oppressive Christian Sunni Alliance.

Thomas: So yes, he moved to Lebanon, aged only 31 in 1960, and immediately launched into a political career, really, becoming an activist amongst Lebanon's Shia community, helping to form the Lebanese Supreme Islamic Shi’i Council, which he became the head of in 1969.

So, he was a big player amongst the Shia in Lebanon, and was achieving national prominence there through his movement, the Movement of the Dispossessed, which was a political movement. And its militant arm, which was founded in the mid-70s, Amal.

Aimen: So, what is Amal? Amal in Arabic means Hope. However, it is a three-letter abbreviation for the Arabic sentence Afwaj al-Muqawama al-Lubnaniyya, or The Battalions of the Lebanese Resistance.

So, as you can see here, dear listener, there is an absence of the word Islamic so far. And this will play an important role in why there was a need for a Hezbollah.

And as the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975, again, go back to the Lebanon episode and listen to it. Don't be lazy. You will find that some of the Lebanese Shia religious students who were studying in Najaf at the time, returned and joined Amal, the Lebanese militant movement established by Musa al-Sadr.

Among those returned students were a man called Subhi al-Tufayli, who just happened to be an admirer of Musa al-Sadr, and would later become the other co-founder of Hezbollah.

Thomas: That's right. So, the Sadr family, have a lot to answer for. Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr inspired one co-founder of Hezbollah, Abbas al-Musawi, and Musa al-Sadr inspired the other co-founder of Hezbollah, Subhi al-Tufayli.

Now, 1978 is a key year. We covered this in that Lebanon episode. So, we will simply remind the dear listener that in that year, and remember, the Lebanese Civil War is now in full force, Musa al-Sadr disappears, he disappears in of all places, Tripoli in Libya.

And it is believed, though, never firmly proved, that he was assassinated by Muammar Gaddafi. Gosh, there's so many characters in this story already. You remember President Gaddafi, the mad man of Libya.

Aimen: Except he wasn't the president.

Thomas: Oh, no, don't-

Aimen: He was just the citizen leader of the what? The Great Republic Socialist, whatever — one minute, I have to take a breath.

Thomas: Oh, God.

Aimen: And Libyans saw-

Thomas: Not again, I don't want to talk about Gaddafi. It's too depressing. Anyway, Gaddafi assassinated Musa al-Sadr, at which point, Amal sort of split into two camps.

One camp was more secularist leaning. Amal was never wholly hardline, sectarian, religious theocratic. It was a little bit more of a broader tent. It had a secular more, let's say Republican orientation and some hardline more religious radical elements.

After Musa al-Sadr disappeared, these two elements began to kind of fight between each other within the movement. And in general, the less ideologically religious half became prominent.

So, Amal became less religiously radical, leaving many of the radical Shia militants within it unhappy.

Aimen: Yes, because as you know, another player in the Lebanese Civil War was Syria. And President Hafez al-Assad, wanted Amal to remain secular, because he just did not like the idea of a … especially with the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, giving a zeal, giving a more push towards the radical elements within Amal to assert themselves.

So, the Syrians helped the secular side of Amal to take over, and that was represented in Amal's, new leader in 1980, all the way until now, 40 years. And he's still the same leader.

I don't know what is he eating every day to remain alive like this? His name is Nabih Berri, who is now of course, the speaker of the Lebanese Parliament.

Thomas: So, yes, Amal becomes more secular in its orientation. It's upsetting the more militantly religious members within it.

At the same time, dear listener, in 1979, the Islamic Revolution in Iran happens. In 1980, Iran and Iraq start clashing. Saddam Hussein becomes more paranoid about Shia.

He expels more and more Shia. They go to Lebanon. He executes Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in 1980 after forcing him to watch his sister be raped. What a terrible story that is. Making him a martyr, inspiring even more Shia militancy amongst his partisans in Lebanon.

Now, in the midst of all of this, and forgive us, but hopefully that's clear. In the midst of all of this, Amal began clashing with the PLO. You'd think that this movement, which started out in a kind of broadly speaking pro-Palestinian direction, would remain so.

But actually, Amal was clashing with the PLO. And this meant that when Israel invaded Southern Lebanon to deal with the Palestinian problem there, first in 1978, and then in a big way in 1982, the Amal Movement in Lebanon was not entirely opposed.

So, again, amongst the radical, more radical, Shia militant, religiously inspired militants of the Amal Movement or affiliated with it, the Amal Movement was compromised in its eyes. It didn't take a strong enough stance against Israel. And this was considered a betrayal by the Shia hardliners affiliated with Amal.

Aimen: And two of those who were disappointed, deeply disappointed were Abbas al-Musawi and Subhi al-Tufayli.

Thomas: Abbas al-Musawi and Subhi al-Tufayli, the two co-founders of Hezbollah. And this betrayal in their eyes by Amal really opened up a big opportunity for a new political player to enter the Lebanese theatre of politics, war, terrorism and chaos, Hezbollah. And we're going to take a break right there.

Now, dear listener, I hope that was clear. We needed to give you that foundation so that you can understand out of what Hezbollah was born. And when we come back, we will see what that newborn baby was like. Stay with us.

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We're back. Hezbollah is about to be born into the theatre of Lebanese Civil War. But before we talk about that, Aimen, let's go back to our old buddy Iran and talk about the Iranian influence in the formation of Hezbollah.

So, as we mentioned in the last part in 1978, or beginning around that time, and continuing for a few years after, Shia clerics in Iraq were executed or expelled by Saddam Hussein. He feared that they were fomenting revolution there, as they were currently doing against the Shah, and then did against the Shah.

And many of these expelled clerics and other Shia political supporters of the revolution went to Lebanon.

The Iranian revolution then took place. Some Shia in Lebanon were definitely inspired by it and by its ideals. And in 1982, the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, opened a couple of training camps, one in Lebanon and one in Syria.

And that summer, 1500 IRGC soldiers went to these camps under the supervision, in fact, of Iran's ambassador to Damascus, and began to give radical Lebanese Shia militants training, both in the arts of war and in the arts of revolutionary politics.

Aimen: Absolutely. And actually in 1982, it's the same year in which a lot of disaffected Amal Islamist members went all the way to Iran to meet Ayatollah Khomeini. And among them, of course, was Abbas al-Musawi, Subhi al-Tufayli and many others, including by the way, Husayn al-Musawi, a cousin of Abbas al-Musawi, who to this day is still alive, funny enough.

They were all encouraged to disassociate with Amal and to establish a separate Islamic resistance movement in Lebanon. And so, they did.

Thomas: Yes, Abbas al-Musawi is an important character. He's one of the two co-founders of Hezbollah. When he had returned to Lebanon from Najaf, from Iraq, he set up a Hawza, a Shia religious seminary in Baalbek in Lebanon.

And while he was there, he met a very young teenager, a man who would become his protege to some extent, and a man who would certainly change Lebanon forever, and who will become really the main character of this narrative. And I'm talking about Hassan Nasrallah.

Aimen: Oh, yes, indeed. Hassan Nasrallah.

Thomas: Now Aimen, maybe for some of our listeners, Hassan Nasrallah is known as the leader of Hezbollah, but as an Arab, what does that name mean to you? Because he is (love him or hate him), an Arab political superstar. Really, everyone in the Middle East knows this man.

Aimen: Well, first of all, he's charismatic and a good orator and a good speaker. Someone basically who would hold your attention for his long speeches. And at the same time, clever, shrewd, he is a strategist and a political calculator.

Thomas: And of course, we mustn't overlook the fact that he has a notorious lisp. He speaks with a lisp.

Aimen: Indeed.

Thomas: Which makes his speeches slightly comical. Not to make fun of anyone with a lisp, but slightly comical, wouldn't you say, Aimen?

Aimen: Listen, there is no need to be so insensitive about me being a lisp, okay?

Thomas: I mean, dear listener, if you have a lisp, we love you. We honestly do. But at the same time, it must be admitted that when you turn to Al-Manar TV station, Hezbollah's TV station, and you hear Hassan Nasrallah decrying the crimes of Israel, the crimes of the U.S., and calling for Islamic Revolution with a lisp, it's just a bit satirical.

It's almost like — and you can imagine Sacha Baron Cohen, it's almost like a cartoon character of an Islamic radical.

Aimen: Absolutely. But still, yet he commands considerable respect among millions upon millions of the Shia of the Middle East and the Muslim world. You see, Hassan Nasrallah, I saw a speech of his, which was one of the earliest speeches of his in 1984, which I referred to at the beginning of the episode.

And from the beginning, you can see the man had a zeal. And he was always by the side of Abbas al-Musawi, his teacher, his guru, we can call him this way.

Thomas: Yeah. And he was political from a very young age, in the mid-70s when he was only like 15-years-old, he became his village's Amal movement representative. So, he was another one of these Shia affiliated with Amal, who, alongside his mentor, Abbas al-Musawi, became disillusioned with Amal and joined what in 1982, was only called the Islamic Resistance.

It was not yet called Hezbollah. This is very important. It's important because the precise date when Hezbollah was formed is not really known, because at the beginning, the Islamic resistance was very loosely organised, more like a kind of militant cabal than a hard and fast organisation.

Comprised of young militant Shia activists who were self-consciously a revolutionary vanguard of the Islamic Revolution inside Lebanon. They were that Sayyid Qutb Vanguard. And they answered to Iran.

Aimen: Thomas, if some listeners were to ask us what is the difference, what is the difference in the aims between Hezbollah and Amal? I think the best way to answer is simple. It's very simple answer.

Amal wants to protect the political rights of the Shi’ites in Lebanon, Hezbollah, however, wants Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and some other countries with it, Yemen, Bahrain to be part of the greater Islamic Republic, centred in Tehran and led by the grand deputy of the absent Imam, the Ayatollah of the day, whether it is Khomeini in the past and Khamenei right now.

So, this is the deep ideological rift between the two. This is why the two split from each other, and of course, would later clash briefly with each other.

Thomas: As we'll see. And Hezbollah's strategy at the very beginning, or the Islamic resistances strategy, I should say, mirrored Iran's strategy. So, initially its primary targets, and this is kind of interesting, I'd forgotten this, were communists.

Over 100 Communist party members in Lebanon were killed by the Islamic resistance in its first years. The same thing was happening in Iran. Iran was purging communists and other leftists who had participated in the revolution there from society.

The other prong of its initial strategy also echoed Iran. And that is that the Islamic Resistance, if you like, Hezbollah, made life hell for America in Lebanon. America was in Lebanon overseeing an international peacekeeping force, the MNF short for multinational force, since the withdrawal of the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization from Lebanon in 1982.

We talked about this in the Lebanon episode, Yasser Arafat and the other leaders within the PLO left Lebanon went to Tunisia, leaving behind 300,000 Palestinians in camps. And the MNF overseen by America and other countries like Britain and France were there to keep the peace or so they thought.

But the peace was not kept, especially not in October 1983. Let's start by saying when two big bomb explosions went off.

Aimen: October 1983, a date that is so infamous, because on that day, two trucks loaded with huge amount of explosives drove into both simultaneously the French paratroopers headquarters and the U.S. Marines headquarters.

And the explosions were so massive that resulted in the deaths of 240 U.S. Marines and 60 French paratroopers. That is actually the largest number of U.S. military personnel to be killed due to a single act of terrorism to this day.

In 9/11, most of the fatalities were civilians. So, it is the largest terror attack by far. But when we talk about the U.S. military, yes, it is the largest number of fatalities due to a terror attack.

Thomas: And 60 French paratroopers also died in that bomb attack. So, both countries, the U.S. and France, were left bleeding.

Now, the question is, who carried out the attacks? As I said, dear listener, Hezbollah was not yet formerly Hezbollah. It was just the “Islamic Resistance” and its operations were certainly very murky at this time, and no one can say for sure that it was them.

A group claimed responsibility. It called itself the Islamic Jihad Organization. And this group was definitely linked to Iran. And frankly, Aimen, I think was linked to what would become Hezbollah, no question.

Aimen: I mean, it's very clear that Imad Mughniyeh, who would later become the military commander of external operations for Hezbollah, was behind this attack.

And because his fingerprints, in a sense, not literally, but figuratively, were on the same style of attack that would kill 19 elite American U.S. pilots in my hometown, Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia in 1996, in a similar attack, similar style, and he was definitely behind it.

Thomas: Imad Mughniyeh will definitely come up again, dear listener. He is a key player in the history of Hezbollah. The attacks in 1983 led President Reagan at the time of the United States to wind up the MNF the multinational force and withdraw all American forces from Lebanon.

And in fact, in 1987, it got so bad for Americans in Lebanon that the U.S. declared a ban on American citizens from travelling to the country, a ban that lasted a whole decade. Just as a reminder, how chaotic Lebanon was and how impactful Hezbollah's activities were there on the ground.

There were other things that targeted Westerners, Americans, et cetera. There was the notorious hijacking of the TWA Flight 847. Again, Imad Mughniyeh is likely behind that. There were assassinations, lots of hostages were taken, especially foreign journalists who were kidnapped and held hostage, some for years.

Terry Anderson, a particularly famous case, he was held for seven years. He had been kidnapped by Hezbollah. The hostage taking of Hezbollah was a very important factor in the Iran-Contra affair, which we are not going to discuss.

Aimen: Please no.

Thomas: We discussed it last season. I'm not going to discuss it again, but just again, to contextualise it, the Iran-Contra affair largely circled around trying to free American hostages held by Hezbollah.

So, Hezbollah was pursuing this strategy, making life hell for America, and it succeeded. They were like, “Wow, America's pulled out its troops, we're winning.”

It was also, and perhaps primarily aiming at making life hell for Israel. The very first, in fact, the very first attack that the Islamic resistance carried out was in November 1982, when a truck bomb went off at the Israeli intelligence headquarters in Tyre, in southern Lebanon, killing 75 Israeli officers and 14 Arab prisoners.

And this is notable, Aimen, because it was a suicide attack. It was what Hezbollah called a self-martyrdom.

Aimen: This was big, actually, Thomas, because this is the first time that a suicide bombing would be condoned by a theological branch of Islam here, Shia Islam, adopting this method, of course, from left-wing guerillas just like that LTTE, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, as well as other militants who used that tactic before.

However, for it to be used, for suicide bombing to be used by a religious movement, or by Shia, was something big. And then this, of course, would influence Sunni movements first in the Palestinian Territories. And of course, later in 1997, Al-Qaeda and others,

Thomas: As a result of this first attack, Hezbollah, and the Israeli occupation forces because remember, dear listener, Israel was occupying a huge suede of Lebanese territory at this point, led to a back and forth between both sides for years.

There was the terrible incident in 1983 when an Israeli army patrol in the village of Nabatiye, or the town of Nabatiye in southern Lebanon, opened fire on a crowd of Shia participating in a sacred procession on the Holy Day of Ashura.

It was all a blunder. They hadn't meant to go to the town at all. They'd been told to stay away from the town. They misread the map. They kind of drove into this crowd. They fired on the crowd to disperse them. It led to a terrible riot. The stones being thrown, more people killing.

And this sort of thing was happening back and forth. The Islamic resistance attacking Israeli troops, Israeli troops attacking Shia militants and civilians, and the Islamic resistance was putting such pressure on Israeli troops that it led directly to the decision by Israel in 1985 to withdraw its forces from all of Lebanon, apart from the area south of the Litani River, south Lebanon, the Shia heartlands of Lebanon.

So, they could concentrate their forces where they were being attacked the most, and defend, as they put it Israel proper. Now for the Islamic resistance, for Abbas al-Musawi, for Subhi al-Tufayli, and for young Hassan Nasrallah, this was an immense achievement. They took full credit for liberating most of Lebanon from Israeli forces.

Aimen: So, taking credit for the expulsion of Israeli forces from parts of Lebanon into the south, with some exaggeration, of course. Finally, the so-called Islamic resistance came out finally as Hezbollah and issued that communiqué, that letter, which absolutely looks as if it was written by the Iranian embassy in Damascus.

Thomas: All of the Iranian bogeymen are there, the U.S., Israel of course. The one thing about the letter, though, which is interesting, is it does not openly call for the establishment of an Islamic Republic on the basis of Wilayat al-Faqih in Lebanon.

It does omit that, which I think from the very beginning led many analysts to downplay or even doubt the connection between Iran and Hezbollah. And I think we need to admit that there are lots of people, journalists, academics, who do rather downplay the connection and believe that the Iranian connection is over egged.

I don't know how they can possibly believe it, but it's true. Sometimes you get that.

Aimen: Again, it’s the Taqiyya syndrome, man. It is absolutely the political Taqiyya.

Thomas: Yes, Taqiyya. You remember, dear listener, the ability to hide your true religious allegiance.

Aimen: Exactly. The Taqiyya siyasiyat and Taqiyya diniyat, we talked about it before. The religious concealment of your aims and goals, the political concealment of your aims and goals.

This is practised to the letter. Every time you hear Iran saying, our nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, again, Taqiyya. Every time you hear Hezbollah saying, we are a political party, we are not terrorists. We don't carry out any acts of terror abroad, Taqiyya.

But the problem is the lack of understanding by western journalists, analysts, academics of the concept of Taqiyya, they apply their secular scepticism into religious minds as if you're trying to put an octagonal shape into a circular hole. It's just, it's not going to work.

Thomas: Well, Hezbollah wasn't really hiding its true intentions with that letter. Having declared itself openly now, as a player in Lebanon's continuing civil war, which was actually about to reach its nadir, so horrible was the bloodletting to become.

After Hezbollah openly declared itself, Hezbollah focused its attention first, surprisingly, perhaps on its fellow Shia, and to consolidate its influence over the Shia of Lebanon declared war on Amal.

Aimen: Indeed, they call it actually the War of the Brothers. And it lasted two years and seven months, 5,000 dead, tens of thousands wounded, dispossessed. And so, of course it was absolutely horrendous. But Hezbollah came on top.

Thomas: As we said. Amal's political ideology was less religiously inclined. It had a non-clerical leadership. Hezbollah did not like this. Hezbollah also thought that Amal was too willing to participate in politics.

As a revolutionary vanguard movement in the Sayyid Qutb mode, Hezbollah felt that democracy was one of those obstacles that needed to be overcome on the road to Islamic Revolution.

So, it opposed democracy when it came out in 1985 as Hezbollah. For all these reasons, as you say, the war of the brothers was launched, and it was terrible. Now, Amal was not innocent in this war. Amal was deeply embroiled in Lebanese Civil War politics at the time.

And so, its hands were covered in blood, especially in the notorious War of the Camps in 1985, when Amal launched a campaign to wipe out Palestinian militants in the Palestinian refugee camps, which campaign failed because Hezbollah aided the Palestinians.

Aimen: And this is when the influence of Hezbollah during the 1985, 1987 campaign of the refugee camps led in 1987 to the establishment of a similar organisation in the Palestinian Territories called Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya HAMAS, the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine, HAMAS, to split from what? From the PLO.

Thomas: Yes, it's amazing, but it's all connected, dear listener. It's all connected. You must pay close attention.

Aimen: Indeed.

Thomas: The War of the Brothers sort of reached a climax in 1988, and it's a little bit complicated, but it's a fascinating story. So, an Amal splinter group allied itself with Hezbollah and kidnapped the U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel William Higgins, in 1988.

Amal itself at that time was trying to maintain a very cooperative relationship with the United Nations interim force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, another one of these global bodies trying to create the conditions of peace in Lebanon, trying and failing.

Higgins was among the leadership of UNIFIL and Amal, hoping to maintain this cooperative relationship with it, tried to retrieve Higgins from its splinter group who had kidnapped him. A splinter group allied with Hezbollah.

Higgins' kidnappers managed to evade Amal. So, Amal militants targeted the kidnappers who managed to evade them. And this sparked off a ferocious back and forth between Amal and Hezbollah.

Initially, Amal had the upper hand, and at one point it did look as if Hezbollah might be finished, but the tables soon turn. And in the fall of 1988, Beirut’s largely Shia southern suburbs exploded into fighting. And this is really Aimen, what you were talking about.

Aimen: And in the famous largely Shia southern suburbs of Beirut, the war between the brothers erupted, Amal and Hezbollah were fighting for months in the streets, to the point where even the women were coming out to match to beg the cousins and the brothers and the family members who were fighting each other on either side of the political and religious divide, even though they were all Shia to stop.

And even the women were shot and were chased with bullets. But in the end, Hezbollah expelled Amal out of the southern suburbs of Beirut, the heartland of Shia political power in Lebanon.

And since then, and until now, Amal is nothing but a subordinate branch of Shia Lebanese as far as Hezbollah is concerned, Hezbollah is the big brother, and Amal is just a butler.

Thomas: Amidst all the bloodletting of the war of the brothers, poor Lieutenant Colonel Higgins was rather lost sight of, and he was sadly killed. And there's a whole story about the attempts to find out who killed him exactly. And to get justice. That's perhaps meat for another episode. Who knows?

What I think is interesting about it is the bloodletting became so bad in Lebanon that it actually embarrassed Iran. By this time, the Ayatollah Khomeini had died, and President Rafsanjani came to power there.

Rafsanjani was trying, at the very least, to rehabilitate the Islamic revolution's image. Following the Iran Iraq war, Iran was devastated. It was a time of reconsolidation. Rafsanjani was quite brilliant at repackaging the Islamic Revolution in a slightly softer way for public consumption at least.

And the bloodletting in Lebanon was embarrassing. So, he actually publicly denounced the Shia in Lebanon for their killing.

Aimen: Yeah. And this is why in the end, it was a pressure from both Tehran and Damascus, which of course led to the truce and the ending of the war between the two sides.

It did not lead to political unity between the two, but it led to some sort of unity of purpose that the Shia house in Lebanon, that the Shia tent must remain united politically. But there is no doubt Hezbollah is now in the driving seat.

Thomas: Negotiating the end of war was in the air, because of course, around the same time, the Lebanese Civil War itself came to an end, thanks to the 1989 Taif Agreement signed in the city of Taif in Saudi Arabia, brokered by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.

We don't want to talk about the agreement, it's too complicated. But Hezbollah acquired quite a significant concession during the Taif Agreement negotiations.

Aimen: And what a concession, Thomas, what a concession. In fact, it was a disaster. The most fundamental clause of the Taif Agreement was that all political militias must disarm all of them, no exception in order for the army to be the only armed entity within the Republic so that a Republican life could resume normally.

And there is only one guarantor of peace and security within the Lebanese territory, and that would be the army. However, Hezbollah sneakily insisted on including an exemption for itself because, and under the pretext of fighting the Israeli occupation of a significant part of the Lebanese territory, south of the Litani River.

Thomas: You say pretence Aimen, just before you go on. You say pretence. But it is true. Israeli forces were occupying the Shia heartlands of Southern Lebanon.

Aimen: Indeed, Thomas, the Lebanese territories south of the Litani River were still occupied. And there are something like a few hundred thousand Lebanese living under occupation there under the Israeli occupation.

But there is two issues here. Isn't it the responsibility of the new Lebanese state and the new Lebanese army to liberate these lands and not up to one sectarian militia? That's a very valid question, because if you remember, Israel wasn't the only armed force in Southern Lebanon.

In fact, Israel had a huge army of its own consisting of Christian and Shia Lebanese who were allied with the Israelis. So, if there is a non-sectarian army in South Lebanon, allied with the Israeli occupation force, then it is the responsibility of the non-sectarian Lebanese army to come and free the South.

But this is where a Taif Agreement included a clause, a virus that would actually eat up the future peace of Lebanon by allowing Hezbollah to maintain and retain huge arsenal of weapons.

And when they came out, they came out under the leadership, not of secular figures like Nabih Berri, the leader of Amal. They were not wearing suits. They were wearing turbans, white and black. Subhi al-Tufayli was the leader of Hezbollah and Abbas al-Musawi was the commander of the military wing.

Thomas: So, Hezbollah won these concessions in the Taif Agreement and maintained its resistance stance against Israeli occupation. Resumed its tit for tat attacks against Israeli patrols in the south, Israeli patrols attacking back.

Internally, Hezbollah underwent a change of management. There was a clash or a disagreement between al-Tufayli who was the leader, and Abbas al-Musawi, who was the military commander, his deputy, really.

And Tufayli, and you remember dear listener, these are the two co-founders of Hezbollah. They had studied under the Sadrs, they would've been inspired by the Iranian Revolution. Tufayli was forced out of the leadership position and was replaced by Abbas al-Musawi.

But that wasn't to last for long. In February of 1992, a fleet of Israeli Apache helicopters fired missiles at Musawi’s motorcade in southern Lebanon. And he died. He was assassinated.

His five-year-old son, Hussein was also killed in the attack. This would become a big fodder for Hezbollah propaganda. As you can imagine, especially with a name like Hussein, the most famous martyr in all of Islamic history.

Abbas al-Musawi died and was replaced by his young protege, the man with a lisp, but the man who still commands immense respect across certainly the Shia world, indeed the Muslim world, and to some extent the global anti-American, anti-Western resistance fraternity, Hassan Nasrallah.

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And that's where we're going to leave this first in our two-part series on Hezbollah with Hassan Nasrallah at the very top of the organisation. And in our next episode, we will tell the story of how this man, Hasan Nasrallah, effectively took over Lebanon. Stay tuned.

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Harry Stott. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley and Tom Biddle.