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Mughniyah hit threatens war
28 February 2008
Imad Faiz Mughniyah was the Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah's most notorious operative. Starting with the car bombing of the US embassy in Beirut on 18 April 1983, he has been linked to almost every terrorist operation blamed on either Hizbullah or Iran.
Hizbullah is a notoriously secretive organisation that has proved extremely hard to infiltrate. Mughniyah was particularly guarded, even by Hizbullah's high standards, making him an almost mythical figure.
Mugniyah's elaborate security precautions explain why there seems to be little hard evidence of his involvement in many of the attacks and plots he has been linked to. The US has only indicted him in connection with the hijacking of TWA-847. Bob Baer, a former CIA agent who investigated bombings and kidnappings in Beirut told Jane's the intelligence on the 1983 US embassy bombing was "as close as you get to proving" his involvement.
Baer said the CIA had also "nailed" him for the kidnapping of William Higgins, a US Marine Corps officer serving with the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, who was abducted in February 1988 and subsequently killed. He also said there was strong evidence that Mughniyah was extensively involved in fighting the Israeli military in southern Lebanon.
The most surprising allegation against Mughniyah is that he trained operatives from the fledgling Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s. An alliance between Hizbullah and Al-Qaeda - a movement heavily influenced by a form of Sunni Islam that considers Shia Muslims heretics - seems unlikely. However, informants testified during the trial of four men accused of bombing the US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania that Al-Qaeda operatives were trained by Hizbullah.
While there seems to be little hard evidence of an ongoing relationship between Iran/Hizbullah and Al-Qaeda, the tactics developed in Lebanon clearly influenced the Sunni jihadists.
The details of Mughniyah's death remain unclear. A vehicle was destroyed in a powerful explosion in a quiet area of Damascus on the night of 12 February. Then Hizbullah issued a statement announcing Mughniyah's martyrdom. The Syrians subsequently confirmed that he had been killed in the explosion in Damascus, but released few details.
Hizbullah predictably blamed Israel for the assassination, but several other theories have been put forward. Some observers think one of Hizbullah's many Lebanese rivals may have been responsible, possibly to avenge the assassination of Rafiq Hariri on 14 February 2004. Others rate Mughniyah's security so highly that they refuse to believe it was possible to kill him without the collusion of someone in Syrian or Iranian intelligence or even his own organisation. Mike McConnell, the director of US National Intelligence, said: "There is some evidence that it may have been internal Hizbullah. It may have been Syria."
Regardless of who perpetrated the killing, it makes little difference to Hizbullah, a vengeful organisation that has been embarrassed by the loss of its most famous commander. The real identity of his killers is also largely irrelevant since the Israelis will be the target of the retaliation.
There has been speculation as to what form the revenge will take. In his fiery funeral speech, Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah criticised Israel for operating outside the "traditional battlefield" by killing Mughniyah in Damascus and threatened an "open war". He also put Mughniyah in the pantheon of Hizbullah's greatest martyrs alongside Abbas al-Musawi, the secretary general killed by Israeli helicopters in February 1992. The bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina followed one month later.
While Nasrallah's threats suggest Hizbullah will avenge Mughniyah's death somewhere outside the "traditional battlefield" with an attack along the lines of the Buenos Aires bombings, the group has other options. It could launch another operation against the Israeli military on the border, but this might not inflict sufficient casualties and could risk another major conflict.