Hizbullah and Al-Qaeda: Friends or foes? By Haytham Mouzahem Special to The Daily Star (Lebanon) Friday, August 20, 2004
The final report of the Sept. 11 Commission in the US argued that Al-Qaeda had ties with Iran and Hizbullah, but it also concluded there was no collaboration between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, one of President George W. Bush's central arguments in favor of launching an invasion of Iraq last year. The report noted that "the relationship between Al-Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shiite divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations." But the report also found "no evidence that Iran or Hizbullah was aware of the planning for what later became the Sept.11 attack." It is true that Sunni-Shiite differences are in no way obstacles to cooperation between Islamist groups such as the Shiite Hizbullah and Palestinian Islamist movements such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad. But the Sept. 11 Commission did not observe that Al-Qaeda was a very different Sunni group than the Palestinian ones; it is an extremist Wahhabi movement that considers Shiites nonbelievers, referring to them as rafidha, or those who reject mainstream Islam. In 1998, the Taleban regime in Afghanistan, which was harboring Al-Qaeda and its leadership, committed atrocities against Afghan Shiite Hazaras in Mazar al-Sharif, killing thousands, as well as eight Iranian diplomats. The crimes very nearly led to a war between Iran and Afghanistan, and helped explain Iranian support for the northern Afghani groups in their battle against the Taleban and Al-Qaeda - and later (if more circumspectly) for the US invasion that led to the Taleban's overthrow The relation between the Iraq's Baath regime and Al-Qaeda began in 1998, when Saddam Hussein allowed the group to establish training camps in Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was reportedly the broker of this connection. The alliance may have resurfaced after the US invasion through the unexpected cooperation between the two parties in attacking coalition forces, Iraqi policemen and civilians and Shiite leaders and holy shrines. The tight organization and apparent logistical network behind the Al-Qaeda suicide operations suggest there may have been preparation for those attacks with the Baath regime, which provided Al-Qaeda with organizational and intelligence assistance as well as money and maybe combatants. It was bizarre indeed that Al-Qaeda and Saddam's followers should have focused their attacks so strongly against Shiite religious and political leaders and cadres, and against their holy shrines in Najaf and Karbala, as well as the Qazimiyyeh Mosque in Baghdad, killing thousands of civilians, instead of focusing on targeting the occupation forces. That strongly implied both a deep a hatred for the Shiites and a desire to prevent them of playing any major role in post-war Iraq. Wahhabis consider the Shiites unbelievers (kuffar) and "polytheists" (mushrekin) because of their veneration of the prophet and the imams. Since the late 18th century, the Wahhabis launched three military campaigns to conquer Shiite regions in Arabia, leading to the destruction of their mosques and shrines. In 1803 and 1806, the Wahhabis entered Iraq and sacked the tombs of Imam Hussein in Karbala, an act of incredible desecration. In 1927, senior Saudi religious scholars issued fatwas condemning the Shiites, and these were reasserted as late as the 1990s. Given all this, Hizbullah cannot be indifferent toward the terrorist and sectarian attacks against their Iraqi brethren and their shrines. The party's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, condemned these killings and warned Al-Qaeda fighters last March that such behavior would damage the Palestinian cause because it would lead to Sunni-Shiite sectarian strife, an apparent goal of Zarqawi's as it appeared in a letter he is said to have addressed to Osama bin Laden seized by US forces. In an interview with Middle East scholar Asaad Abu Khalil in June 2004, Nasrallah expressed strong fears and concerns about the so-called "resistance" in Iraq, and strongly condemned its methods, for example the use of car bombings. As he put it, they are "willing to kill 90 Iraqi civilians in order to kill one US soldier." Nasrallah asserted, "the Wahhabi network is very active in Iraq, and it has a strong sectarian agenda." He said he believed that "Saddam's Baathists and even Wahhabis are willing to negotiate with the Americans all in order to prevent a rise in Shiite power." He worried that this Wahhabi network "will strike at Shiite targets in the Arab world, outside Iraq, very soon." Hizbullah has condemned attacks targeting civilians by Al-Qaeda and its allies. Nawaf Musawi, who is in charge of Hizbullah's international relations department, said in an interview that his first comment following the Sept. 11 attacks was "this is (Israeli Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon's lucky day," because "Sharon would be able to kill the Palestinian people under the pretext of 'fighting terrorism.'" He added: "I believe that those kinds of condemnable terrorist operations have done great damage to the struggling Palestinian people." There are several barriers hindering the cooperation between Hizbullah and the Wahhabis. Religious and historical divisions play a major role in this, but are not the only factors. Hizbullah and Al-Qaeda have very different political priorities, strategies and agendas. Whatever the Sept. 11 Commission said, all the signs are that Al-Qaeda and Hizbullah are foes rather than friends. Haytham Mouzahem ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is a Lebanese analyst and researcher specializing in Middle East and Islamic affairs. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id= 7532