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Image Is Everything In New Terror Game
By Gwynne Dyer
19/02/08 "NZHerald"
-- -- Imad Mughniyeh didn't have long to be surprised, for
the bomb that exploded in the car parked next to his undoubtedly
killed him in less than a second. He wouldn't have been
surprised anyway - as the special operations chief of
Hezbollah's secretive military wing, the Islamic Resistance, he
would not have been expecting to die in bed. But he may have had
just enough time to wonder who finally got him.
In the normal course of events, the assassination of a terrorist
leader would be a one-day news event in the Middle East. (Mughniyeh
organised the hijacking of an American airliner in 1985, and was
suspected of involvement in the bombing of Israeli and Jewish
targets in Argentina in the 1990s.) What made it a bit different
was that Mughniyeh was killed in Damascus.
Normally, this kind of stuff - targeted assassinations, bombings
both by suicide and by airplane, military raids, etc - is
confined to Israel and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian
territories, although it frequently reaches into Lebanon and
much less often into Jordan. For it to happen in the Syrian
capital, however, means that the rules have changed - or at
least, that's how some people will choose to interpret it.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, automatically blamed
Israel for the blast that killed Mughniyeh, and told a huge
crowd of Lebanese Shias who attended his funeral in south Beirut
that by attacking him in Damascus, the Israelis had changed the
rules. They had extended the conflict beyond the customary
borders, and henceforward Hezbollah would do the same.
"Zionists, if you want this sort of open war, then let the whole
world hear, so be it!" Nasrallah told the crowd, implying
(without actually saying) that Israeli and perhaps even Jewish
people and institutions worldwide would now be regarded by
Hezbollah as legitimate targets. The Israel Government,
meanwhile, denies responsibility for Mughniyeh's killing (though
even in Israel not many people believe it).
Syria's Foreign Minister, Walid al-Moualem, swore to track the
perpetrators down, pointing out that "The fighter Imad Mughniyeh
was the target of lots of intelligence agencies." He did rather
telegraph the conclusions of his investigation, however, by
asserting that Mughniyeh's death had "assassinated all efforts
for peace" between Syria and Israel.
Business as usual in the Middle East, then, including the usual
rhetoric of conviction when admissions of ignorance would be
more in order. For example, it is by no means certain that
Israel organised the death. It could have been the United
States.
Imad Mughniyeh has been on the US Government's list of "Most
Wanted Terrorists" since it was first compiled, and has been
accused of being the mastermind behind the suicide bombing that
killed 241 US Marines in a barracks in Beirut in 1983 (though he
would only have been 21 at the time). A September 2006 article
in the New Yorker alleged that US hit teams were actively trying
to track him down.
So maybe it was the US, in which case Nasrallah was barking up
the wrong tree - or maybe it really was the Israelis, in which
case the question becomes: Why now? Just because they finally
got a fix on him? But Mughniyeh's big successes were far behind
him, in the 80s and early 90s, and the Israelis are too
sophisticated to buy into the Hollywood notion of a "mastermind"
who is so vital to the conduct of operations that his death
would make a big difference.
Assuming that it was the Israelis, and assuming also that they
are not stupid, why would they kill Mughniyeh in Damascus? Could
it be that they were trying to push Hezbollah into the kind of
response that Hassan Nasrallah actually gave?
Hezbollah has prospered mightily since its successful resistance
to the Israeli army in southern Lebanon in 2006. Luring it into
terrorist attacks on civilian Israeli and Jewish targets
overseas could only serve to discredit it in the eyes of those
in the West who might be tempted to talk to it, and even in the
eyes of some Arabs. Are the Israeli intelligence services clever
and subtle enough to think this? Is the Pope a Catholic?
And what about Nasrallah? Was he actually declaring a jihad
against Jews all over the world? Well, no, actually. He seemed
to be saying what the crowd at Imad Mughniyeh's funeral
obviously wanted to hear, but he left his real options open. He,
too, has been in this game long enough to understand that the
goal of the other side is not so much to hurt you as to push you
into mistakes that will damage your cause.
We shall have to wait and see, but I would be very surprised if
Hezbollah now launched a terrorist campaign against Jewish
targets outside the Middle East. This is a game in which people
die from time to time, but it is fundamentally about influencing
the popular perception of your cause at home and abroad.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose
articles are published in 45 countries.
Copyright ©2008, APN Holdings NZ Limited
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