[R-G] Hezbollah Forging New Ties, Recruiting from Other Sects

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/01/MNOISNC32.DTL&hw=hugh+macleod&sn=001&sc=1000>
Lebanon's militant Hezbollah forging new ties
Shiite group recruits from other sects to help build strength

Hugh Macleod, Chronicle Foreign Service

Thursday, November 1, 2007
A cousin of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah stands over...

(11-01) 04:00 PDT Ain Al-Hilweh, Lebanon --

Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group, is expanding its
military power by recruiting Sunnis, Christians and Druze in
preparation for another conflict with Israel, according to sources
close to Hezbollah.

In addition to its yearlong political campaign to bring down Lebanon's
pro-Western government, Hezbollah has ignored U.N. and Lebanese
government calls for disarmament and remains focused on bolstering its
military strength by recruiting non-Shiites. The Islamic organization
wants to allay fears that it is strictly a sectarian militia, these
same sources say.

Former Lebanese Brig. Gen. Amin Hotait, an expert on Hezbollah, says
the nonsectarian strategy began after Hezbollah declared a "divine
victory" over Israel in a monthlong war in July 2006. Since then, its
fighters have increased by several thousand, the analysts say.

"After the July war, the numbers of Shiites joining Hezbollah as
fighters doubled, but the group has also expanded by appealing to
other sects under the banner of the political opposition," said
Hotait. "They are preparing for a future role in conflict against
Israel."

In recent months, Hezbollah and its political allies have led a
protest to topple the government coalition of Sunnis, Christians and
Druze known as March 14. The crisis ensued last year after Prime
Minister Fuad Saniora called a Cabinet meeting to discuss disarming
Hezbollah. In response, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accused
Saniora of being a traitor and working for the United States and
Israel. Last November, all five Shiite ministers and a Christian ally
resigned from the government.

"Before the July war, Hezbollah had called for a national unity
government," said Amal Saad Ghorayeb, an expert on Hezbollah at the
Carnegie Endowment's Middle East Center in Beirut. "But after the war,
they became much more vocal and hard-line because they saw that there
was a clear U.S. policy to utilize March 14 to disarm Hezbollah and
weaken Iran and Syria in the process."

Intelligence experts widely believe Hezbollah - defined as a terrorist
organization by the U.S. State Department - receives most of its
weapons from Iran. The arms are then smuggled across the Syrian border
with the approval of Damascus.

Although exact figures are impossible to come by, experts estimate
that Hezbollah had several thousand professional fighters and about
10,000 second-rank troops before the war with Israel.

Hotait says Hezbollah has since re-established the Lebanese Brigades
for Resisting Occupation, which had been scrapped in 1999 and whose
ranks included Shiite and Sunni Muslims, Druze and Christians.

Hezbollah is also courting Sunni religious scholars known as sheikhs
to shore up its military support, according to Patrick Haenni, a
senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.

"Hezbollah is in desperate need of the Sunni sheikhs and went to meet
as many as they could," said Haenni. "They are eager not to make the
resistance against Israel a Shiite cause."

Moreover, Hezbollah is arming and training a Sunni militia group
inside the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp near the southern
port of Sidon, ostensibly to counter al Qaeda fighters. It is the
largest of a dozen Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, with an
estimated 75,000 residents.

Sheikh Abu Ayoub, the commander of some 300 Sunni Palestinian fighters
of Ansar Allah (Followers of God), acknowledges his group's
affiliation with Hezbollah.

"Everything comes from Hezbollah - financial support, weapons and
training," said Abu Ayoub, inside the run-down camp. "Palestine is an
Islamic issue. Hezbollah are Islamic. We are Islamic."

Ansar Allah members say they will monitor and expel foreign fighters
to prevent a repeat of the devastating summer conflict between the
Sunni al Qaeda-inspired militants of Fatah Islam - many of whom were
Saudi extremists - and the Lebanese army in the northern Nahr al-Bared
refugee camp. The three-month-long conflict was the worst internal
violence since the end of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war. The fighting
destroyed much of the camp and killed 168 soldiers, more than 200
militants and 47 civilians.

"Hezbollah has an interest in preventing the rise of al Qaeda when you
see what has happened in Iraq," said Abu Ayoub.

Hezbollah's media office ignored several requests to comment for this
story. However, in an earlier interview, the group's foreign affairs
spokesman, Nawaf Mousawi, blamed the rise of Sunni extremism in
Lebanon on Washington and the government coalition, which sees such
groups as a bulwark against Hezbollah. Washington and Beirut adamantly
deny the allegation.

In a March article in the New Yorker magazine, reporter Seymour Hersh
quoted a former British intelligence officer saying the Sunni
extremist group Fatah Islam was "offered weapons and money by people
presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government's
interests - presumably to take on Hezbollah."

After the end of the civil war in 1990, Hezbollah became the only
militia allowed to retain its weapons to resist Israeli occupation of
southern Lebanon. In 2000, Israeli troops withdrew after a 22-year
occupation and a war of attrition with Hezbollah fighters.

Although the Lebanese government confirmed Hezbollah's right to
liberate an Israeli-occupied border area called the Shebaa Farms in
2005, international attention on the militant organization has been
mounting since 2004, when the U.S.-French sponsored Security Council
resolution 1559 called for disarming all Lebanese militias.

Few observers here dispute that Hezbollah is preparing for another
confrontation with Israel after last summer's war ended in a stalemate
and U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese army replaced Hezbollah fighters in
the south.

Hezbollah leaders say that they are setting up hidden military zones
north of the Litani River, the waterway that marks the boundary of
U.N-patrolled territory. Government officials say Hezbollah is also
fortifying positions in the Bekaa Valley near the border with Syria.

But these same analysts say Hezbollah is unlikely to provoke another
war as it did last July, when a cross-border raid killed two Israeli
soldiers and captured two more, who were taken to Lebanon and remain
captive.

"Hezbollah knows that in the case of Round 2 with Israel, they will
not only lose the support of their Christian allies, but also the
support of many Shiites, who know that if they have to flee the south
again they will have nowhere to go in Lebanon," said Haenni of the
International Crisis Group. "Hezbollah knows they have lost the
southern border with Israel and it will be closed to them for a very
long time, but that is not because Hezbollah can't make operations in
the south through U.N. and Lebanese army lines - those will always be
possible."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/01/MNOISNC32.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 11 of the San Francisco Chronicle
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>