Free Warriors of God by Nicholas Blanford Page B

images—Imam Hussein in the blood-splattered sands of Karbala; Khomeini gazing with beetle-browed intensity at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Islam’s third holiest site. Iranian flags fluttered alongside banners hanging from electricity pylons or suspended across roads exhorting “Death to America.” The main square in Baalbek was renamed after Khomeini. Women began to wear the full-length black chador. Alcohol was removed from the shelves in shops and hotels. IRGC clerics taught classes on the Koran and Khomeini’s theories on Islam. Others visited
husseiniyah
s in villages to give lectures on the Iranian revolution and show films of the Iran-Iraq war.
    It was a slow process, but the Iranians were methodical and patient.
    â€œMost people were happy to see them, but others were suspicious,” recalls Hussein Hamiyah, then a university student from the Bekaa village of Taraya. “Some thought that the Iranians should have fought the Israelis and couldn’t understand why they were wasting their time preaching religion to us.”
    The Iranian campaign to persuade and recruit the Shias was aided by a split within the ranks of Amal a week into the Israeli invasion when Nabih Berri, the movement’s leader, agreed to join a committee of “national salvation” under the leadership of President Elias Sarkis. Also included in the committee was Bashir Gemayel, leader of the Christian Kataeb militia, whom Ariel Sharon had earmarked as the next president of Lebanon. The Islamists within Amal were outraged that Berri would sit at the same table as an ally of Israel. Hussein Mussawi, the deputy leader of Amal, angrily denounced Berri as a collaborator and moved to the Bekaa with his followers to establish a new faction called Islamic Amal. In Tehran, Sayyed Ibrahim al-Amine, Amal’s representative to the Iranian capital, publicly announced his split from the movement. Another defector from Amal was Hassan Nasrallah.
    Gradually, shepherded by the IRGC, a loose coalition began to emerge in the Bekaa consisting of the Amal defectors, Mussawi’s Islamic Amal, members of the Lebanese Union of Muslim Students, and adherents of the Lebanese Dawa party, as well as numerous tiny institutes and study groups that comprised the radical Shia milieu in Lebanon. Although they lacked an organizational framework, they shared common ideas and outlooks. The ranks were also augmented with those Shias who had fought with Palestinian factions and were looking for a new paymaster after the bulk of the PLO evacuated from Beirut at the end of August. Among them was Imad Mughniyah, who recognized that the new group coalescing in the Bekaa under Iranian stewardship was the right vehicle for him and his comrades. Mughniyah exploited his connections with Fatah and Anis Naqqash’s Arab Lebanese Movement to persuade fresh recruits to join the new Iranian-directed resistance in the Bekaa.
    The leaders were Lebanese clerics, mainly from the Bekaa, such asSheikh Sobhi Tufayli, Sayyed Abbas Mussawi, and Sheikh Mohammed Yazbek, all of whom had studied in Najaf under Sayyed Mohammed Baqr as-Sadr. They expressed commitment to Khomeini’s leadership and sought to build an organization rooted in Islam that looked beyond Lebanon’s parochial purview and was dedicated to the struggle against Israel.
    â€œWe wanted our own organization, which would be more pan-Islamic and supportive of the Palestinians [than Amal],” Tufayli recalls. “We wanted to lay the foundations of an institution that would be independent and not have specific influences on the Lebanese scene. We wanted it to be completely dependent on Islamic law and not influenced by nationalist ideologies. During that period there were many discussions and details worked out.”
    The result was the “Manifesto of the Nine,” a synthesis of the new organization’s ideas and goals. The three main tenets of the manifesto were, first,