In November 2001, the State
Department placed Hezbollah on a formal list of foreign terrorist
organizations whose financial assets can be seized. After September
11, the Bush administration demanded that Lebanon freeze Hezbollah’s
assets, but Lebanon has refused. Also, the head of Hezbollah’s
security apparatus—Imad Mugniyah, a Lebanese with long-standing ties
to Iranian intelligence agencies and a decades-long history of
involvement with anti-American terrorism—now has a $25 million U.S.
bounty on his head, just like Osama bin Laden.
Yes, although the Shiite clerics who rule Iran
have a different radical religious outlook than those of the Sunni
Muslims of both the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban,
which targeted Shiites in Afghanistan. But Mugniyah did reportedly
meet at least once during the 1990s with bin Laden. Moreover,
Hezbollah and al-Qaeda have reportedly been cooperating on logistics
and training for some operations, according to intelligence
officials and some terrorism experts.
Yes. Hezbollah has 12 seats in Lebanon's
128-member parliament, which is elected in a system that experts say
tends to magnify the influence of Christian and Sunni groups worried
about Shiite influence over the country. The group entered the
Lebanese political arena after Lebanon's civil war ended in 1990 and
the country fell under Syrian influence.
Experts attribute much of Hezbollah's widespread
popularity within the Arab world to an unprecedented feat: Hezbollah
was able to use force to get Israel to pull back from territory,
something no Arab government or group had ever accomplished.
Hezbollah waged a violent, 18-year campaign against Israel's control
of a self-declared “security zone” in southern Lebanon, which Israel
had taken after the 1982 invasion of Lebanon masterminded by then
Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. After suffering mounting casualties,
in 2000, then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered Israeli
troops to unilaterally leave the security zone. For millions of
Arabs, that made Hezbollah into heroes. And many Palestinian
militants waging the current intifada (uprising) against
Israel cite Hezbollah as an inspiration.
Shiism is the minority strain within Islam, and
its members believe that the Muslim community should be run by
descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
By the Council on Foreign
Relations.
Specific attacks
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