By Cliff May
Thursday, June 06, 2013
Back during the Bush administration, Deputy Secretary of
State Richard Armitage famously called Hezbollah the “A Team of terrorists,”
adding, “al-Qaeda is actually the B Team.” How do these two organizations
compare today?
Last week, the State Department released the 2012 issue
of its annual “Country Reports on Terrorism.” At a “background briefing,” a
“senior administration official” highlighted an “alarming trend”: a “marked
resurgence of terrorist activity by Iran and Hezbollah. The tempo of operational
activity was something we haven’t seen since the 1990s. . . We see no signs of
this activity abating in 2013. In fact, our assessment is that Hezbollah and
Iran will both continue to maintain a heightened level of terrorist activity
and operations in the near future.”
The State Department is right to see Hezbollah and Iran
as joined at the hip: the former is financed and instructed by the latter. That
has not always been understood, despite the fact that, prior to 9/11/01,
Hezbollah was responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist
organization. And Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, has
proclaimed, “Death to America was, is, and will stay our slogan."
It’s well known that Hezbollah has been sending
combatants into Syria in support of Bashar Assad, the dictator and Iranian
satrap. Less publicized are Hezbollah’s operations in other corners of the
world. A Hezbollah attack on a bus in Bulgaria last July killed five Israelis
and one Bulgarian. In Nigeria, authorities recently broke up a Hezbollah cell,
seizing what one Nigerian official called “a large quantity of assorted weapons
of different types and caliber.”
The State Department report contains surprisingly little
information about Hezbollah in Latin America. However, a 500-page report issued
last week by Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman reveals that Iran has
established an archipelago of “clandestine intelligence stations and operative
agents” in Latin America that are being used “to execute terrorist attacks when
the Iranian regime decides so, both directly or through its proxy, the
terrorist organization Hezbollah.”
The following are South American countries in which Iran
or Hezbollah has set up intelligence/terrorism bases: Argentina, Brazil,
Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname.
Nisman provides additional evidence — not that more is
needed — that Iranian officials and one Lebanese Hezbollah operative were
responsible for two terrorist bombings in Argentina in the 1990s. There’s an
American nexus too: Nisman charges that Mohsen Rabbani, Iran’s former cultural
attaché in Buenos Aires — implicated in the 1994 attack on a Jewish center in
Buenos Aires in which 85 people were killed — directed “Iranian agent” Abdul
Kadir, now serving a life sentence in connection with the 2010 plot to bomb
John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
Connect the dots, Nisman argues, and they draw a picture
of Iran “fomenting and fostering acts of international terrorism in concert
with its goals of exporting the revolution.”
All this considered, can al-Qaeda still be considered a
serious competitor? Yes, it can! Last weekend, my colleague, über-researcher
Tom Joscelyn, pointed out that AQ and its affiliates now “are fighting in more
countries than ever.”
In Afghanistan, AQ maintains safe havens in the provinces
of Kunar and Nuristan. The Taliban, its loyal ally, is responsible for a level
of violence “higher than before the Obama-ordered surge of American forces in
2010,” according to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force.
AQ and its affiliates have bases in northern Pakistan.
The Pakistani government, Joscelyn notes, “continues to be a duplicitous ally,
sponsoring and protecting various al Qaeda-allied groups. The Tehrik-e Taliban
Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban, remains a threat after orchestrating the
failed May 2010 bombing in Times Square. The State Department announced in
September 2010 that the TTP has “a ‘symbiotic relationship’ with al Qaeda.”
The AQ-affiliated al-Nusrah Front may be the most
effective force fighting against Assad’s troops and against Hezbollah and
Iranian combatants in Syria. AQ is resurgent in neighboring Iraq, with April
2013 being the deadliest month in that country in nearly five years, according
to the U.N.
AQ has expanded operations in Yemen. In Somalia, Shabaab
— which formally merged with AQ last year — is far from defeated and has
managed to carry out attacks in neighboring Kenya and Uganda as well. In
Nigeria, Boko Haram continues to slaughter Christians. In Egypt, al-Qaeda
members and associates — including Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the brother of
al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri — are operating more freely than ever. On
9/11/12 they hoisted an AQ flag above the U.S. embassy in Cairo.
Libyan groups closely linked to al-Qaeda were responsible
for the 9/11/12 attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three
other Americans. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb easily took over northern Mali
until French forces pushed them out of the population centers. Al-Qaeda
affiliates are becoming more visible and perhaps viable in Tunisia, too.
Despite all this, the State Department report asserts
that “core” al-Qaeda “is on a path to defeat.” I am not convinced that there is
sufficient evidence to substantiate that thesis. And even if it does prove to
be accurate, who’s to say that a weakening core can’t be compensated for by a
stronger periphery?
In the final analysis, “Which is the A Team of
terrorism?” is not the paramount question. What is: in the years ahead, does
the U.S. have what it takes to be the A Team of counterterrorism?
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