Laura Rozen: Islamic radical groups are not all alike

Islamic radical groups are not all alike

By Laura Rozen | August 13, 2006

IN COUNTERTERRORISM analysis, there are two primary questions: What is a terrorist group's capability? And what is its intent?

President Bush has declared the current conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah to be part of the US-led global war on terror. ``The current crisis is part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East," Bush said in Miami last month. But there are practical reasons not to collapse Al Qaeda and Hezbollah into the same mold. Although Hezbollah has the capability and a history of killing Americans, that group is not currently trying to kill Americans. Al Qaeda and its imitators are -- as is evident from the exposure Thursday of a London-based conspiracy, possibly linked to Al Qaeda, to blow up transatlantic jetliners.

While there's been ample discussion of why terrorist groups attack US interests, it's also vital to understand why some terrorists hold back.

Almost all counterterrorism specialists agree that Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi'ite terrorist group backed by Iran and Syria, has the capability to strike US targets. Indeed, until Sept. 11, 2001, Hezbollah had killed more Americans than any other terrorist group. Yet since the 1980s, when Hezbollah killed hundreds of Americans in strikes on a Marine barracks and the US embassy in Beirut , the group has not attacked US targets, but Israeli ones.

Recent US intelligence community analyses raise the question: What would change Hezbollah's current posture of standing on the sidelines and not actively targeting Americans?

In April , the community produced a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism, which, according to people who have read it , says that Hezbollah is the only major terrorist group with global reach currently not trying to kill Americans. The document also raised the intelligence community's concern that, if the United States were to attack Iran over its nuclear program, Iran might use Hezbollah to strike US targets once again.

The situation in Lebanon presents a more indirect confrontation between the United States and Iran. On one level, it pits the US-supplied Israelis against the Iranian-supplied Hezbollah. What's more, the Bush administration is widely perceived to be providing diplomatic cover for Israel's assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon. And because the group has so far survived, respect for Hezbollah on the so-called Arab street is at an all-time high. As former Reagan-era Pentagon counterterrorism chief Noel Koch puts it, ``Hezbollah's stock is rising up the charts."

According to former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham, Hezbollah has a larger presence in the United States than Al Qaeda does. Nevertheless, experts say the group will continue to exercise restraint against Americans. ``I don't see much prospect of Hezbollah attacking US targets," Koch says . ``They've got their hands full with the war against Israel, and this is their winner."

Despite suggestions by some politicians that Islamic radical groups are all alike, Hezbollah is not Al Qaeda. ``President Bush and some congressmen paint Hezbollah the same way as Al Qaeda," says Dennis Pluchinsky, who recently retired after 28 years as a State Department counterterrorism analyst. ``But I don't think [Hezbollah] has a global agenda. Al Qaeda has initiated a global jihad. Al Qaeda and other global jihadists really believe it's Islam's manifest destiny to rule the earth. Hezbollah is fairly pragmatic; they want to set up an Islamic state in Lebanon."

Pluchinsky says as esteem for Hezbollah has risen , Al Qaeda has tried to get in on the action. ``Now bin Laden has an opportunity to step forward and show support, and to try to link what's happening in Lebanon to what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Hezbollah says, `No, there's no link at all.' "

The United States could still be drawn in, if current peace efforts fail and a regional war ignites. According to Magnus Ranstorp, a Swedish expert who has interviewed hundreds of members of Hezbollah, the only real way for Israel to defeat Hezbollah will be to take out its political leadership.

``Israel can never `win' this conflict," Ranstorp told me in an e-mail. ``If it really wants to make a dent it has to take out [Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan] Nasrallah and his closest leadership to create a vacuum ." Yet that move, he said, would lead to a broader war.

With Thursday's reminder of the unfinished business in the war to neutralize Al Qaeda, it's important to distinguish between those enemies that need to be destroyed, and those that can be deterred.

Laura Rozen is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect and the author of the blog War and Piece.