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The Islamic Jihad Organization was the name used by telephone callers demanding the departure of all Americans from Lebanon and taking responsibility for a number of kidnappings and of bombings in Lebanon which killed several hundred people. Their deadliest attacks were the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing of French and U.S. MNF peacekeeping troops, and the April 1983 United States Embassy bombing in Beirut.

Whether this Islamic Jihad was a nom de guerre used for terrorist activities by the Lebanese Shia Islamist political movement/party/militia/social services organization known as Hezbollah or something more varied and nebulous, is disputed.

Contents

Existence

Initially the group was described as "a mysterious group about which virtually nothing was known," [1] one whose "only members" seemed to be the "anonymous callers" taking credit for the bombings, or one that simply didn't exist. After the MNF bombing the New York Times reported that "Lebanese police sources, Western intelligence sources, Israeli Government sources and leading Shi'ite Moslem religious leaders in Beirut are all convinced that there is no such thing as Islamic Jihad," as an organization, no membership, no writings, etc.[2] Journalist Robin Wright has described it as "more of an information network for a variety of cells of movements", rather than a centralized organization. [3] Not all of IJ's claims of responsibility were credible, as "in some cases, the callers seemed to be exploiting the activities of groups that had no apparent ties to Islamic Jihad," while working with some success to create "an aura of a single omnipotent force in the region." [4]

Wright has compared Islamic Jihad to the Black September wing of the Palestinian Fatah,[5] serving the function of providing its controlling organization, in this case Hezbollah, with some distance and plausible deniability from terrorist acts that might provoke retaliation or other problems.

Lebanese journalist Hala Jaber compared it to "a phony company which rents office space for a month and then vanishes," existing "only when it was committing an atrocity against its targets ..." [6]

Adam Shatz of The Nation magazine has described Islamic Jihad as "a precursor to Hezbollah, which did not yet officially exist" at the time of the bombings Islamic Jihad took credit for.[7] Jeffrey Goldberg says

Using various names, including the Islamic Jihad Organization and the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth, Hezbollah remained underground until 1985, when it published a manifesto condemning the West, and proclaiming, “.... Allah is behind us supporting and protecting us while instilling fear in the hearts of our enemies.” [8]

A 2003 decision by an American court named Islamic Jihad as the name used by Hezbollah for its attacks in Lebanon, and parts of the Middle East, and Europe.[9] Just as Hezbollah used another name Islamic Resistance, or al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, for its attacks against Israel. [10]

By the mid-1980s Hizbollah leaders are reported to have admitted their involvement in the attacks and the nominal nature of "Islamic Jihad" - that it was merely a `telephone organisation,` [11] [12] and [13] whose name was `used by those involved to disguise their true identity.` [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]

Some believe IJ is more a creature of the Islamic Republic of Iran than Lebanese Shia. Author Robert Baer describes it as the cover name used by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Pasdaran) for state sanctioned terrorist operations. Baer claims the order for 1983 US embassy bombing is widely believed to have originated high up in the Iranian Islamic Republic's hierarchy.[19] According to Baer it is "a very distinct organization, which was separate from Hezbollah because you had the [Hezbollah] consultative council which only had a vague idea of what the hostage-takers were doing."[20]

Hala Jaber calls it a name "deliberately contrived by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their recruits to cast confusion." [6] Wright is more circumspect, saying: "Islamic Jihad was clearly pro-Iranian in ideology, but some doubts existed among both Muslim moderates and Western diplomats about whether it was actually directed by Iran rather than home-grown." [3]

More recently authors such as researcher Robert A. Pape[21] and journalist Lawrence Wright[22] have made no mention of Islamic Jihad and simply name Hezbollah as the author of Lebanese terror attacks claimed or attributed to Islamic Jihad.

From 1982 to 1986, Hezbollah conducted 36 suicide terrorist attacks involving a total of 41 attackers against American, French, and Israeli political and military targets in Lebanon ... Altogether, these attacks killed 659 people ... [21]

Actions

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Bombings and assassinations

  • May 24, 1982. Car bomb attack on French Embassy in Beirut killing 12 and wounding 27. Islam Jihad is one of several groups taking responsibility. Anger over France's providing of arms to Iran's enemy Iraq is thought to be the motivating factor. [23]
  • April 18, 1983. Bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Detonated in a delivery van driven by a suicide bomber, carrying about 2000 pounds of explosives. The bomb killed 63 people, 17 of them Americans, including 9 CIA agents in Beirut for a meeting.[24]
  • October 23, 1983. MNF barracks bombing in Beirut. Two truck bombs struck buildings in Beirut housing U.S. and French members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon, killing 241 American servicemen and 58 French paratroopers. Islamic Jihad claims responsibility in a statement to Agence France Presse: "We are the soldiers of God, ... We are neither Iranians, Syrian nor Palestinians, but Muslims who follow the precepts of the Koran ... We said after that [April embassy bombing] that we would strike more violently still. Now they understand with what they are dealing. Violence will remain our only way." [25]
  • December 12, 1983. 1983 Kuwait bombings. Two months after the Beirut barracks bombing. The 90-minute coordinated attack of six key foreign and Kuwaiti installations including two embassies, the airport and the countries main petro-chemical plant, was more notable for the damage it might have caused than what was actually destroyed. What might have been "the worst terrorist episode of the twentieth century in the Middle East," succeeding in killing only six people because of the bombs faulty rigging.[26]
  • January 18, 1984. Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University in Beirut (AUB), assassinated near his office. Had replaced AUB president David Dodge, who was kidnapped six months earlier. A telephone message claiming to represent Islamic Jihad proclaimed: "We are responsible of the assassination of the president of AUB ... We also vow that not a single American or French will remain on this soil. We shall take no different course. And we shall not waver." [27]
  • September 20, 1984. American Embassy Annex in Christian East Beirut is bombed by suicide van bomber with 3000 pounds of explosives. 14 were killed, including 2 Americans, dozens are injured. Embassy had moved to a "quiet residential suburb of hillside villas and luxury apartments" after the 1983 bombing. Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew and visiting British Ambassador David Miers are buried under rubble but rescued with only minor injuries. Islamic Jihad takes credit in an anonymous phone call vowing, "The operation comes to prove that we will carry out our previous promise not to allow a single American to remain on Lebanese soil. ... we mean every inch of Lebanese territory. ..."[28]
  • April 12, 1985. 1985 El Descanso bombing. The IJO claims a bombing of a Spanish restaurant aimed at American military personnel. The bomb killed 18 Spaniards and injured 82 others, including 11 American servicemen. [29]
  • May 25, 1985. Attempted assassination of Kuwaiti ruler (Emir) Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, by suicide car bomber attack of the Emir's motorcade. Two bodyguards and a passerby are killed. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility and again demands the terrorists release.[30]
  • March 17, 1992. 1992 Israeli Embassy attack in Buenos Aires. A suicide truck bomber smashs into the front of the Israeli Embassy destroying the embassy, a Catholic church, and a nearby school building. 29 are killed and 242 wounded, mostly Argentinian civilians, many of them children. As of 2006 it remains the deadliest attack on an Israeli diplomatic mission. Islamic Jihad, claims responsibility, stating the attack was in retaliation for Israel's assassination of Hezbollah leader Sayed Abbas al-Musawi.

Claims of bombing

  • December 12, 1985. Arrow Air Flight 1285 taking off from Gander, Newfoundland, crashes and burns about half a mile from the runway, killing all 256 passengers and crew on board. In an anonymous caller to a French news agency in Beirut, Islamic Jihad claims it destroyed the plane to prove "our ability to strike at the Americans anywhere." [31] However an investigation by the Canadian Aviation Safety Board (CASB) finds the crash was most likely an accident.[32][33]

Kidnappings

Further information: Lebanon Hostage Crisis
  • March 16, 1984. William Francis Buckley,Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Beirut chief of station, was abducted on this date. Islamic Jihad Organization claims to have killed him on October 3, 1985. The Islamic Jihad Organization later released to a Beirut newspaper a photograph purporting to depict his corpse. Press reports stated that Buckley had been transferred to Iran, where he was tortured and killed. [34 ]
  • May 1984. Presbyterian minister Benjamin Weir is kidnapped by three armed men. Weir may have thought he was safe from harm from Muslims because he lived in Shiite West Beirut working "closely with various Muslim-oriented charity and relief groups," and had lived in Lebanon since 1958. Two days after his abduction, a telephone message claimed: "Islamic Jihad organization claims it is responsible for the abduction ... in order to renew our acceptance of Reagan's challenge and to confirm our commitment of the statement ... that we will not leave any American on Lebanese soil." [35]
  • February 10, 1986. The Islamic Jihad Organization released a photograph that claimed to show the (dead) body of French citizen Michel Seurat, who had been kidnapped earlier. [34 ]

References

  1. ^ Wright, Robin, Sacred Rage, Simon and Schuster, (2001), p.73
  2. ^ New York Times, December 30, 1983, p.A6, "The Search for Evidence."
  3. ^ a b Wright, Robin, Sacred Rage, Simon and Schuster, (2001), p.85
  4. ^ Wright, Robin, Sacred Rage, Simon and Schuster, (2001), p.86
  5. ^ Wright, Robin, Sacred Rage, Simon and Schuster, (2001), p.95
  6. ^ a b Hezbollah : Born with a vengeance by Hala Jaber, p.113
  7. ^ Adam Shatz (April 29, 2004). "In Search of Hezbollah". The New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17060. Retrieved 2006-08-14.  
  8. ^ In The Party Of God Part I, By Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker, October 14, 2002
  9. ^ see also Bates, John D. (Presiding) (September 2003) (pdf). Anne Dammarell et al. v. Islamic Republic of Iran. District of Columbia, U.S.: The United States District Court for the District of Columbia. http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/01-2224.pdf. Retrieved 2006-09-21.  
  10. ^ Ranstorp, Hizb'allah (1997), p.67
  11. ^ Marius Deeb, Militant Islamic Movements in Lebanon: Origins, Social Basis, and Ideology, Occasional Paper Series (Washington, DC, Georgetown University, 1986) p.19
  12. ^ al-Nahar, 7 September 1985
  13. ^ LaRevue du Liban, 27 July-3 August 1985
  14. ^ al-Nahar al-Arabi, 10 June
  15. ^ Ma'aretz, 16 December 1983
  16. ^ Le Point, 30 July 1987
  17. ^ al-Shira, 28 August 1988
  18. ^ Nouveau Magazine, 23 July 1988
  19. ^ Baer, Robert. 2002. See No Evil Three Rivers Press, New York, New York.
  20. ^ Interview Robert Baer
  21. ^ a b Pape, Robert A., Dying to Win : The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism , Random House, 2005 p.129
  22. ^ Wright, Lawrence, Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright, NY, Knopf, 2006
  23. ^ New York Times, April 19, 1983, 'Islamic Attacks Seen as Pro-Iranian, Hijazi, Ihsan, p.A12
  24. ^ Wright, Robin, Sacred Rage, Simon and Schuster, 2001, p.73, 15-16
  25. ^ Wright, Robin, Sacred Rage, Simon and Schuster, 2001, p.73
  26. ^ Wright, Robin, Sacred Rage, Simon and Schuster, 2001, p.112
  27. ^ Wright, Robin, Sacred Rage, Simon and Schuster, 2001, p.101-2
  28. ^ Wright, Robin, Sacred Rage, Simon and Schuster, 2001, p.107
  29. ^ Walker, Jane. "Spanish bomb blast blamed on Jihad / Madrid restaurant explosion blamed on Muslim group." The Guardian, April 15, 1985.
  30. ^ New York Times May 26, 1985
  31. ^ Watson, Laurie. "Errors By Crew Reportedly Cited In Gander Crash", Philadelphia Inquirer, United Press International, November 6, 1988, pp. A33.
  32. ^ "Arrow Air Flight 1285 accident record". ASN. http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19851212-0.  
  33. ^ "CSB Majority Report". http://www.sandford.org/gandercrash/investigations/majority_report/html/_i.shtml.  
  34. ^ a b Lebanon, The Hostage Crisis
  35. ^ Wright, Robin, Sacred Rage, Simon and Schuster, 2001, p.101,2,4

See also








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