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Hezbollah and Al Qaeda networks in South East Asia are also the same NGO infrasturcture to advance their aims and objectives. Legitimate international Islamic organizations including charities funded by respectable governments were penetrated and exploited by Al Qaeda and Hezbollah to advance their objectives. Abdul Nasser Novoh, based in Maikati City , Manila faciliated Al Qaeda and Hezbollah operations. He worked with the Phillipines based Muslim World League (MWL) , International Islamic Relief Organization (IRAQ), Darul Hirja Foundation (HC) , International Islamic Conference (IIC) and other international Islamic organizations. Through him both Al Qaeda and Hezbollah infiltrated unwitting domestic Islamic non - governmental organizational organizations such as the Islamic Dawah Council of the Phillpines (IDCP) whose purpose was to propogate Islamic principles and knowledge.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Hezbollah Al-Qaeda relationship was a strategic partnership indicative of a major shift in terrorist thinking, Throughout the 1990’s ethnonationalist groups were supplanted by or fell under the influences of Islamist groups therby paving the way for idological tolerance and intergroup cohesion as a means of confronting a common menace and enemy. This interesting development was not confined to the Middle East: Shia and Sunni groups also cooperated in Asia, the first signs of this been seen in links between Hezbollah and Al Qaeda associate groups such as the Morro Islamic Foundation Front (MILF) which facilitated and supported Hezbollah’s operations in the Asia-Pacific in the late 1990’s. The disruption of a Hezbollah cell in 1998 and arrest of a Hezbollah cell in Singapore in 1998 and arrest of Hezbollah operatives in the Phillipines in 1999 and 2000 in the Phillipines is compelling evidence of this new cooperation.
The arrest of Pandu Yadhawinata , an Indonesian Hezbollah operative , at Manila’s domestic airport was a direct result if monitoring the MILF liason officer Abdul Nasser Nooh’s communication with Islamic “Charities” connected with Hezbollah and the Phillipines . Furthermore Hezbollah’s plans to rescue Malaysian and Indonesians to conduct terrorist attacks in Australia and Israel have been detected. Trilateral cooperation between the U.S. , Israel and the Phillipines, also led to the arrest of Malaysian based Hezbollah leader , Hisham ( alias Jaafar) , who was planning terrorist attacks in South East Asia.
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Sphere: Related ContentHezbollah constantly denies responsibility for bombing the U.S. Marine barracks and French paratroop headquarters in 1983. Although the U.S. was privy to Hezbollah - Al Qaeda cooperation as far back as late 1998, it did not take decisive steps to criminalize Hezbollah leadership , even though the group and kidnapped as well as killed many Americans. This was interpreted by Hezbollah as a sign of weakness , prompting it and Al Qaeda to think that it could attack Americans and the USA with great impunity. This feeling was reinforced by the realization that after the debacle in Somalia, American politicians were loathe to risk the lives of their armed forces , by deploying them in high risk areas overseas. It was only after September 11 and the Sept 111 bombings that the FBI placed Mughmiyeh , now thought to be living in Iran, on its list of twenty two persons designated as ” wanted terrorist leaders”.
Despite Iran being responsible for the deaths of over 1500 Americans and being the world’s most active sponsor of state terrorism, the U.S. has failed to bring key leaders such as Mughinyeh to justice. U.S. intelligence suffered two major losses that deleted their strategic capabilities in the middle east ; the C.I.A.’s section Beirut station chiel Robert Armes was killed in the Embassy bombing of April 23,1983 , while William Buckley was kidnapped in March 1983 and killed soon afterwards. Moreover the Iranian intelligence services shielded Hezbollah from U.S. intelligence penetration. Mughaniyeh operated for Hezbollah and Iran, depending on either’s political or security interests at the time.
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Sphere: Related ContentIt was Mughniyeh who inspired Osama bin Laden to develop coordinated simultaneous attacks as a regular modus operandi , and this has been the hallmark of more subsequent Al Qaeda operations including 9/11 and the East Africa bombings. The CIA’s nightmare was that Osama , the leading Sunni Moslem terrorist, amd Mughniyeh, the leading Shia Moslem terrorist, would combine their forces. Mughniyeh , who was especially close to the Iranians, helped Al Qaeda , to develop its agent - handling systems , having specalised in conducting long range operations - including the suicide bombing of the Jewish community center and Israeli consulate Buenos Aires Argentina in 1992 and 1994 respectively and experts from Iran’s Ministry of Information and Security trained Al Qaeda members in Sudan ( in existing Al Qaeda facilities). Therafter Al Qaedas’s modus operandi came to resemble that of Hezbollah. The latter kept the marine base and and barracks in Beirut Lebanon under surveillance for months while Al Qaeda learnt to keep its targets for years before mounting an attack. Although they came from different traditions , the motiviations of Hezbollah suicide bombers was little different from that of the Al Qaeda counterpart.
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The cooperation did not end with Al Qaeda members receiving training in Lebanon. According to the testimony of Ali Muhammed before the court of the Southern District of New York on October 20, 2000 he set up a meeting between Osama and Hezbollah leadership. represented by Omad Ughniyeh - Hizbollah’s best expert in security - formerly a specalist with PLO Force elite 17 as well its Islamic wing - Khomeni Fatah Islamites . He joined Hezbollah as a bodyguard to its spiritual leader Sheikh Fadalah and later became head of external operations. He is credited with the operation that lead to the forced or leading to the extraction of the American forces if the U.S. led Multinational Forces (M.N.F.) from Beirut in August 1982.
Mughiney is suspected of having planned and supervised the simultaneous and the French paratrooper H.Q. in Beirut on April 18, 1983. The Americans lost 241 Marines , their heaviest military defeat since Vietnam. Twenty seconds later a suicide attack struck the paratrooper H.Q. 4 miles away killing 56 soldiers, France’s highest military loss since the Algerian war. Mughaniyeh had also planned simultanteously destroy the Italian troops that were billeted in tents , not in a building, thereby nullifying the purpose of a suicide attack. In response to this appalling loss of live the multinational peacekeeping force withdrew from Lebanon
A previously unknown and unappreciated fact about Al Qaeda concerns the ties it has forged with both Iran and Lebanon as well as with Hezbollah , the feared and resourceful resistance movement of Lebanese Shia supported by these two states and Syria. In addition to uniting the two most powerful Egyptian terrorist groups, Osama’s other achievement was to forge a working relationship between Shia and Sunni in keeping with his goal rather than rule orientated doctrine. By virtueof this strategic partnership he united the Middle East’s two most dangerous Terrorist groups - Al Qaeda and Hizbollah; the latter had long been regarded as the region’s most technically advanced outfit. one that Hamas, Palestininan Islamic Jihad and the GIA sought to emulate and copy. Iran received nearly 10 % of Osama’s outgoing calls from Afghanistan from mid 1996 to 1998 suggesting that Iran was maintaining a relationship with Al Qaeda even after he developed close ties with the Taliban in Afghanistan a regime most unfriendly towards Iran.
Osama was closely supported in this enterprise by Mamdouh Manmud Salim, Abu Fahdl al _makkee and Abu Fahdl al -Iraqi who persuaded otehr Al Qaeda members of the need to overcome secterianism. According to the U.S. court record Osama was livin in Khartoum when the renowned Sudanese religious leaderAhmed Abdel Rahman Hamadabi brought him to meet with the Al Qaeda leadership. Sheikh Nonami represented the Iranian Shias , who occupied an Iranian government maintained offfice in Khartoum, and had access to the highest eschelons of power in Tehran. This meeting was chaired by Osama, was the first in a series between Al Qaeda and Iran on the one hand and Hezbollah on the other. Al Qaeda was keen to invest ime and effort from a technical point of view too. Al Qaeda had previously discovered that it had technical difficulties in bombing big building, having failed in February 1003 in its plan to collapse one tower of the World Trade Center , one onto the other which it hoped would result in an estimated 250,000 casualties. Within a few weeks of the Khartoum meeting, however Iran consulted Hezbollah and Al Qaeda was invited to send a contingent to Lebanon.
The Al Qaeda team included Abu Talha al - Sudani, Sarif-al-Islam el-Masry and other trainers, including Abu Jaffer el-Masry, the explosives expert who ran the the Jihad Wal in Afghanistan. In addition to developing this capability with Iranian assistance. Al Qaeda also received a large amount of explosives, from Iran that were used in bombing East African targets, The training teams brought Hezbollab training and propoganda videos with the intention of passing on their knowledge to other Al Aaeda members and Islamist groups.
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