Hizb’allah and the Hostage-crisis Within Lebanon

Abstract

In a ten-year period, between 1982 and 1992, a number of enigmatic and obscure organisations, seemingly loosely or indirectly affiliated with the Hizb’allah organisation in Lebanon, not only launched spectacular and deadly suicide operations against the Western presence but also engaged in political acts of hostage-taking of Western citizens. While the shadowy Hizb’ allah movement has denied any active involvement in these acts of terrorism, though applauding these operations in concert with Iran, its self-proclaimed main enemies of the United States, Great Britain, and France, collectively sustained casualties of over 300 individuals killed by the organisation while it has held over 45 citizens in captivity for various lengths of time over a ten-year period.¹ While the chaos and insanity of the fifteen-year protracted civil war in Lebanon contributed to the difficulty in extricating the Western hostages from among a multitude of confessional militias, it also led to the association and image of Hizb’allah in the West as a crazy and fanatic religious group, bent on martyrdom through suicide-operations, and engaged in the random abduction of foreigners, under the assumed strict control and direction of Iran’s clerical establishment.