Hizbullah / Hezbollah (just the group)

[Jedburgh]

Here's the first two parts of a three-part series being published in the Asia Times:

12 Oct 06: Part 1: Winning the Intelligence War

...Our overall conclusion contradicts the current point of view being retailed by some White House and Israeli officials: that Israel's offensive in Lebanon significantly damaged Hezbollah's ability to wage war, that Israel successfully degraded Hezbollah's military ability to prevail in a future conflict, and that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), once deployed in large numbers in southern Lebanon, were able to prevail over their foes and dictate a settlement favorable to the Israeli political establishment.

Just the opposite is true. From the onset of the conflict to its last operations, Hezbollah commanders successfully penetrated Israel's strategic and tactical decision-making cycle across a spectrum of intelligence, military and political operations, with the result that Hezbollah scored a decisive and complete victory in its war with Israel...

13 Oct 06: Part 2: Winning the Ground War

...Moreover, and more significant, Hezbollah's fighters proved to be dedicated and disciplined. Using intelligence assets to pinpoint Israeli infantry penetrations, they proved the equal of Israel's best fighting units. In some cases, Israeli units were defeated on the field of battle, forced into sudden retreats or forced to rely on air cover to save elements from being overrun. Even toward the end of the war, on August 9, the IDF announced that 15 of its reserve soldiers were killed and 40 wounded in fighting in the villages of Marjayoun, Khiam and Kila - a stunning casualty rate for a marginal piece of real estate...

Edit to add: 14 Oct 06: Part 3: The Political War

[kaur]

Here is article from JDF 20.09.2006, that describes very well katysha rockets shooting modus operandi. Nice deception principles.

http://rapidshare.de/files/36556553/...ckets.pdf.html

[kaur]

Hamas is learning too. Article form JDW

http://www.webfilehost.com/?mode=viewupload&id=4539274

[georgev]

Hi!
Need to know the movement and strategy of Hizballh in Lebanon.
Regards,
George

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006...in_lebanon.php

[jonSlack]

Jerusalem Post - Exclusive: Hizbullah paying terrorists for Kassam attacks

According to the officials, while Islamic Jihad was behind most recent rocket attacks - including the one on Tuesday night that critically wounded 14-year-old Adir Basad in Sderot - several splinter terrorists groups are also involved and have received direct funding from Hizbullah.
According to security officials, Islamic Jihad gets the money via its headquarters in Damascus while Fatah's Tanzim terror group and the Popular Resistance Committees receive payment from Hizbullah in Lebanon.

All of the money originated in Iran, the officials said.

Government officials said Hamas was not currently involved in firing missiles, but was doing nothing to stop those who were.

[kaur]

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/p...icyFocus63.pdf

[Jedburgh]

Hizballah at War: A Military Assessment

Good link, Kaur.

From the conclusion:

...Hizballah’s display on the battlefield should worry U.S. policymakers and military planners as well. Enemies of the United States will likely seek to emulate Hizballah’s perceived successes in southern Lebanon, and the lessons learned by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan may or may not apply to such a fight. As the IDF learned in the occupied territories and Lebanon, the fight you have today might be completely different from the one you have tomorrow...

I don't believe we need to be "worried". Threat migration is an issue that we are very cognizant of, and (despite assertions to the contrary by some critics) there are a few very capable professionals out there monitoring various insurgent and terrorist TTPs in conflicts around the world. The TTPs of the conflict in question are certainly being broken down and digested for their potential at the tactical and operational level. However, the context of the Israeli-Hizballah conflict is unique, and I do not see it being replicated for a future US conflict.

It also needs to be said that those Americans in uniform who have spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan already are starkly aware of the truism that the fight you have today might be completely different from the one you have tomorrow. Threat TTPs, particularly in Iraq, are very often highly adaptive and evolutionary. In my opinion, we do a very good job of collecting lessons learned and breaking down threat tactics - although we do have blockages to effective dissemination and training implementation.

This oft-beaten dead horse - effective information sharing - is still a serious problem. As stated, we have capable professionals collecting and analyzing virtually all relevant lessons to be learned from conflicts world-wide. The problem is that it doesn't all go where it can do the most good - down to the small unit leaders that can best digest and implement the material.

Of course, much of the "analysis" I'm speaking of isn't put together into a soldier-friendly format...although these tactical lessons are picked up, they are not broken down and put back into a format useable at the tactical level by our guys.

And, although we do monitor and analyze TTPs in a wide variety of conflicts, there is no intelligence element that ultimately ties it all together and spits it back out - linking key aspects of separated TTPs from around the world together, like an explosives analyst looks at signatures in widely scattered bombing incidents, a profiler looks for tiny similarities in multiple murders across a wide area, or a crime analyst looks for similar incidents in other regions as he works to figure out a new crime trend in his jurisdiction...

[Strickland]

I am not sure why this is either shocking or seen as being somehow under-handed or nefarious? Didnt we pay the Contras to attack the legitimate government of Nicaragua? Didnt we pay the Hmong to act as a counterinsurgent force? Didnt we pay the ISI / Afghan Mujahideen to fight the Soviets? Wasnt the IRA primarily funded by misguided souls in Boston and New York City?

[Bowman]

What I find interesting is that apparently Hezbollah has to pay someone to do their deed ! How much of this mercenary business is going on when we are told that ideology drives the attacks ? Very interesting and worth looking further .

[Bill Moore]

The Hezbollah have proven they understand how to implement 4GW strategy effectively. These are guesses, but they are attempting to garner more political power in Lebanon, so they are probably holding their military arm in reserve, and keeping a clean overt appearance, yet covertly they are keeping the pressure on Israel by channeling money to various individuals and groups to conduct harassment attacks against Israel. To what purpose? This creates a wide array of targets for Israel, which means there are few if any identifiable targets that can be "effectively" neutralized. They may be able to find and kill the shooter, but there are hundreds of shooters waiting to step up to the plate. The Israeli government obviously feels compelled to take action, so this could be an attempt to lure Israel into conducting an attack, which will be seen by many as unprovoked, so again Hezbollah wins on the IO stage. Speculation, but don't underestimate them.

[kaur]

Take a look at pages 18-19

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/mh/dti0906/

[120mm]

Seems to be a reverification, though from a pro-Israeli source, of Israeli Armor performance in Lebanon.

As an aside, that NXT-book format is horrible. Who thought that would be a good idea?

[Jedburgh]

In Their Own Words: Hizbollah’s Strategy in the Current Confrontation

...The ideas expressed in the lengthy interviews, which we summarize below, are vitriolic. In deciding what material to use and what to leave out, we picked neither the most inflammatory nor the least controversial. Rather, we picked the ideas that were expressed repeatedly. We present those ideas without commentary, even when the language is extreme and accuracy questionable. We believe the raw material of the interviews will be helpful to readers seeking to understand the current crisis in Lebanon as well as the potential long-term ramifications of the crisis.

This presentation of Hizbollah’s ideas is based on six interviews conducted in Beirut by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb. The officials interviewed between November 1 and December 10, 2006 were: Sheikh Na’im Qasim, Hizbollah’s Deputy Secretary General; Sheikh Nabil Qaouk, the Commander of the Resistance in the South; Seyyid Nawaf al-Mousawi, the head of Hizbollah’s Foreign Relations Unit; Hussein Khalil, Seyyid Hassan Nasrallah’s Personal Political Assistant and member of the party’s Shura-Council; Ali Fayyad, head of Hizbollah’s think tank and member of Hizbollah’s Politburo; and Ghaleb Abou Zeynab, member of Hizbollah’s Politburo....

[Jedburgh]

20 Jun 07 testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe: Adding Hezbollah to the EU Terror List.

Michael Jacobson, Senior Fellow, Stein Program on Terrorism, Intelligence & Policy, WINEP

Alexander Ritzmann, Senior Fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy

James Phillips, Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, The Heritage Foundation

Dr. Matthew Levitt, Director of the Stein Program on Terrorism, Intelligence and Policy, WINEP

[SteveMetz]

In a recent interview, Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Rahhal discussed how Israel's summer 2006 war against Hezbollah changed both the West's vision of Arabs and the Arabs' vision of themselves (al-Quds al-Arabi, July 13). Rahhal claims that the Arabs now see themselves as "capable of action," and no longer as a people "who cannot do anything in the face of an advanced Western machine [the Israeli military] that is supported with a lifeline from the West." He argued that the West now sees the Arab as one with the "will of steadfastness, confrontation and dedication, as well as the capability of fighting…who can be a match for the Israeli, who has 60 years of technical and financial support from the West…We have forced the West to look at us as equals." Rahhal also analyzed the changed perception that Israelis have of themselves in the wake of the war. "There is a feeling of disappointment and failure [among Israelis]," he said. "This is because he has reached a conviction that if the Arabs had a will to fight, they cannot win. They are reassessing the situation with regard to all Arab armies. This is extremely important, and it is a strategic change that involves the Arab and Israeli individuals."

Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Focus, July 17, 2007 - Volume IV, Issue 23

This reminds me of all the time Saddam Hussein spent explaining why 1991 was actually a win for him. These guys must be magna cum laude graduates of the Karl Rove Academy of Positive Spin

[Jedburgh]

WINEP, 21 Aug 07: Hizballah's 'Big Surprise' and the Litani Line

....At the moment, the group seems to think that despite Israel's heavy reliance on airpower in the last war -- with ground forces deployed in only a limited fashion -- the next war would begin with a much larger Israeli ground assault. Any attempt to defend the area south of the Litani would therefore be suicidal. Moreover, the deployment of 12,000 UN peacekeepers and several thousand Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) personnel has made the construction of static defensive lines in southern Lebanon much more difficult than it was before summer 2006. Accordingly, even as Hizballah continues to train village units south of the Litani in the hope that they could slow an Israeli ground invasion, the group has constructed its main defensive positions to the north, where the terrain favors the defender and where Hizballah could deny Israeli armor columns easy access to the Bekaa Valley....

[Rex Brynen]

Take a look at pages 18-19

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/mh/dti0906/

One notable thing that I take from this (if true) is that Hizbullah AT units matched ATGM attributes to Merkava subtypes, and systematically targeted to probe for AFV design weaknesses.

If true, its shows a strikingly high degree of training and fire discipline, when the tendency for most irregular (and many regular) forces would be to fire at the nearest or most threatening vehicle.

[Rank amateur]

If true, its shows a strikingly high degree of training and fire discipline

Yes, and since they were trained by Iranians, there are huge implications if we get into a ground war with Iran. There are also huge implications if the Iranians provide similar weapons and training to the Palestinians or the Iraqi Shia.

[Rex Brynen]

Iran doesn't have much capacity to smuggle substantial ATGM capacity to Hamas in Gaza, and almost no capacity to get anything into the West Bank. The most you find is a few RPGs (usually with regular, non-tandem warheads) and IEDs/mines, and in Gaza only. Given how casualty-averse the IDF is, however, that's a substantial deterrent.

Regarding Iraq, its almost inevitable that Iran will, in the long term, be providing some security assistance to Iraq--indeed, Ahmadinejad has made the offer. Indeed, some (now senior) Supreme Council military cadres held IRGC commissions during their exile in Iran in the 1980s.

[Rank amateur]

I'm just speculating that Iran could get more aggressive once they have a nuclear bomb, or if we get aggressive with them, but your points are well taken.