The Hizballah-North Korean Nexus
The Hizballah-North Korean Nexus
by Carl Anthony Wege
Download The Full Article: The Hizballah-North Korean Nexus
A significant relationship between Hizballah and North Korea, facilitated by Iran, has developed over the last two decades. This relationship has changed the configuration of Hizballah and shaped it into a more formidable military entity. The famed Hizballah Model now includes a North Korean flavor.
In the early twentieth century Paris sought to create a Christian-Arab state in the environs of Mt. Lebanon to further French political objectives. Lebanon was established with a confessional system dominated by a Maronite-Sunni axis to the disadvantage of the Shi’a.
This confessional system stratified Lebanese political institutions and society in a way that became increasingly untenable precipitating a civil war in 1975. The Lebanese fratricide included Palestinians, Israelis, and Syrians. Clan, tribe, and confessional association became more important than any intermediating Lebanese political institutions. The outbreak of the war in the spring of 1975 was followed by a Syrian intervention in 1976 and Israeli invasions in 1978 and 1982.
Among the Shi’a the 1982 Israeli-Lebanon war catalyzed the emergence of Islamic Amal (Amal Al-Islamiyah), led by Hussein Musawi when he and hundreds of followers from Musa Sadr’s original AMAL organization streamed east to Baalbek in Lebanon’s Bekka valley joining Sheikh Subhi Tufayli’s cadre from Lebanon’s al-Dawah (the Islamic Call). A coalition developed between the Musawi organization, the followers of Sheikh Subhi al-Tufayli, and other Shi’a factions. The Sepahe al-Quds (Jerusalem) elements of Iran’s Pasdaran (Padan-e Inqilal-e Islami or Revolutionary Guards) in coordination with the Iranian Embassy’s in Beirut and Damascus, deployed in the eastern Bekka in July of 1982, built on this and Hizballah was born.
Download The Full Article: The Hizballah-North Korean Nexus
Carl Anthony Wege is a Professor of Political Science at the College of Coastal Georgia and has previously published a variety of materials on Hizballah.
