Who Is Who

There are a lot of different groups in the Middle East that come up, but it is not always easy to figure how they relate to each other and how they are perceived in their own country.

Everyone is probably familiar with Yasser Arafat and associated him with the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] for years, but the PLO has evolved into the government of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Groups like the Communist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are active only in Palestine and only as militias. Death is their only purpose and violence is their only tool. Their main “claim to fame” was their association with the Japanese Red Army, the group that introduced the suicide bomber into the conflict.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad is similar, but they have ties to groups in areas other than Palestine.

While they might serve some purpose during a revolution, if the revolution succeeds, the new government is going to have to deal with them. Many believe the Tet Offensive was designed in part to rid the North Vietnamese of the “problem” of the Viet Cong.

The al Qaeda movement is totally different. They operate like a terrorism foundation, providing training seminars on terrorism and grants but don’t directly involve themselves in the individual acts. That’s why they are difficult to track and destroy. At its heart al Qaeda is a grants committee. Groups submit proposals to the al Qaeda leadership and if the proposal is approved, the group will receive funding and resources to accomplish their project. Other than at training sessions, the groups don’t meet. The training camps were originally established by the CIA to provide people to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, but the techniques and procedures have been spread throughout the world.

The final grouping of organizations are the most important because they are all quasi-governments with social services operations, military operations, and political parties, usually established in that order.

Fatah, Arafat’s group, is the oldest of the Palestinian groups still in existence. It formed among the Palestinian diaspora in the 1950s and is resented by some for being outside of the area of Israeli occupation for decades. It is a secular nationalist movement. The al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades is associated with Fatah, but doesn’t necessarily listen to the Fatah leadership as it is populated by what might be described as violent psychopaths. Fatah does have a relatively sane militia that is capable of standard police/military functions.

Fatah is generally viewed as non-threatening by other Arab governments, and receives support from them.

Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni Islamist wing of the Muslim Brotherhood formed in Gaza under Israeli occupation. It has gained wide support among Palestinians because of its social services operations that pre-date the Palestinian Authority, and are still needed.

The support Hamas receives from Arab governments is dependent on the relationship of those governments with their local Muslim Brotherhood chapters. Egypt is not a friend, but the Syrian government needs the goodwill of the Muslim Brotherhood, so they offer support.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shi’ia Islamic group founded in 1982 to fight the Israeli Defense Forces who occupied southern Lebanon. They received aid and training at the beginning from the Iranian Sepah-e Pasdaran [Revolutionary Guard], veterans of the continuing Iran-Iraq War, so they have real military training, unlike most militias. This is a qualitative difference that is displayed in their battles against the IDF.

Hezbollah receives support from the ruling Alawite Ba’athist Party in Syria, the Shi’ite parties in Iraq, and the government of Iran. Their military success tends to make the Sunni Arab governments nervous.

Hassan Nasrallah is the head of Hezbollah and has ties to Iraq and Iran through his religious studies. He attended The Hawza in Najaf, Iraq when it was headed by Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr, a renowned Shi’ite jurisprudent who had founded the Islamic Da’awa Party. Nasrallah then continued his studies in Qom, Iran.

Muqtada al-Sadr who heads an organization similar to Hezbollah, i.e. the social, political, military [Mahdi Army] mix, is the son-in-law of the late Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr and a supporter of Hezbollah. This is the largest Iraqi group that makes a point of reaching out to Sunnis as well as Shi’ia.

The last of these multipurpose groups is the Shi’ia fundamentalist Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which fields the Badr Brigade, the suspect in many anti-Sunni atrocities. SCIRI suffers reduced support in Iraq because it spent a long time in exile in Iran, while Muqtada al-Sadr stayed in Iraq and continued the social work started by his father.