Imad Mughniyeh: The Ghost of Beirut
Imad Mughniyeh, this name may not mean much to you, or perhaps very little.
Yet, he was one of the most controversial figures of Hezbollah and the struggle against Israel.
As the historical military leader of Hezbollah’s armed branch, his face and name were only revealed to the public upon his death in 2008.
His passing was anything but peaceful. It mirrored his life and the tumult of the Middle East. They say, “Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.” This sad adage becomes his epitaph, a man filled with contradictions.
It took only a detonation, a click, to set off the explosives in the car and end a life of clandestine existence.
With a resounding crash, Damascus was filled with silence.
After 20 years of pursuit, Western intelligence services and Mossad put an end to an epic saga known only to Lebanon. Before becoming a black legend of terrorism or resistance, Imad Mughniyeh embodied a collective destiny. The fate of a wounded nation, silently tending to its wounds.
Wounds born of fratricide. Of the eternal recurrence of the first murder. Lebanon had bet on the goodness of humanity, on solidarity free from sectarianism, but it was mistaken. After the civil war, Lebanon was no longer the same.
Yet, the land of the Cedar remains extraordinarily beautiful, a beauty carrying the duty of violence. A duty that Imad Mughniyeh and a whole generation of Lebanese turned into a right.
Born on December 7, 1962, Imad hailed from a small town in southern Lebanon, Tayr Debaa, one of the towns closest to the Israeli border. This geographical proximity instilled in young Mughniyeh a deep attachment to the Palestinian tragedy. He saw the drama symbolized by the Palestinian refugee camps anchored near his town, like makeshift rafts after a shipwreck.
From this sense of injustice, he found a reason to act. A natural leader, he joined the ranks of Fatah and joined its elite brigade, Force 17, as a sniper. Even as a teenager, he became Yasser Arafat’s close bodyguard.
Despite his early role, nothing destined Imad Mughniyeh to become one of the greatest tacticians and enemies of Israel. It was after the 1979 Iranian revolution and the Israeli intervention in 1982 that the son of a humble vegetable vendor took on a historic turn. Through Anis Naccache, another activist for the Palestinian cause, Imad met with the Iranian intelligence services and the leaders of the newly founded Al-Quds Force.
In 1982, he was one of the five historical founders of Hezbollah. He focused less on preaching and speeches and more on military tactics and intelligence. For years, he worked to give Hezbollah international prominence, backed by Syria and Iran. This support resulted in the creation of a bloc called the “front of refusal” against the “American-Zionist imperialism.”
His stance was so radical that Hezbollah never referred to Israel as anything other than “the Zionist entity.”
During his 25-year reign at the helm of Hezbollah, Imad Mughniyeh was far from being an innocent bystander. Fiercely intelligent, he turned a small militia in southern Lebanon into the only force that inflicted a military defeat on Israel. His achievements were so remarkable that Robert Baer, a former CIA agent who spent years tracking him, described Mughniyeh as “probably the smartest, most capable operative we’ve ever run across.”
Yet, while he became a legendary figure in the fight against Israel, Imad Mughniyeh employed means of immense violence to achieve his goals. He was accused of masterminding the deadliest attacks in the region. He was suspected of being behind the attacks on Israelis in Tyre in 1983 and 1982 (75 dead), the US Marines headquarters in Beirut (241 killed), and the “Drakkar” attack in 1983 (58 killed French paratroopers). He was also linked to the bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires in 1994, which killed 85 people and injured hundreds. His name was associated with the kidnapping and assassination of Western hostages, including the CIA chief in Beirut, William Buckley, and the French sociologist, Michel Seurat.
These acts of immense barbarity unfortunately did not stand out amidst the pervasive violence in the Middle East. These acts may seem monstrous and terrorist to us because they are perpetrated outside the banner of a respectable state. When a regular army carries out a bombing that takes the lives of hundreds of civilians, the term “terrorist” is rarely used. This is precisely why the status quo on the recognition of a Palestinian state persists. If a Palestinian state were to emerge, it would enjoy sovereignty in defense, no longer tarnished by guerrilla tactics.
Imad Mughniyeh embraced this “bad” reputation. Yet, as his actions filled the press columns, he remained a ghost. So spectral was he that he became the main subject of a documentary series by Showtime in 2023, titled “Ghosts of Beirut.”
Throughout his life, Imad Mughniyeh remained a mystery. Elusive, everyone knew him by his alias “Hajj Radwan,” yet very few had the opportunity to look him in the eyes.
“We gathered intelligence on him, but the closer we got, the less information we gleaned — no weaknesses, no women, money, drugs — nothing,” revealed David Barkay, a former major in the Israeli military intelligence unit 504, who was responsible for the Mughniyeh file.
Under the direction of Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad in 2002, the noose tightened around Mughniyeh. Having lost two brothers in a car bomb explosion in Beirut, Imad became scarce.
To achieve his legend, a hero needs blood, his own. He fulfilled his fateful destiny on February 12, 2008. At the moment of the final detonation, Imad Mughniyeh became a martyr.
His entire life was a prelude to this precise moment. Stricken by the double curse of violence and heroism, Imad devoted himself wholeheartedly to his homeland and to the homeland denied to others. Nevertheless, in 2022, Lebanon and Palestine are but ruins and desolation. It echoes Bertolt Brecht’s phrase, “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”
